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.
That was Wendy Vitter, wife of Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), in 2000 expressing the indignation voiced by many liberated women when Hillary Clinton failed to kick her skirt-chasing husband to the curb after his affair with Monica Lewinsky became fodder for international tabloids. Of course, their indignation was wholly warranted.
After all, in a metaphorical bra-burning moment in 1992 (on her road to becoming First Lady of the United States), Hillary protested that she “wasn’t some little woman ‘standing by my man’ like Tammy Wynette”. How ironic therefore that since then she has stood by her man through more personal betrayals and public humiliation than any self-respecting housewife, let alone an iconic feminist, would have tolerated.
Of course, to the perverse disappointment of many women, Hillary did not follow Bobbitt’s 1993 example by cutting off Bill’s penis to reclaim her pride. Instead, she insinuates in her frigid biography that she smacked him upside the head (again?) – after reading all of the juicy details Special Prosecutor Ken Starr published in his pornographic report about the unseemly dictation Bill routinely gave Monica in the Oval Office during their affair.
But now Mrs Vitter faces a similar moment of decision. Because yesterday’s salacious reports about her husband’s assignations with prostitutes make Clinton’s extramarital affairs seem puritanical by comparison. Moreover, her challenge to say goodbye or shut up and cry is especially acute because – unlike Bill Clinton who everyone, including Hillary, knew was a priapic womanizer long before he was caught with his pants down – Sen. Vitter erected his political career on a platform touting “traditional family values”….
Perhaps you recall the suspended animation that attended initial reports a few months ago about the imminent publication of a DC Madam’s black book, which purportedly contained the “names of thousands of politicians and powerbrokers”. But its billing as potentially the biggest sex scandal in Washington history proved little more than a tease when the only people outed were third-rate bureaucrats and foreign diplomats.
Nevertheless, I may have been more prescient in one of my commentaries on this scandal than I realized when I gleefully suggested that:
[many of the DC Madam’s] former clients must be sweating bullets trying to figure out how to explain (to their wives, colleagues and constituents) why their names might appear.
Because little did I know that at the very moment Vitter was probably tarrying before God and pleading with his wife for forgiveness. (The couple are pictured here with one of their four children rejoicing after his election to the Senate in November 2004.) Indeed, here’s his spin on the path he took to (perhaps marital, though not necessarily religious or even political) redemption:
This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible….Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there—with God and them.
Talk about skirting the issue and using the Lord’s name in vain. After all, we all know that it’s not his wife and God Vitter’s worried about; it’s Louisiana voters! But to add to his woes in this respect, late-breaking claims by a New Orleans Madam yesterday (that Vitter was one of the more genteel and faithful patrons of her house of ill-repute) and more sordid details that porn’s publishing king Larry Flynt promises to broadcast later today might expose him as not only a serial and kinky adulterer, but also a pathological and unrepentant liar….
That said, I am acutely aware that many of you have no idea who Vitter is or why his pedestrian infidelities are even worthy of comment. Nevertheless, I suspect all of you will appreciate the undeniable schadenfreude that comes with this ironic chain of hypocrisy – courtesy of the Associated Press:
In the House, Vitter succeeded GOP Rep. Robert Livingston, who was in line to replace Newt Gingrich [who was forced to resign by marital and financial scandals] as speaker until Livingston admitted to extramarital affairs and quit Congress. Livingston had been a critic of President Clinton, calling on him to resign over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Indeed, I feel constrained to note that if these men were not lead vocals in a Republican chorus of moral crusaders, I would not have given their sexual escapades a moment’s thought. For the unadulterated pleasure of afflicting such political hypocrites, however, I do not even mind being bedfellows with a publicity–seeking hustler like the aforementioned Mr Flynt.
Meanwhile, I shall wait with morbid curiosity to see if Mrs Vitter will chop off her husband’s Willy and walk away to demonstrate that she’s more faithful to her vow to avenge this betrayal than he was to his marriage vows….
NOTE: Instead of Lorena Bobbitt, Mrs Vitter would do well to emulate the wife of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who filed for divorce last month after his affair with Mirthala Salinas, a reporter for NBC station Telemundo 52, was exposed.
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