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TechnoratiThe Art of Adultery
When dalliance was in flower and maidens lost their heads.
— A 1957 release of bawdy English ballads sung by Ed McCurdy
It is time to review the rules for confessions of infidelity by public figures. They do not address toilet stall tap dancing since that, being a solo performance, raises different issues from the dalliances here addressed. These involve married couples. A number of matters of etiquette present themselves and the ones we examine are: attendance at the required press conference (who does and does not attend), tears (presence or absence) and apologies.
The proper place for the wife during the public confession of infidelity is first. In the John Ensign and Mark Sanford press conferences the wives were absent. In the Eliot Spitzer and David Vitter press conferences the wives were present although a study in contrasts. Mr. Spitzer’s wife assumed a stoical stance standing by her husband’s side although reports said Ms. Spitzer’s jaws were so firmly clenched that she could have bitten through a bar of steel. Mr. Vitter’s wife stood beside him but that came as something of a surprise since she had once said, about the possibility of her husband’s infidelity,: “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.” John Edwards had an interview on ABC News without his wife and then issued a statement.
The next question: tears. The score is four to one against. Governor Sanford of South Carolina was the one. That may be explained because of his deep religious feelings and his understandable self loathing. He feels so strongly about the importance of family values that when voting for the impeachment of Bill Clinton he piously proclaimed that: “If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone. . . .I think what he did in this matter was reprehensible. . . .” He didn’t just shed a tear or two. He reportedly choked up repeatedly during the press conference. That was consistent with his activities earlier in the week that he described as being spent with his mistress in Argentina crying (presumably, though unspoken, among other activities.)
All the men were appropriately contrite. They knew that in addressing their transgressions their apologies had to be heartfelt and all encompassing. David Vitter set the tone by announcing that God and his wife had already forgiven him (she by eschewing emasculation) and said the discussions would be limited to those two. He concluded, however, saying: I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.” Eliot Spitzer said that: ”I apologize first, and most importantly, to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better.” John Edwards, lamenting the paucity of the English language, said: “It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry.” Senator Ensign said: “I know that I have deeply hurt and disappointed my wife Darlene, my children, my family, friends, my staff, and all those who believed in me. And to all of them, especially my wife, I’m truly sorry.” Senator Sanford said: “I hurt you all. I hurt my wife. I hurt my boys. And all I can say is I apologize.”
It is surely a coincidence that the Europeans choose moments when we are in a dither over the private sex lives of public figures to show us that groveling because of sexual peccadilloes is unnecessary in truly civilized societies. The reaction to disclosure of the fact that Mr. Spitzer found pleasure in prostitutes seemed foolish when compared with the equanimity with which the French greeted the goings on of Nicholas Sarkozy, his then wife and their respective lovers and his then political opponent, Ségolène Royal and her long time partner, François Holland. There was no groveling. And now, courtesy of the Italians, the contrast is again stark.
The wife of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi has announced her intention to divorce him, in no small part because of pictures of him cavorting with young girls at his assorted mansions. Mr. Berlusconi’s equanimity is undisturbed. He maintains that his cavorting is perfectly harmless. When three women, not quite so young, came forward saying they were paid to attend parties at his official residence and were given jewelry Mr. Berlusconi was asked if he had ever paid a woman “so she would be with him.” Responding as one might exact from a man of his temperament he said: “Naturally, no. I have never understood what satisfaction there is if not in the pleasure of conquest. There is nothing in my private life for which I should apologize.”
The French and Italians know how what importance to place upon adultery in their national dialogue. We should be so civilized.
27 Comments so far
Show AllI could not care less about any politicians extra-curricular - and especially sexual - activities. As long as it has no untoward influence on their job performance and how they vote, and it's legal, it's their business.
It is the press that drives the titillation in order to make profits.
The rethuglican hypocrisy here is huge! They stand together as the party of NO!, while their public approval ratings continue to fall off the cliff. Family Values my ass! That's all they've got besides tax cuts for the super rich. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of Thugs.
Adultery is one thing. I'm not absolutely sure that life long monogamy is achievable for the majority of people. It's not the adultery, It's the Hypocrisy! (It's not the Heat, it's the Humidity!)- although the humidity out here in Colorado is no match for what I grew up with in Indiana.
Soap.
I agree with those who see infidelity as a sign of integrity. That being said I'm also fine with "Free love" (between consenting adults of course). I'm not obsessed with politicians sex-lives because we all ready know they have no integrity. Sometimes you hold out hope- like John Edwards- (fine don't prove me wrong).
As far as the justification that we should be less concerned with such matters because Europe is, that's BS. They have far more open marriages/relationships as a cultural norm. It's all fine with me, just don't tell me one thing and then screw me (by screwing someone else) when my back's turned. My husband and I have an agreement, we can sleep with as many people as we want, but we have to ask for the divorce first.
