Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne have seen happier days, that’s for sure. Since the entire clan became famous on a reality television show “The Osbournes” in the early 2000s, Ozzy, Sharon, and their children Kelly and Jack have become popular public figures.
Reality shows have a way of making Americans feel invested in the families they chronicle, which results in tens of thousands of viewers when they move onto other shows, and millions of followers on Twitter. That means untold millions saw this gem from Kelly Osbourne this week about her father’s mistress:
The next morning on her show “The Talk,” Sharon laughed about the tweet when asked by her cohost about it: “What are you gonna do—be angry with her because she loves her mom and dad and she wants us to be together? She loves us. She can do what she wants, because she’s an adult. You have to laugh. She is just so funny. I’m always proud of my girl.”
If doxxing Ozzy’s mistress is how Sharon thinks their family could be kept together, it’s easy to understand why and how the marriage fell apart in the first place.
Keeping a Marriage Together Is the Participants’ Responsibility
In 1982, Sharon and Ozzy made a vow to each other to stay together in sickness and in health, and pledged fidelity to one another. All reports seem to indicate this isn’t the couple’s first experience with infidelity, but it might be the final straw for Sharon. What kind of pledge did the mistress, Michelle Pugh, make to Sharon or anyone in the Osbourne family? Like all mistresses, she made none. Responsibility for faithfulness rests on the shoulders of spouses, not outside parties.
If a reunion is really the goal, a more appropriate target would have been the party actually at fault: Ozzy. There will always be another woman waiting in the wings for her 15 minutes of fame and a shot at some of the Osbournes’ cash and notoriety. If salvaging the marriage and fortifying it against further erosion has any hope, Ozzy needs not only to have shame and remorse about his actions, but his family need to expect it from him as well.
To her credit, Sharon didn’t publicly repudiate what Kelly tweeted (even though, as a direct and glaring violation of the Twitter terms of service, the service should have). But one would hope that in private Sharon had some pointed words for her daughter about appropriate ways to channel her frustration and grief over the end of her parents’ marriage. While Kelly is an adult, parenting never ends, especially when adult children are acting childish.
The Osbourne split is the latest in a long line of celebrity breakups in which the mistress is painted as the ultimate villain. After it was confirmed that the breakup of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck’s marriage was due to infidelity, the public became fascinated with the “other woman,” nanny Christine Ouzounian. Becoming famous has turned into an even bigger attraction (besides potential payouts) for women interested in pursuing married celebrities.
By doxxing her father’s mistress, Kelly has given further incentive to future mistresses not only of her father’s but of every other celebrity to keep chasing married men. While changing her number was surely a hassle, Pugh just achieved the most notoriety she can possibly hope for in her lifetime thanks to Kelly Osbourne. Prior to Kelly’s tweet and the coverage surrounding it, like most Americans I had barely heard about the breakup of the Osbourne marriage. Now Pugh’s name is a household name, at least until the furor dies down, and she has Kelly Osbourne to thank.
As the wise old adage goes, “Hate the player, not the game.” The player, in the case of the latest round of infidelity, is Ozzy Osbourne. Many women, apparently, have been able to bed the aging rock star, and continued to engage in the 15-minutes-of-fame game. The way for family members to end the game is to starve the mistresses of attention, not provide more. That strategy, coupled with expecting husbands to behave as equal partners in marriage responsible for honoring and remaining faithful to their wives, would do a lot more good for marriages, both in general and for the Osbournes in particular, than tweeting a cell phone number.
