In light of his recent scandal, the nation is looking at New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. After the initial shock of his scandal wore off, I first began mulling over the fact that “high-priced prostitute” is an oxymoron … then I noticed his wife. I get so tired of seeing a man fall from grace with his wife standing dutifully by his side, stuck in a daze, at a news conference.
I understand marriage vows, but he broke those long ago. I believe that when you marry someone, you enter into a blood covenant and become one body. But if my arm gets a mind of its own and starts lingering near the fire, it’s time to let that arm go.
Spitzer spent tens of thousands of dollars on prostitutes, a law enforcement official told The New York Times, subjecting his wife to every disease known to man including the deadly virus known as HIV. He embarrassed his family and the entire state of New York. He even would still be involved if it weren’t for The New York Times exposing him red-handed (ironically, the same newspaper who made the mistake about John McCain; apparently they hit the jackpot with this one).
So while it may seem a noble thing for a woman to stand by her man in the face of even the most egregious scandals, it is actually an extremely bad example. What message are we sending to the young girls in this country who look up to these prominent women? There is a lot of talk about athletes and musicians being bad influences on the men in this country. However, some of these people, especially musicians, can be passed off as ignorant. What is there to make of a Harvard Law graduate standing by a man too stupid to at least cover his own butt? Pride and arrogance rightly placed him where he is today — in a place of public humiliation and shame. But what about her? What places her next to him, causing her to shame her own daughters and look like a fool? Love? Really?
Young women may look to her and wrongly decide to stand by their own cheating, heartless jerk they call their husband or boyfriend. If Mrs. Spitzer can make it through that, then young women think they should too.
However, I’m not coming down on just Spitzer. She’s only following the lead of so many women before her. Mrs. Spitzer even wore a baby blue pantsuit like former New Jersey Governor James McGreevy’s wife. Hillary Clinton was famously loyal to her husband in the face of several affairs. But no one can be confused about Hillary’s rationale — political gain, period. She didn’t care what example she set back then so she could run for president today ... congratulations.
I’m not saying these women should join with the masses in calling for the head of their own husbands. I am saying it is about time some woman stood up and said she isn’t going to take it anymore. For all the feminist cries for equality, why do we stop short from publicly denouncing our own husbands for something as horrendous as a prostitution ring, an affair in the Oval Office, lying under oath (mayor of Detroit) or sleeping with men? Instead of taking the time to stand up for themselves and their children, these women retreat to the powerless, pitiful stance two steps behind their husbands at a press conference. Even occasionally holding hands (imagine where Spitzer’s hands have been ... at five thousand dollars a pop, they better have been somewhere great). Some of these women do eventually leave their husbands, albeit privately. And that’s not a happy day for anyone. But you would think after being subject to the pain of a widely publicized, extended affair with random women, the wife would have something to say at a press conference or anywhere public. Anything. Or, maybe these women would take the liberty to stay home in protest. They don’t follow their husbands to every other speaking engagement. Why go to this one?
If women want to stand behind abhorrent men, that’s their prerogative. Forgiving the inexcusable is no simple task, even for the saints among us. But I think the next time a politician finds himself in the muck of a scandal with his pants around his ankles, his wife should find a voice and say, “That’s enough!” But maybe it’s just me.
Alissa Griffith is a junior journalism major. Send her an e-mail at ag180505@ohiou.edu.
Reader Comments
I guess being a junior in college qualifies as enough life experience to make one a credible authority on marriage. Get over yourself Alissa Griffith; your writing is trite, insipid and pedantic. Your clear intent is not informed opinion designed to evoke thoughtful debate, rather it is pointless teenage dribble clearly meant to draw attention to yourself. Consider this: No one else really cares, it is just you.
It appears to me that "nothingbettertodo" did care and, thus, broke out his/her thesaurus so he/she could comment on Ms. Griffith's column. I truly enjoy when others try to tarnish a writer's capabilities by attempting to sound more erudite than they actually are. Keep up the good work "nothingbettertodo" as those of us who are actually learned appreciate YOUR scholarly dribble.
Point of fact, I don't own a thesaurus. I don't need one. Tarnishing a writer's capabilities was not my intent. I simply called it as I saw it and what I see everytime I read a column by Griffith is the type of sniveling and whining indicative of this latest generation of twenty-somethings behaving like teenagers. Attacking me and my quality based on a few sentences was, at best, juvenile. But as a defender of Griffith, I would expect nothing else.
I am not a defender of Griffith. I'm merely stating that when I dislike something or someone's topic, I choose not to read it. I find it ridiculous that so many people attack the columnists in The Post because they don't agree with their ideals or theories. Just don't read it. People too often belittle and berate authors for the information they choose to address when they have the simple freedom to refuse to read it. I wasn't being juvenile; I was proving a point that your comments aren't much higher than the "dribble" you accused Ms. Griffith's of writing.
