WSJ: What Our Obsession with Belle Burden’s ‘Strangers’ Says About America
How America Communicates (or Doesn’t)
Here is an essay about how one memoir showed me that we dig in rather than explore the greys in life. Women must remember how we wield power, and tap it, integrate it, realize it. Sometimes we react to injustice or betrayal by treating any foray into gradations as if it’s an existential threat to progress. I happen to think the opposite is true.
The question we should ask ourselves is, How did we arrive at this new place? Not the place of a saucy divorce intrigue, a border skirmish between the well-heeled, a tell-all page turner. That is an old place.
But this charming new place where highly educated women band together in righteous indignation. Against men. To get tipsy on shared outrage. To share the joy of The Oppressed. Even if it's no longer true.
Did these “truths” of oppression rise up organically? Were they lying on the ground like ripe fruit? Or were they taught, poured into them like liquid truth.
But this "truth" has been swept away, and the righteous indignation remains. Why?
This is the important question.
I wish more people were writing pieces like yours. Yes, "James" had an affair and that sucks and Belle has every right to feel hurt and betrayed and angry, but this is a revenge memoir if ever there was one, no matter how many times she excuses herself and claims to have moved on. I'm not excusing "James" for cheating on his wife, but does he deserve to be dragged through the mud the way he has been at high volume and warp speed since the book came out? If he stands up for himself, all he does is push the story even more into the public eye, exacerbating and prolonging an already toxic spectacle.
More to the point, what about their kids? That's who I feel for: I suspect it was traumatic enough having your parents split up during Covid because your dad had an affair, but then to have your mother write a blockbuster memoir that makes everyone think your father is the scum of the earth when you know it's not true, when you have a good relationship with him?
I'm glad Belle has a massive trust fund and "James" earns a more-than-healthy income, because at the very least, the two of them can afford to pay for the therapy their kids deserve.