Why do political wives stand by their man? Why do they stoically stand next to their husbands at the podium as the dirtbags admit to sleeping with prostitutes and young men? Most women I know would morph into Loretta Bobbitt in a similar situation rather than Silda Spitzer.
Silda is urging Eliot to stay in office. At this point, I would be throwing his clothes out of the window of their 5th Avenue apartment and letting them rain down on the reporters below.
Silda must have known about the hookers. She must be getting off on the
photo spreads for the Governor’s green mansion. She must be loving the
dinners with Martha Stewart and New York City big shots. She is willing
to put up with a creepy husband for all that. Sad.
The View was talking about this yesterday.
The female hosts on “The View” have also had their share of tabloid
stories, but most of those scandals followed catfights behind the
scenes, not lapses in morality or professional probity. Certainly there
were no tears shed for Mr. Spitzer on Tuesday on “The View,” where for
once all five women agreed emphatically on almost everything about the
scandal.
“Aren’t you sick of men?” Joy Behar, one of the hosts, said. “Viagra is destroying our government.”
Dina Matos McGreevey says that we shouldn’t be wondering what the heck is going in the mind of the poor wives.
Why not? We’re wondering about the motivations of these women, because their behavior is just bizarre and unthinkable for most women. I’m wondering why Dina still uses her ex-husband’s last name.
Apt. 11d 
This is where I have to respectfully disagree. We were debating this at work toady. I think reasonable women can disagree on this. We have no idea what is going on in their relationship and why she is standing by him. I would be angry but most likely be by my husband’s side in the same circumstances. For me it comes down to “for better or worse” this is the “worse” we were talking about. I would expect the same loyalty if I developed a brain tumor or debilitating depression, or the spouse’s crazy brother had to move in to our house.
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I’m with Laura, and I don’t understand these wives (Slida, Hillary, McGreevy’s wife). I guess what I don’t understand is why this particular brand of “better or worse” corresponds to a brain tumor, or a spouse’s crazy brother, and not to the husband who is unable to stop himself from beating you or your children (well, and for these politicians the rest of the country, too). Regardless about how you feel about prostitution, the behavior causes chaos and destruction in its wake.
I’m willing to compare it to drug use, to an addiction. But, if so, shouldn’t the guy be kicked out and in a treatment center? Maybe one can control personal anger (or feel primarily sadness), but it seems our primary obligation is to protect ourselves, and our children, while helping the transgressor as best as we can.
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I don’t see that this is the same as the threat of physical violence to one’s children (I am not going down the path as to whether this posed a physical threat of STDs to Ms. Wall Spitzer, as that is mere speculation.) “Worse” to me doesn’t mean bad stuff that is out of your spouse’s control. To me it also means stupid, lousy things that the spouse should have known better than to do. But that is just me. I respect that other women might feel differently and I honor their ability to make different, reasoned (or not reasoned but emotional) choices.
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“One multicolored drip painting, in a den that the family calls the Adirondack Room, had been signed “Spitzer Wall,” because the two of them had painted it together early in their courtship.
“Eliot and I had been to the Whitney and were looking at a Jackson Pollock, and he said, ‘I could do that,’ ” Ms. Wall Spitzer said, imitating her husband with a braggadocious tone. “So I said, ‘Let’s see you try,’ and then I helped him.”
”
(from the NY times article). It breaks your heart. I will say that I do believe that love, rather than the perks of being married is a significant contributor to the “stand by your man” phenomenon.
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I think whether or not you have kids is one important variable. Whatever the husband has done, he’s still his children’s father, and their love for him may not be at all contingent on what he’s done in his private life, though as it hurts their mother, it becomes a familiarly difficult issue. So you stand by him at this particular moment because he’s bleeding out in public: you don’t want your kids to see you joining in the frenzy. There’s time later to walk away in a more considered way.
If I were a political spouse and I didn’t have children, I don’t think I’d appear by his/her side at a moment like this.
If you read the NY Times profile of Silda Wall Spitzer today, by the way, a lot of her friends suggest that she was NOT enjoying being the governor’s wife, and so this isn’t about wanting to cling on to the photo spreads and so on.
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My preferred wifely response would be, “It’s time for you to spend more time with your family.”
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Rod Dreher makes much the same point as Tim, though at greater length and from a more religious point of view. Basically, it’s a question of how one values the family unit, however broken or betrayed it may have become. If there are children there, one has to keep in mind their relationship with the spouse, and not just the collapse of the relationship between spouse and spouse. Not to say I support the choices many political wives have made; just saying I can understand, even sympathize with, the reasoning that may be behind it.
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Staying in a marriage and publicly supporting the cheating husband in order to protect the kids is rational and understandable. I’m just not sure that I would be all that reasonable and rational in a similar situation. I would need time and much marriage counseling in order to get to that point. Probably a bottle of anti-depressants.
My sister and I were chatting about this yesterday and we came to the conclusion that Silda must have known about this ahead of time. Probably in the way that Hillary knew about Bill’s cheating ways long before Monica came along. A few weeks ago, we talking about McGreevey in my State and Local class, and the students believed that Dina knew about McGreevey’s gay affairs before the scandal hit. Most women, no matter how much they loved their husband and kids, wouldn’t put up with repeated affairs. Ya gotta wonder what the wives got in exchange for their silence.
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There’s also the “public face” phenomenon. I might be screaming bloody murder at home, but still appear supportive in public. Most people instinctually want to put the best face forward in public. I also suspect that there would be a small minority of people who would say/think “Oh, that’s why he goes to prostitutes–his wife is a real b***” if she were acting in what others might perceive as a normal way–not standing by, throwing things, screaming, etc.
