Breaking up is hard to do, but much more expensive in today’s Hollywood than rural Georgia of three decades ago.
Mel Gibson is finally divorced from his wife of more than 30 years and mother of seven children after turning over an estimated half of his $850 million in movie earnings.
At the same time, the nation’s other Lethal Mouth seems to have been lying about his first divorce three decades ago as CNN unearths Georgia court documents showing that his wife wanted to stay married.
Even worse, the first Mrs. Gingrich’s petition states: "Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time."
Former friends say they took up collections for the family, because Gingrich "wouldn't give them a dime" in the first months of the separation, and there were "no lights, no heat, no water, no food” in the home. "We had a food drive at First Baptist Church," says a former fellow professor. "The deacons went down and stocked her pantry."
Before the advent of no-fault, divorces were admittedly messier than they are now, but as the husband of a lawyer-mediator and co-author of a book about how women are treated in marital breakups, I can testify that the first Gingrich divorce seems par for the course back then: Get a tough lawyer and starve out an unwilling wife, even if the kids go hungry, too.
It’s heartening to see the former Mrs. Mel Gibson get a just share of her loathsome former husband’s movie loot, but then again, he isn’t Newt Gingrich, who dumped two wives on the way to running for President on a platform of bringing back good old family values for us all.
It's a great relief for him. I mean the fact that he is now free from his previous marriage.
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