Susan Bordo: Two books examine why some public figures can get away with moral lapses while others are ruined by them
[Susan Bordo is a professor of humanities at the University of Kentucky. She is currently writing a book about Anne Boleyn.]
... Consider a tale of two politicians:
One, married to the same woman for 31 years, has a brief affair, which he confesses to his wife, a cancer survivor. She is furious, then forgives him, and together they try their best to keep the affair private. Two years later, after losing his campaign for the presidency of the United States, he is outed by The National Enquirer and is forced to fully admit his guilt. He is decried as a "scumbag" and a traitor to his wife, whose disease has by then recurred. He remains with his wife and family, but is exiled from public life. Although he was once a likely candidate for a cabinet position or possibly even vice president, commentators generally acknowledge that his public career is over.
The other, on his return from military service, finds that the wife he left behind, a former swimsuit model, has been in a horrendous auto accident, requiring 23 operations and leaving her limping and disfigured, a full five inches shorter than she had been when he left. After five years of casual affairs, he meets a beautiful young heiress, whom he secretly pursues for six months and eventually obtains a license to marry while still legally married to and living with his first wife. He remarries five weeks after his divorce is granted. Thirty years later, he becomes his party's candidate for president. During his campaign, few articles or media reports mention the first wife or the circumstances of his remarriage. It's as though she never existed.
You know who these guys are. I bet, however, that at least some of you didn't know about Carol McCain, wife No. 1, and with good reason. It's as though there is some anachronistic collusion — or mass delusion — sustaining the myth that the perfectly coiffed blonde, as primly glamorous as a Hitchcock heroine, is all there is and ever was. But you only have to count up the children, whose numbers rival Brad and Angelina's, to see how unlikely that is. Yet most journalists, while they frothed in indignation over John Edwards's dalliance with self-described party-girl Rielle Hunter, seem to have reverted in dutiful obedience to the JFK playbook in dealing with John McCain's truly shabby treatment of his ex-wife. The September 8 issue of Time, in 17 reverential pages devoted to Mr. and "Mrs. Maverick," mention the break-up, in a sidebar on "The Clan McCain," in one euphemistically constructed sentence: "After John returned from the war their marriage ended because of his infidelity." Oh, and it was "the marriage" that filed for divorce? (McCain exploited the same passive construction when describing his "greatest moral failure" — to evangelist Rick Warren, during his televised Saddlebrook faith forum — as "the failure of my first marriage.")
Perhaps Elizabeth Edwards's life-threatening cancer elicits more sympathetic outrage than Carol McCain's physical ordeal, now long over (although, from the few photos I've seen, the ravages clearly remain). Maybe, as is suggested by the career of Ted Kennedy, who was declared "finished" after Chappaquiddick but is now revered as the conscience of the U.S. Senate, there is simply a statute of limitations on public condemnation. Or maybe McCain's horrific years as a POW have given him a "get out of jail free" card that seems never to expire. (Maureen Dowd's mother explained it to her daughter matter-of-factly: "A man who lives in a box for five years can do whatever he wants.") On the other hand, there are those who are never allowed to get out of jail. Bill Clinton was stalked by scandal-hungry journalists on a campaign trail that wasn't even his own, but his wife's.
Two fascinating, recently published books offer more theoretically driven explanations as to why scandal sticks to some while sliding off others. ...
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Ed
... Consider a tale of two politicians:
One, married to the same woman for 31 years, has a brief affair, which he confesses to his wife, a cancer survivor. She is furious, then forgives him, and together they try their best to keep the affair private. Two years later, after losing his campaign for the presidency of the United States, he is outed by The National Enquirer and is forced to fully admit his guilt. He is decried as a "scumbag" and a traitor to his wife, whose disease has by then recurred. He remains with his wife and family, but is exiled from public life. Although he was once a likely candidate for a cabinet position or possibly even vice president, commentators generally acknowledge that his public career is over.
The other, on his return from military service, finds that the wife he left behind, a former swimsuit model, has been in a horrendous auto accident, requiring 23 operations and leaving her limping and disfigured, a full five inches shorter than she had been when he left. After five years of casual affairs, he meets a beautiful young heiress, whom he secretly pursues for six months and eventually obtains a license to marry while still legally married to and living with his first wife. He remarries five weeks after his divorce is granted. Thirty years later, he becomes his party's candidate for president. During his campaign, few articles or media reports mention the first wife or the circumstances of his remarriage. It's as though she never existed.
You know who these guys are. I bet, however, that at least some of you didn't know about Carol McCain, wife No. 1, and with good reason. It's as though there is some anachronistic collusion — or mass delusion — sustaining the myth that the perfectly coiffed blonde, as primly glamorous as a Hitchcock heroine, is all there is and ever was. But you only have to count up the children, whose numbers rival Brad and Angelina's, to see how unlikely that is. Yet most journalists, while they frothed in indignation over John Edwards's dalliance with self-described party-girl Rielle Hunter, seem to have reverted in dutiful obedience to the JFK playbook in dealing with John McCain's truly shabby treatment of his ex-wife. The September 8 issue of Time, in 17 reverential pages devoted to Mr. and "Mrs. Maverick," mention the break-up, in a sidebar on "The Clan McCain," in one euphemistically constructed sentence: "After John returned from the war their marriage ended because of his infidelity." Oh, and it was "the marriage" that filed for divorce? (McCain exploited the same passive construction when describing his "greatest moral failure" — to evangelist Rick Warren, during his televised Saddlebrook faith forum — as "the failure of my first marriage.")
Perhaps Elizabeth Edwards's life-threatening cancer elicits more sympathetic outrage than Carol McCain's physical ordeal, now long over (although, from the few photos I've seen, the ravages clearly remain). Maybe, as is suggested by the career of Ted Kennedy, who was declared "finished" after Chappaquiddick but is now revered as the conscience of the U.S. Senate, there is simply a statute of limitations on public condemnation. Or maybe McCain's horrific years as a POW have given him a "get out of jail free" card that seems never to expire. (Maureen Dowd's mother explained it to her daughter matter-of-factly: "A man who lives in a box for five years can do whatever he wants.") On the other hand, there are those who are never allowed to get out of jail. Bill Clinton was stalked by scandal-hungry journalists on a campaign trail that wasn't even his own, but his wife's.
Two fascinating, recently published books offer more theoretically driven explanations as to why scandal sticks to some while sliding off others. ...