Paul McCartney and Heather Mills Separate, Blame Media
I blogged on the news that Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills are getting separated on Gone Hollywood this morning. The story, while interesting to some, is pure pop culture news without much social significance.
Now, however, they have held a press conference whining that it’s all the media’s fault.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney and his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney, said Wednesday that they are separating after nearly four years of marriage, blaming intrusion from the media and insisting their split is amicable.
[…]
“Separation for any couple is difficult enough, but to have to go through this so publicly, especially with a small daughter, is immensely stressful,” it added. “We hope, for the sake of our baby daughter, that we will be given some space and time to get through this difficult period.”
[…]
On Wednesday afternoon, McCartney posted a message on his personal Web site, saying he was very upset over suggestions that Mills McCartney had married him for his money. “It’s been suggested that she married me for the money and there is not an ounce of truth in this,” he said in the post. “She is a very generous person who spends most of her time trying to help others in greater need than herself. All the work she does is unpaid, so these stories are ridiculous and completely unfounded. I’m very sad to see that some insensitive people would choose a moment like this to spread these vicious rumors.”
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“Although some of these articles can be funny, there are others that are plain malicious and you need to be strong not to be hurt by some of the cruel suggestions that flow from these peoples pens,” the statement said. “The media sometimes suggests a rift between my kids and Heather, but in fact we get on great and anyone who knows our family can see this for themselves,” McCartney wrote.
Now, I sympathize with his pleas for privacy and avoiding vicious gossip. Still, McCartney has been an international superstar since literally before I was born. And I was born before his wife. It’s not as if the man doesn’t know the territory by now. And he managed to keep his first marriage together for over thirty years, until her sad passing, during the heyday of his fame.
Update: Don Surber apparently didn’t get the memo.
“that we will be given some space and time to get through this difficult period.�
Paul, you lose, there are enough idiots out there who will treat this as really important news.
How utterly silly. Obviously it’s Yoko’s fault.
Hah! Good one, Dodd.
So, if it’s an amicable split, how is the press responsible? Do lots of pictures force people to live apart? Was ‘the Press’ secretly having an affair with one of them? I never understand when famous folks blame things on ‘the Press’… If someone did something to damage your marriage, sue the bastards. But if _being famous_ keeps you from maintaining a relationship, I think _you’re_ the one with the problem…
I think they’re blaming the media because they couldn’t think of a way to blame Bush.
No no – McCartney’s _British_. He’d have to blame _Blair_.
Seriously, I’m on vacation this week. I’m gonna have to check my office e-mail more often 🙂
He’s 25 years older than her. What sort of Utopia of a marriage did they think this was going to be, even if the media had ignored them (which I was under the impression it mostly had, seal-hunting aside)?
What am I missing here? It’s a routine case of an AP headline misstating the content of the story. McCartney doesn’t blame the media in the story — he simply says it’s hard to go through a divorce in the public eye. But as to the divorce itself, here’s the quote:
McCartney never connects the “daily pressures surrounding us” to the media, and indeed, the word “blame” only appears in the headline, never in the body of the piece.
Ah, but who’s to blame for Blair? 😉
Whoa, beth…maybe you should get ahold of a Beatles biography. PM, as a teenager, was a poor struggling musician playing dives in an area of Hamburg that could easily be described as the dregs of society. Fame and money didn’t come til his twenties and the real money not til later in his life….from all that Lennon and McCartney ‘elevator music’….. The Beatles feared for their lives in the Phillipines after snubbing Marcos. And, uh did you forget that Lennon was assasinated and Harrison was attacked at knifepoint in his own home. These guys know a thing or two about the underbelly of life and certainly the press. They’ve, no doubt… no doubt…. been surrounded by weirdos and hangers-on for a good part of their careers. You’re probably too young to remember the famous “more popular than Jesus” statement in the PRESS that got blown out of proportion and the ‘mass’ Christian-sided protests, etc. PM’s has faced quite a good bit of the “outside” world. True, it is bogus to blame their marital breakup on the press. If anyone would have had a hard time it would have been her…they have mostly attacked her since day one.
Still, a strong love/bond would have overcome this
BS.
terry
Paul had plastic surgery? On what??