Hell Hath No Fury.....

"You never really know a woman until you've faced her in court".
(Norman Mailer)


The late novelist, Norman Mailer, certainly knew a thing or two about facing women in court. He was divorced five times, and most of those divorces were acrimonious---hardly surprising, given his propensity for affairs and his not-infrequent drunken rages (he stabbed wife number two in one such episode). But, perhaps fortunately for him, Mailer's final divorce occurred long before the advent of YouTube.

Even if you haven't seen the video clip, you've probably read something about the notorious Philip Smith/Tricia Walsh-Smith divorce case that was finalized just this week in New York, following several months of worldwide publicity over Ms. Walsh-Smith's self-serving, self-indulgent, and just-plain-nasty YouTube video.

Ms. Walsh-Smith, a sometime actress and playwright, had married Mr. Smith, 30 years her senior and the president of the famous Shubert Theater organization, back in 1999. They had a pre-nuptial agreement that said that if Mr. Smith were to file for divorce, he would have the right to sole possession of his Park Avenue apartment (which he had acquired long before the marriage), and would have to pay his wife $750,000. Apparently, things were rocky from the start, and by early this year Mr. Smith had decided that enough was enough, and filed for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty (New York is the only state without a no-fault divorce statute). He then exercised his right under the pre-nup to have his wife evicted from the apartment.

At that point, Ms. Walsh-Smith brought in a video crew and proceeded to give a rambling, angry monologue about how she had been wronged, including references to her husband's sexual inadequacies, and to his "evil" adult daughter. The video immediately got the attention of media types in New York, and within a couple of months had been viewed over three million times and was the subject of numerous TV debates on privacy, slander, free speech, and other legal and moral issues.

As far as the divorce case was concerned, Ms. Walsh-Smith's strategy was a failure. The divorce court judge, in his written ruling, blasted her YouTube production, calling it a "melodrama", a "calculated and callous campaign to embarrass and humiliate her husband", and a "not-too-subtle attempt to pressure him into settling the case on more favorable terms." The judge ruled that the pre-nup was 100% valid, and refused to award Ms. Walsh-Smith additional compensation beyond the $750,000.

So, the case is now closed and, legally, both parties got what they has agreed to nine years ago. But in the all-important court of public opinion, nobody wound up getting anything good. The husband is now more widely known for his sex life, or lack of it, than for his long and distinguished career. The wife will be forever known as a vindictive, psychologically shaky woman---someone to stay as far away from as possible. Even the husband's adult daughter will never escape the consequences of being thrust into the limelight: "Hey, isn't she that evil stepdaughter from the YouTube clip?"

Divorces have always engendered nastiness, but in the old days---meaning just a few years ago---rants like that of Ms. Walsh-Smith's were pretty much confined to one-on-one sessions with close friends and confidants. Now, your unhappy spouse can rip you apart in front of her three million newest best friends. It's a scary and depressing situation, and there's probably nothing that can be done about it, other than individual judges imposing heavy sanctions on people who act maliciously. But by then the damage has been done; sanctions can never repair a damaged reputation.

If there is a lesson in all this---other than to avoid marrying someone unstable in the first place---it's probably that, if divorce is inevitable, we should avoid adding fuel to the fire. Divorce doesn't have to be ugly. It's possible to break up with dignity and mutual respect, and even for the couple to remain friends. I don't know exactly what Mr. Smith said or did to his wife, and I'm certainly not making excuses for her, but he might have handled the separation poorly. He might have blindsided her with the divorce and/or the eviction papers. He might have misjudged her potential reaction, might have considered it strictly a "legal matter" that would be processed in a cut-and-dried manner by the lawyers and the judge. Divorce, as well as marriage, requires a sensitivity to the dignity, the emotions, and the psychological makeup of the other person. Failing to anticipate trouble virtually guarantees that it will happen. And in this day and age, trouble is no longer a private matter between two people.