The Adulterer's Perp Walk
As with Spitzer’s self-destruction in New York, sex scandals are spectacular but brief
By Mick Farren
Hold the front page! Clear the decks! Emergency! Emergency! We have a sex scandal, people! A sex scandal – especially a political sex scandal – is the media equivalent of DEFCON 4. Prurience sweeps all before it. In the case of disgraced (and now former) New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the New York Post actually cleared its front page for a coyly topless photo of Ashley Alexandra Dupré, or whatever the hooker in the story is currently calling herself.
Eliot Spitzer now joins the list of all the recent careers to be flushed away, or at least severely dented, by sexual misconduct – like those of David Vitter, Randall Tobias, Mark Foley, Don Sherwood, Newt Gingrich and, of course, Bill Clinton, plus the one woman on the list, Helen Chenoweth, who admitted to a six-year affair with a married associate. And, of course, for more historical tarnishing of legacies, we can go all the way back through Jack Kennedy, to Warren G. Harding, and Thomas Jefferson, without even adding the suspected but unbusted, like John McCain, Joe Scarborough, and Gary Condit, plus the whispers that have always dogged George W. Bush – the criminal rape complaint by Margie Schoedinger, and the allegations of former stripper, Tammy Phillips, of an affair. Unfortunately Schoedinger killed herself and Phillips simply disappeared.
The political sex scandal, however, has a weakness as a media event. It may create an initial voyeur frenzy. Once, though, the news is no longer breaking and the pundits’ faux-moralism starts to fade, it’s like the old-time beat cop used to say: “Move along. There’s nothing to see here.” The pol caught with the whore knows his or her options are clearly defined. They may or may not face resignation or impeachment, but will definitely be required to perform an act of televised contrition, an adulterer’s perp walk, with the wronged spouse at their side, that is near-Nathaniel Hawthorne in its puritanical self-abasement.
Any robust carnality has long been drained from modern U.S. politics by the prevailing tide of mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. It would be impossible to imagine the following 18th century British Parliamentary exchange between cabinet minister the Earl of Sandwich and MP John Wilkes on the contemporary floor of the House … .
Sandwich: “Egad sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox.”
Wilkes: “That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”
Spitzer must have been a major disappointment to the lurid media in that he kept the story short. After the obligatory mea maxima culpa with the wife looking on, he was gone like a cool breeze, no squirming to stay in office. But he did prompt me to wonder why the wife was forced on camera to stand mute-but-humiliated. Why not let the fornicating sonofabitch take his media whupping on his own? The demented Dr. Laura Schlessinger attempted on The Today Show to suggest that Eliot Spitzer’s wife Silda – and other cheated-on spouses – only had themselves to blame. Her argument was if Silda Spitzer, who rather resembles an aging Jennifer Aniston, had been keeping hubby happy in the sack, he would never have strayed. “These days, women don’t spend a lot of time thinking how they can give their men what they need.”
While Schlessinger is clearly attempting this provocation to jump-start a career that I thought was over years ago, I suppose some philandering political wives do tolerate their husband’s shenanigans (and maybe seek consolation with the tennis coach or the pool boy) in return for the power, prestige, and perks that go with the territory. Even so, I still fail to understand why they follow them to the television pillory. Another thing (although perhaps not directly related) I don’t understand is what Ashley Dupré, a 22-
year-old from New Jersey, who is not exactly Angelina Jolie, does for the Governor of New York that is worth a cool $4,300.
Mick Farren blogs at Doc40.blogspot.com.
Published: 03/19/2008
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
