OK: An Excellent College Ranking

Parents Forum
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<p>Anyone remember reading this one? </p>

<p>Homewrecking Couple’s Scandalous New York Times Wedding Announcement</p>

<p>"This weekend’s New York Times wedding section tells the salacious tale of two people who coldly dumped their spouses for each other, and true love. How dare they disgrace the sanctity of the New York Times wedding section!</p>

<p>Four years ago, former WNBC anchor Carol Anne Riddell, then 40, met the handsome president of media sales John Partilla, 42, at the Upper West Side school their kids attended. They became friends and, as rich, skinny parents, they fell in love, obviously.</p>

<pre><code>In May 2008, Mr. Partilla invited her for a drink at O’Connell’s, a neighborhood bar. She said she knew something was up, because they had never met on their own before.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he recalled saying to her. She jumped up, knocking a glass of beer into his lap, and rushed out of the bar. Five minutes later, he said, she returned and told him, “I feel exactly the same way.” Then she left again.
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<p>They claim they didn’t have an affair, but quickly separated from their spouses. “I did a terrible thing as honorably as I could,” Partilla told the Times. The two divorced from spouses 1.0 and got married. In the announcement they were defensive but unapologetic: “I wanted to get up in the morning and read the paper with him,” Riddell said.</p>

<p>This story caused a bunch of people to spit orange juice all over their Sunday Times. “Easily the saddest story in the New York Times today,” tweeted John Moe, host of the public radio show “Future Tense.” “Dig the joyless onlookers.” Slate film critic Dana Stevens found it “staggeringly monstrous:” “I’m waiting for the Modern Love column that’s a rebuttal from the abandoned spouses.”</p>

<p>Others were happy for a wedding announcement that didn’t read like a well-written LinkedIn profile: “Better than ‘we were led to each other by careerist unicorns dropping rose petals,’” tweeted financial journalist Heidi Moore.</p>

<p>But how scandalous is this, really? Gawker weddings expert Phyllis Nefler, who has spent countless hours poring over the Times wedding section, explained that the Times has been probing the darker side of the “how did you meet” story for a while:</p>

<pre><code>It’s like the logical extension of a storyline the Times has been building towards for years. They constantly feature stories with questionable timelines that leave the reader thinking, with horror, 'Wait—what about the guy she was living with when they met at the Purim party? Here they just went all out.
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<p>The traditional wedding announcement rubs the reader’s face mercilessly in a couple’s perfection; this one does the same thing with their flaws. Which one would you rather read if you were the guy left behind at the Purim party?"</p>

<p>[Homewrecking</a> Couple’s Scandalous New York Times Wedding Announcement](<a href=“http://gawker.com/5715019/homewrecking-couples-scandalous-new-york-times-wedding-announcement]Homewrecking”>Homewrecking Couple's Scandalous <em>New York Times</em> Wedding Announcement)</p>

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<p>^^^^</p>

<p>I remember that one vividly as well as the outcry afterward.</p>

<p>I LOVE reading the wedding announcements every Sunday morning (I read Sunday Styles BEFORE I read the front section!) It’s sociological!</p>

<p>Believe it or not the wedding section is far more democratic now (Jews! People of color! State university grads!) than it was even 20 years ago when it was all WASP all the time and there was FAR more emphasis of the bride and groom’s lineage (paragraphs were devoted to their ancestors often traced back to the Mayflower.)</p>

<p>I’m so glad I’m finding so many of my people here!</p>

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Oh the NYT is way too with it to treat gays differently. :slight_smile: At any rate this part (check out the complete article) is one way to get bonus points:</p>

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<p>I love reading the wedding announcements in the Sunday Times. It’s one of the first sections of the Sunday paper that I read. </p>

<p>One thing I’ve noticed is that MOBs or StepMOBs who aren’t retired–but don’t work–are always identified as being board members or trustees of museums, foundations, or other non-profits. I guess if you aren’t retired, you have to be doing something! Never seen any MOB described as homemaker!</p>

