Who knew that Dooce believed in Tuff-love? She always seemed more… Oh, nevermind. She seems like an ice queen. The metaphor doesn’t hold. I tried.
Internet, have we talked about this yet? Do we have a “Heather and Matt sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g” situation on our screens?
Now, I don’t want to get a “cease and desist” letter here, but Heather and Matt seem to want us to talk about them, blowing each other @kisses on Twitter. I’ll bet ol’ Doocey is sitting on top of the world working her puppet strings and laughing maniacally. Or maybe manically. You know that Hamilton woman.
This fixation on would-be Internet Toxic Best Friend-types is clearly about me being a child of divorce who cries over vintage Star Wars posters. Here I go, projecting my issues onto what equates to a reality TV star on the internet.
Dooce and I had babies about the same time (her: Marlo, me: Viva), so I discovered Mommy Blogs via her. She was the most famous mother, writer, and neuroatypical individual I knew of (this was before a certain giant metal chicken played a game of ding-dong-ditch with Jenny Lawson’s too-cheap-to-buy-new-towels husband). She was my first glimpse into what internet writer fame could be. My first successful post was entitled “Bitches I Hate” and she was a featured bitch.
So, when GOMI drew my attention to an Instagram picture of Heather Dooce ARMSTRONG and her new alleged-piece Matt Tuff, I wanted to shank a bitch. This? This is what you threw your marriage in the garbage for? To be free to pursue someone like this guy? THIS guy?
(Thanks Dlisted.com via Tosh.O)
Okay, that’s not really Matt Tuff, but you get the idea.
In the Instagram photo of Her Dooceness and MattBroChill, Heather wears the expression a woman only sports after 1) vigorous satisfying coitus, 2) cashing a huge check. Page views are money; therefore, one will lead to the other. Win-win here.
Will Matt move to Salt Lake, or will this unmitigated narcissist make the children fly for hours every time they get to see their daddy? Whatever is most convenient for her, no doubt. I continue to mourn the death of the Armstrong marriage. It’s like they’re part of my group of friends from college. At first it’s barbecues with tons of booze and hook-ups. A few years later people pair off and get married. In the next phase, you shell out baby shower gifts, then spend Saturdays watching kids swing bats at pinatas. The next inevitable phase is the divorces.
For all I know, Jon is an insufferable jackass and Doocey is the good guy. I’m nothing but a slaggy whore to him. I know it. Who can blame the guy? When it’s my turn to get raked over the internet coals, I doubt Odie will feel any warmth for the bitch holding the bellows.
Why won’t Heather and Jon talk about it for our voyeuristic ecstacy? She welcomed us into her life and started a genre, or at least took that genre to a different level. Everything I do here is possible because of what she did. We’re all standing on the shoulders of Mormons. Now, though, when the story gets titillating, we’re cut off. Just like that. Cold-blooded.
Or they both signed an agreement that they wouldn’t blog about the divorce or about dating. Ostensibly, it’s to protect the children, but I suspect the real motive folds and goes in a wallet. Neither is allowed to make money off of the salacious details of Dooce getting her groove back. She would naturally want to kill a tell-all about what a nightmare it was to live with Dooce, the milk throwing mommy blogger. His counter-move:”If I can’t write about it, neither can YOU.” The only hole in this theory that I can see is that her money is his money. Therefore, it’s safe to wildly speculate that the divorce settlement was a one-time pay out and includes no future earnings. Have to sell the house, though. Turns out the house that blogging built is a house of cards built on sand. Oh, shit, I went and mixed my metaphors. See what you’ve done to me, Mommy Heather?
God, I need to call my therapist.
I can’t help but feel resentful toward Matt Tuff (in a legally acceptable way). He’s mommy’s new boyfriend and he’s flushing my reconciliation fantasies down the toilet. A toilet that’s no longer clogged because Heather and Jon will never shit in it together again.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Hey, I love your new look.
Unfortunately, I don’t know who Heather Armstrong or Dooce is…Have to google. Am I too late to the party?
Hilarious as always
I feel a similar kind of betrayal. Dooce wrote about every aspect of her life and I have to believe that even a few of the details were revealed for the dual purpose (and ON purpose) of shock value and revenue. I recall a time when she and her husband were having sex in the living room and–maybe–almost got caught by someone. Dad? Neighbor? Who can remember?
The point is that when you write about having sex or your depression or your issues with your childhood religion or (gah!) your constipation, it’s like leaving your drapes open so that the world can see everything you are doing. And then? Just in case parts of your audience got called to jury duty that day and didn’t get to peek inside for up close details? You rehash it in the old blog. And that’s fine since it appears she is going for total transparency.
Until she isn’t. Honestly, what stands to reason is that when you close the metaphorical drapes it’s because your life can no longer withstand the scrutiny because you are protecting YOURSELF and your actions. Because if you can profess to be all hot and in love with the father of your children and then suddenly go “dark” about your troubles and be all vague and foggy about it?
Dooce loses nothing if JA is the one wanting the divorce and she wants to write about it since her readership would surpass that of OK! magazine if she did. I mean…inquiring minds WANT TO KNOW and all that. But if she is the one who moved to dump her husband or if she is the one whose behavior was on the DL, she risks a lot if it is revealed. So my money is on Dooce being the one who instigated the split and upon whose behaviors it is based. But that’s just me.
Hiding the details seems a bit hypocritical, given her usual pattern of personal revelation. I’m right there with you, Mrs. O. Something just isn’t kosher about this whole thing.
You need help. Get a fucking life. Clearly you are miserable
I don’t mean to sound all “Bitch, put down the bellows” here, but your infantile comment about my wife makes me laugh. I wonder if you are in Ms. Hampton’s Army of Sycophants. If not, you should enlist – you would fit right in. All you need is the desire to pretend that life in your private woods is nothing but rainbows and unicorns, when in reality you are full of hatred, judgement, and fear of any opposing world view (you definitely seem to have that last part down, at least). What you seem to be too stupid to get is that my wife is venting and satirizing because it is much better to use art to laugh at the harsh realities of life than to take the opposite “Hamptonian” approach of dumping a thin veneer of glitter glue over one’s shadow self and lashing out vehemently at anyone who rolls their eyes at the farce.
My knight in shining armor. Thanks, babe, for defending me against the barbs. Truly, these kinds of comments don’t bother me because it isn’t intelligent debate. It isn’t criticism. It’s just nastiness. I’m sorry that something I said triggered this reader to feel angry and to lash out at me. What puzzles me is that there’s nothing in my Matt Tuff posts that makes me sound “miserable.” If this were a comment on my post about depression or low self-esteem, it would make more sense. In any case, I am not miserable, except when I am.