Column: "Understanding Eliot Spitzer"
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008 - 697 words
Lord only knows how David Eigen, author of something called Men: The Gods of Love, was invited to appear split-screened with Anderson Cooper Monday night, but he was, and proceeded to explain, in world record time, how he thought Eliot Spitzer’s tendency toward whoring was a function of his being an emotionally overwrought, thoroughly modern man. “I think the governor is guilty of having a situation where he’s just not been able to express himself and probably doesn’t know how. And, you know, there’s no question men have a huge sex drive, which really is a replacement for all the other needs they have. And he just found himself in a place where this – he just needed to go outside of that relationship.”
Continued Eigen, “I’m not excusing it. [Really?!] I’m just saying, you know, this is where men have been caught in an actual situation where they’re not allowed to have feelings. So, it becomes – everything becomes about sex. And that’s what the problem is here. Men need to be allowed to have feelings, be allowed to say, hey, you know, I had a bad day at the office and I need a hug. I need to tell you how I feel downtrodden or how it’s too much for me.” (Not even Cooper, CNN’s resident feminized oh-dear, was buying this nonsense. “Well, I mean, it seems like we're going very far down the road of speculation. We don't really know what their relationship is like or what's going on in his family's life.”)
Other than Lawrence O’Donnell’s wondering why the FBI was investigating the case at all (on Live with Dan Abrams, which I watched so you wouldn’t have to), Eigen’s “analysis” set Monday’s high water mark for televised pointlessness. Oprah may have nodded in solemn agreement, but she would. This sort of asininity fails to explain how Spitzer’s having a bad day at the office would really, logically, translate to dropping $4,300 for four hours worth of whore-mongering, other than the fact it just would, because that apparently is how men behave when they need a hug.
Writing for FoxNews.com Tuesday, someone called Yvonne Fulbright (irritatingly branded a “sexpert”) came closer than anyone to getting it right, but shot herself in the foot by stopping first to insult Silda Spitzer. “When I first heard about the Eliot Spitzer scandal, I immediately wondered what’s not going on in Spitzer’s marital bed. After all, when your average married man goes to a prostitute, it’s often because he’s sexually dissatisfied of sexually deviant.” In other words, her fallback position was to wonder how this was Mrs. Spitzer’s fault. We anxiously await Fulbright’s next column, where she will hopefully explain how every other female victim in America’s long, illustrious existence also had it coming.
Despite this inanity, Fulbright strikes the right chord here, but pulls up short: “Research shows that people consumed with power experience an adrenaline rush. This helps to explain why some people are willing to push the envelope – and why someone like Spitzer may have been unable to control himself.” (This comes precariously close to the Twinkie Defense, but with vaginas.) The next point should have been that even though children are expected to have trouble controlling themselves, adults are expected to rise to a higher standard of decorum, precisely because they have lifetimes of experience at their backs. Adults are supposed to know better than this.
Eliot Spitzer’s problem is that he likes to have sex with strange women, and the odds are slim to none that this is a new character flaw. This should seem obvious to anyone not attempting to pawn the intellectual equivalent of snake oil, or for those not bowing to political correctness during prime time. We tend to assume a man can fill his brain with Dr. Phil’s “homey witticisms about relationships,” or something similar, and call it self-awareness, but at the end a man has to know himself. No amount of masking (say, through marriage and child rearing) will calm the desires he, as a man elected to uphold the laws of New York State, should want to control. And until you understand that, you cannot understand Eliot Spitzer.
Continued Eigen, “I’m not excusing it. [Really?!] I’m just saying, you know, this is where men have been caught in an actual situation where they’re not allowed to have feelings. So, it becomes – everything becomes about sex. And that’s what the problem is here. Men need to be allowed to have feelings, be allowed to say, hey, you know, I had a bad day at the office and I need a hug. I need to tell you how I feel downtrodden or how it’s too much for me.” (Not even Cooper, CNN’s resident feminized oh-dear, was buying this nonsense. “Well, I mean, it seems like we're going very far down the road of speculation. We don't really know what their relationship is like or what's going on in his family's life.”)
Other than Lawrence O’Donnell’s wondering why the FBI was investigating the case at all (on Live with Dan Abrams, which I watched so you wouldn’t have to), Eigen’s “analysis” set Monday’s high water mark for televised pointlessness. Oprah may have nodded in solemn agreement, but she would. This sort of asininity fails to explain how Spitzer’s having a bad day at the office would really, logically, translate to dropping $4,300 for four hours worth of whore-mongering, other than the fact it just would, because that apparently is how men behave when they need a hug.
Writing for FoxNews.com Tuesday, someone called Yvonne Fulbright (irritatingly branded a “sexpert”) came closer than anyone to getting it right, but shot herself in the foot by stopping first to insult Silda Spitzer. “When I first heard about the Eliot Spitzer scandal, I immediately wondered what’s not going on in Spitzer’s marital bed. After all, when your average married man goes to a prostitute, it’s often because he’s sexually dissatisfied of sexually deviant.” In other words, her fallback position was to wonder how this was Mrs. Spitzer’s fault. We anxiously await Fulbright’s next column, where she will hopefully explain how every other female victim in America’s long, illustrious existence also had it coming.
Despite this inanity, Fulbright strikes the right chord here, but pulls up short: “Research shows that people consumed with power experience an adrenaline rush. This helps to explain why some people are willing to push the envelope – and why someone like Spitzer may have been unable to control himself.” (This comes precariously close to the Twinkie Defense, but with vaginas.) The next point should have been that even though children are expected to have trouble controlling themselves, adults are expected to rise to a higher standard of decorum, precisely because they have lifetimes of experience at their backs. Adults are supposed to know better than this.
Eliot Spitzer’s problem is that he likes to have sex with strange women, and the odds are slim to none that this is a new character flaw. This should seem obvious to anyone not attempting to pawn the intellectual equivalent of snake oil, or for those not bowing to political correctness during prime time. We tend to assume a man can fill his brain with Dr. Phil’s “homey witticisms about relationships,” or something similar, and call it self-awareness, but at the end a man has to know himself. No amount of masking (say, through marriage and child rearing) will calm the desires he, as a man elected to uphold the laws of New York State, should want to control. And until you understand that, you cannot understand Eliot Spitzer.
Sources:
David Eigen on Anderson Cooper 360, 10 March 2008 broadcast; accessed Tuesday, 11 March.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0803/10/acd.01.html
FoxNews.com: “Power and Prostitutes: Why Powerful Men Can’t Help Themselves” by Yvonne K. Fulbright; accessed Tuesday, 11 March.
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,336837,00.html
posted by Brian S. Wise | 5:56 PM
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