That was fun, Michelle. Great little ditty, too.

It is improbable that she didn't know something; this was, after all, an on-going piece [sic] of behavior.. And, although men have affairs and find it hard to resist temptation, very few men--especially those with this much to lose--hire sex workers on a regular basis. There was, I suspect, something wrong with the sexual side of their marriage. As a guess--and I probably shouldn't even go there, since I am profoundly irritated by people who are shocked, shocked at others' messy lives while their own are rarely vanilla-boring--he desperately wanted something she was unwilling to give him. As dear Mr Allen put it, the heart wants what the heart wants. Houses, glass, first stone. You know the drill.

i don't think there are any non-descript tract houses in the spitzers' future.

  As an an Italian male, it's quite easy.

 First, you put your anger aside and decide to do what's best for the family.  They are the most important thing in your life.  

 Second, you recognize that everyone has a weakness.  You know, "let he who has not sinned cast the first stone" and all that.  

 Third, you remember that you vowed to carry on "for better or worse".   You simply cannot dismiss this solemn pledge you made to God.  

 This would get me through it all.  This and the fact that useless putana will be on kitchen and laundry detail for the foreseeable future.

Of course, we don't do press conferences, not being public figures, but the humiliation you endure in small town rural America might be a fair facsimile of Spitzer's press conference.  ANd actually, in the messy sex-related, plebian situations I know locally, the men have stood by their women roughly as often as vice-versa.

I was wondering the same thing, and concluded that a prerequisite for running for a high-profile political office would be The Talk. The Talk is so ingrained in our political culture that it's probably not even a conversation any more; I'm sure by now it's been translated into generic, multi-page, color-coded documents in written in carefully-worded legalese, which are widely distributed among the upper tiers of both parties.

The Talk, in English probably goes something like this:

"Dear Spouse of __________, holder of and/or candidate for the office of ________:

Although you may or may not be aware of it, your spouse may at some point in the past, present, or future, engage in prurient acts including: adultery, fornication, soliciting of prostitution, purveying prostitution, homosexual acts, pedophilia, coprophilia, bestiality, bukkake, sadomasochism, pornography, transvestitism, underwear-sniffing, using Internet search engines without a filter, making "friends" with interns, being "in bed" with special interests, or otherwise offending the moralizing nature of American politics. We're not saying this is the case! Your husband/wife is a great guy/gal, and would never do such a thing, ever. You two lovebirds can beat the odds, we are sure.

But you can't know anything for certain! Some philosophers dispute the notion that we can really 'know' anything at all. As a result, and as the spouse of a political candidate/office-holder, during the course of your spouse's campaign or incumbency, you legally agree to the following:

1) Should a credible report impugn your spouse's personal integrity, you will publicly appear with your spouse on the relevant television news stations.

2) You will not call your spouse a double-crossing, cock-sucking motherfucker on said television program, or elsewhere

3) You will explicitly state when asked that the allegations against your spouse are lies, that the allegers are liars, and, if your spouse has made personal faith a campaign issue, that they are all going to Hell when they die, hopefully soon."

etc.

Spell check works.  You should try it sometime, Michelle.  And your low-rent style ("convince...to") is charming, too.

That said, your equal-opportunity feminism dounbtless pleases the sisters but it's misplaced.  Most women understand that it's in the nature of men to be cads.  For women, the watchword is constancy. Despite her protestations, Hillary did indeed stand by her man.  A gentleman, if his wife is cold, will not rape her but seek a substitute. (Paula Jones strikingly resembled a younger Hillary.)

Here's another ditty:

A girl must be like a blossom

With honey for just one man.

A man must be like honey bee

And gather all he can.

To fly from blossom to blossom

A honey bee must be free,

But blossom must not ever fly

From bee to bee to bee.

(Oscar Hammertein II)

Monogamy is stupid.

Oh sure, sometimes monogamy is how it works out; two people prefer each other, or are just too old or lazy or otherwise occupied to sniff out a little strange once in a while. Nothing wrong with that.

But explicit, stated, constitutional monogamy is just plain dumb. Not one decent reason for it on Goddess' green Earth. Not one. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Pay attention, people! Snap out of it!

Some folks like to lick a frozen flagpole in the dead of winter, just to see what happens. Others like to smear Fancy Feast on their nuts and dangle themselves into cages of hungry wolverines.  Some tell each other, "You, and only you, baby."  Others troll medicinal waste storage facilities, searching for radioactive imaging debris they can use as suppositories. Go figure.

The only thing more stupid than monogamy is daylight savings time. Yesterday and today, the folks on the train with me who had to get up an hour earlier than usual looked like aged clams on steroids. The guy I shared my seat with this morning made Jabba the Hutt look like Fred Astaire in the perkiness department. Everyone oozing into each other, harboring bad thoughts. Just fucking grim.

If an advanced civilization on the other side of the galaxy gets wind of our ridiculous "monogamy" and "daylight savings time" rituals, they will likely turn their death ray on us and fry us all into oblivion, pathetic hapless vermin that we are, just to put us out of our misery.

jm_rice, if you define a "gentleman" as someone who will cheat rather than rape his wife, you're sure setting the bar for us guys low. Shamefully low.

