Christie Brinkley: A beauty's ugly divorce

What happened

Former supermodel Christie Brinkley’s divorce trial got off to an explosive start on Wednesday, as her husband, architect Peter Cook, was reduced to tears over his affair with a teenager and his obsession with Internet porn. "I should have handled everything differently," Cook said through sobs. (New York Daily News)

What the commentators said

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This goes to show that it is a bad idea to cross a supermodel, said Jo Piazza in the New York Daily News. It was just day one of Brinkley’s “very public divorce from the man who humiliated her by cheating with a teenaged assistant, but by the end of it the scorned wife was the sure winner.”

Cook "admitted all he could have admitted" in the first day, said Charlie Brett in eFluxMedia. He had an affair with an 18-year-old assistant, showered her with expensive gifts (including a $15,000 car), watched Web porn, and neglected his wife. “This divorce is the beginning of the end for Peter Cook.”

Still, said Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, Brinkley should have thought about the ugly breakups of Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards, or Heather Mills and Paul McCartney, before she demanded media access in the courtroom. Brinkley has to sit there while Cook’s lawyers paint her as a shrew, and next may come years of therapy for her traumatized kids. You see, nobody ever really wins in a celebrity divorce.