I'm going to break up the flame war a bit and ask why it is that specifically musicians are ignorant. As a musician and a 3.8 student, I find it slightly off-putting that I'm apparently ranked lower on the intellectual scale than Nascar drivers, Kentucky Derby jockeys and bowlers. From what I hear, those count as athletes. Please don't get me started on football players, though.
I didn't mean all musicians, I meant most popular rappers. I was thinking more about the influence of 50 cent, Snoop, Cassady and the likes who encourage young boys to do the unthinkable. They can be passed off as ignorant. I should have clarified. My apologies.
Dale Earnhardt > Mozart
obviously
I don't think that it's fair to differentiate between musicians and athletes when discussing who might or might not be ignorant. Neither the athlete nor the musician are in a necessarily intellectual career path in the traditional "I'm an English professor" sense, but both require specific intellectual skill sets unique to their areas of expertise.
I think that the better choice would have been not making such broad generalizations.
Also, oxymoron doesn't mean what you think it means, and I can't believe that no one has brought up the fact that you called men sleeping with men horrendous, or that you differentiated that from the other forms of adultery that you mentioned.
As for the actual content of the column, I think that you summed up how many, if not most, people feel about the issue when you wrote, "if women want to stand behind abhorent men, that's their prerogative." That sentence kind of made the rest of the column seem completely irrelevant. We now know that you, personally, would leave your husband or boyfriend if he was cheating on you, but not really anything else.
My question for you is why does it seem so implausible that Spitzer's wife is in love with him? Perhaps she's extremely upset, which she should be, but she doesn't want to make a decision about the future of her marriage without first giving herself some time to cool down and think about the situation first. We can't know what Mrs. Spitzer (or Hillary C.) is (was) thinking.
I can decisively say that the Black entertainers who willingly contribute to stereotypical assumptions of Black people (even for monetary gain) are ignorant. Period. And their bad influence can be countered by any young person who is aware that in his/her young age, he/she has more sense than these entertainers. I am NOT saying all (or most) musicians are smarter than all (or most) athletes. What I am saying is that most (again not all) popular basketball and football players at least went to college. So as much as some people may say they are bad influences, most popular rappers claim to fame is they spent time in prison. I should have clarified in my article. However, that is completely besides the point.
I didn't make my own headline. I am not saying that every woman should leave his/her cheating husband. I am saying that these extremely popular and professional women should unequivocallydenounce their husbands actions in public whether they stay or not. To make matters worse, Mrs. Spitzer reportedly suggested to her husband that he not resign. I don't care what goes on behind closed doors. Mrs. Spitzer should not serve as a public condoner of her husbands actions. Furthermore, we can all give ourselves some credit...we know EXACTLY what Hillary C was thinking.
Lastly, if 20 and 22 year old females (only slightly younger than Spitzer's daughters) can be paid 5,500 dollars to sleep with the governor of New York. I, at 21, can say that he is disgusting and deserves every bit of the repercussions he received and the loss of his wife's public support should be one of those repercussions.
Unequivocally denounce? Maybe they're trying to save what little face they have and try to keep their undoubted future marriage problems private, instead of broadcasting them to the world.
I think anyone can infer, without the aid of public denunciation, that Mrs. Spitzer does not support the actions of her husband. Nor did Hillary. And it's doubtful that she was thinking presidency in the mid-90s. Why can't you give them the benefit of the doubt and let them deal with family matters behind closed doors?
A running theme in your columns, Alissa, is that you pass judgment on people in situations that either you've never experienced or haven't clearly thought through. How can you possibly know what is running through Mrs. Spitzer's head? Has your politician husband recently cheated on you? To be honest, I think it could be said that being a role model for young women is the LAST thing on her mind.
I just can't wrap my mind around why you slam politician's wives for not taking you into account. So sorry, they're dealing with the reverberations that affect their marriage, their children, and their emotional state. And so what if it is love that she's fighting for and wants to work through things? It's so easy to say that you would leave when you've never been in such a situation. Would you, Alissa, really want to denounce your husband/boyfriend publicly in your column? Does the public really have a right to those feelings?
Of course Spitzer's actions were terrible. But his marriage and his wife's reaction is an entirely private matter...and once again, it is just you.
Whilst I do agree that cheating within a relationship (especially a committed one like marriage) is wrong, I have to say I'm disappointed in you as well as the rest of the media for still talking (read: gossiping) about this. So the guy screwed up and his wife hasn't left him. So what? It just isn't any of our business what goes on behind closed doors--we don't know all the details of their marriage so it's just plain stupid to talk about it.
