I said the other day that John Edwards can't be my poster boy for an attack on marital norms. Well, I changed my mind, he's my poster boy.
The AP is saying that his political career is finished. The other night Andrea Mitchell asked a hundred investigative questions about when the affair began and where the money went. I don't care. We sacrificed a really smart guy, Gary Hart, to this sort of investigation, lost an important mind on international relations. New York lost a really smart governor, Eliot Spitzer. When will it end? When will we grow up? What sort of test is this for national service? Do we ask them to do origami competition–no. Then why is marital fidelity a supreme test, what is the connection?
Once again there's a female conversation about Edwards and a male one. The female one is the only licit one, the only one on tv, but the male one is the one that matters, because men are just going to do this kind of thing. They're answering a need. Call it bad if you like, well they are going to be bad. Good men have turned out to be bad again and again. They're going to be bad again. And it's never pretty. Yes he betrayed a woman with cancer. Does that mean he'd be a bad policymaker? No.
Better change the rules. People are supposed to be monogamous but what species is monogamous. Not homo sapiens. It is a myth. Politically, it's a test that means nothing. Sarkozy failed the test and no one over there cares, they got over it. Here he'd be toast. There's so much hypocrisy around marriage, why, because it's the sacred economic unit. So marriage is supposed to be sexual forever. What if it isn't? I did an article for New York Magazine after the Spitzer deal and one of the big revelations was the Sexless Marriage. A lot of my friends murmured to me about it. People feel ashamed about it. They have to be like an R movie forever. I think when you hit 50 more women bow out of the sexual thing than men, that's another strong impression I got from that piece. So where does that leave men? What if someone wants to be sexual and the other doesn't. Don't you respect that? One of my middle aged informants said, "My wife
My generation used to have imagination around these issues. It's all gone. We should liberate ourselves from a lot of these expectations, including the one that marriage has to be sexual.
And as for Edwards's chicanery, I don't really care. The most important information we ever got about him was his failure to be John Kerry's second in '04. That was enough info. The chicanery will always be there, it's part of the picture. Eliot Spitzer had his embarrassing fiddles, too. Sex is just unseemly, that's the deal. Love has pitched its tent in the place of excrement–Yeats, I quoted that during the last scandal. How many more scandals will I have to keep quoting it thru.
Related posts:
{ 16 comments }
Nicely put, Phil.
Back during the Monica scandal, I was in a business meeting with a couple of guys from a French company. One of my colleagues asked them what people in France thought about the scandal. They laughed and said, "In France, you can't get to be President without a good sex scandal. You have to show the people you're a man!"
I'm still with you, Phil, and I'm the wife who's got cancer.
Maybe I'm just a libertine. Or world-weary. Or something. I'm more judgmental about that volleyball player offering her ass to be slapped to the President – and the other one posing with her butt cleavage showing – than I am about Edwards' infidelity. Really. I have been spouting off for two days about how the office of the President deserves the respect of covering up asses and belly buttons.
Explain this contradiction to me, that I want the women's volleyball team to cover up to get photographed with the President (and refrain from sticking butts out to be slapped in public) but I don't care if Edwards had sex with that woman. I guess I believe in public decorum and private profligacy.
But I think I would be pissed if my hubby fathered a child with his mistress, after I'd given him four, two of them under extreme physical duress which might have contributed to my cancer. Speculating on Elizabeth E here – remember she went through massive fertility treatments in her late 40s to have those last two, after their teenaged son died. It's not the sex, it's the procreation, dammit! (PS my hubby doesn't have a mistress, AFIK, I'm theorizing about the Edwardses here)
'We sacrificed a really smart guy, Gary Hart, to this sort of investigation, lost an important mind on international relations. New York lost a really smart governor, Eliot Spitzer.'
What do these two, along with Edwards, have in common? They are not Republicans. If Larry Craig hadn't been pinged by a cop he'd probably still be stalking pages in toilets. And wherever did Jeff Gannon/Guckert go? What about the rent boy scandal of the early Bush 41 years, which involved the mysterious death of one Craig Spence?
Some political parties are more equal than others when it comes to outing shenanigans. Or maybe the GOP doesn't have as many transgressors. Certainly they don't have so may 'important minds' or 'smart governors'.
Or Governators for that matter. Is Arnie as pure as his lack of scandal might indicate? I don't care, unless others are being targeted for being on the other side of the aisle.
I'm entirely with you on forgiveness and personal acceptance.
I'm not with you on his publicly lying.
I'm also not with you on his competence to be president. Its not just the formation of policy, its the implementation of policy. And, noone can implement policy broadly if his word is substantively questioned.
The honorable thing to do would have been to mentor and actively support others without baggage to articulate the message.
As its our responsibility as adults to control our tongues and pens, its also our responsibility to manage our sexual expression. That does not diminish the potential for passionate consensual sexual relation.
Sarkozy lives in a society in which discreet extra-marital affairs are often tolerated among the wealthy. (Class is another element of the issue, that wealthy and powerful have a selective permission to sensuality that working people don't.)
