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Birkhead vs. Stern: friendly competition? |
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Written by Ryan Pearson, asap
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Wednesday, 11 April 2007 |
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Once jealous competitors for Anna Nicole Smith’s attentions, Larry Birkhead and Howard K. Stern embraced before cameras this week as results of a paternity test were announced.
They looked, at least for a moment, more like bowling buddies than courtroom combatants.
Dannielynn’s father and the man listed as such on her birth certificate pulled off the old handshake-into-man-hug with minimal awkwardness, considering the circumstances.
Seconds earlier, stooping down to speak into a mound of microphones, Stern said he wouldn’t fight for custody. He even invited Birkhead to his home to get to know the girl.
“As far as I’m concerned, Larry can come over to the house and spend as much time with her as he wants right now,” Stern said.
TV news viewers could be forgiven for imagining them raising the baby in a whole new Dannielynn-focused reality series on the E! Network: “He’s a photographer from Los Angeles with the blond-streaked hair and goofy charm of a surfer. And he’s a buttoned-down attorney whose firm once handled Anna Nicole’s modeling contracts. But who will change the diapers?”
Was the goodwill real, though? It appeared to be simply more of the multitudes of mug-for-the-camera antics in the bizarre case, ranging from a crying judge to Larry King confessionals.
Birkhead could hardly look at Stern while the attorney spoke at the news conference. He told King back in January that when he was in bed with Smith, they had to lock her bedroom door to prevent Stern from barging in.
“I told (Smith) several times that it was, you know, basically her home, she needed to tell him that, you know, what his place was as her attorney, friend, whatever, but not to overstep those bounds and to kind of give us our space,” Birkhead told King. “He’s always -- was always interfering with her everyday life.”
It’s possible that now that the paternity case is over, Birkhead and Stern will resolve their differences, and the focus of both will be on Dannielynn. And they won’t continue to snipe over the millions of dollars that the daughter could inherit from her late mother’s marriage to the even later billionaire J. Howard Marshall.
But in this case, that single man hug is more likely camera fodder than symbol of a shifting relationship.
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Ryan Pearson is an asap reporter based in Los Angeles. | Only registered users can write comments.
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