I have decided to shun Jerry Seinfeld and his stolen sycophant wife. He has a new bee movie coming out soon and I’m not going to see it because
I have come to believe Jerry is not a good person, he is morally corrupt, and he lacks a social understanding of ethical behavior in context. Jerry Seinfeld has become, for me, “the Barry Bonds of comedy” by denying the obvious to protect the ego. Here’s why.
To understand the comedian, we need to investigate the man. Sure, Jerry is funny and entertaining on stage, but at home, in the stillness of the night, he and we, must realize silliness cannot afford the luxury of riches that plow fallow fields.
Let’s start with Jerry’s first open mocking of morality and propriety as a public person with his wrongful wooing of the 17-year-old beautiful Jewish Princess prize Shoshanna Lonstein. He is 20 years older than she and he dominated her life and recklessly stole the comity of her youth. What sort of man chooses to date a such a young soul?
Not a man we should admire or financially support with our valuable entertainment dollars. Here is the stunning Shoshanna as she is and as she was.
Then Jerry stole Jessica Sklar — the new wife of Eric Nederlander — shortly after their honeymoon:
Mr. Nederlander, now 39, had a good reason for hesitating to start a relationship under the scrutiny of their housemates. At the time he was recovering from the very public implosion of his first marriage, in 1998, to Jessica Sklar.
When Ms. Sklar left him shortly after their honeymoon for the higher profile Jerry Seinfeld, Mr. Nederlander, whose family owns a collection of Broadway theaters, found himself in the cross hairs of the gossip columnists.
What kind of man wants to steal the wife of another man? Not a man I choose to admire or support. I realize one cannot steal the wife of another man without the willing participation of the thefted woman — and it just goes to prove Jerry’s new wife, Jessica Sklar, was money hungry and a “star whore” and she relentlessly played into the stereotype of the money-grubbing gold-digger giving up one man’s riches for the never-ending wealth of another.
Mr. Nederlander even threatened to sue Jerry for “alienation of affection” for the theft of his wife and that was the right moral thought for the immoral impetus.
Then Jerry bought a parking garage to house the excesses of his public life — is that sort of in-your-face purchasing power well-spent?
How many cars does one man need? Does Seinfeld believe or care how this sort of vapid excess plays with a public that adores the funny but hates the haughty?
Semi-retired television actor Jerry Seinfeld is spending nearly $1.5 million on prime Manhattan real estate. But it isn’t for himself; it’s for his cars. Nearly two years ago he bought a building near his home on Central Park West for about $1 million. And he had planned to spend another $500,000 renovating it to meet the needs of his Porsche collection.
The garage (which is large enough to fit 20 cars) was reportedly expected to include a cushy 844-square-foot office, kitchenette and a bathroom and shower. Two years later, after delays and permit problems, drilling finally started this week, according to published reports. And neighbors are already complaining.
Next, Jessica and Jerry bought Billy Joel’s Long Island home for $32 million USD and promptly tore down 85% of the home because they didn’t like it.
The most recent Seinfeld/Sklar debacle is one of a more ominous tone: Allegations of plagiarism are wafting in and around the Seinfeld estates and it all started when the sycophant Mrs. Seinfeld appeared on Oprah to shill her new cookbook:
Jessica Seinfeld appeared on Oprah last week to promote her cookbook “Deceptively Delicious” and one week later it is a national best-seller. Today, her husband Jerry is in the interview seat to promote his upcoming animated feature “Bee Movie,” in which Oprah voices a judge.
With Jessica in the front row, Oprah, walnut-sized diamonds dripping from her ears, told the audience what Jessica had sent to her instead of a note thanking her for last week’s appearance. Shoes. Jessica sent Oprah 21 pairs of shoes. From the shot that goes across the screen, the majority were Christian Louboutin kicks, which retail for $800-$1200 a pair. Just a $16,000-$20,000 thank you, from one multi-millionaire couple to their billionaire friend.
