Our National Nightmare is Over; Silda's Has Just Begun
Talk about chutzpah.
Talk about living on the edge.
Talk about stupidity
Eliot Spitzer hardly suffered from an isolated weak moment after being holed up in a swank Washington hotel while crunching too many numbers from the state budget. Turns out, the New York governor’s midnight trysts happened with such frequency, one in D.C.., another in Dallas, yet another in Miami, like he was a member of the Van Halen comeback tour. He had a groupie in every American city, only he had to pay for it. And pay for it he did.
His political career, which seemed so promising just five days ago, has been flushed down the toilet
But enough about him and his hooker friend ``Kristen'' now identified by The New York Times as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, 22, originally from the Jersey Shore, and now living in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. She’ll be offering her services in the coming weeks to the highest bidder. Not to john’s, mind you, but anyone willing to pay for shocking details about her roll in the hay with ex-Gov. Spitzer.
What puzzled me most was why his wife Silda, a striking Harvard-trained lawyer, who gave up a prominent legal career for her husband to care for their three daughters and devote countless hours launching a philanthropic foundation, would still stand on the dais yesterday even after being publically humiliated?
What would be her reason? For the children, so as to hold the family together during a time of crisis, or maybe as way of subordinating her personal humiliation in order to make this historic disgrace of a governor as graceful as possible, while the torch is passed to Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson.
Or were there other factors involved. Despite her husband’s reckless behavior, does she still love him enough to overlook his transgressions; or is she possibly so smitten being married to such a prominent public figure it has clouded her judgment; that is, is she more in love with the prestige and glamour of being a first lady than the man himself. She did, after all, according to news reports, encourage Eliot not to resign.
These are just some of the questions that rattled through my mind while I was watching her gaze at her husband during his resignation speech like he was reading the Gettysburg address or announcing a cure for cancer.
But since none of us really knows what goes on behind closed doors; there may be some messy components of their 20-year marriage that has not yet leaked out, just like the way we were all stunned to learn Diana and Charles lived in a loveless marriage from the get-go.
And the bombshell of the New York governor’s appetite for high-priced prostitutes might not be Mrs. Spitzer's first encounter with heartbreak. The New York Times profiled her in 2006 in which they reported Silda had a 29-day marriage, before marrying Spitzer, a part of her life she doesn’t like to talk about because she was `hurt and embarrassed by the episode’’
If Silda does decide to dump the lug, she should consider resuming her professional career by running for governor in 2010. She’ll likely have a ready made constituency all too willing to support her.
-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net
Talk about living on the edge.
Talk about stupidity
Eliot Spitzer hardly suffered from an isolated weak moment after being holed up in a swank Washington hotel while crunching too many numbers from the state budget. Turns out, the New York governor’s midnight trysts happened with such frequency, one in D.C.., another in Dallas, yet another in Miami, like he was a member of the Van Halen comeback tour. He had a groupie in every American city, only he had to pay for it. And pay for it he did.
His political career, which seemed so promising just five days ago, has been flushed down the toilet
But enough about him and his hooker friend ``Kristen'' now identified by The New York Times as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, 22, originally from the Jersey Shore, and now living in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. She’ll be offering her services in the coming weeks to the highest bidder. Not to john’s, mind you, but anyone willing to pay for shocking details about her roll in the hay with ex-Gov. Spitzer.
What puzzled me most was why his wife Silda, a striking Harvard-trained lawyer, who gave up a prominent legal career for her husband to care for their three daughters and devote countless hours launching a philanthropic foundation, would still stand on the dais yesterday even after being publically humiliated?
What would be her reason? For the children, so as to hold the family together during a time of crisis, or maybe as way of subordinating her personal humiliation in order to make this historic disgrace of a governor as graceful as possible, while the torch is passed to Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson.
Or were there other factors involved. Despite her husband’s reckless behavior, does she still love him enough to overlook his transgressions; or is she possibly so smitten being married to such a prominent public figure it has clouded her judgment; that is, is she more in love with the prestige and glamour of being a first lady than the man himself. She did, after all, according to news reports, encourage Eliot not to resign.
These are just some of the questions that rattled through my mind while I was watching her gaze at her husband during his resignation speech like he was reading the Gettysburg address or announcing a cure for cancer.
But since none of us really knows what goes on behind closed doors; there may be some messy components of their 20-year marriage that has not yet leaked out, just like the way we were all stunned to learn Diana and Charles lived in a loveless marriage from the get-go.
And the bombshell of the New York governor’s appetite for high-priced prostitutes might not be Mrs. Spitzer's first encounter with heartbreak. The New York Times profiled her in 2006 in which they reported Silda had a 29-day marriage, before marrying Spitzer, a part of her life she doesn’t like to talk about because she was `hurt and embarrassed by the episode’’
If Silda does decide to dump the lug, she should consider resuming her professional career by running for governor in 2010. She’ll likely have a ready made constituency all too willing to support her.
-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net
Comments