In light of the Spitzer scandal...

3.24.08

If I’ve learned anything over the past few weeks, it’s that if I’m ever hard-up for cash, I should go carouse New York City and look for city personnel. I’m just kidding, but $4,000 for 4 hours? Really, Eliot Spitzer (who, by the way, I’m pretty sure will be much lower than the circle of the lustful in Dante’s hell)? Were you that sexually frustrated? Was your wife that much of a dead fish that you had to find a call girl?
The Spitzer scandal points to a larger truth I’ve been mulling over for awhile now and it’s not that women are higher life forms—it’s actually the antithesis. Why do women continue to stand next to men who are louses?
As I watched the clips of Spitzer’s speeches, his obviously stunned wife standing there with him, I was disgusted for reasons beyond his personal ethics. They have two teenage daughters. The example she is setting is that it is perfectly fine to continue to be with someone who does not respect you or themselves. Then the new governor comes out with his wife and talks about his affairs, and his wife is still there with him. How will these marriages ever have any semblance of trust in them again?
Second chances are great, but the foundation of a relationship is trust. I know I’m not a very forgiving person by nature, and I actually hold grudges for an extended period of time, but I’d like to think that most women couldn’t stand next to their cheater husbands on television for the world to see. Apparently, I’m wrong.
I think this is part of the reason I don’t have much respect for Hillary Clinton—that and the heinous black and yellow jacket I always see her wearing; it makes her look like a bumblebee. She is undoubtedly an incredibly intelligent woman who has political experience and viable plans for the future of this country. But how much self-respect could she have left, after the huge scandal with Bill? I don’t see strength and leadership when I look at a woman who didn’t leave the man who turned her life upside down. I see weakness.
“Everyone has affairs,” the defense seems to be for cheaters and people that stay in relationships with them. I’m very bitter and cynical, but even I can’t make myself believe that. I want to believe that there are people out there who respect their significant others, politicians or not. Unfortunately, I know many relationships that have both endured affairs and ended because of them, so affairs obviously happen frequently. The consensus seems to be that just because the person you love decides to “love” someone else for awhile doesn’t mean you can stop loving them. How could you continue loving them?
I speak without experience in the situation, but I do speak with self-respect and a clear sense of how I believe women should be treated (and men; we all know women cheat too). So, if you see me on TV one day standing next to my cheating, public official of a husband, call me out on it. Or, if you see my MySpace page with pictures of me and a public official who is someone else’s husband, call me out on that, too.