Here Come the Judds

All right, here you go: These are the words of actress Ashley Judd, in an interview on WBAL radio the other morning:

"I'm abstinent from all press and media about myself."

Lover of irony will note that these remarks were made on a 50,000 watt AM radio station, the largest in Maryland.  And these remarks were made as part of huge press campaign to beat the drum, looking for people to break a leg running to the bookstore to buy a copy of Ms Judd's autobiography, "I'm a Self-Inflating Attention-Seeking Bowl of Conflicts with a Heaping Side Order of Family Issues: The Ashley Judd Story."


Funny thing is, I don't recall seeing too many of her movies, and I am not a huge fan of her mother and sister, the singing Judds.  But just as the tuneful twosome are set to launch their TV show on the Oprah Channel, detailing their fractious past, here comes Ms Ashley with her book - released the same week! - and the book is all about how Ashley was abused as a child, and then the tv show will discuss how mother Naomi was abused as a child and chose not to tell anyone until about a dozen television cameras were on her as she told her other daughter Wynonna about it.  Then Wynonna gets all peeved because she wanted to talk about how SHE was abused, and Ashley's thinking, well why didn't you write a book about how you were abused, like I did?


Not for one second do I countenance any form of abuse of anyone.  But if a person is a victim of any form of abuse, there are proper means of dealing with it.  My thought is that the worst way to deal with it is to try to turn it into a promotional vehicle to sell books or TV reality shows.  


And I don't doubt that these women have issues that need to be sorted out, along with their talents as an actor and two singers.  It's my thought that they should sort them out in another, more private and appropriate, forum, as encouragement to the millions of others out here in the real world who are victims but lack the beauty, talent and publicity agents that the Judds have at their disposal.

"Heard about the Jolly Green Giant?"

To seek help and then quietly advise, assist and encourage others in doing the same - what a noble idea that would be.  To take one's personal trauma and turn it into a publicity stunt - and then to deny, on a huge media outlet, that one is involved in the media whatsoever, is sort of like hearing the Jolly Green Giant deny that he's ever been in a peapatch.