Honestly, I'm sick of instances like these when 'formal' news sinks to the level of those horrible magazines you see at the check-out line in the supermarket--why the hell do people care if this random useless celebrity is pregnant or if this sleazy politician liked hookers? When will anyone understand that it isn't any of our business? If I got pregnant tomorrow, I know I definitely would NOT want people analyzing the hell out of my relationship with my gentleman friend.
Politicians (and celebrities), stupid as they can be, are just human. Both to Alicia and the media--quit magnifying scandals and analyzing lives you know nothing about and start talking about real news.
And another common sense article... How can you disagree that wives standing by their husband's after they cheat is a bad look? They only stay for the money, we all know this. And yes, maybe THIS is not our business. Maybe it was not the business of the newspaper that makes a business out of publishing people's business. And I am not a person who is into ET or Extra, because I simply do not care (or watch TV). BUT when the issue is shoved in our face everyday, it makes us question how many lives these influences are affecting. No one wants this to become so mainstream, that when a REAL woman leaves a cheater, she looks out-of-line. See, this is what history has taught us; if we accept the wrong, the wrong becomes mainstream, and mainstream becomes right (via dominant ideology.)
As long as we're all injecting our own scenarios onto a situation we clearly can't truly know, let me do mine. Let's say when the Sptizer couple became the Spitzer couple they were madly in love. They had sex all the time, good sex. Let's say a couple years go by and the amount of sex they have goes steadily down. Let's say before they got married, Silda and Eliot already had some infidelity squabbles but decided to work through them. So, some years into their marriage, several children later, they just aren't having sex much. But Eliot's a horn-dog. More than that, the guy's apparently got some fetishes (If you look into the story, the Madam told "Kristen" that "Client No. 9" might want to do things that "you might not think are safe") So, let's say Eliot's a bit of a freak, maybe he's into felching, or rusty trombones, who knows? Anyway, it's probably nothing he'd want to do with the mother of his children (a woman who barely has normal sex with him anymore anyway). So, for the past six years, the guy's been getting whores. But these two are in public life. I'm guessing Silda's not too dumb, and Eliot's not too smart, so over the past six years she must've at least had her suspicions. But let's say she's a very image-conscious person, who realizes the "show" of public life, and besides, wants to protect her children from public embarassment. So she doesn't leave the guy for his philandering in order to preserve their family and its reputation (this protectionist sentiment seems natural.) Well, Eliot's a bit dumber than poor Silda expected and then he gets caught in a very public way. This isn't a political crisis for Silda, this is a family crisis (and probably one she's been trying to avoid.) Most likely, she's not selfishly thinking about how wronged she is (because she probably knew he had this side in the first place). He main (protectionist/maternal) concern would be for her kids. So what is she to do? Abandon her children's father in a time of national embarassment for their family? I say no. For the sake of her children, she's got to stand by him until the national feeding frenzy dies down. At that point, I have no doubt she'll make a decision on whether or not to leave him (my guess is she will because of the embarassment and heavy blow to the family unit that his stupidity caused, even if she already suspected his infidelity). So, if we're all going to give mindless conjecture, that's mine.
Come on... I'm sure the wife knew that the gov'nor was sleeping around... they have probably been in a loveless marriage for years and have made certain concessions as such... she looks the other way, he supports her fancy lifestyle. Just like Tony and Carmella Soprano. Don't you know all political and TV/movie couples are like this?
One word to OneRodeToAsaBay: the reason why Spitzer's infidelity is newsworthy has nothing to do with "magnifying scandals," as you put it. It's because what Spitzer did was illegal. And what Ashley Alexandra Dupré ("Kristen," née Ashley Youmans) and her co-workers have been doing is illegal, too. And therefore the public has a right to know that New York's supposedly "squeaky clean" governor was implicated in (yes, I'm going to say it again, to make this quite clear) an ILLEGAL action.
Your getting pregnant by a "gentleman friend?" Last time I checked, that's not illegal.
kabrownrigg, I'll admit that I was rather unclear but I'm arguing that his wife's reaction to his infidelity is not newsworthy. Yes, he's incredibly guilty of hypocrisy whilst in office by visiting a prostitute whilst passing laws about prostitution and THAT may be worthy of discussion. But I don't think his wife's loyalty to him should be a big newsworthy item. It's their own private matter, everyone should leave them be.
And I can list a few other illegal things that have happened recently worldwide that are of much greater importance than ONE man's illegal affair with a prostitute.
And, sorry, I hate saying 'my boyfriend' and usually refer to him by his first name (but won't on here as I prefer to remain primarily anonymous).
Submit a comment to The Post