The American Spectator

Live From New York

There is a Lorenz Hart lyric that about sums it up:

blockquote> em>When love congeals br> It soon reveals br> The faint aroma of performing seals... /em> /blockquote> He further mentions,

The conversation with the flying plates...

And,

The fine mismating of a him and her...

These could be the lyrics to the most entertaining show in the Hamptons...certainly, at least, until the rainy season is over.

It all started with a divorce, which should have been a ho-hum yawn of an event for the usually jaded residents of this money-by-the-sea community.

Mr. Cook wanted the courtroom closed and the children's Law Guardian supported this request. In New York, this usually happens virtually automatically in child abuse and neglect cases, but does not happen in the average divorce case unless there are small children involved and sensible parents request a closed courtroom. However, in this case, Ms. Brinkley wanted the courtroom open to the media of the Western World and any neighbors who did not have anything better to do on a rainy afternoon. The judge, in an entirely legally supportable decision, whose precedents go all the way up to the Supreme Court, decided the courtroom should be open to the media and public.

Ms. Brinkley's position appeared to be inexplicable since the airing of this couple's dirty linen could only be detrimental to the children. Especially so, since Mr. Cook's peccadilloes apparently included a couple of very young women and at least one other who was already married, unfortunately, to someone else. In fact, his own lawyer compared him to those bastions of sexual probity: Clinton, Spitzer and McGreevy.

Mr. Cook was seeking custody, but, back in the real world, that stood as little chance of happening as Bin Laden showing up at a Bar Mitzvah. What the mother was trying to show was that he was morally unfit to have visitation with their two children. However, the fact is that it probably takes him twenty minutes to do whatever he does with a young lady and he has the rest of the day to be a good father. Brinkley's capable lawyers will have to prove that his conduct somehow has so contaminated his life that he should not have unsupervised visitation.

topics:
Television, Business, Law, Supreme Court