That plus the ditty you quote and the throwaway observation that "most women understand that it's in the nature of men to be cads" (unlike vice versa, obviously) all kind of make me feel like I was just thrown into a time machine to 1955 or something. Yikes.

You got it all wrong Michelle, as an unrepentant example of the male slob of our species I must say I am pleasantly surprised that "my woman" (quaint idea, in that I certainly don't view her as my property) has not gone out looking to pay (though as a woman she can get a man to do the paying) some young stud to scratch her itch (even though I am quite confident in my ability to scratch that itch). Truth to tell, if my wife were to go out and do such a thing I would know it is to fill a deep seated need that I no longer can or do. Whereas if I were to do so, it would be simply because I know I it is because I am a pig. So truthfully, if she were to be caught and ask my forgiveness, of course I would.

Relationships are not so simple. I don't think you can say that men wouldn't stand by their women or that al women would stand by their man. Clearly women who seek out relationships of men with power have their own priorities. It's very possible that the Mrs. knows of or condones the extra-marital relations. Some partnerships are like that. Better that he's paying a disinterested party than he's having an affair with someone who gets attached and wants more. Perhaps it even serves to keep their marriage together.

I'm not sure why we continue to get so out of sorts about these things. (from the "honor of the marriage" point of view. I have bigger questions about the treatment/safety of the women being paid. I wish they would just legalize this and protect the women.)

It seems to me that the only real issue with Spitzer is that there is an hypocrisy of making a career out of enforcing laws against prostitution and then engaging in that activity yourself. Though, really, I just see it as human. How many undercover cops infiltrating the drug trade ending up using?

The fact that they went after Spitzer and that lead to the prostitution ring and not the other way around, makes this whole thing suspicious. Many people are threatened by his work and they went after him in the lowest way. His weakness doesn't lessen their offenses, but now we're all talking about him. Enjoying his humiliation. The corporate honchos are laughing all the way to the bank.

Another great post from williamyard. Do you have a blog somewhere I should be reading?

Thanks, Charles.

This space is as bloggy as I get, and this blog is as spacey as I get, for better or worse.

I occasionally toy, however, with starting my own online publication, "The Gnu Republic," with multiple blogs (the Spank, the Spunk, the Skunk, the Skank, etc.).  If so, I'll have my people contact your people.

I love your posts to Will, wouldn't the Spunk rightly belong to Spitzer? don't agree with this one (not about daylight savings time though). I hurt a woman I used to love because I wasn't monogamous. She didn't deserve the pain because of my selfishness (although we were only dating at the time, so I don't know if it ranks up as cheating officially). I still regret it. The momentary pleasure was nothing compared to the genuine pain. I am married now and will never cheat on my wife. (leave her, maybe, cheat never)

jobeek2, no, that's not how I define a gentleman.  I just say that's what a gentleman would do, given the choice.  

As for the anachronism of my little ditty...so, you think human nature has changed since 1955?  You and Lysenko.  As any honest woman will tell you, men, as a breed, are pigs.  And, as any honest man well tell you, women are ballbusters.  If you prefer to subscribe to movement fantasies....

Yes, there are plenty of faithful spouses, but we're all born with the tendency to vice that some of us -- mostly women -- resist better than others.

"Monogamy and daylight savings time" and flouridation....it's all a plot to deprive us of our precious bodily fluids!

Michelle, your little parable was amusing, except for one thing:  married women have their fair share of affairs.  But, they don't go out and hire male studs.  It's not common female behavior.

It's also silly to assume that Spitzer didn't have a good sex life with his wife.  It might be good or not good.  But, for reasons of his own-- shared by a lot of men-- he liked the idea of young, very upscale, expensive doxies to attend to his every sexual whim.

He chose hookers over the alternative of having an affair, probably because he wanted zero work and zero complications.  He just wanted to buy what he want when he wanted it.  The most efficient way for him to take care of what needed taking care of.

But, to give you an entirely sober answer to your question, I think these wives are willing to stand up on the podium with their husbands because in every case I know about, they have children.  

They probably see standing up during the hard part as a way to show their children a form of courage and pride.  And a way to ward off the humiliation.

If the wife just disappears, she could look as if she is on the lam.  In a way, the wife standing by watching the husband confess in public shames him.  To disappear unseen would be to shame herself, unwarrantedly.

Michelle,

Your piece reminded me of something back in 1999 here in Texas. I was heavily criticizing a Southern Baptist belief that men are superior to women, when one of my female co-workers who's married replied that she did in fact believe such a thing. So I threw out a hypothetical: If your husband was cheating on you, then, you, sticking to your belief, couldn't possibly criticize your husband for doing such a thing, and that is 100% pathetic -- and it most certainly, without so much as a shadow of a doubt, is.

Here's hoping Spitzer's wife cleans her husband out every which way but loose if she chooses to divorce.

Again with his wife by his side, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace this morning after getting caught in a call-girl scandal that shattered his corruption-fighting, straight-arrow image. National Public Radio has a gallery of photos of on