WILMINGTON, Del. – News of the Reese Witherspoon-Ryan Phillippe breakup has sent tremors through the state of Delaware, “The Home of Tax-Free Shopping” and the birthplace of Mr. Phillippe.
Throughout the First State—from Rehoboth Beach in the south, where gay congressmen and their pages frolic in the summer ocean, to Wilmington, 110 miles to the north, where signs announce to visitors that this is “The Place to Be Somebody”—Delawareans are asking themselves today, “How could this have happened to us?”
The question, which is more than rhetorical, goes to the heart of Delaware’s inferiority complex.
“Hell, if this state were a person, it would suffer from penis envy,” said an MBNA/Bank of America executive over lunch at Wilmington’s 821, “the best restaurant in the state.”
Although Delaware has long basked in the reflected glory of Henry Heimlich, inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver, who was born in Wilmington, the Blue Hen State has yet to produce an A-list celebrity. Not surprisingly, when Ms. Witherspoon’s breakout movie, Legally Blonde, opened at number 1 in July 2001 and went on to gross $96 million, all 720,000 Delaware residents nearly had a simultaneous orgasm.
Suddenly the two-year-old marriage that even Delawareans had ignored when Ms. Witherspoon was third on the bill to Mr. Phillippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar in 1999’s Cruel Intentions, suddenly became the biggest entertainment news in the state since local band George Thorogood and The Delaware Destroyers had opened for the Rolling Stones in Philadelphia in 1981.
“We considered Reese one of our own,” said Cicely Carpenter, an executive secretary at MBNA/Bank of America.
“To be honest, we never warmed to Valerie Bertinelli, Sean Patrick Thomas, or Judge Reinhold (all born in Delaware); and even Ryan Philippe has one of those instantly forgettable faces; but Reese Witherspoon’s a freakin’ Oscar winner, woooooo-hoooooo! It doesn’t get any bigger than that.”
Apart from Estelle Taylor and Elisabeth Shue, also born in Delaware, the First State has had to resort to “once lived in . . .” or “once stayed at the Hotel DuPont” references to burnish its celebrity cred. Actor Tom Welling who plays Clark Kent on Smallville belongs to the former group, while several bit players and character actors fit in the latter.
As for Ms. Witherspoon, despite the fact that she has never actually been photographed in Delaware, most Delawareans you meet have a Reese Witherspoon sighting they’ll be happy to share with you.
Meanwhile on the West Coast, where Ms. Witherspoon is playing all three of late country music star Buck Owens’ wives in Bakersfield Blues, a member of her p.r. team had no comment on the effect of her breakup on the state of Delaware.
“You mean Delaware’s a state?” said the p.r. type. “I always thought it was a city in Maryland or someplace.”
In related news, Delaware Senator Joe Biden is said to be mulling a movie career or another run for the White House “if that’s what it takes to keep this state on the map.”
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