"Well politicians got lipstick on the collar
the whole media started to holler
but I don't give a fuck who they screwin' in private
I wanna know who they screwin' in public!
-Michael Franti
Adultery is having sexual relations outside of marriage, considered unlawful by both religious and civic standards. Adultery is breaking an oath or promise, and sacrificing the integrity of the union of marriage and family.
From a religious perspective, the severity of the act is obvious. From a civic perspective, I believe the attention paid to the act is more prurient; the sex and betrayal played out in the media makes no real distinction between reality and fantasy. For that matter, the reality becomes the fantasy...and the public tunes in to watch a real-life soap opera.
On a darker note, it is a indirect way of expressing the suspicion of the general public: all politicians are liars. The political lies are simply too difficult to bring to light, and the public and the press are not interested in doing their homework. Finding the "lie" in adultery is much easier than mining the "lies" in policies, laws, ideologies, etc.
To confirm public suspicion, without inciting the people to revolt, is to show politicians as liars in their personal and not their professional lives. If the press can find out what politicians do when they are "not working," they can find out what politicians do when they are....so why doesn't the press devote their investigations to this far more noble end?
Not because sex sells...because the truth doesn't. How corrupt these politicians are, the general public really doesn't want to know. So we are given "the scoop" or the "the dirt" instead.
This issue has nothing to do with Europeans being more civilized about sex than our country, nor our Puritanical influences, blah, blah, blah. Puritanism left this country long ago...it is a dead argument. The real issue is when sex became the main issue in adultery. Not one hundred years ago, it was an issue of integrity, of dignity, and of honor. Now it is "ooooh, someone had naughty sex. Who with? How? Where? In what position? Oh, and uh, no, it's not right, but who's to say it's wrong?"
To deceive and betray the one closest to you is no small feat. It takes time, energy, and a great deal of extensive effort to practice such cunning in the face of family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc. All in the name of sexual pleasure/gratification? Never. Only pride and vanity, tinged with selfishness. This combination generates more heat than lust: lust can diminish thinking of your children, what it means or how to be a man/woman of character, reading a book, taking a walk, or simply contemplating the ways in which you would like to be treated, and remembered for treating others.
If you are proud and vain, if you are selfish, those alternatives never enter your mind...those alternatives force you to consider someone else other than yourself. Adultery is never about sex: only about character.
As for the character of politicians....it is the manner in which they commit adultery that gives insight into their "standard of conduct." If one must drag oneself through such articles and issues, it need not be in vain....
Well, I'd say adultery is about sex, and about back-stabbing, vengeance,betrayal, and a whole lot of other nasty things besides. The sheer illicitness of it makes it fun and entertaining too, which are two more of the reasons people do it.Politicians do it, for the same reasons the rest of us lesser mortals do, but they take huge public risks.Maybe it adds to the fun? Sanford did it in a particularly clumsy and obtuse way. But I need to stop: my moral turpitude is showing.
corinthian, so well said. The big question remains,........How do you fix our troubled times without a spiritual mind?
So what are you saying, Brauchli, that because some European countries are misogynistic, including their women voters, that we should be more misogynistic here?
"It is surely a coincidence that the Europeans choose moments when we are in a dither over the private sex lives of public figures to show us that groveling because of sexual peccadilloes is unnecessary in truly civilized societies."
****************
Europe, incubator of the Dark Ages, centuries of Inquisitional persecution, ravaging wars of unprovoked aggression called Crusades, and the incubator of two world wars a civilized society?
Europe, the birthplace of evolution and its cognate cousins eugenics, Marxist dialectical-materialism, and Nazism--a civilized society?
Chris, yo dude, what funny stuff are you smoking, snorting, or shooting up? Give it up 'cause it's messing up your mind. The United States has a lot wrong with it and has set a really lousey example to the world--but Europe is no model to look to for guidance from anybody wishing to be civilized.
Poet
The problem, Poet, is that you are comparing a historical Europe (pre-1945) with contemporary America. That's apples and oranges. Moreover, the dark European past is also the dark past of the majority of contemporary Americans whose ancestors were those Europeans.
Contemporary Europe is a far more civilized place than contemporary America. Just check their record on crime and punishment, transparency (and fairness) of elections, lack of inclination to bomb the hell out of anyone, anywhere in the world, who doesn't salute the Stars and Stripes with sufficient alacrity.
Rainborowe
boy does amerika ever have ita priorities
in order or what?
whats the matter with kansas or s.c for that matter.
what used to be real news is NEVER reported anymore
and page 1 is now replaced by page 6.must be the 21st century
version of let them eat cake. well when you see all these
news papers going out of business you might get the
idea that they didn't get the memo about giving us the
real news instead of b.s propaganda!
