When I first heard that song in, oh, the late 60s, it caused me to think that Paul McCartney was just a romantic sop. I had already lost my puppy love (at 13) and couldn't conceive of living into my sixties at all, much less with a female who would promise to "need" and "feed" me at that stage. Well, now I can readily imagine living into my sixties—though at this rate, I suspect that only the Eucharist could keep me alive much past 65. But in one thing I have been vindicated: Sir Paul has indeed proven to be a romantic sop.Myrna Blyth of NRO (click my title) explains why. Paul has just turned 64, and he and his rather unedifying second wife, Heather Mills, are splitting up. Apparently he offered her fifty million pounds (currently, about $90 million) to melt away quietly, but she will have none of it. She wants ten times that, presumably to avoid the homeless shelter while paying the lawyers for the impending custody battle over their two-year-old daughter. It's entertainment, but it's respectable entertainment. A girl's gotta keep her dignity, after all. Such as it is, or ever was.
McCartney's first wife, Linda Eastman, was wonderful. Not quite a living saint, perhaps; just a moderately talented, emotionally stable, and totally devoted wife and mother. Her death from cancer apparently left Paul lonely and rudderless. His choice of replacement for Linda led me to believe then what the recent porno-pic flap about Mills onfirms: now that he was aristocracy, he allowed himself to fill the void with some socially acceptable sex. I'm surprised he managed to get four years out of the deal.
Sometimes I'm glad I can't even afford to date.
