My interest in football is minimal. I love a good story of athletes overcoming the odds and showing us that anything’s possible. In that regard, Tom Brady is a hell of a role model.
I’m also not a fan of the Patriots quarterback’s wife, Gisele Bundchen.
Mood music:
It’s nothing personal. The world of professional modeling and fashion bores me, except for the occasional episode of Project Runway. And that’s just to see the train wrecks.
As for all the money they have, I don’t hold it against them. I know rich people who are miserable and poor people who are happy. And vice versa. I know rich people who are giving, beautiful souls and poor people who are self-absorbed assholes. And vice versa. The good and not-so-good exist in both worlds.
Now that I’ve clarified things, let’s turn to the public outrage of the week.
A lot of people are furious with Gisele for some sore-loser verbiage following the loss of her husband’s team in the Super Bowl.
On the way out of the stadium, someone heckled Gisele with this:
“Eli owns your husband.”
She responded, within earshot of the TV mics: “My husband cannot (expletive) throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.”
What outrages people most is that her comment essentially blames the rest of the team for coming up short. Teams are supposed to succeed and fail together, right?
It’s unfortunate that she said that. She should apologize to Tom’s teammates.
But in all the angry comments everyone is making on Facebook, Twitter and the news media, an important truth has been kicked to the curb: Gisele is human. All us humans say stupid things on a daily basis, especially when we’re getting defensive about someone trash-talking about a loved one. But we don’t have a camera on us to capture the moment.
It doesn’t matter if we’re swimming in money and mansions or living on the streets: We have our good moments and pathetic moments. Since Gisele is human like the rest of us, I’ll give her a pass on this one.
This morning I read a column from Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan on the whole affair. She writes:
Super Bowl Sunday offered a telling glimpse into the Brady/Bundchen household. Our suspicions may be true.
It was never Tom’s idea to dress like a girl in headbands with hair down his back.
Or buy a $1,000 Toto toilet with water jets and blow dryers.
Or ride a bike through town with Gisele’s 5-pound ratty dog in his front basket like a teeny, tiny, nasty ET.
At least Tom put his foot down when Super Gi had the Super Idea to name Super Baby Benjamin … River. “Something always flowing, immortal,” blogged Super Gi after her Super Pregnancy and Super Childbirth in the tub, where she meditated for 8 hours. And don’t forget: She wanted a law requiring all mothers to breast-feed and claimed she’d potty-trained Benjamin by six months.
I mean, beyond nauseating.
None of that stuff is my cup ‘o joe, either. I prefer the simpler life of old jeans, broken-in leather and old-fashioned toilets you can sit on without being fondled by mechanical doo-dads.
But Tom did ask for all that. That’s the woman he chose to marry. In marriage husband and wife merge their lives in a blender, and the end result sometimes looks strange.
That’s beside the point, though.
We all do and say things that are nauseating. I’ve read and liked Eagan’s columns for years.
But she can be nauseating at times, too.
Bill, sort of a left handed compliment here, no?
How so?
You said to cut her some slack but then did a pretty good job of bashing her a bit, didn’t you?