Jenice Armstrong: A fallen Star? No surprise

THE NEWS that Star Jones has filed for divorce didn't take us by surprise. We suspected it was coming. In fact, we're amazed it took as long it did.

Not so much because we believed the rumors that had floated around about Al Reynolds being gay and all that.

But to an outsider, their love affair, which Jones used to constantly gush over back when she co-hosted "The View," appeared forced. Showy even. She irritated a whole lot of folks with the way she carried on about it.

Jones, 46, was even more annoying when she was on-air promoting all those freebies that sponsors contributed to her over-the-top Park Avenue wedding. It made Jones, who couldn't have been hurting for money, come off as downright greedy. Especially since you got the sense that the whole affair was one big, tulle-covered train wreck waiting to happen.

And it's not that everyone was jealous or rooting against her. I, for one, was glad to see the big girl with the even bigger mouth get a chance to don a tiara and a Reem Acra wedding gown and play fairy princess in front of 500 wedding guests, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, of all people.

Still, it was hard not to feel cynical in the face of so much ostentatiousness. Hearing about the wedding ad nauseum gave the impression that Jones was a woman who had gotten herself all caught up in the whole fairy-tale-princess thing.

It can happen to anyone. Who doesn't know a financially stable, professionally accomplished woman who has found herself sucked into such craziness? It's something women have to guard against. From the time they were girls, women have had their heads filled with Cinderella stories and other fairy tales, and people often forget that they're just that - fantasies. But the wedding industry is powerful, as are all the pressures to find your prince and settle down.

"Nobody wants to grow old alone," pointed out Bev Mahone, author of "Whatever! A Baby Boomer's Journey Into Middle Age." "We get caught up in the idea of being in love and we don't really examine the person we claim to be in love with.

"She made a really big deal about the wedding - not that she was marrying the man of her dreams," said Mahone, who doesn't know Jones but has followed her career from afar. "If you're really in love with the person, you don't have to do all that.

"I think there were red flags in that relationship that she ignored," Mahone added. "I think she wanted to prove everyone wrong."

Considering Jones' history, she will probably 'fess up at some point, the way she eventually did after her controversial weight loss. Another Larry King sit-down may be in the offing for her, or possibly even for Reynolds, should he decide to write a tell-all.

TMZ, the celebrity Web site, reported yesterday that Reynolds had hired Stanford Lotwin, the same guy who reportedly handled divorces for Howard Stern, Donald Trump and Diana Ross. Let's hope girlfriend had an ironclad pre-nuptial agreement.

But Jones, who is fond of reminding folks that she's a lawyer, probably did. *

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