Stand by your man?

Where is their self-respect and dignity?

Standing up there is tacit approval of or signaling that she UNDERSTANDS what he did or who he is, and that she's somehow willing to share the humiliation and/or responsibility for it and that burden.

Personally I think prostitution should be legal

On Wednesday, Spitzer announced his resignation at a press conference, accompanied once again by his wife, Silda. (Memo to future disgraced politicians: The nation has discussed this at length, and we do not want to see any more stricken spouses at the press conference. Not even if she volunteers; it's your moment of supreme humiliation, not hers. And while we're at it, it's impolite to register under the name of a friend/campaign donor when you're checking into a hotel for the purposes of entertaining a visitor from the Emperor's Club V.I.P.)

An interesting editorial in my paper today starts like this:

Quote:

T o the next high-profile guy caught cheating on his wife, here's a word of advice.

Don't drag the missus to the news conference. Don't persuade her to stand next to you when you put on your Sorry Honey face and try to salvage your career.

If you do, her presence will be proof that you're not sorry at all.

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer faces possible criminal penalties for serving as a client of a prostitution ring, law enforcement officials said this week. The news set off an epidemic of schadenfreude throughout New York, where Spitzer earned his fame rooting out corporate corruption and prosecuting all forms of moral turpitude, including prostitution rings.

Spitzer apologized to the public but "first and most importantly, to my family." He vowed to regain the trust of his wife and three daughters, which he acknowledged might take a while.

What a crock.

(Read all about it: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1205283321109020.xml&coll=7)

How would it change things if the wife simply said "Screw it, buddy, you're on your own."?

I would hate to be paraded and all that crap, and would refuse to be, but on a personal level, I'd find it hard to rub his nose in it when he was at his lowest. If I'd cared enough to stay with him that far, I don't think I could just walk out when the **** really hit the fan (unless he'd molested the kids or somesuch.) He's still a human being, and I do kind of melt when I see these guys' demons come and take their pound of flesh. Oh the humanity!!!

I suspect people mostly know there's a secret life of some sort going on.


Whether there'd be a future????? That's different. But I think I'd stick around to help with the pieces.

Any decent man would not ask his wife or family to stand behind him as he aired their private business and his dirty laundry. A real man would say, "I may have made a mistake - but my family had nothing to do with this and I will not allow them to be humiliated along with me. Even if it costs me my job."

With his resignation, she lost HER job: First Lady.

The more baffling question to me is why she did it. All I could think of, watching Silda Spitzer's defeated expression, was of Taliban women covered from head to toe in burqa, standing a few paces behind their men, appendages to their all powerful husbands. Or Indian women committing sati, throwing themselves on their husband's funeral pyre.

American women are so quick to criticize the religious tradition of others, where women take a subservient position - but are we so different? That's not what the Spitzer scandal suggests.

One can only assume that the women who do this are just as enamored of the power and the position as their men. Of course their power is derivative, which makes it all the more difficult to lose. (It was reported that Silda Spitzer did not want her husband to resign.) Would Hillary Clinton have run for the Senate or even President had she not stood by her man after the Monica Lewinsky episode and insisted he not resign? We'll never know.