The Quaint Misogyny of Serial Cheater Bing Crosby
The widow of crooner — and serial cheater — Bing Crosby just died and her obituary puts a cutesy spin on the nightmare of his misogyny. WTF?
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Kathryn Crosby, widow of Bing Crosby, gave a master class in eating shit sandwiches and pronouncing them delicious. Never in my life have I read an account of such gobsmacking misogyny played for laughs. I want to throw the entire New York Times obituary in the Universal Bullshit Translator, but it’s still recovering from yesterday’s column.
Here’s a gift link, so you can barf along with me.
Kathryn and Bing Crosby’s meet cute:
When she asked to interview the star for her column, “Texas Girl in Hollywood,” which was running in several Texas newspapers, he finagled the appointment into a dinner date at Chasen’s, the Hollywood canteen. On the drive home, he took her hand and sang “You’d Be So Easy to Love.” She was 19; he was 49.
Uh, in the MeToo era we would call this sexual harassment. How charming. This young woman thinks she’s a journalist. No darling, you’re a potential fuckpuppet. And if you play your cards right — a wife! What’s a 30-year age difference? Daddy needs a new appliance.
Kathryn’s immediate pick-me dance, culminates in winning the turd.
Their courtship was far from easy, though Mr. Crosby proposed that year. The star, beloved for his public image as a laid-back Everyman, was diffident and mercurial. He disappeared for months at a time, set wedding dates and broke them — once because, as he joked, he’d left his toupee at home, and once because another romantic entanglement had threatened suicide. He was also involved with Grace Kelly, his co-star in “The Country Girl” and “High Society.” He and Kathryn finally married in a Las Vegas church in 1957.
No one explained love bombing back then. Or the brain science on the addictive qualities of intermittent rewards. Nope. Mr. Everyman (holy metaphor, Batman) was a prize. He’s aloof? Try harder! He breaks dates? Stick with him! This will all be a funny story some day!
Of course the devaluing never stops.
But after her marriage and the birth of her three children, Harry, Mary Frances and Nathaniel, her husband urged her to turn away from acting. She worked occasionally as a model for the designer Jean Louis and performed in several summer stock productions, activities that irritated her husband, who had old-fashioned ideas about marriage.
WHY ARE WE CALLING THIS “OLD-FASHIONED”, NYT? And not ABUSIVE? Oh, be utterly financially dependent. Have no identity outside of wife and mother. If you resist, Mr. Everyman will be angry with you. (But let’s minimize it to “irritation” for publication’s sake.)
His dick wanders, but she’s the one who “neglects” the family.
Mr. Crosby was constantly on the move — if he wasn’t on a film set, he was playing golf, hunting or fishing, often in exotic locales, and he expected his young wife to run a tight household back home in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco.
She was often scolded, as she wrote in her 1983 memoir, “My Life With Bing,” for being a lax housekeeper and disciplinarian. He scolded her, too, for her pursuit of a nursing degree, which she earned in 1963 — she earned a teaching certificate, too — studies that in Mr. Crosby’s view encouraged more “neglect” of her family duties.
Who doesn’t dream of a husband who scolds you for getting a higher education? “Expected his young wife to run a tight household” is again code for ABUSE.
Dude, you’re checked out fucking around in exotic locales. You don’t get to say shit about how she runs the household you abandoned.
And the pick me dance continues.
Once, while Mr. Crosby was on an extended solo vacation in Biarritz, France, he proposed that she leave their children with him and a young French stewardess, one of a few “nannies” he tried to foist on Ms. Crosby, who gamely prevailed. (Her technique with the French interloper was simply to leave the children with the young woman for the day, after which she promptly quit.)
Oh, hahahahaah. He left the children with a series of mistresses and she let him! Isn’t that droll? Good thing no one was traumatized. Oh hang on…
Yum, yum, this shit sandwich tastes delicious.
Ms. Crosby was never cowed by her domineering husband, whom she said she adored.
Yes, with a 30-year age advantage, she just outlived him until he died of a heart attack.
But she got 20-years of domestic abuse. #adoration
“For our whole 20 years of married life Bing alternately implored and enjoined me to get organized,” Ms. Crosby wrote with typical brio. “It was very much like ordering a government to reduce inflation.”
Surprise. Bing Crosby was a serial cheater in his first marriage.
But conveniently put the blame of his marriage’s woes on his wife’s alcholism.
