MAUREEN CALLAHAN: How delicious to see Team Jonas’ ugly ‘bad mom’ blitzkrieg on Sophie Turner misfire so spectacularly… She will win this dirty divorce saga – and his good guy image may be destroyed forever

In a year full of messy celebrity breakups, Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas’ affair may be the messiest.

But it’s also the most revealing: We see in real time how the “bad mother” story backfires – in spectacular fashion.

Before the couple announced their divorce earlier this month, Jonas’ team seemed to be embarking on a none-too-subtle blitzkrieg: Joe was suddenly a de facto single parent to two small daughters, ages three and one, even while he was on tour.

Oh, how he had suffered. Check out this totally unstaged paparazzi shot, in which Joe holds one of his daughters while Sophie is nowhere to be seen, his wedding ring visibly missing. If only their mother would bother to, well, be a mother.

“She likes to party,” a Jonas source told TMZ, “(and) he likes to stay home. They have very different lifestyles.’

We all know what “partying” is code for: the implication that Turner drinks too much or does drugs.

It was ugly, unnecessary and hypocritical: after all, are we supposed to believe that 34-year-old Joe Jonas, who has been famous since his teens, has spent most of his life as a touring pop musician and has a string of famous ex-girlfriends – including Gigi Hadid and Taylor Swift – is a choir boy?

Please. Those infamous purity rings came loose a long time ago.

Here’s Turner in a 2021 Netflix comedy about her husband and his brothers: “For those of you who don’t know, purity rings are worn to show that you abstain from sex before marriage. And the Jonas brothers – they had them all… But Joe Jonas didn’t just stick his fingers in some stupid metal rings, he stuck his fingers in co-stars, actresses and even a few supermodels’ as a teenage Disney star.

As they say: in every joke there is some truth.

And what about the Joe Jonas who told CBS Sunday Morning in May 2021 that it took a global pandemic for him to become an active presence in his children’s lives?

“It was forced to be at home,” he said. ‘I’m always on the road, I’m always moving, traveling and touring. And to be in one place for a long time and keep my feet on the ground and be with my family, my immediate family, is a time that I don’t think I’ll get back.”

This is how Turner described himself to Conan O’Brien in April 2020, at the start of lockdown: ‘I’m an introvert. I’m a homebody… If I could stay home all day I would, so this is great for me.”

What an epic fail for Team Jonas to portray Turner’s decision to film a six-part ITV series in England last summer as a surrender. This is really archaic stuff.

As detailed in Turner’s lawsuit Thursday — more on that later — the job was “the first significant role the mother has taken on since having the children.”

A friend of Turner told the Daily Mail that the now 27-year-old actress had been struggling for some time. ‘She feels like her life has come to a standstill after ‘Game of Thrones,’ and that includes her personal life…Sophie feels like she’s only just waking up to what her life and reality really are . She became famous at a very young age, then got married and had children at a young age and never really had the teenage years of sleeping around and just having fun with friends without a care in the world.”

Sophie Turner’s public crisis is, in my opinion, not so much reminiscent of that of the fictional Nora in Ibsen’s play ‘A Doll’s House’: a young, newly domesticated wife and mother who is pilloried for having ambitions of her own. That piece was written in 1879.

These claims by Jonas smell like mothballs. They have the smell of an old house or a thrift store. His wife, who was a famous actress when they met, wants to remain a famous actress? Shock of all shocks!

You’d think someone whose fan base is almost 100 percent women would have thought this through. Women don’t easily forgive rich, famous, bitter ex-husbands for shaming their ex-wives as bad mothers.

Ask none other than Alec Baldwin, who for years accused his ex-wife Kim Basinger of parental alienation — a crusade that ended after a voicemail was leaked in which he railed against his then 11-year-old daughter, calling her “a rude, thoughtless one.” little pig.’

Chris Pratt has received some well-deserved criticism for social media posts shading his ex-wife Anna Faris and her suitability as a mother. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. infamously discredited his estranged wife Mary, who committed suicide in 2012, as a terrible mother to anyone who would listen – after her death.

None of these men seem to realize or worry about the obvious consequence: their children will one day grow up to read all these things. The bar is set pretty low for celebrity parenthood. 101: Keep your mouth shut.

Sophie Turner is to be applauded for skillfully playing a long game.

How smart has she been to stay so quiet, to arrange photo ops this week with Swift – who has written songs believed to be about Jonas’s casual cruelty during their relationship – and to dismiss her petition to the court to prevail.

And wow: In that filing, Turner claims Jonas is refusing to turn over the children’s passports and engaging in “wrongful retention,” reneging on their agreement to permanently move to England, her home country.

“The mother is fully involved in all schooling, medical care, dental care, cultural activities and other activities of the children in England,” the petition said. ‘The Mother provides all the daily care for the children in England. England is the children’s habitual residence.’

It further states that “on or about September 5, 2023, the mother found out through the media that the father had filed for divorce.”

Nice guy, right?

What happens next could definitely ruin Joe Jonas’ good image, as he can’t seem to stop mudslinging.

Immediately following Turner’s lawsuit, a representative for the singer issued a statement labeling it a “harsh legal position” that contradicted the “amicable co-parenting arrangement” he claims he set up.

After all, nothing is more “amicable” than allowing “sources” in your area to spread rumors about the mother of your children to TMZ.

There’s a reason why this celebrity split, more than any other this year, is resonating: misogyny just isn’t that easy to explain anymore.

Women and teenage girls will think twice about putting money in his pocket.

And if there’s one thing Joe Jonas cares about, it’s probably money.

He would definitely make up with Swift after their bitter breakup — partly, he said, because “no one messes with the Swifties.”

Sophie’s appearances with Swift this week, once arm-in-arm just hours before she filed that petition, should give Joe Jonas serious pause.

And if she can maintain her dignified silence — think Jennifer Aniston at the height of Brangelina — Sophie Turner will win, in more ways than one.