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Wendy Vitter used the Bobbitt analogy during Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
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Dina says she didn’t know (in an op-ed piece at the NYT). I think we’re wrong to imagine that people will certainly know these things.
And, I do see Miranda’s point — certainly a lot of people certainly felt that way about Donna Hanover, a woman who didn’t “Stand by her man.” (of course, Giuliani made it impossible for her).
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Presumably, then, Mr V is still in the Senate because he doesn’t have anything better to do at night than read legislation.
Oh and just hypothetically, if you were getting sensitive information about what prominent political opponents are doing with their money and online and such (because what’s the point of a domestic spying operation if it’s not to help the people in power, sorry, because pretty much every domesitc spying operation ever in history has been used for the personal benefit of the people in power) how would you go about laundering that information into something actionable? Banks? IRS?
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I disagree with you, Laura. My husband doesn’t have a high status public position, and it might be different if he did. But I am nearly positive I would stay with him if he cheated on me, even with a prostitute. In fact, a prostitute would be “better” in a way because I would know it was not about something emotionally wrong in our relationship. It’s really hard for me to say if I’d do the press conferences. I don’t have a life where I do press conferences. Maybe if I did, it wouldn’t seem too weird/scary.
Meanwhile, I am still trying to figure out why this situation warranted a frickin’ wiretap. I was talking with my students about it this morning. They had No Idea how Spitzer was found out. And when they found out, it led to quite a discussion about stuff like what is probable cause and “if you’re not doing anything wrong, then why is it a problem to give up your privacy?”
Fascinating.
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Like BJ, I also disagree that people “know” these things. They may have some inkling that things are not kosher. They don’t necessarily know *what’s* not kosher, or how far it’s all gone.
And I think it’s uncharitable to question why McGreevey continues to use her ex’s name. This is the name she shares with her daughter, after all. And even if she didn’t have that pull, it is her decision and does not somehow make her less worthy.
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I’m a hot head. I’m not saying that Dina or Silda’s reaction is wrong or less worthy. I just can’t imagine behaving in a similar way and am trying to understand their method of dealing with public humiliation. I would be more like Donna Hanover and have some public freak out. It would be unbecoming and loud.
I don’t see this as a feminist thing. I don’t think that women should immediately dump idiot husbands. It’s just that I’m not built for calm rational decisions like that and am genuinely puzzled by these political wives.
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Me too, Laura, of the more hot-headed type (and I’m not even a redhead :-). Dina basically argues that she was in shock.
I think that this particular phenomenon is a bigger part of the whole political wife phenomenon, though. I think there are positions, and politics is the most clear version of this, where the wife’s life is subsumed by the husband’s. I think the only examples I’ve seen where this doesn’t seem the case is when the spouse has a truly non-political life of their own (Dean’s physician wife comes to mind). I wonder what it’s like for political husbands? They tend to be money guys (or politicians themselves).
What kind of independent life can a politician’s wife have? There’s the time problem (as in someone has to take care of the kids, but that goes away when the kids get old enough, though the part where the wife is an accessory doesn’t). But, there’s also a political problem (can you be a lawyer, when your husband is AG? probably not). Can you be a scientist? Can you be a professor?
In the old days I think lots of professions required this (i.e. the wife was a necessary accessory). Now, it’s not as expected, except for political wives.
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I think Mrs. Spitzer looked relieved today. I don’t necessarily believe the press reports that “she wanted him to stay on.” That line of argument, to me, is more likely to come from his staff. Many people were asking, “Why did she have to be there?”
Very telling–in the AP slideshow on Yahoo, in photos dating before the revelations, she’s a person who hugs the people she loves, her daughters, her husband. There’s movement in the frame from her to her family. She’s smiling, she glows with happiness.
The photos taken after the news broke? They aren’t touching. She’s standing at his side, but they’re islands. Photo no. 118 is particularly telling, as is photo no. 133. The contrast with photo no. 136 is stark.
She’s a very dignified, intelligent woman. She’s a lawyer by training, so she has a “game face.” She’s not going to make a scene in public, but I would bet that her self image no longer includes “wife” as a defining factor. Having to schedule medical tests due to your partner’s willing negligence can do that.
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I was going to go with the “in shock” explanation, as well as the long practice in putting on a game face for public appearances. That having been said, there’s a stepford-wife mentality to political spouse-dom that strikes me as 20 years behind the times. I don’t think anyone garnered any additional information about Spitzer’s intentions simply due to the presence of his wife at the first press conference, and I don’t think anyone would have condemned him more if she had stayed home that day. But I’d bet that his political advisors bullied/cajoled/begged her to attend.
One aspect of high-profile marriage that would creep me out (and I think I include most high-profile Hollywood marriages in this category) is the undoubted ever-presence of aides and advisors. That must alter the spousal dynamic in any number of ways, none of which I personally would welcome.
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Also, I wince away from any claim that “she must have known.” It seems to imply that the spouse is a co-conspirator in the betrayal of public trust.
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Why do we have to judge Silda? Who can claim to really understand anyone else’s marriage? The couple that fights all the time is still together twenty years later and the couple that seemed perfect divorce eighteen months later. We don’t know, and we don’t need to know why Silda made the choices she has made up until now, and she should be free to make the choices that work for her and her family in the future without being judged!
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The ring is gone: http://www.nypost.com/seven/10302008/gossip/pagesix/missing_ring_135921.htm
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