Letters to the Editor
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Whose Business Is It Anyway?
The media and countless pundits, including yourself, seem to find it your obligation to earn money off this woman's misery. It is no one's business but her own. Her choice. Her decision. If she chooses to leave Spitzer, wonderful, if she stays, that must be based on her own personal choice, and not for anyone, let alone media types profiiting from this, to judge.
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Hilary and Silda
true, plus, embarassing as Monica is, at least it was an affair with someone who clearly wanted to have it and in her own naive, trashy way, she was kind of charming. Not quite the same as finding out your spouse is hanging out on dirtbag websites shelling out 2.5 kilobucks for a couple of hours with a quasi-scank.
-- ShawnWM
Very true...yet the haters always like to say that Hillary did it for ambitious reasons, more repellent sexist bullshit that has returned to the fore during this campaign.
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Well put, Rebecca
"Eliot Spitzer was a known hothead, sure. But this was a guy who built his career busting the bad guys, cockily steamrolling over those so powerful that they behaved as if they believed themselves above the law. And many of us who had voted for him bought it, thought him a nice Jewish boy with a foul temper who at heart wanted New York and the United States to be better off. And we're incredibly pissed off at him for making us feel stupid and naive."
Does this story sound familiar to anyone? It's Bill Clinton all over again. We knew he wasn't perfect but thought he was capable of accomplishing great things - until he damn near threw his presidency away because he couldn't keep it in his pants. At least Spitzer had the guts to come clean right away - Clinton first tried to cover his ass by lying to everyone around him. Remember how Clinton's wife, his Cabinet secretaries and Democrats in Congress all went on the offensive in the media trying to defend this guy ("the vast right-wing conspiriacy")? He just stood back and let his inner circle waste their credibility. He only came clean because Monica produced that infamous blue dress and forced his hand. It's been ten years and it still pisses me off - risking your family and career over a piece of ass? It's unfathomable to me.
I don't live in New York but it sounds like Eliot Spitzer was a do-gooder that actually was doing some good, and his political future was limitless. His actions showed shocking disrespect to his family and made a mockery of every thing he'd spent his life upholding as an attorney. Hope that ass - rented ass at that - was worth it.
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Political/Power Spouses
The only woman I can fully know is myself. The only marriage I can truly know and understand is mine. Every other woman and marriage belongs to those in them.
As far as I can remember, whenever a political spouse or power spouse does something wrong and it becomes public fodder, the non-offending spouse has always stood next to him/her during the press conferences. After the spotlights go off different spouses do different things and usually in private.
For the life of me, I can not ever remember this not happening. Can anyone else? I just figure that the couple standing in the press spotlights after one of them has done something wrong, or perceived to be wrong is de riguer.
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Reason for staying
Hillary stuck with her man and she has gone a long way with her example.
The best reason for sticking is the children.
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Adding insult to injury
Spitzer should not have appeared with his wife by his side to apologize or resign. The purpose of that was to frame politically damaging and potentially criminal activities as if they were personal, family matters. Spitzer would not have shown the targets of his own prosecutions the consideration he seems to expect if they had appeared in public to apologize with their silent, suffering spouses.
Instead, Spitzer should have waltzed to his press conference arm-in-arm with one of his favorite prostitutes to announce something like this: "Today, I have had a change of heart. I propose to legalize prostitution north of Albany. That will help close the state budget shortfall of $2.2 billion dollars, and it will bring prosperity to economically depressed regions in our state. Thank you."
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the Spitzers and beyond
I find the sentimentalizing about Silda pretty funny. Love is not the theme on her mind. She's 51, and has been with Spitzer for twenty years. If she's embarrassed and humiliated, she'll get hers, and showing up with him at the press conference is one means of assurance. Also, she's a beautiful woman, and she might as well remind the aghast population that sex is only marginally the subject here.
In her position, I think his betrayal would be seen, even by Silda, as one of their lives in general, seeing what's come down.
What is really interesting here is that Spitzer was the target of an FBI investigation to bring him down. Yes, that is not the way the media has put it, but a very simple line up of facts made it clear. For whatever reasons this guy was the sort to walk right into it. Yes, if he didn't have a thing for paying lots of money for sex, the FBI slash Bush Administration would not have driven him out of office. But he did. That's what makes this story so interesting. Lots of men in his position see prostitutes. They usually don't get to walk right into a sting. You couldn't make this shit up, because it's been done so many times before. Kane?
As a story of the absolute corruption of power, pretty good. As a story of a marriage gone sour, not so much. Too much guessing. As a story of the lengths to which the rulers will go to oust the competition, there is much to say.
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How much of an article would you have left if you were asked not to use the words "we" or "us"?
Just wondering.....my guess is that there wouldn't be much of an article at all.
Do you really have friends who,having heard that man cheated on his wife, refer to him as "a lying sack of shit? Maybe because he humiliated her and just flushed her life and her children's lives down the toilet?"
That's a bit indulgently overwrought, don't you think?
You and your friends sound like a bunch of self-righteous church-ladies. A woman shouldn't feel personally "humiliated" because her husband has slept with prostitute/s. I expect, however, that most women would feel angry to find themselves the subject of an article such as yours.
Oh...I know....the reason you're writing about this is because other people are doing the same (I still haven't figured out why Salon seems to think that none of its readers read anything else; it's a very skoolmarmy assumption).
By the way, the "Thousands of dollars" you repeatedly mention isn't that large a sum....certainly not to the Spitzers.
Creeping Jesus....
----david terry