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<p>OK, so now I’m confused. I graduated undergrad from one of the "for the boarding school crowd (naturally, it should honestly be considered a “demi-elite”), but then attended a “demi-elite” (although, probably less-prestigious, and certainly less-selective) for graduate school. Do I get 3 points for that?</p>

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<p>OP, thanks SO much for this–so much concentrated hilarity.</p>

<p>The Spouse and I love reading the announcements that have a byline, which are the ones with a significant backstory. There was one over the summer where the couple met while their respective families were trekking in Nepal or Tibet. They were staying at inns on opposite sides of a mountain or something, each wanted to see the other and made their way through a foggy pass to the other side of the mountain to find that the other person wasn’t there. Who their parents were, where they went to school, that I don’t remember at all. </p>

<p>xiggi, did you see that James Fallows mentioned on his blog that he has a new grandson? He included a link to the happy couple’s NYT wedding announcement. A perfect nexus of NYT and Atlantic Monthly. :D</p>

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<p>“I think this whole thing indicates how a society is compelled to set up some kind of class system. It’s facinating that in American we want to base on university attendance.”</p>

<p>:)</p>

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<p>This got me thinking of that group,The Ivy Plus Society(TIPS)- a social networking society for meeting other young graduates in the bigger cities. There are only graduates of certain schools that can go to the social events. They want to keep out the riff raff apparently. Good way to meet a future spouse that will land you in the New York Times wedding section, I guess.</p>

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<p>@MathMom…thanks. As the mother of a gay son who is apparently a “Power Hippie”, just trying to see if there was a way to work the point system here…he may not have made it to an Ivy, but we still have to work the hook for life’s next competitive moment, right? ;-)</p>

<p>.ROFL…</p>

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<p>Sevmom – in practice, those events include guests who’ve gone to all kinds of schools, and no one cares. But I guess they don’t advertise that.</p>

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<p>Hanna, I know they can bring guests,other people can come. The whole thing is just an interesting concept! One of my son’s would be from a demi-elite, the other not on any of the lists. Luckily, the one that’s not is doing very well in college so at least now I know where to direct him if he wants to go to graduate school!</p>

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<p>I always think it’s funny when “membership in IvyPlus” is cited by some on CC as proof that a school is elite! Honestly, I get the point of a social networking that has some screening applied so it’s not just every schleb who gets in, but the name IvyPlus is a little cheesy IMO.</p>

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<p>I agree,Pizzagirl- and naming a social group something like Ivy Plus is just inviting comment.</p>

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<p>At my niece’s post-nuptial breakfast this summer my SIL started shrieking - I thought either someone was having a heart attack or she had won the lottery.</p>

<p>Turns out her second daughter’s wedding announcement also made it into the NYTimes. She literally said “my life is complete.”</p>

<p>Me, I’ll just be grateful if my kids don’t wind up in the local police blotter.</p>

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<p>DH says the NYT wedding announcements are akin to breeder’s lines for horses, i.e., “the bride, by Winfield Chester Hottentot VI out of Priscilla Mayflower Winchester…”</p>

<p>Had no idea there were so many closet announcement readers here!</p>

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<p>Well we have to read something uplifting after reading the obituaries (and I know you all do!).</p>

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<p>I’m assuming Katie Baker knows about this priceless information:</p>

<p><a href=“http://gallery.yourtango.com/gallery/10_Colleges_That_Produce_The_Best_Husbands[/url]”>http://gallery.yourtango.com/gallery/10_Colleges_That_Produce_The_Best_Husbands&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I wonder if there’s a best wives equivalent?
If you google Wedded Blitz, Katie Baker also does “nuptials algorithms” that rate the announcements for a given month. Universities attended are part of what she looks at for the rating.</p>

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<p>So, inquiring minds want to know… how much does it cost to put the wedding annoncement in the Sunday Times?</p>

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<p>Ha, Ha, for my family, it just shows you can’t break out of your social lot in life. H and I both went to a demi-elite school and both kids go to one as well! I feel that we have our own little caste system.</p>