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The Kendra and Hank Breakup: Dissected
Andrew Breitbart used to say “politics is downstream of culture.” Similarly, I believe cultural trends are downstream of Hollywood, so you’ll excuse me if I dip my toes a bit into some celebrity gossip for a few minutes.
Kendra Wilkinson (it’s okay if you’ve never heard of her; she was one of the handful of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends featured on his reality show “Girl Next Door”) and husband Hank Baskett (of some sort of sportsball fame) have announced their divorce this week. The pair are parents of two: eight-year-old Hank IV, and three-year-old Alijah.
As celebrities have been conditioned to do, Wilkinson is trying to play down the enormity of what divorce means for her and their two kids. Days after filing the couple appeared together as a united front at their child’s soccer game; a move perfected by countless celebrity parents, some of whom (Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck) even go on vacation together. We’re told that divorce doesn’t matter; that kids aren’t affected, and divorced parents can parent just as effectively as married ones. It’s a facade that couples across Hollywood have taken pains to create; we still love each other and everything is great and wonderful, except we’ve decided to divorce. Strangely, the story doesn’t get more believable, no matter how many times we’ve been told.
On Instagram Wilkinson wrote:
Here’s a key line: “Marriage was just a piece of paper and a piece of jewelry but our hearts will always be real.”
That veneer of playing it cool wasn’t nearly as convincing, or even present, days prior, however. TMZ posted a few heartbreaking videos Wilkinson recorded about the couple’s decision to separate, and even considering she only came to fame because of a reality show, they are profoundly raw. And it exposes the ugly truth about divorce; that it can’t all be put back together and tied together with a pretty bow.
Wilkinson’s statements about marriage “just a piece of paper” flies in the face of everything she did to save the marriage since 2014, when the marriage almost ended after reports of an affair between Baskett and a transgender model became public. The couple litigated a great deal of that conflict in public, and somehow miraculously stayed married, despite the public humiliation Wilkinson endured while eight months pregnant with their youngest child. Her commitment to trying to make the marriage work out flies in the face of any claims that marriage is “just a piece of paper,” because if it were, she would have divorced Baskett four years ago. TMZ and other celebrity gossip outlets attribute the split to the eventual fallout of that scandal. One the couple never totally recovered from.
Even though they weren’t able to come back, it’s been inspiring to see someone in Hollywood – especially a woman who came to fame because of the Playboy franchise — to work so hard to salvage a marriage, even if she ultimately wasn’t successful at doing so.
Published in Entertainment, Marriage
Has there ever been another period in American popular culture when we had so many “celebrities” famous for having accomplished nothing of note? Whose subliterate Instagram musings are pored through like the Dead Sea Scrolls? I’m not criticizing you for bringing it up to make the points you made, but gah, these people.
I’m enjoying some aspects of entering the curmudgeon phase of life. (Is mid 40s too early?) I look at the magazine covers in the check-out lane and don’t know who most of the people on the covers are. If I do, it’s because they passed away and it’s a tribute magazine or a scandalous headline about their last days.
Clearly you’re not talking about Hank as being unaccomplished? He was a thoroughly average Receiver that was signed (undrafted) by your Vikings & traded almost immediately to my Eagles for the equally mediocre Billy McMullen.
Several years later he the process was reversed – Free agent, signed pre-season by the Eagles & sent to the Vikings for the regular season. He even caught one pass for you guys that whole year….
The man is practically American royalty!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous
Divorce seems to have been common with celebrity couples for almost a 100 years.
Being that many celebrity couples are part of a new upper class, I wonder if Charles Murray’s data would be correct for Hollywood too. Perhaps divorce is more common outside of Hollywood now. Many celebrities in Hollywood probably don’t get married.
It seemed like Hollywood divorce statistics peaked around the 1970s in the days of Elizabeth Taylor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Johnny Carson, Mickey Rooney, Richard Pryor, Larry King, etc.
The same TMZ website link ridicules her (“throws insensitive celebration”) for picking a piece of cotton?
Her husband left a Playboy model and the mother of his kids for a transsexual?
Well, there are certain stereotypes, I guess…
Ol’ Hank’s football career went from undistinguished to infamous. He was the “victim” of the most famous onside kick in football history, when he muffed one in the Super Bowl on the opening kick-off of the second half in a surprise maneuver by the New Orleans Saints. The play is credited with turning the entire game around as Baskett’s team, the Indianapolis Colts, went down to defeat. Baskett is #81:
This post caught my eye, because Hank Baskett grew up in the same town I did, Clovis, NM.
Though Clovis High School football was considered a dynasty in New Mexico at the time, he seems to be the only player to make it to the NFL from Clovis, from what I’ve read in the local paper there, though I don’t know that for sure.
When I lived there in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Clovis had a high proportion of church goers. Before it was prohibited by the Supreme Court, public school prayer was common there.
His Wikipedia page indicates that his own parents are still married, with his dad having been in the Air Force.
He sure has let himself be distracted from what is important. He grew up surrounded by traditional values.