Marriage Gone Amok

Skip the rice and orange blossoms, the New Year is starting out with deranged nuptial news.

In the week that Elizabeth Edwards' will was made public comes word that her widower will be marching down the aisle with Rielle Hunter, the horse killer's daughter he impregnated during his wife's terminal illness while still in the running for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. No word on where they are registered for wedding gifts.

Not to be outdone in grotesque marriage planning, 84-year-old Hugh Hefner announces his engagement to a 24-year-old Playboy playmate, prompting Timothy Egan to write on a New York Times blog:

"Hefner’s reputation, a gloss of nonsense put forth by people who feel privileged to hang with the mummified sybarite at his mansion in Los Angeles, took a hit when a British newspaper recently published an account of the Hefner compound by a former bunny.

"The portrait that emerged was of a strange old man who popped Viagra pills like they were Skittles and doled out $1,000 a week in cash from a safe to his various 'girlfriends.' There’s a word for that kind of arrangement."

Such sneering by the Times follows a flap of its own over featuring in its wedding section a couple, each married to others, who fell in love after meeting at the school their kids attended. The story of the happy homewreckers did not go down well with readers of a more traditional bent.

In the olden days, things like that happened, too, but the smitten usually didn't break up families, hire a hall and alert the media. They had what were called "affairs." However...

Whatever else 2011 brings, its new take on family values is starting out with a rash of non-traditional unions that may make gay marriages look like a ho-hum.