Mr. Crosby was named “Hollywood’s Most Typical Father” in 1937. But his home life with his first wife, Dixie Lee, whom he married in 1930, was troubled.
He was an absent father and, when home, a cold and frightening disciplinarian. Dixie Lee, an alcoholic, died of ovarian cancer in 1952, when she was 42. Their four sons all suffered from alcoholism, and two, Lindsay and Dennis, died by suicide, in 1989 and 1991. Gary, Mr. Crosby’s oldest son, wrote of his chaotic upbringing in his memoir, “Going My Own Way” (1983).
Gee, I wonder why the first wife was so troubled? Conveniently, she died and didn’t write a memoir to tell us. It’s probably a coincidence that she died of ovarian cancer which is linked to STDs.
At Mr. Crosby’s death, Ms. Crosby told The Associated Press that she had been rereading his love letters, which revealed, she said, that he was “a pretty cute kid when it came to convincing a girl that what she really wanted to do was stay at home and scrub floors.”
Drudgery and servitude! How cute! Tell me another one!
“He didn’t know that he was a male chauvinist pig — but he was, of course,” she said.
And he lacked introspection too!
“I expected Bing to live to be at least 92,” Ms. Crosby added, “and I never felt that Bing was much older than 14.”
Bing Crosby wasn’t a serial cheating, abusive fuckwit who drove his first wife to an early death and preyed on countless women. No, he was just a rascally teenager. You know how boys are.
Kathryn, I’m sorry this was your life. And I hope all those misogynistic tropes died with you.
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Your Friday Challenge is to either react to this insanity or write an honest obituary for your cheater.
I may have to read her book. I got a kick out of that I never felt he was much older than 14 comment, I feel like that looking back on my marriage and I also use humor to deal with it. A lot of her comments seem like dry, snide, sarcastic humor to me and I think she knew exactly what he was and she was bagging on him in interviews. I personally love it.
For Kathryn Crosby’s generation, calling her late husband a “chauvinist pig” was pretty blunt. But it’s too little/too late in terms of the “mightiness” it might have taken to save her kids from internalizing the abuse they grew up. I think this is obvious by her daughter Mary’s long campaign to undermine and negate her half brothers’ accounts of being violently abused as children. It suggests Bing’s abuse had the tragic effect of grooming his daughter into an abuse apologist and hagiographer for a monster.
I don’t mean that the onus for this falls on Kathryn. Given Bing’s power and lack of legal protections and rights for abused wives in that era (poor Dixie Lee had to die to escape), Kathryn Crosby was probably making the best of her hostage situation, even being defiant at times. But the story still illustrates how abuse echoes through generations and how lies and minimizations of it kill. Mary Crosby’s whitewashing reminds me of how Frieda Hughes, the daughter of poet Sylvia Plath, continues to censure the parts of her mother’s work that describe Frieda’s father John Hughes’ violence and minimize his role in the untimely deaths of four people, including– like Bing– two of his own children.
I think the solution for the generational disaster lies in the work of individuals like Drs. Emma Katz and Christine Cocciola in lobbying for changes in divorce and custody policies in order to protect survivors and their kids from post-separation abuse and the weaponization of children.
omg… i think i missed the whole point. if you see my comment above i was so mad. lol
I think you are right. Also that the obituary was a very tongue-in-cheek, take-down of him, and a clever coded piece of admiration for a classy broad with gumption (that’s a coded phrase too!)
You know how it goes, when a man is iconic. He’s a romantic hero right? Better to show him up by reading – and writing – between the lines.
So much about this echoes my parents’ marriage.
My father was a charmer–when he wanted to be. He was full of derring-do, a geologist-bush pilot in Alaska who pushed the limits of what was possible in a small plane. He landed his SuperCub on sand bars, perfected “water landings on wheels” (as he called them), and invented methods to sample treetops and soil from his airplane. He was a romantic figure to the young men who envied his skills and his bush knowledge.
He was also domineering, abusive, and pathologically jealous, regularly accusing my mother of “making eyes” at other men, although she was a virgin when they married, and faithful to him. He, on the other hand, had a long time side piece, who after my father killed himself when he was 72 had the gall to write to my mother. I hadn’t known until then, when my mother also confided that when she was young she used to stab her pin cushion with pins while imagining she was stabbing this other woman.
