14 DAY TRIAL // Jesse James might have cheated on Sandra Bullock with a tattoo model, Michelle McGee, as media reports indicate. If he did, he’s not admitting to it, as it’s made clear in his public apology of a few days ago. He doesn’t say he didn’t either, which means he most certainly did – just not to the extent McGee claims. Still, this is not the first time that a celebrity couple breaks up because of an infidelity scandal, yet Jesse James is officially America’s most hated man right now, Jezebel says.
It’s not that he cheated that makes him despicable, but the fact that he did so on Sandra Bullock, “America’s Sweetheart,” as Jezebel calls her. He cheated on her with a woman who timed her tell-all interview to come out right after Bullock’s Oscar win, which should have been the crowning of a very successful and long career, a career that she built with sacrifice and effort, for she was mostly alone. The woman he cheated on Bullock with got paid an estimated $30,000 for the interview, precisely because it came after the Oscar win. A woman who, for all the world knows, might also be a white supremacist and a liar.
“Jesse James isn’t just a despicable idiot because he cheated on his wildly popular wife Sandra Bullock. He’s a despicable idiot because, in doing so, he basically offered himself up to America’s lynch mob. […] No, we’re captivated because Sandy, America’s Sweetheart, a genuinely likable mega-star, didn’t even get to enjoy her Oscar for 8 days. A highlight of her career – a lucrative career that, as Barbara Walters noted, pulls in the audiences but not the recognition – and her celebration was cut ridiculously short. Seriously, that’s not fair. And sure, Bullock will recover, at least professionally. But James is a woman’s worst nightmare: the lying, the cheating, the hairline. But what truly makes him the sort of man who haunts the darker corners of the mind is the effect he had on Sandra: You’d be hard pressed not to believe that she truly loved this man,” Jezebel writes.
In an interview of a short while ago, Sandra was saying she would have never imagined love could be like that, saying she never had anyone to “have [her] back” and was moved to tear by how wonderful that was, because she had never allowed herself “to be cared for.” The same sentiments she echoed in her Oscar speech, so this only makes James’ betrayal all the more vile, especially since he also had her to thank for his A-list status. Proof of the fact that James is currently the number one most hated man is also the fact that the release of a series of text messages from Tiger Woods to one of his mistresses barely managed to get some attention.
“Did this even upset anyone? Other than the shock factor of the language itself (assuming you’re even shocked by that stuff anymore), no. We barely raised an eyebrow, and not because it was Tiger’s umpteenth transgression. We’re far more invested in the fact that Sandra Bullock was wronged. Yes, Elin Nordgren has been excruciatingly wronged as well, but America isn’t attached to Elin. We barely know her. The truth is, we just care more about Bullock (sorry, Elin). Maybe we’d taken more note of the […] story if James hadn’t been so busy [cheating on] our girl,” Jezebel points out.