The XX Factor: What women really think.

A Tale of Two Spitzers

The Observer has an admiring piece on Eliot Spitzer's phoenix-like public image "resurrection." First came the Slate column. This week, there's a Newsweek byline, an interview, and a Nation nomination for treasury secretary. "[H]e says what he thinks!" Slate editor David Plotz crows. "[I]t's back-to-square-one time, and Mr. Spitzer seems to be bringing all of his Sisyphean strength to bear on the project," the Observer admires. "At rare moments, I’ll do my best to add to the public conversation," Spitzer demurs. What struck me as interesting was less this latest installment of a fallen politician's return from a sex scandal (yawn) but the contrast with the media's portrayal of his wife, Silda. The March issue of Vogue makes it more than clear how we're expected to see Mrs. Spitzer a year later: as a victim. "The survivor," the headline slapped next to her reads. I guess, in the end, it's all pretty typical. The public's initial stance of scorn at Spitzer's sexual transgression was just that—a show, designed by a public that wishes to perceive itself as above the very behaviors that its members partake in regularly. Meanwhile, Silda gets stuck in the victim rut, where America will keep her, if it has its way. If we had to perceive her any other way, we'd have to ask ourselves if we would do the same thing that she did—and, if we did so, if we were right in doing so.

The Power of Plus One

I just finished paging through the latest issue of Vogue, which the editors have billed as the "Power Issue."  In addition to a profile of cover girl Michelle Obama, there are pieces on Carla Bruni, Silda Wall Spitzer, Melinda Gates, and Queen Rania of Jordan. Exceptional, intelligent, accomplished women, all. But I couldn't help noticing that all are famous chiefly in their role as helpmate to an even more famous husband. And, yes, all have turned that role on its traditional head, and yes, all were just as exceptional and accomplished before their marriages. But would they have been included in the issue without that new last name? The grouping seems to suggest they would not. (To be fair, there is also a story on Twilight author and self-made woman Stephanie Meyer, but she's not mentioned either in the cover lines or the editor's note, and relegated all the way to the back of the book. It seems almost tacked on; one never wants to be too matchy-matchy, and they'd already used so much first spouse in this issue!)

I don't pick up Vogue expecting it to be Ms., but still, this issue is clearly intended as a self-conscious departure from the usual breathless accounts of socialites who have just vacationed somewhere fab, or started fashion companies on a whim. It's meant to be Serious with a capital S, and to explore the ways women wield tremendous power in spheres outside of fashion. And it's precisely that intended scope that makes the implied definition of how power can be gained appear so incredibly narrow. In an odd way, it's collectively insulting to all the women included in the issue, who—as the profiles within prove—are anything but narrow-minded themselves.

The World's Least Likely Lady Macbeth???

Anyone else catch yesterday’s ripped-from-the-headlines Law & Order finale? About a New York governor who hires expensive young hookers (and some strange, tangentially related murder)? Anyone else notice that the single biggest difference between the Spitzer narrative and L&O’s—aside from the fact that the fictional governor gets away with it—was the craven legal meddling by the ruthlessly ambitious Silda character? Just checkin’.

Green Cards for Sex? (Thank You, NYT)

I am curious about what all those people who think immigrants have such a fabulous free ride in this country think about this New York Times story about a 22-year-old Colombian woman, married to an American citizen, who was informed by a U.S. immigration agent that her application for a green card would sail right through—after a couple of blow jobs, that is.

According to the story, this was not even an isolated incident: "Money, not sex, is the more common currency of corruption in immigration, but according to Congressional testimony in 2006 by Michael Maxwell, former director of the agency's internal investigations, more than 3,000 backlogged complaints of employee misconduct had gone uninvestigated for lack of staff, including 528 involving criminal allegations."

In a conversation the Colombian woman taped on her cell phone, she pleaded with the agent not to force her to have sex with him: "If I do it, it's like very hard for me, because I have my husband, and I really fall in love with him.'' But when she tried to get out of the car where this conversation was taking place, he stopped her and made her perform oral sex. Too frightened to take the tape to the police, she eventually went to the newspaper, and, because there is a God, found reporter Nina Bernstein. Now the immigration agent has been arrested, but the woman's new husband—no Silda Spitzer he—has left her.