Like Crosby’s family we were merely an extension of the man himself, and our value was based on our use to him. My mother trained me to be attentive to his moods, and used me, his favorite child, to try to manage them. “Go and sit in your father’s lap,” she’d tell me, and I have no idea how this practice played into his sexual abuse of me. She once told me I had to go up to the haybarn where he was shut in with a gun threatening suicide, because, she said, “You’re the only one who can stop him. He loves you enough to put the gun down.” By the time I was thirteen, I was physically putting myself between my father and my mother and sister to protect them.
When I married my now-ex, I thought I had chosen a man completely unlike my father. But I ran interference for him, was attentive to his moods, made sure that any professional achievement I earned was also extended to him (we were both professors), and, to my shame, bought into his belief his was the superior intellect. I took on more and more of the domestic burden, and then listened to him talk himself up as a superior teacher, and devalue me because I wasn’t spending as much time at the office as he was. He had a series of emotional crushes on young women faculty members, in the name of “mentoring” them, and his attentiveness to several young women students over the years crossed the line, although instead of seeing it that way at the time, I second guessed myself as “pathologically jealous.”
His relationship with one of these young women, now an alum, with whom he secretly began “experimenting with his gender identity,” was, to me, a devastating betrayal. She knew more about the intimate details of my marriage and my then-husband than he was willing to share with me. In fact, the day he came to me and told me he had decided he was “a woman in a man’s body,” I thought he was planning to tell me he was leaving me for her.
I won’t say she was a victim throughout, because she was always a willing accomplice, but sometimes I imagine the damage done to that young woman’s psyche by her years wrapped up with my now-ex.
Personally, I think people like your ex’s mentee/side piece come pre-damaged and predisposed to betrayal so whatever damage they suffer from poor choices is more ironic than tragic. That woman didn’t just enable cheating but abuse of a family.
I was put in the same position dozens of times as an aspiring young careerist yet, nope, didn’t bite and, furthermore, I pushed back. The risk of being professionally punished just wasn’t enough of an inducement to ever justify giving into quid pro quo, especially if this involved enabling the victimization of someone else. I wasn’t facing violence, death or starvation, only failure so about the only pass I’d give for complicity is for, say, an immigrant single mother from a perilously dangerous country who’s having her immigration status weaponized by some married douche boss– i.e., someone forced at proverbial or actual gunpoint.
The rest can get stuffed and even “relative youth” isn’t a pass. Considering that most serial killers begin their killing careers at around age 20, “relative youth”– though it can definitely contribute to people becoming victims of and entrapped by abuse– is still a very limited alibi when it comes to being a perpetrator or accomplice.
Adelante, I just was so moved by what you posted that I wished you were here in person so I could shake your hand. Please pat yourself on the back a million times for going through all that and sharing your story here to help others. 💞👍
Thank you so much for sharing this story and as some of the commenters below say, they also thought they married someone different, and then the similarities come to light. I am happy you are free, but so sorry for all of us. We deserve compassion, not judgement, no more victim blaming ,and I come here to remind myself of that. Because it still is not engrained in me. I love this group, and refer it as my group therapy to people.
Adelante, no child should have to endure what you went through. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, and my heart goes out to you. As for your ex, he’s a piece of work. He didn’t deserve you.
So much of what you wrote resonates with me. While my father wasn’t abusive or cruel, he was an alcoholic. My mother would have me play beside him while he was passed out, perhaps believing that the sound of a child might wake him and lift his spirits.
Like you, I married someone who seemed entirely different from my father—that was part of the appeal, or so I thought. But in hindsight, I see that just as I once learned to instantly sense whether my father had been drinking, I later became hyper-aware of my husband’s frequent bad moods. It was the same kind of constant vigilance, the same instinct to adapt myself to someone else’s emotional state. To say that none of this was healthy is an understatement.
Constant vigilance and hyper-awareness is exactly what it was. I know our mothers were doing the best they could, but they unwittingly did a lot of damage.
Adelante, I can’t begin to comprehend how horrific this was, particularly how your mother used and abused you to manage her marriage and your father. She put your life at risk by sending you to stop your father from killing himself with his gun. He could have killed you both.
I’ve admired many of your posts and commend you for becoming who you are despite all these horrors in your life. You have strength and you still have space for compassion.
