Oh, perhaps you remember the saga of the hidden vegetable cookbooks? Jessica Seinfeld came out with a book on secreting vegetables in your kids' food, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food. This book bore remarkable similarities to a book that came out a month earlier, by Missy Chase Lapine, called The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals. When I posted about this scandal, the publisher commented here and denied plagiarism played any part in Seinfeld's book. Around the same time, Jerry Seinfeld went on Letterman and echoed that denial, adding, "Now you know, having a career in show business, one of the fun facts of
celebrity life is wackos will wait in the woodwork to pop out at
certain moments of your life to inject a little adrenaline into your
life experience." He also went on to comment on Missy Chase Lapine's name, saying, "if you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins. Mark David Chapman. And you know, James Earl Ray. So that's my concern." Those are the murderers of John Lennon and Martin Luther King, Jr., by the way.
And that, folks, is why the Seinfelds are now being sued by Missy Chase Lapine for slander and plagiarism. But you know what I think is one of the worst parts of this whole thing? In addition to Jerry Seinfeld's supremely asshole-ish comments, the Seinfeld's lawyer just "suggested Lapine was seeking publicity to boost her book's sales." Hold on, I have to count to ten before I get into this. Exhale...two, one.
Now, what I'm getting here is that Jerry Seinfeld says that as a celebrity, he has to deal with wackos who are trying to get press by targeting the famous. And the Seinfeld lawyer is calling this a publicity stunt. But wait, why did Jessica Seinfeld's book get so much attention over Lapine's in the first place? Why was she so "promotable"? How did she get on Oprah and a billion other talk shows and in newspapers and magazines and even here on Babble? Was it because she has had an illustrious cooking career, made a name for herself as an excellent child nutrition expert?
Naw. It was because she's married to a famous guy. So every time the Seinfelds get pissy with Lapine over supposed coattail-riding, I guess we can all scratch our heads and say, hmmmm. So it's okay to saddle up on someone else's fame at the expense of struggling authors, but those authors better back off the Seinfelds. That's just shame-to-the-less. Aaaand we even said it last time, too.
Oh, and it's messed up to use your fame and the many forums it brings to call someone a nut, too.
