Hearne: Star Unleashes Embarrassing, Clueless Kate Spade Psychobabble

Every family has one…

Well, maybe not every family, but in the world of responsible journalism one needs to exercise a little common sense before taking an embarrassing, risky plunge.

Unless the only aim is Tony’s Kansas City-like tabloid journalism.

Which is what the Kansas City Star and Eric Adler unleashed Tuesday.

“Kate Spade suffered years of mental illness, sister says. Suicide not expected,” the headline reads.  

Sound like legitimate reporting to you?

Earlier in the day, the Star ran a standard issue wire story about Spade’s suicide with little to no actual local reporting. Largely because nobody at 18th and Grand had the sources.

Until that is a distant older sister in New Mexico weighed in with a spelling correction.

Here’s where it gets ugly.

Spade’s sister “emailed the Star shortly after it posted an online story about Spade’s death…to say that the story had misspelled Spade’s childhood nickname, Katy,” Adler writes.

“The Star made the correction and asked (Spade’s sister) if she would speak by phone about her sister or if there was anything else about her that she wanted reflected. (She) responded that she was not willing to take a call and had taken a sedative.”

Uh, hello…that should have been the editor’s first clue that something wasn’t quite right.

Instead, they passed it off to Star schlockmeister Eric Adler to do the dirty work – and did he ever.

Which amounted to little more than editing and rearranging a couple of bizarre emails.

Spade’s suicide “was not unexpected by me,” the sister wrote, adding, “Sometimes you simply cannot SAVE people from themselves!”

Classy.

All caps on “SAVE” and an exclamation point at the end to drive home that this was a carefully worded, sensitive revelation by someone with both feet on the ground and a keen sense of diplomacy at an ultra sensitive time.

The sister wrote that she wanted Kate hospitalized and had offered to tag along so they both could have a fun time while incarcerated, pouring over half-forgotten recollections of their childhoods.

Ah, but Kate, the sister confided, was hesitant to go for fear of tarnishing her “happy go lucky image.”

To quote a former high school science teacher, “Horse hockey!”

It gets worse…

“She was always a very excitable little girl and I felt all the stress/pressure of her brand (Kate Spade) may have flipped the switch where she eventually became full-on manic depressive . . . .” the sister wrote. “I’d come so VERY close to getting her to go in for treatment – to the same place Catherine Zeta-Jones went for her successful bipolar program…She was all set to go — but then chickened out by morning.”

Seriously. Does this sound even remotely like something one would expect to fall from the lips of a clear thinking, concerned family member?

The kicker:

Start rubbing your eyes now, because this whacked out, half-ass journalistic misadventure’s about to get a whole lot bumpier.

“After numerous attempts, I finally let go,” Spade’s sister wrote. “Sometimes you simply cannot SAVE people from themselves! One of the last things (Kate) said to me was, ‘I know you hate funerals and don’t attend them, but for me would you PLEASE come to MINE, at least. Please!’ I know she perhaps had a plan, but she insisted she did not.

“She was a dear little person. So dear — so kind, so funny. I’ll miss our 6-7-hr-long phone conversations between NY and NM. I’m off to bed for a good cry.”

Perfect timing.

Because after Spade’s friends and family choke down this pile of poorly researched, journalistic garbage, they’ll all be crying.  

Very classy, Eric and the Star, you’ve outdone yourselves.

This is seriously embarrassing, as you guys will learn if you bother or can get any family members or close friends to take your calls to set the record straight.