My mother’s actions were never done out of malice. She was so conditioned by the abuse herself, and was just doing the best she could. One time when I put myself in between my father and my toddler sister, she told me that if she’d done it, he would have escalated his abuse. I do have some residual anger, however, that she did not choose to to act to keep us safe,
I’ll take the “obit challenge” for £100 please CL.
So Ex-Mrs LFTT – a woman never renowned for sparking joy in others’ lives – is gone.
Good.
When not drinking to excess (she thought that she hid it well but didn’t), lying (her BS was both blatant and obvious), manipulating (I doubt that she ever had an interaction with someone that wasn’t transactional and in her favour) or stealing (not just from me, but from our kids too), or cheating (enough said), she spent a lifetime trying to achieve centrality in places where she was not wanted.
In her favour, she gave birth to the three children who have all grown into wonderful young adults; this despite her best efforts. After walking out on her husband and three young children, she never looked back ….. apart – that is – from spending nearly two years dragging out the divorce proceedings, lying to the Judge and her own legal team, driving up costs, making unreasonable demands and generally act like a dick.
Her last 10 years were spent with her “multiple-times AP” (they had also had an affair when she was single and he was married) living in a poky one bedroom rental property in a crappy commuter town to the West of London. The extra time that she gained from having left 99% of the effort of bringing up her children to her Ex-husband allowed her to indulge in her two true passions; self-pity and drinking No one knows or really cares whether she was happy or not, because she had managed to alienate almost everyone who had ever met her by this stage in her life.
Her ex-husband is quoted as saying “I am sure that I must have seen something in her at some point but, looking back, I was probably wrong.”
She will not be not missed.
LFTT
LFTT- This would have made a great friday challenge. Write an obituary for your FW friday. She sounds horrible. Ambivalence. But I think appropriate to mark the occurrence of her death here.
Not Slough?!!!! Reminds me of the John Betjeman poem that starts
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough
It isn’t fit for humans now
Even I wouldn’t wish Ex-Mrs LFTT on the population of Slough. They have suffered enough already.
LFTT
Mourned only by those who didn’t know her, Amen.
Wow, I hope you and your children find more and more joy as she fades away into the ether of your history.
Ka-chump,
Thank you. The kids (now 28, 26 and 21 but 18, 16 and 11 when she left) and I are in a really good place now. It’s been a long journey along a rocky road, but the smaller that she gets in the rear view mirror the better it gets.
LFTT
LFTT! I think you just found your side hustle! I would pay you handsomely for your service in writing my special FW’s and the even more special AP’s obituaries! Cheers!
Mic drop. 🎤
Thanks for the link! I had to cancel my subscription to the NYT because I can’t handle the news right now. I have many thoughts about this whole mess. Here are a few of them.
Kathryn was just about the same age as my mom. Southern ladies who were born in the 1930s tended to shut up and get on with it. Even the ones who weren’t Catholic didn’t get divorced because it simply wasn’t done.
I thought the third photo that accompanied the obituary was really telling. It shows Bing, Kathryn, and their oldest child in front of an airport. Bing was looking ahead with his focus above the photographer. He was like that in most of his photographs. Kathryn is turned toward the child looking down at him. The kid is in the middle holding hands with both parents, but his body is turned toward his mother. That kid wasn’t having any of it with his sperm donor.
Bing’s first wife died of cancer at the age of 42. They had 4 sons. The oldest son was OLDER than Kathryn. Don’t you know that gave him the icks!
Another thing I noticed was that one sane parent made a huge difference for the children. Bing’s first wife was was reported to be an alcoholic and she died when her sons were teenagers. The sons were reported to be alcoholics, all of them had multiple marriages, and two of them committed suicide. On the other hand all of Kathryn’s children seem to have successful careers of one kind or another. Her daughter got married as a teenager (not unusual with a terrible father), but she divorced that dude and took some time to grow up before she married again. I couldn’t find much information, but her sons do not appear to have had multiple divorces like their half brothers.
And my final thought…I might not be able to watch White Christmas again. I didn’t know Bing Crosby was such a bad guy. Of course there’s a quote from him that should have been a clue. On IMDB he was quoted as saying, “Everyone knows I’m just a big, good-natured slob.” If somebody calls himself “good-natured” it’s a lie. It’s always a lie. That’s like my ex saying he was a terrible liar. That may be who he wanted to be, but that kind of stuff is a lie.
