Frenemies

I've been doing a lot of knitting lately, and listening to books on tape. Two I've listened to recently seem, on the surface, to be dissimilar. But closer inspection shows similarities.

The first is The Best of Friends: Martha and Me, by Mariana Pasternak. The author meets her neighbor in Westport, Connecticut -- the as-yet-unknown Martha Stewart -- and they become, as she says, "the best of friends." The author gets sucked into Martha's world of fame and fortune as Martha's sidekick. She and her family serve as props in early Martha Stewart books and television shows. She and Martha each become divorced from their spouse (the author's divorce apparently occurred in part because her husband did not approve of her friendship with Martha), and the author becomes a single mother real estate agent. She mentions several high-level real estate transactions in which she participates as a real estate agent and the very good income she derives from these transactions, but she finds it hard to keep up with Martha's lifestyle on her income. Their friendship included yearly holiday travels to various exotic locations as Egypt, Machu Picchu, and a luxury Mexican spa (where she learns of Martha's stock transaction which ultimately led to Martha's trial and imprisonment). Thus she ends up in thousands of dollars in debt to Martha for trips and renovations on her home. She also testifies at the trial, and their twenty-plus year friendship does not survive. In the end, the author is cast out of Martha's world and has only her less-glamorous life as a real estate agent.

The second is The Politician: An Insider's Account of John Edward's Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal that Brought Him Down, by Andrew Young. Young graduates from Wake Forest Law School but decides he does not really want to be a lawyer, so he works for the NC Trial Lawyers. There, as a thirty-something staffer, Young hears John Edwards give a speech to the trial lawyers and decided to hitch his wagon to Edwards' senatorial campaign. He believes this man could be President some day, and he wants to climb that ladder with Edwards. As a staffer in the Senator's Raleigh office, he works his way into driving the Senator when he is in NC so as to get closer to him. He grabs at the chance to move to what he perceives to be a better position in the Capitol Hill office, but after 9/11 his wife wants to move back to NC, so they do. Young describes how he makes himself the "go-to guy" for the Edwards' family -- taking care of anything and everything from buying Christmas trees to setting up campaign offices for the various Presidential races in which Edwards participates. Ultimately, he helps Edwards hide his affair with Rielle Hunter from Elizabeth, his wife. He thus falls out of Elizabeth's good graces, but John keeps him on -- for he has become the go-between between John and Rielle. Young describes how he rose to his "position of power" by never saying "no" to John Edwards, and how he ultimately felt trapped in his relationship with him as a result. He says that he could not say "no" to anything Edwards asked -- including claiming paternity for Reille Hunter's child and taking his wife and children into hiding with Hunter when the affair became public. Ultimately he, too, loses his relationship with John Edwards and, thus, his job of over ten years and his reputation.

In both books, the author spills the dirt on the celebrity "friend" -- much of it a parade of pettiness and anecdotes to show how the "real person" is not like the persona they present to the public. Both authors latched onto the celebrity and enjoyed the reflected glamour and/or power it gave them -- the chance to hobnob with other rich and famous and powerful people. Both authors could not say "no" to the celebrity but ultimately felt they had become trapped in their bond with the celebrity, and ultimately broke with the celebrity over the celebrity's criminal behavior (alleged or convicted).

There's a lot of sordid detail to wade through in both books. But each is a morality tale -- whether the author intended it or not -- on the consequences of hitching yourself to a celebrity and being so blinded by your own ambition for fame, wealth, power, etc. that you end up never saying "no" and doing things you can easily regret doing. In the end, each author is left worse than he or she started.