Stand by your man: Silda Wall Spitzer and the cheating governor
When politicians cheat on their wives, why, as they give their public confessions, do their wives stand next to them at the podium?
Joe Garofoli’s San Francisco Chronicle piece, “Why do political wives stand by their men?”, asks this great, little-asked question:
Part political theater, part open-air therapy, these excruciating public confessionals demand three things of the spouse: to hold her family together at a moment of crisis; to support the person she supposedly loves; and to provide a least a shred of future political viability for her man.
But some analysts wonder if these humiliating productions have outlived their political usefulness.
“They have put these women through so much already – it just seems to be a second level of humiliation,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It is supposed to make him look like not such a bad guy. Like, ‘Geez, look, his wife was standing next to him.’ But in this case, she looked so pained that, to me, he looked less sympathetic.”
Also in the SF Chronicle, Debra J. Saunders (“The emperor’s wife”) reasonably asks
If we have to see the wife, couldn’t it be as she is throwing his suits, socks and golf clubs on the sidewalk while invoking the name of a ruthless divorce attorney?
It would certianly make better television. Watching Silda Wall Spitzer, all I could think was that she looked like she probably felt: That she’d been socked in the gut. (Reportedly, she’d learned of the scandal the day before.) She didn’t even have Dina McGreevey’s odd little frozen smile.
In fact, even McGreevey has weighed in on the issue. “Let’s get away from this notion that an elected official’s wife has to stand up there,” she says in today’s New York Times.
In happier times: Silda Wall and Eliot Spitzer, Election Day, November 2006. According to current timelines, Spitzer had been seeing prostitutes for years when this picture was taken
Adds Nichola D. Gutgold, a Penn State communications professor, in the Garofoli piece
“I wanted to yell to her, ‘You don’t have to do this! Go shopping! Go for a walk. Do anything else,’ ” said Gutgold, author of Paving the Way for Madam President. “I keep waiting for one of these women to tell their husband, ‘You go make that speech yourself.'”
Is Nichola D. Gutgold…a sister?
3 comments ↓
The assumption that they had no idea that this behavior was part and parcel of the relationship is what seems particularly naive. Political wives, generally share the ambitions of their husbands and their public displays of support are also “political”. They know who they’re married to. The biggest offense is the stupidity of getting caught and the risk of torpedoing everything they’ve worked so hard to build. A political career is a family affair. Aint saying Silda’s not hurt. But dont count this as weakness either. More like strategic…
Has anyone else seen this pattern? When a politician’s spouse leaves the husband (wife), the parting spouse is affectionally called a free spirit, pursuing their own goals etc., and great empathy is with the politician. The spouse who stays with the philandering politician who is forced out of office, receives little sympathy. Certainly political spouses are party to the power and, I bet, are aware of the their spouses foibles.
Is there any way these ‘suits’ could keep their hand out of the cookie jar, as to say, while they are in the public limelight?
All the power to the free spirits who see the light and are no longer party to their spouse’s failings
There is ABSOLUTELY no FREAKIN’ way I would have stood up there with him – especially as the mother to young girls.
What she has said to them, in essence, is, “It’s OK for your husband to lie to you, lie to others, be a hypocrite and pay for hookers with the money he could be spending on your college education. You should stand by his side anyway.”
Back in the Leave-it-to-Beaver day, it used be that people would expect a woman to “stand by her man” no matter what. Today’s public is a lot more swift and if his PR people had had ANY strategic sense, they could see that having Silda up there with him made him look like more of a womanizer and abuser.
Many people speculate that these wives sign some sort of contract when their husbands take office for just these kinds of reasons. Maybe they do. Who cares?
If I had been asked to stand with him, I would have two answers for his dumb a**:
1) Sue me.
2) Where’s Kristin now?
Leave a Comment