The paragraph about the family photo really struck a chord with me. I was once in a wedding party that included mostly parents. Our children were also included as flower girls, ring bearers, etc. During the photos portion of the reception the photographer had to repeatedly ask the parents to look up at the camera, because most of us were looking down at our children. I think it is a huge red flag when (not only during photos) people don’t look at each other. Flash forward 30 years and I saw a pre-affair photo of Mrs. Bendover and her husband on Fakebook. His face was turned towards her looking at her adoringly, while her gaze was straight ahead looking past the camera focused on who knows what. This prompted me to look closely at my old family photographs and I saw for the first time that FW was not there. He was in the photos all right, but he was…. not there. It was startling to see the progression of time, and I don’t mean sagging bodies and wrinkled faces over 35 years – I mean growing distance.
I like the clarity she seemed to have, at least later in life, about her husband. “He didn’t know that he was a male chauvinist pig — but he was, of course,” she said.” And “not much older than 14”!
Seems like she defiantly stood up to him at times, like earning degrees – hats off to that.
I am so sick of amoral, childish, selfish players having so much limelight and accolade, and not being taken to task.
Born in 1963, I grew up with Bing the Good Guy propaganda. The Bing bubble burst in 1986 when I read Gary Crosby’s entry in the book Courage To Change, personal stories of celebrities in recovery for alcoholism. I may have read his book Going My Own Way; I remember reading a book with photos of Bing and Dixie.
This all reminds me to how to regard Traitor Ex’s post DDay relationship status. If he gets married, dates, is in a relationship, whatever. None of those things means one is safe, trustworthy, emotionally mature, or psychologically healthy. Rather than assume everything is lollipops and rainbows, assume it’s not, because having a secret sexual double life or being a side piece proves an absence of healthy relationship skills and the presence of deep and serious problems.
Consider the affair the equivalent of finding the mark of the devil like when Damien’s parents found the 6’s tattooed on his scalp in The Omen…..
I recently read in my local news sources that the crime scene is for sale…
https://apple.news/APxvDHELJQCy7auLj-YQ5Kw
Check out the lovely facade…..
Perhaps I’d write, “Contrary to what he told friends, family, employers and random people he accosted on the street, Fraudster was not a veteran, was not an MD, did not have two MBAs or even one, and did not win international championships.”
GoodFriend, I love this!
Semi-related in an obscure way. My mom ended her romantic relationship with my dad when she was 40. She moved out, and never was romantically linked to him again. But they remained friendly. The thing is, he was not a good husband, and while he was somewhat better as a friend, he was still who he was. A rather selfish and ungrateful man. She no longer had to be is wife appliance or deal with him all day every day, but she still dealt with a good amount of it. After everything that went on in their marriage including his infidelity, he really didn’t deserve that. Though that is not my call to make really, just my opinion.
She mostly just put up with him. He drove her crazy. And he was financially much better off than her so as she watched him have things that she couldn’t afford, it left her angry. Again, not my call but I think if she went no contact and had no idea what he was up to, she would have been happier overall.
She died of a terminal disease. At the end, she was ok with some visitors, but her preference was to sit quietly most of the time. She wasn’t interested in chatting. When he came to visit, which he did frequently, he didn’t shut up. And she had been so conditioned to walk on eggshells all those years that she just put up with it. Even on her literal death bed.
Sometimes I see parallels in my marriage and hers, in that I also did all the eggshell walking, I learned fron the best! But D-Day happened not long before she died. And one thing I realized was that I didn’t ever want tolay dying, and still put up with his BS just because I was too afraid not to.
The fact that Bing Crosby was awful and Kathryn’s obitury is so focused on his awfulness just makes me sick. She was a very young mom with multiple kids, dealing with them alone for the most part, and what we see is references to how her house was what? Not tidy enough?She wasn’t strict enough with the kids…according to WHO? Him? The absent asshole father? Even in her death his opinions of her are what is put out there. Ewwwwwww.
“Chaotic upbringing”? What’s with all the media euphemisms for DV? It’s disturbing to see this kind of whitewashing when, back in the pre-#MeToo dark ages, the news very frankly reported that Gary Crosby didn’t just write about a “chaotic” upbringing but his father’s coercive control towards his mother and constant violence towards himself and his brothers. Gary Crosby reported being beaten every day until he bled because he was overweight as a young boy and his brothers corroborated.
