Twentysomething...By David Lion Rattiner

Christie Brinkley

We all thought that this story was done and over with last year as Peter Cook walked in shame around East Hampton, denounced by the public for cheating on his wife, Christie Brinkley. How quickly we forgot about it for most of the year, only to feel the full-court press of the media, which is shining a flood light on every detail of the divorce between the supermodel and the architect, who have both enjoyed complete Hamptons royalty status for the entire length of their decade-long marriage.

So is this very article about Brinkley and Cook fueling the media fire? Yet how can a community paper not cover luminaries of the community? The trial is open to the media to cover as much as they'd like. There are plenty who speculate that the media attention is a deliberate action to hurt Cook as much as possible, and there are those who speculate it is all for show. Whatever it is, we are all learning too much about an extremely personal situation that should be behind closed doors.

So far, we know for sure that Cook cheated on his wife with an 18-year-old girl who he picked up in a toy store and then hired to work at his architectural firm. He went to her high school graduation where he had to fend off her stepfather, a Southampton Village police officer who knew of the affair. He admitted to giving a $300,000 payoff to his extramarital lover and spending thousands of dollars on pornography.

It just gets uglier. Who wants to know about all of this, anyway? We do! Yaaaay!

People love to know about things that are absolutely none of our business - we call it entertainment. All of the facts just mentioned are extremely personal and under normal circumstances, would not reach anybody else's eyes or ears except those involved and those that needed to hear it for legal reasons. But isn't this so much fun to read and know about! Yipee! A horrible divorce between two rich people is happening! I need more!

The fact is, this information just scratches the surface of what we need to know about Cook and Brinkley to fulfill our need for celebrity gossip, and in order to analyze every horrible moment over dinner at Nick and Toni's. So, keep it coming. The audience is waiting.

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