Is it fair to immigrants like this poor woman to leave them effectively unprotected by the law? And to all of you who've canceled your NYT subscription because it was mean to your favorite candidate or added a conservative voice to the opinion page, have you really thought about what we'd do without newspapers? Or without reporters like Nina who have the time and the inclination to actually listen to this woman's story and say, That happened to you? We'll see about that. If that day ever comes, I don't want to hear a word out of you.

Eliot Is a Rorschach Test, Too

"Deserve got nuthin' to do with it."—Snoop (and before her, Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.)

Whatever the mix of bad breaks and pathology and misguided, "I Wanna Be a Supermodel" ambition that led Ashley Dupre to the Emperors' Club, I feel sorry for anybody who would wind up in that situation. And whatever unseen cracks there were in Spitzer's foundation, the same goes for him.

But this whole thing also has me thinking more about what Dahlia wrote about how this political season has so far been all about us, about identity politics and how we see ourselves in the presidential candidates—or don't—and then feel put down or lifted up accordingly, bouncing along on the waves of their campaigns. And I wonder how identity—and class in particular—might have shaped our initial reactions to this Spitzer story. [Update: Rosa points out that Ashley's stepfather was actually an oral surgeon! But we obviously didn't know that, and my own assumption was definitely that she must have been struggling financially.]

Hillary Clinton has in the past played the class card against women who claimed to have been involved with or taken advantage of by her husband; she and her surrogates suggested that these women were the real perpetrators, and her husband the victim—of low-rent gold-diggers manipulated by his political enemies, and of his vulnerability as someone caught between the first two women in his life—his mother and grandmother—throughout a difficult childhood. Aren't there also some class-based assumptions involved in seeing 22-year-old Ashley as the "vixen'' and the governor of New York as the hapless unfortunate? What does it mean that prostitution is an OK career choice for "certain women"? If it's not OK for our daughters, is it OK for anyone's daughters?

We all see the world through the prism of our own identity and experience—who else's?—so my first reaction to this story, because I am a wife and a mom, who sometimes even wears pearls, was to put myself in Silda's shoes, rather than (as I might have done if I were younger or poorer) in Ashley's presumably strappy stilettos.

Emily B., when you mentioned your disappointment that Spitzer had blown (sorry) his shot at becoming the first Jewish president, did you mean that that made you any more (or less, for that matter) sympathetic to his situation? I never really related to my fellow Catholic John Kerry as such, other than to wish that our church would stop beating up on him, but as the first Catholic president, JFK sure walked on water for a lot of my coreligionists of an earlier generation. To the point that they would have looked the other way, even if they had known at the time what a cad he was with women? We'll never know, but I'm guessing yes. Identity is so powerful still today, in 2008, that as Dana notes, even Obama's grandmother, who raised him -- and did one fine job of it, obviously -- talks unselfconsciously about distrusting what people who are different from us might have to say. 

Sins of the Fathers

Seconding Ellen: Yes, it's striking, isn't it, how many women have been mortified and collaterally damaged by this scandal. The wife. The daughters. Vacuous Ashley (maybe). Clearly, whatever else it is, prostitution is not a victimless crime. Or not in this case. Victims, here, as far as the eye can see. You do feel for the daughters, horribly, who doubtless don't want to venture outside now on even the simplest errand. As for raising them: "Daddy made a mistake, which he regrets and which we all can learn from" probably won't cut it here, will it? Nor "I'm sorry," either. He' d need something stronger and more persuasive--the claim of sex addiction, maybe? Over which he had no control? For which he will be treated? And doubtless they do love him, his daughters, which makes it all the more awful. Ruth Marcus made that point on the Diane Rehm Show this morning about Silda Spitzer: One reason she may have been out there, by his side, is that in addition to all the other feelings she may be feeling, she may well love him.

I am not so sure about the victimhood of Ashley. I had dinner recently with a friend who also came from a broken home, who had an abusive stepfather, who lived for a while in a foster home. She did not become a prostitute. She became a scientist and put it behind her.

Still, really at this point I feel sorry for all of them.

Tricks of the Trade

Resignation Hangover