As a little kid I loved watching old musicals during Christmas but then I heard about Gary Crosby’s book and went through a kind of kiddy reckoning on how really bad people can create mild mannered public images. That was probably an important early object lesson which it seems today’s generation are being pointedly denied.
I saw a funny post online recenty that said “I saw my partner’s Tinder Profile and I am so mad at the lies! He is NOT “fun to be around”
And it just made me laugh out loud. It also made me wish I had created fake profiles when he was active online so I could have viewed his profiles. I am so betting he said he is fun to be around too. And he’s not. He is miserable to be around. (In fairness, he was probably really fun on dates as they were new supply and he had his mask on) Just saying, it would probably be hilarious to see how he described himself.
I have to say I get down on my knees and thank Jesus for title seven of the civil rights act of 1964, which outlawed employment discrimination against women, among other protected classes. I think 95% of this misogynistic hatefulness was due to women not being able to earn their own money, and having to, out of a desire to survive, suck shit up. No longer!
Hopefully this nonsense will die out with that generation. I know my daughters wouldn’t put up with this for a nanosecond, they can earn their own money, and they do. When you have the ability to just walk right out the door and maintain your own style of living, it’s amazing how little you will tolerate!
My grandmother was 18 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, for reference. She once left a secretarial job because the boss was making all the secretaries sit in his lap. Imagine having to tolerate that without beating his ass to death. Thank God for feminism and the legal protections we have today.
I’m sure you’re right. My mother, who had a college degree, later earned a teaching credential, and the fact that she had her own income and a secure job is what allowed her to finally leave my father. I grew up with her admonition “You need your own income,” and I’m glad that stuck with me.
Centuries of woman living like this. Unthinkable to leave…not sure how Priscilla Presley managed, but like the game of throwing a hot 🥔 potato around, the last woman standing wins the frosted turd. Wins! Now can write books, keep.the house, the insurance money, the name… and bragging rights.
One other thought on these men spending time away from home. Our house was peaceful without my perfectionistic raging father . Calm, loving, happy until.the moment he got home then we snapped to attention. My 2xs who cheated, the same rings true. Quiet calm peace when they were gone…we would say to ourselves….please stay away longer. Could this be a reason people stay even though they know whats going on? The peace of these mean people is restored the second they leave and go anywhere else. Just a thought..days in between abuse makes one think you can handle this. That cycle we know so well and so sadly. The longer they stay out the better. Though Mrs Crosby was alone with the children while Bing did his thing. I can assure you, momma loved up on the little ones and helped them through the crazies of a serial user and tyrant father and husband. One SANE PERSON even though she hung
on amd was preyed on.
Leave it to Beaver, Daddy knows best, Lassie we’re these real men too?
He scolded her, too, for her pursuit of a nursing degree, which she earned in 1963 — she earned a teaching certificate, too — studies that in Mr. Crosby’s view encouraged more “neglect” of her family duties.
Back in the 60s, and even 70s, many nursing schools would not accept candidates who were married or had children, since they wanted female students who would focus solely on nursing studies. I wonder if she got those degrees so she’d be able to support her family if they divorced. It might have been a two-edged sword if it would also mean she wouldn’t get a good settlement, alimony or child support, particularly in contrast to his lifestyle as a multi-millionaire, which she could share while they were married, and inherit on his death.
Tracy was appalled by this writer; some commenter suggested that maybe the writer and Kathryn herself intended us to read between the lines. The obit writer certainly did when she wrote, a young French stewardess, one of a few “nannies” he tried to foist on Ms. Crosby, who gamely prevailed. She put “nannies” in quotes deliberately, to cast doubt on their real purpose. But “prevailed” is a dubious opinion, and incorrect since there multiples mentioned. And it’s worth noting that whatever the writer intended, she was not accurate: Editors posted THREE factual corrections to this obituary, and missed the fact that Kathryn earned not one but two teaching certificates, in both primary and secondary education.
I wonder about those wedding dates he broke, Joking that he left his toupee at home suggests he actually stood her up. I hope she had a good last laugh.
I cannot imagine all that she endured—yet another example of a Hollywood type who could not keep it in his pants.
Of course, the times were different, and women tolerated way more as the norm. My elderly aunt (nearly 90) divorced twice in her 20’s for adultery. She related to me how humiliating it was to do that and also how determined she was to not put up with that in her marriage. Thankfully, husband #3 was a gem, and they had forty happy years together when he passed away.
