The names and events here are true: CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen wrote a horribly self-centered open letter to his ex on her wedding day. Lizzie Skurnick called him out on it. So Andrew wrote Lizzie a very Crap Email.
Before we dig into the Crap, a word about the relevant documents. Cohen apparently intended his missive as a way of lifting his ex’s obviously crushing guilt at marrying another guy: “The present I humbly send her today is this column; this public note, this irrevocable display of affection and support and gratitude; this worldly absolution from any guilt or sadness she felt between the time she said no to me and the time she said yes to him. No one ought to have to carry that with them into a marriage.” Onetime Jezebel contributor Skurnick, after a few musings on the Crap Email as a form (“It’s already annoying that someone who reserved the right to be numbingly uncommunicative during the relationship is now such a freakin’ Chatty Cathy”), criticized Cohen’s premise:
Yoo-hoo, sir. It is YOU writing the big Internet column on your ex’s wedding day — on which she is, you know, marrying another dude. I guess it’s possible she does need “worldly absolution from any guilt or sadness she felt between the time she said no to [you] and the time she said yes to him.” It is true, as you say, that “No one ought to have to carry that with them into a marriage.” But here’s the thing. SHE’S GETTING MARRIED. I know you’d like to think she’s staggering up the aisle consumed by guilt and sadness, but honestly, there’s a dim possibility she might just be looking forward to her life with the man she’s marrying. (At HER WEDDING.)
We thought Skurnick’s critique was funny, light-hearted, and on point. Cohen, apparently, disagreed. Here’s yet further evidence that he may be a Crap Correspondent Par Excellence:
Dear Lizzie:
I won’t embarrass you further (than you’ve already embarrassed yourself) by responding in public to your shrewish little column. I took down the Tweet because I realized it made me appear to be like you-nasty and hostile and spoiling for a fight. That’s not me.
The first time I read your piece I was upset. The second time I read it I realized you’ve spent the last 20 years or so looking (and failing, evidently) to find someone or something in a relationship. And the third time I read it I realized why that was. To spend so much time and energy and apparent relish being so bitter and judgmental about someone you don’t know and a relationship you know nothing about: How sad for you. Me? I take comfort in the thousands of people, men and women, who took the column at face value and saw it in the better angels of our nature, who didn’t project their own failures and insecurities upon it, and who were kind and compassionate instead of… well, instead of like you.
-Andrew
On Her Wedding Day, Saying The Things Left Unsaid [Politics Daily]
How Not To Congratulate Your Ex On Her Wedding Day [Politics Daily]