{"id":214,"date":"2008-03-12T10:36:10","date_gmt":"2008-03-12T14:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=214"},"modified":"2008-03-12T10:44:25","modified_gmt":"2008-03-12T14:44:25","slug":"best-question-yet-why-do-political-wives-stand-next-to-their-disgraced-husbands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=214","title":{"rendered":"Best Question Yet: Why Do Political Wives Stand<\/i> Next to Their Disgraced Husbands?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Silda
\nStand by your man: Silda Wall Spitzer and the cheating governor<\/span><\/p>\n

When politicians cheat on their wives, why, as they give their public confessions, do their wives stand next to them at the podium?<\/p>\n

Joe Garofoli’s San Francisco Chronicle<\/em> piece, “Why do political wives stand by their men?”<\/a>, asks this great, little-asked question:<\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

But some analysts wonder if these humiliating productions have outlived their political usefulness.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also in the SF Chronicle<\/em>, Debra J. Saunders (“The emperor’s wife”<\/a>) reasonably asks<\/span><\/p>\n

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?<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In fact, even McGreevey has weighed in on the issue. “Let\u2019s get away from this notion that an elected official\u2019s wife has to stand up there,” she says<\/a> in today’s New York Times<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"In
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

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<\/em><\/p>\n

Adds Nichola D. Gutgold, a <\/span><\/span>Penn State communications professor, in the Garofoli piece<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“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<\/em>. “I keep waiting for one of these women to tell their husband, ‘You go make that speech yourself.'”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is Nichola D. Gutgold…a sister<\/em>?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46,9,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}