I’m sure Oprah is so poor she needed Jessica Sklar-Nederlander-Seinfeld to buy her 21 pairs of shoes worth twenty grand.
Where is the reasonableness in the behavior? Now we move into “The Realm of the Really Interesting” as the New York Times reported last week that bits of Mrs. Seinfeld’s new cookbook may have been pulled from a previously published book:
But a number of readers posting on Amazon.com and Oprah.com and other Web sites have pointed out some similarities between Ms. Seinfeld’s book, which was published this month by Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins, and another cookbook published by Running Press, an imprint of the Perseus Books Group, in April.
That book, “The Sneaky Chef” by Missy Chase Lapine, who is not a celebrity, also suggests that parents purée healthy foods like spinach and sweet potatoes and hide them in childhood favorites like macaroni and cheese or brownies. A week from Sunday it will be No. 9 on the paperback Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous list.
But wait!
It gets even more devious and interesting:
It turns out that Ms. Lapine, a former publisher of Eating Well magazine, had submitted her 139-page proposal for “The Sneaky Chef,” complete with 42 recipes, to HarperCollins twice — once in February 2006 without an agent and again in May last year, the second time represented by an agent. Both times she was rejected. She landed a deal with Running Press in June 2006, the same month that Collins won an auction to publish Ms. Seinfeld’s book. …
Ms. Lapine’s publisher contacted HarperCollins this summer after an early brochure for “Deceptively Delicious” showed an illustration of a woman holding carrots behind her back, similar to a drawing on the cover of “The Sneaky Chef.” Collins changed its plans for the cover, although, Mr. Ross said, that could have been because “it just looked too awkward to have her holding a plate of brownies with one hand and carrots” in the other.
Mrs. Seinfeld’s retort against the accusations of plagiarism were expectedly cunning, curt and cutting:
In a telephone interview, Ms. Seinfeld said she had come up with the idea more than two years ago in her kitchen while puréeing butternut squash for her youngest son and cooking macaroni and cheese for her husband and two oldest children.
“I’ve been obsessed with this for the past two years,” said Ms. Seinfeld, who worked with a chef and a nutritionist on the book. “I don’t need to copy someone’s idea. I’ve got enough going on in my life.”
Well! We have been put in our place: Busy people don’t plagiarize! But Wait! It gets even more devious and interesting as Jerry interrupts the conversation by riding to his stolen wife’s rescue:
Mr. Seinfeld, who joined his wife on the phone, said, “Let’s be realistic — my wife isn’t in this for the money or the publicity.” He added, “I really don’t think we have another Watergate here.”
Ah! There we have it in creeping condescension: Jerry Seinfeld’s stolen wife isn’t “in this for money or the publicity.”
She’s alive to not just leave one rich man for a richer man — but to also buy houses and tear them down, and write books for profit — and to buy poor Oprah some new shoes. I can’t remember a more disingenuous defense in my lifetime except for the one provided by the alleged defendant herself:
“I can’t explain a coincidence like this,” Ms. Seinfeld said, “but I applaud it and I wish there were 10 more books like mine because I’m not in this for a competition, I’m in this to help families.”
Mrs. Seinfeld needs to learn there is no such thing as a coincidence and trying to push away charges of plagiarism by accusing the accuser and pretending your book isn’t imitative — and then setting yourself up as a superior person because you support family values — sheepishly belies the facts of your life as you ran from the arms of your husband on your honeymoon and into the moneyed clutches of Jerry Seinfeld.
That pernicious, dramatic, behavior, Ms. Sklar-Nederlander-Seinfeld, is called “an irrevocable, revelatory, habit of action.” We get it. Now you know why I’m done with Jerry Seinfeld and his stolen sycophant wife.
I’ve had enough of duplicitous stars that pretend, for profit, to be ordinary folk while mocking common morality with money and fame and an attitude of living that claims the laws of the real world do not implicitly apply to them and that includes wholesome human decency.