GENTLE BENNIFER
For my money, no one tags pop culture weirdness better than the Washington Post's Joel Achenbach.
Here's a sample of his latest story, in which he cogitates over the fixation on Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopes:
It's every bride's nightmare. You've got the big rock on the finger, you've picked the date, you're lining up the preacher, the band, the valets, the florists, the photographers, the videographers and the publicists. You've hired the chopper for arrival and departure. All the lawyers are on board. Prenup is signed. Studio execs have green-lighted your choice of mate.
But then your new movie bombs, it's "Ishtar"-bad, it leaves the biggest crater since Mexico's Chicxulub; and then your fiance, the jerk, goes to a strip club, and suddenly there are screaming tabloid headlines saying "BEN CHEATED," and the tawdry events are detailed at every supermarket checkout line in America. The tabs dredge from the dark, abyssal depths of society the stripper, the blonde with implants the size of cantaloupes, with whom the alleged cheating occurred.
And now there's not a soul on the planet who thinks your marriage could possibly last longer than a tube of lipstick.
For many of us, the current difficulties of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, also known as Bennifer, or Ben-Lo, or Jennufleck, are a source of cruel amusement. It's a fabulous double helping of schadenfreude.
This raises a philosophical question: Is our little thrill at the misfortune of these people a reflection of our larger, bloodsucking, pathetic love-hate relationship with celebrities, or do we have some objection to this specific coupling? This time, is it personal?
First, we must note that although the Lopez-Affleck union seems to be firmly in the category of "pre-failed" and the Vegas over-under on its duration is measured in days, it is possible that this is a momentary hiccup in their relationship, that the wedding (date not publicly announced) will go off as planned and that they'll settle down to a long, happy, fecund and faithful partnership that years from now will be seen as a model of how two people can reconcile superstardom and domestic bliss. We live in an age of infinite possibilities (i.e., "Governor Schwarzenegger").
Second, we should note that there is a distinct hysteria to the reporting of the Bennifer difficulties.
"This is a blip on the radar. One movie that tanked and some insanity in the tabloids," says Affleck's spokesman, the wonderfully named Ken Sunshine. "Everyone in the real world knows that it's nonsense."