I didn’t fully confirm that adultery was involved until partway through the divorce, but no, I didn’t tolerate that either.
…there’s a link between STDs and cervical cancer? Fascinating article. I was taking my fuckwit to pre-cancer screenings right before the Pick-Me Dance Phase began. Weird!
As for her future-obituary-
“Ex-Mrs. Washington tragically passed last Monday evening from some combination of an STI, ovarian cancer, and anaphylaxis from her own bullshit. Her body was her temple, and like most temples it appears to have been sacked by the Romans. She otherwise died the way that she lived-running from her own problems and any kind of responsibility. Her motto, “what’s life without risk?” were words that she lived and ultimately died by.
She dedicated her life to yelling at people that held her accountable and largely rejecting systems that she created and bought into when they became inconvenient. She earned her master’s degree in social work from (redacted), a degree she largely put in low effort toward. Her stated goal was to join social services to prevent upbringings like her own and she largely became what she wished to avoid. Her career was mostly pockmarked with scandal and fraud. Quoth Mr. Washington, “I guess the slut just wasn’t that ethical after all.”
She is survived by her mother and brothers. Surviving her is the wreckage of countless souls and broken promises, not the least of which is “her” cat and her ex-common law husband of 13 years. She left behind no children despite proclamations of wanting them on the premise that she simply could not clean up after herself, let alone participate in the care and feeding of human life outside of her household.
In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate donations to whatever cause Ex-Mrs. Washington was championing at the moment of her death. We don’t know either.”
Crosby’s first wife reportedly died of ovarian cancer which researchers recently linked to chlamydia infection. But almost all cervical cancer cases like your ex’s are associated with cancer-causing strains of HPV or human papillomavirus. Apparently so are the vast majority of mouth and throat cancers.
Because the dangerous strains of HPV are always silent, the vaccines for the disease don’t cover at least six of the cancer-causing strains and any associated cancer can take several year to manifest, it’s a risk that hangs over the heads of most chumps. Fortunately most people clear the virus naturally but not all are so lucky. To the degree that emotional trauma can measurably impair immune function, abuse survivors face higher risk. Anyway, this is one of many reasons why I think cheating should be officially categorized as a form of intimate partner violence.
“Her body was her temple, and like most temples it appears to have been sacked by the Romans.”
OMG I’m laughing at an obituary!
“Her body was her temple, and like most temples it appears to have been sacked by the Romans.”
Ahahahahaaa! Great line.
I second what Cam said. If there’s a chance she gave you high risk HPV you’ll need to be screened for penile, mouth and throat cancer regularly. Sorry to have to tell you that but you need to know. Believe me, I know how shitty it feels.
Yes! Google HPV. It’s why they invented the HPV vaccine.
Mikey Mouse has bit his last piece of cheese & gone to Rat Heaven. Mikey received his nickname due to all his cowardice of running away….from Life. Mikey is survived by Plastic Schmoopie who will gleefully push out Mikey’s three kids from inheriting anything because Mikey valued gold-digging pussy more than his own flesh & blood. Celebrating tonight is his ex-wife who will toast his demise with lots of bubbly & laughter with her friends & family that hated the fucker. All are welcome if you have no respect for cowardly run-away moms & dads. The thought of never encountering Mikey Mouse again in a grocery store or at a kid’s graduation just brings a lot of joy!! Condolences go out to the kids for having a mouse as their dad & him never growing up to be the dad they needed. May there be lots of cats in Rat Heaven. Karma.
Jesus, I might actually have to do an obit when the real Mikey Mouse dies. Of course, Mikey Mouse will still be the name I use 😉
My grandmother was a mistress in her youth and had no remorse about it. Meanwhile, an elderly family friend thought infidelity was okay as long as the guy compensated you for your time.
I had NO IDEA about any of this. They both dropped this shit on me like a nuclear bomb shortly before they died, and it absolutely obliterated my view of the both of them.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised. They both had a desperate neediness for men (any man) and thought you needed one to survive. I understood that part because it’s what they grew up with, but they never moved on mentally or emotionally, viewing men as literal life rafts and other women as competition. It was disturbing.
They also shared stories of casual misogyny and sexual harassment in their youth that made my hair stand on end. We truly grew up in different universes.
