Who’s in Charge Here??

The governor should resign or be impeached. There is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?p=1930

Governor Sanford
This man places himself first, others at a distant second, his state, his family. He may have always been like this, yet no one noticed.
South Carolina should evict him..

I never cease to be amazed at the chutzpah of these guys . I’m just getting over my nausea from the whole Eliot Spitzer kerfuffle (I live in the NY metro area, so you can imagine the media “carpet bombing” to which we were subjected on that one).

I especially love how they will slide and spin the story (yeah, “shrouding this larger trip” is a real prizewinner, isn’t it?!) until there’s absolutely no way to wiggle any more … and only then do you get the tears and contrition. I think that I’d faint on the spot if I heard one of these princes come right out of the gate and say something like, “Folks, you can stop the speculation, dumpster diving, tweeting, etc. Fact is, I was doing something that I shouldn’t have been doing, and thinking with the wrong part of my anatomy. I was flat wrong, behaved unethically and immorally, and I lied to and betrayed my family, my friends and my constituents. I have no excuse, and I sincerely apologize and hope that you will find it in your heart to forgive me at some point.” True repentance is more and more becoming a relic of another age.

My spouse and I have kicked these stories around between us, and have had some interesting back-and-forth on them. We both think that one of the factors in operation is that Victorian remnant where it’s an accepted practice for the man to have both the loving, dedicated wife to cook and clean and bear children, and the “other woman” (or women) where he goes to indulge his kinkier, less conventional erotic desires and fantasies. (In my book, that attitude was wrong 200 years ago and is still wrong today.)

Where we differ, though, is about the the betrayed wife. I can’t help but feel some pangs of sympathy for the women, although in many cases they seem to have some measure of strength and resilience. (Jerry Sanford, from what I’ve read, appears to have a good measure of steel in her backbone, maybe more so than Silda Spitzer.)

My lovely bride, on the other hand, doesn’t share that view. In fact, she gets pretty disgusted with them and is convinced that they know a LOT more than they let on when the affair is exposed. She thinks that in those relationships there’s an agreement (sometimes a tacit one) where the wife essentially turns a blind eye to the husband’s philandering in exchange for her reaping the financial/social/professional benefits of being “Mrs. Big Shot.” I have to admit that my wife’s take may not be as cynical as it sounds.

Would love to hear what you (and other commenters) think on some of this.