Diana Bianchi: Is She the New Long Island Lolita?

Diana Bianchi is right smack in the middle of her fifteen minutes of fame.  All of Tuesday night's cable TV news shows did segments on the young lady credited with helping to break up the ten-year marriage of Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook.

Diana Bianchi: The New Long Island Lolita? (Image: Fox)

She is granting interviews everywhere in New York and some are dubbing it "Long Island Lolita, Part II."

Harvey Levin of TMZ writes that the newest "Long Island Lolita" really bugs him noting that Bianchi is playing the perfect victim -- in front of a TV camera, that is.

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He writes:

It goes something like this -- "I was so young. I was just working in this toy store and, like, he just asked me to work in his architectural firm. And like, I was making all this money and then, like, he was just coming on to me. And of course, like, I never thought I was hurting Christie cause I was just well, like 18 or 19."

"Give me a break," Levin continues. 

This "child," who now says she was screwing Christie's husband, was smart enough to lawyer up (with an attorney who is, let us say, camera-friendly), talk to the New York Post and the New York FOX affiliate. And her lawyer, Joe Tacopina, now claims his client has "got a great sexual harassment claim."

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But Roger Friedman notes that this is not Cook's first teen lover.  In a Dear Reader column he explains, "When I awoke yesterday to stories that Christie Brinkley’s hubby had cheated on her with a 19-year-old, I thought I’d entered Rocky and Bullwinkle’s Way Back machine."

Exactly10 years ago Friedman wrote a similar story about architect Peter Cook. He was 37 years old at the time and newly engaged to Brinkley.

He notes that he had the ignominious distinction of breaking the news that throughout the spring of 1996, whilst courting Brinkley, Cook was seriously dating a beautiful 19-year-old singer named Samantha Cole.

She was from Southampton, N.Y., and her mother worked at the local police station. Neither she nor Christie knew anything about each other.

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Bianchi's father is a cop as well, Fox News reported Tuesday night. 

Even with Cook's history, I'm with Levin. 

I can't dub this gal a victim, though it's becoming apparent with each interview that is the role she would like to play.  At first she may have been overwhelmed, but as the alleged affair went on for nearly two years, she had to know what she was doing was wrong.

She has more interviews scheduled; expect more on the whole sordid mess.

--Jim Roberts