I found out after she died that one of my great aunts had been an AP for quite a long time. The excuse given was that the FW couldn’t get a divorce. That may in fact have been the case because this was before the advent of universal no fault divorce in the US. Not an excuse though.
Attila the Nerd passed away today after a brief hospital stay for ego implosion complicated by liver failure. He is survived by one desperate fluffer, several narcissistic siblings and the children whose lives he tried to destroy. In lieu of flowers, donations to Pornsick Anonymous are greatly appreciated. Services to be held at Bucky’s Bar and Grill Saturday night at 8. Come hoist a few and read your favorite stories from Penthouse forum in remembrance of Attila. A special screening of Revenge of the Nerds will follow services.
FUCKWIT DIES ALONE
Fuckwit, longtime coward and emotional abuser, died yesterday, alone at his family home on top of the hill. At the time of his demise his mistress was shopping, or maybe visiting her husband, or perhaps on a date with her next victim. The world may never know.
Fuckwit was not a cartoon character of evil, but an intelligent, generous, and effed up man, well liked by those with whom he had limited interactions. He was known to his most intimate family members to be entitled and self-pitying. Throughout his adult life he never confronted his own bullshit, and placed his equally effed up parents on platinum pedestals. His favorite quote was by Socrates: “An unexamined life is the only way I can get through a day.”
Fuckwit is survived by his ex-wife of 35 years I Know I’ve Got Problems Too But I’m Working On Mine; his daughter He’s My Father And I Love Him But I’m Ashamed And Heartbroken; and his son Mom If You Ever Go Back To That Guy I’ll Never Speak To You Again.
In lieu of flowers the family asks for donations to The American Coward Society, in the hopes that every unhappy fuckwit will take positive action to walk out on his/her family instead of staying to put them through hell.
This is absolutely perfect and hilarious!
I’m putting this one on my fridge- it describes Pennywise to perfection.
Perfection. Thanks for the laugh!
PS and off topic – I have just clicked on one of my favorite podcasts “The Jordan harbinger Show” (episode 1133), and there is a discussion about whether or not to expose an extra-marital affair. I haven’t listened yet but a lot of you may find it interesting. That segment starts at 4 minutes 35
I loved this UBT analysis of Bing Crosby’s FWery. I have to share an anecdote that is eerily on point. My mother was that rare thing too, a woman journalist in the 1950s. One of her first assignments as a 23-year-old cub reporter was to interview Bing Crosby. I kid you not. She occasionally interviewed celebs who came to her California town for events. He was the worst celeb interviewee she ever had. He was cold, monosyllabic, and clearly bored out of his mind. No matter what she asked or how she phrased it, he barely deigned to give her a response. She is a very attractive woman and I am now so relieved he didn’t target her as his next victim. I can’t wait to show her the obit.
Bing was a jerk, more so because of being a “star”. He wanted a stay home appliance for his image & offspring, rather than a partner. It sounds like she got back at him a bit though:
“for our whole 20 years of married life Bing alternately implored and enjoined me to get organized”. At least she outlived him & remarried again. Hope that marriage was more a happier one for her.
Not sure what I’d write, but if FW wrote one for himself, it would sound something like this:
Me. Me me me me me me me me me.
Me me me me, me me me me me.
Me me me. Me me me me me me me.
And me.
Well, I did have to write the cheaters obituary. Things were chaos at the time on many levels as I had just had a DD 6 weeks before that, some of which was revealed to his father at that time also. He didn’t make it thru a crazy surgery that was basically experimental.
I wasn’t aware of the depth of the cheating when I wrote his obituary. Short, to the point, usual stuff. Most things came to light (and kept coming to light for ages) after the obituary/ceremony of life was over and done. Like, I was wondering if there was an end to it or not.
If I knew then what I know now, the obituary would have been worded very differently, believe me. My little jab about a year and a half after his death (29 year marriage) was legally changing back to my maiden name and sending out cards to everyone acknowledging that. I know that churned the pot a whole lot as I got calls from old friends out of state asking me “what the hell went on?”. Happily married/widowed women don’t change back to their maiden name a year and a half after a “wonderful man and husband” dies.. I gladly told anyone who asked…why I ditched that last name. 9 years after his death I’m still revealing his infidelity to people. My father in law (toxic man, cut him out of my life many years ago) was especially irked by my name change. Piss off asshole!