Divorce is the likely fate for almost half of all marriages. Which, if you can bear to be entirely cold-blooded about a hugely traumatic emotional event, makes it extraordinary that some people still manage to be so bad at it – and even more extraordinary that the bitterness of divorcees should be celebrated. This week, the Telegraph ran an interview with Robin Williams (who's on some sort of a promo junket for a new Zelda game, Skyward Sword), which was headlined with one of the actor's old gags about the emasculating effects of alimony.
"Ah yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet." (Presumably this was met with much high-fiving at Nintendo PR HQ: "We've got a page! It doesn't mention the game much, but there's a castration angle, which we think is very on-brand.") It's journalistically perverse to lead on a dredged-up line. But it's even more perverse to think that there was a time in Williams's career when it seemed like a smart or civil thing to wring comic material out of the dissolution of two relationships by likening paying maintenance to the mothers of his children to being violently desexed.
Read more
