White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

How Nora Ephron Has Made Me Feel Better about My Neck

April 15, 2010 by White House Chronicle 2 Comments

The horror of my life was the shaving mirror in the morning.

Of course, it wasn’t the mirror but what I beheld there: Me. Actually, my neck.

Like millions of others, I suffer from neckophobia: the consternation that arises when your neck decides, quite on its own, that it’s old and has too much skin; and what are you going to do about it?

Well, there are dickeys, extra-snug shirt collars and turtlenecks.

There are thoughts of cosmetic surgery–tucks and lifts. But that’s expensive and risky and requires bravery.

But, no, my winter of discontent has been made glorious summer by a woman. One wonderful woman: Nora Ephron.

Nora is a genius: a gifted journalist, essayist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and bon vivant. I don’t actually know about the latter, but she must be – she was once married to Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. I did know Carl, we worked together at The Washington Post; and even before he was famous, he was into the good life.

Anyway, Nora has saved me from hating my neck by writing a book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts.” Thank you, thank you!

The moment I heard about her book of essays, I felt so much better about my surfeit of skin. How could a great lady in Hollywood–or is it New York?–so help the self image of a stranger?

Actually I met Nora in 1963 at The New York Post, when she was 21 or so and already a star. She was wise too; assiduously, she avoided my attempts to talk to her.

Nora’s neck was lovely in those days. I can see it now, long and shapely.

I thought Nora might be fascinated by my young adventures in Africa and Europe. But she had moved in rarefied circles all the days of her life. Her parents had been wildly successful screenwriters. They even wrote a play about her when she was a teenager, “Take Her, She’s Mine.” Imagine that? You don’t need a resume; you just send a script or two tickets.

Nora’s secret–I hope she won’t mind if I call her by her first name, since necking is an intimate undertaking–is to turn adversity into art and art into money.

When Carl Bernstein–who I’ve always liked–turned out to be a very naughty husband, she wrote one of the funniest novels of the generation, “Heartburn.” It was a riot of a book in which she wrote that the husband, Mark, was “capable of having sex with a venetian blind.” In this volume, she indulged her passion for revenge with her passion for cooking—grilled husband with diablo sauce. If she is a comfort about my neck with her latest book, she was doubly so for betrayed wives with “Heartburn.”

In the movie “When Harry Met Sally,” Nora took revenge on all her lovers and husbands with the faked orgasm scene. That caused many a man to wonder at his prowess. More revenge against men and comfort for women. Her own cri de coeur: “In my sex fantasy nobody ever loves me for my mind.”

Well, Nora, I love you for your neck. It has so changed the way I feel about mine that I’m going to go on television wearing an open-neck shirt.

But recently, I’ve had this nightmarish thought: Suppose the exceptional Ms. Ephron goes under the knife and restores the long, smooth body part I beheld in New York in 1963?

She wouldn’t do that to me, would she? —For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

 

 


Email, RSS Follow
Email

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Carl Bernstein, cosmetic surgery, neck, Nora Ephron, phobia

Comments

  1. Linda Gasparello says

    April 19, 2010 at 10:05 am

    Gail Chaddock

    Hilarious. I’m still laughing through my turtleneck. Thx Mr. King.

    Reply
  2. Linda Gasparello says

    May 16, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    From Richard Harsham, Cincinnati, Oh.

    Long in the tooth from opining for newspapers–I am much taken by your two-fisted prose; only recently happening upon your splendid TV show that goes the McLaughlin Group one better by letting your guests get their uninterrupted say.

    I managed to read your posted piece afterward and was especially amused by your take on Nora Ephron. And that piece on the perils of coal mining was superb! (Your father knew of what he spoke.)

    On this neck flab business: I see you’ve addressed the issue quite nicely with boldly-colored bowties. But let’s not forget the benefits to be derived from a cowboy’s bandanna and the playboy’s ascot. Both work to conceal the wearer’s neck-sag while introducing a measure of modesty. John Wayne’s trusty bandannas allowed him to keep his swagger while concealing his jowls. By the same token, David Niven wined and dined fetching women half his age by hiding his “turkey neck” flaps beneath his sporty ascots.

    I should think you’s start a trend among the likes of TV commentators if you resorted to the red bandanna now and again. I’m sure your wife would not want you attracting the attention (let alone the affections) of women half your age–so I’ll advise you to steer clear of ascots.

    Of course I may not be telling you anything you don’t already know. That’s the great thing about getting older: more often than not (unlike the horde of young whipper-snappers), we know of what we speak.

    Just wanted you to know you’re “on the beam” of some quite refreshing observations. Stay “two fisted”; it’s good for the heart–yours as well as your readers/viewers.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
Game-Changing Wind Turbines Harvest Underused Resource Close To The Ground

Game-Changing Wind Turbines Harvest Underused Resource Close To The Ground

Llewellyn King

Jimmy Dean, the country musician, actor and entrepreneur, famously said: “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” A new wind turbine from a California startup, Wind Harvest, takes Dean’s maxim to heart and applies it to wind power generation. It goes after untapped, […]

Farewell to the U.S. as the World’s Top Science Nation

Llewellyn King

When I asked John Savage, the retired co-founder of the Department of Computer Science at Brown University, what the essential ingredient in research is, he responded with one word: “Passion.” It is passion that keeps scientists going, dead end after dead end, until there is a breakthrough. It is passion that keeps them at the […]

Europe Knows Russia and Is Deeply Afraid

Europe Knows Russia and Is Deeply Afraid

Llewellyn King

Europe is naked and afraid. That was the message at a recent meeting of the U.K. Section of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), at which I was an invited speaker. It preceded a stark warning just over a week later from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, also speaking in London, who said the danger […]

A Commencement Address — Get Used to Rejections, We All Get Them Sometimes

A Commencement Address — Get Used to Rejections, We All Get Them Sometimes

Llewellyn King

It is school commencement season. So I am taking the liberty of sharing my column of May 10, 2024, which was first published by InsideSources, and later published by newspapers across the country.  As so many commencement addresses haven’t been delivered yet this year, I thought I would share what I would have said to […]

Copyright © 2025 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in