Ageism is another issue. That young women are not prospective property, especially of the wealthy elderly.
What did you think of Clinton's repeated philandering and most importantly, lying about it, including under oath and in somber sincere public confession?
I'm more interested in the timing of sex scandals than I am in the actual scandals. That being said, I'm no fan of infidelity.
I don't believe that the reporting of sex scandals has much to do with the feminine perspective of the reporters. I would bet that most known scandals among the famous and powerful are ignored by reporters. I'm far more curious about why massive corruption is ignored by media members of either gender.
For the most part, the members of the media seem far more concerned with shaping society as they see fit, and occasionally being a tool for personal destruction, than they are in honestly reporting news that is useful to society at large.
Take a closer look at the bottom of the AP article you linked to. The infamous Nedra Pickler, a known Republican partisan, is listed as a contributor.
If the AP were even slightly objective, they would mention that McCain cheated on his first wife multiple times, and likely cheated on Cindy to boot.
If one proven affair disqualifies Edwards from politics forever, McCain should have been banished to the political wilderness long ago.
To answer Phil's question: the phony shock when a pol gets exposed as "not faithful to wife" is all that's left of the old, so-called Christian morality, that is, its hypocrisy. The rule is, (borrowed from the Jewish testament), Keep to the Law when the spirit has fled. Tom White
1) Edwards has young children
2) his wife has been ill (on/off)
3) he is the supposed champion of the
working man ("two america's")
4) he used his own wealth (or campaign funds)
to buy his way out of the scandal).
This confluence of factors offends the
sensibilities of white America. Obviously
the social fabric is very worn and has gaping holes, but it's not gone yet.
Also,
Barney Frank
Gerry Studs
These two were involved in scandals that were quickly brushed under the rug.
1) Edwards has young children
2) his wife has been ill (on/off)
3) he is the supposed champion of the
working man ("two america's")
4) he used his own wealth (or campaign funds)
to buy his way out of the scandal).
This confluence of factors offends the
sensibilities of white America. Obviously
the social fabric is very worn and has gaping holes, but it's not gone yet.
Also,
Barney Frank
Gerry Studs
These two were involved in scandals that were quickly brushed under the rug.
1) Edwards has young children
2) his wife has been ill (on/off)
3) he is the supposed champion of the
working man ("two america's")
4) he used his own wealth (or campaign funds)
to buy his way out of the scandal).
This confluence of factors offends the
sensibilities of white America. Obviously
the social fabric is very worn and has gaping holes, but it's not gone yet.
Also,
Barney Frank
Gerry Studs
These two were involved in scandals that were quickly brushed under the rug.
1) Edwards has young children
2) his wife has been ill (on/off)
3) he is the supposed champion of the
working man ("two america's")
4) he used his own wealth (or campaign funds)
to buy his way out of the scandal).
This confluence of factors offends the
sensibilities of white America. Obviously
the social fabric is very worn and has gaping holes, but it's not gone yet.
Also,
Barney Frank
Gerry Studs
These two were involved in scandals that were quickly brushed under the rug.
CORRECTION:
Sarkozy lives in a society in which discreet extra-marital affairs are often tolerated among the wealthy. (Class is another element of the issue, that wealthy and powerful have a selective permission to sensuality that working people don't.)
It's obvious you've never lived in France. Wealth has nothing to do with it (who insist on this arrangement so as not to dilute family fortunes.)
The French of all classes have engaged in this point-of-view for centuries. It is the stuff of Hugo, Dumas, and countless others. I cannot say if the rising Muslim population has any part of this. I doubt it as a cultural phenomenon.
How long did McCain's staffer sex scandal last this past spring? One day? Cindy stepped up to the podium, defended her husband, said it was her business, and the issue died.
Edwards violated the unwritten discretion law that Kings, Queens, and the lowly French workers understand: dont embarrass your spouse. He got caught at 2 AM at the Beverly Hills Hotel by Enquirer reporters.
What I dont like about this is that he is now a private citizen. There was no chance he would be VP. There was a chance he might be part of Obama's cabinet.
Those vollyball atheletes were just naively reacting, a pat on the butt as tradition these days after a win–and their outfits were proper for their job–I don't think anyone gave much thought to the photo-op–never a bad thing to be with American stars at the Olympics…Bush did the right thing. He gave her a patriotic pat on the lower back when she (unwittingly) offered up her butt. The other athelete was just standing in her work outfit. No big deal. Actually, Bush handled that well. Those girls know how to play on real sand, but not political sand.
Edwards took a political stance that meant something to him–he never entirely forgot where he came from, the lower middle class. That he was Kooky with a comb, and didn't socialize with his poor neighbors or remain true to his wife–what's that to do with his declared policies? I admit, though, I do go back and forth in my own head on this question… But, what candidate is not a shrewd strategist, surveying the field, looking for an operating niche?
Comments on this entry are closed.