Joan Ball is a business professor at St. John’s University in New York and the author of Flirting with Faith: My Spiritual Journey from Atheism to a Faith-Filled Life.
You can dress a schoolyard bully in a fancy dress and put them on national television, but their true nature still manages to shine through. Anne Heche reminded me of this last week when she tore apart her ex-husband Coley Laffoon (and father of her 7-year-old son) on David Letterman.
The daaaaammn moment for me was when Letterman asks what her ex does for a living. Her reply, “He goes out to the mailbox and he opens up the little mailbox door and goes, ‘Oh! I got a check from Anne! Oh! I got a check from Anne! Yay!’”
Hm, tacky at best, Anne, and hurtful to your child at worst. Forget the damage it does to hear your mother publically bashing your father (I’m sure as Homer grows up, he’ll be forced to endure ever more humiliation simply from having a parent in the public eye), Heche is teaching her son an awful lesson – bullying is acceptable when you wield the power and influence.
I don’t often take sides (or honestly care enough to take sides) in celebrity dramas, but I have to agree with Laffoon’s Facebook page: “I wish Anne Heche could see that public bullying isn’t good for the soul or positive for her child. It’s mean.”
Well said.
And she does wield the power in this case – she’s the celebrity, she has the greater voice. I don’t know what went on in their marriage; there’s a good chance that Laffoon deserved every word of her diatribe. But she lost my capacity for non-judgment the minute she went on national television and mocked him like a homecoming queen calling out her ex at a pep assembly.
Power hungry people are everywhere you look, but as we’ve all come to realize in recent years, the power of a bully can do more than emotionally scar, it has physical and sometimes fatal consequences.
Public bullying is rampant these days, not just amongst children and teens, but also amongst the adults who claim to know better. We hear it and read it everywhere, from the mouths of actors/actresses to journalists to musicians to reality stars. Where does it stop, and how do we recognize it for what it is?
Anne’s comments may have earned some laughs and applause on Letterman, but as we all probably remember from high school, bullies often believe their nastiness to be the height of humor, and they’re often rewarded with the response of laughter – perhaps some things truly never change?
Judge for yourself and watch the Letterman clip below:
posted August 29, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I’m not sure how comfortable I feel stretching the definition of “bullying” to include simply saying unkind things about someone. That strikes me as entirely too coddling. Besides, if Heche is a schoolyard bully then schoolyard rules should apply – paricularly those regarding sticks & stones and rubber & glue.
Though I find Heche to generally range somewhere between unpleasant and unhinged, if she wants to rant about her ex on national TV that’s fine with me. It shows her lack of grace that she went so far as to elaborate on her opionion.
[Note: Anne, the way one bashes one's ex gracefully is to smirk slightly at their name and then damn with faint praise. It's both brutal and dignified at the same time.]
As for poor ‘Homer’ (his troubles started early, didn’t they?), I fear having Anne as a mother in general will damage his psyche far more than this one act in particular.
So, yes it’s poor parenting and does nothing to help Anne’s image, but “bullying”? If I were her ex, I would almost consider it a favour that she displayed so publicly the traits that likely made their marriage a failure. It’s a public vindication more than an assault.
posted August 29, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Not exactly a mother of the year. If, she is this way in public,
she may very well be damming her ex (and the father of her child)
in private, which will be incredibly damaging. Perhaps she needs
to prove to herself that she wears the pants in the family.
Then there are the classroom bullies who probably will hear about this
from their parents and the child will have his problems.
It’s thoughtless at the very least. She has a reputation for being
a bit “off.” Letterman should have had the decency-but that’s a LONG stretch for him- to cut the remark out.
posted August 29, 2009 at 6:52 pm
What about the man in question… what are his ethics that he would marry a woman that would support him but then also expect (and receive) a settlement amount ($275K)? Of course, it’s also true that he has primary custody of their son and did have to take a cut in his monthly child support payment of $15K to $3.7K since the settlement amount was granted. Heche is not a bully – she’s just unemployed and getting poorer by the month, and (understandably) pissed about it. Getting settlements and child support used to be solely the ex-Wife’s booty for being a dutiful partner, making a home, having and being the primary care giver to children… times have changed. As for Laffoon, the only things I’ve seen about him is that he went to New York to be an investment banker but then changed his mind and went to California to be a freelance videographer and then married Ms. Heche and now is a real estate sales agent. Whatever her reputation, Ms. Heche has worked long enough and hard enough to not have to live off a trustfund and has accumulated enough to part with $275,000.00. As for her influence on Homer?? I fear the influence of Laffoon will be equal. Here’s a quote from him to US Magazine, “After coming home from showing two different clients two different condominiums, I was disturbed to see Anne taking out her personal frustration on the father of her child on national television.”
posted August 31, 2009 at 12:17 am
As for her influence on Homer?? I fear the influence of Laffoon will be equal. Here’s a quote from him to US Magazine, “After coming home from showing two different clients two different condominiums, I was disturbed to see Anne taking out her personal frustration on the father of her child on national television.”
Is this quote from Laffoon supposed to demonstrate something about the bad influence he will be on Homer? I found Hesche’s mocking hostility disturbing, and I’m not related to Homer at all! How else would any kind of father, good or bad, react?