Christianity has for too long been obsessed with sex. It has served the institutional Church well to control the flock for 2000 years.
Our "Christian" nation wanted to impeach Clinton for the personal sins of lying and infidelity. At the same time though our nation turned a blind eye to the waging of war, bombing civilians, ignoring the poor, and rigging global trade for only the rich.
Personal sin is personal sin, and we are all broken people. Forgive and move on. How can we condemn personal sin so easily when the rotten system of wealth is allowed to steal and kill.
The greatest sin of the world is the diabolical evil of institutional capitalism. It is destroying our Mother Earth and turning people against people.
Christ did not speak of personal sin but for forgiveness. However he condemned the oppression of the Roman Empire and the hypocrisy of religious leaders. Christ would find it no different today.
As Christ said, "you are straining out gnats and swallowing camels". We need to mature as a species. Christ was not seeking to build a new religion but was asking humanity to see through new eyes.
i've often thought that one of the best ways to control any holder of authority in the usa is to have them on tape with young sex objects....not really a difficult thing to with enough planning....but this methodology wouldn't work with any relaxation of the puritanical norm....another reason for the status quo on this??
EVERY SAINT HAS A PAST AND EVERY SINNER HAS A FUTURE
And the point is? Adultery hurts the betrayed spouse badly; all one has to do is witness a friend trying to deal with a cheating spouse to understand that a cavalier attitude does nothing to help the situation become better. All the media hoopla doesn't help either; except to raise ratings.
Maybe, what is needed, is more single people in public life. Adultery isn't a problem then, unless that person is foolhardy enough to get involved with a married person. Sex seems to ruin everything for everyone; amazing how we chase after it, even to our demise.
"Sex seems to ruin everything for everyone...." I'm sorry you think that way, that's not true for everyone though.
Sioux Rose
ROCKER: Typical that only another woman would get it: that infidelity hurts!
I'd like to remind forum members that Shere Hite once published statistics, that about 78% of men and 74% of women experience an extra-marital affair during the term of their marriages. In other words, the ladies do it, too! Men who think males own a privilege ought to realize women can do likewise, although the right wing zealots are doing their utmost to turn women's reproductive rights backwards while they busily cavort with their own "stable" of women! Between "comfort women," and prostitutes, and sex slaves, I am tired of men granting themselves access, but then making sure women are denied! Since men don't get pregnant it's so easy for them to put chains on women while dancing erotically to their own selfish drummers.
If your figures are correct I'm sure us men understand that infidelity hurts too(unless women hide it better). Maybe both sexes are a little too obsessed with controlling each other.
No offense but sometimes you do sound a little misanderist. I'd like to remind you that there are plenty of conservative females around carrying chiwawahs and copies of "Atlas Shrugged" in their purse thinking "let them eat cake."
opps!meant to spell talent.Tony
Let's talk about the PENIS . . . THE REPUBLICAN PENIS, to be exact. For sheer length, there is nothing to outdo a Republican penis. It is so long that a Republican can fuck himself up the ass with it, no problem. How can this be? How can an erect penis curve around and under and go up the rectum? The answer is: HYPOCRISY. Pound for pound and dollar for dollar, the Republican male possesses hypocrisy in amazing quantities.
ROTFL. Wonderful!
Rainborowe
Who needs emotion when they have a tatent?Tony
These poor punks don't know how to have a good time. The only thing that gives these constipated burnouts a woodie is the forbidden fruit. and then they call it "love". But it is just adolescent intensity. Why dont we just make "swinger" rules for the priveleged? Like if you enter a high enough tax bracket you can screw whoever you want? That would get people on the treadmill pronto.
We need to encourage a sex-positive religeous movement, like the liberation theology of the 60's.
Sheesh, it's like the 60's NEVER HAPPENED. How did the squares erase the love generation so effectively?
How about an EROTIC ISLAM? That would put a spin on things, a mass of sexy sufi's who don't own even their own bodies.
Maybe the WHOLE MESS is about body ownership, who owns your body? If you made the mistake of signing up to the military, the pentagon owns it, if you are married your spouse owns it. If you are a worker your employer owns it , or at least rents it during daylight hours.
We are all prostitutes to whatever ruling force, church or corporation is dominant it the moment, it's an s&m role playing game on the international scale.
I love it!Tony
I fail to see the author's point.
Christopher Brauchli omits one important factor in his piece: the USA's puritan hangover. It is a cultural factor that can not be discounted, as it's pervasive and damaging influence continues to infect WASP dominated countries everywhere.