The XX Factor: What women really think.

Jenny and Silda, Coming to a TV Near You

The moment when the political wife stands (or doesn’t stand) on stage while her husband soberly confesses that he could not, try as he might, keep it in his pants, has proven time and time again to be a moment of high drama. This fall, it will also be the basis for a television show. Jezebel points to the trailer for CBS’s forthcoming The Good Wife, a drama starring Julianna Margulies (aka ER’s Nurse Hathaway) as a mother whose politician husband (played by Chris Noth aka Mr. Big) has up and pulled a Spitzer, but landed in jail for it ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)

Ashley Needs To Get a New Agent

Hanna and Rachael, I too was struck by the vulnerability of Ashley that emerged in today's New York Times' profile.  I noticed a "primary source" ("Hot Document" speak) for the profile was the young woman's MySpace page, which by "Thursday at noon ...appeared to have been corrupted." If I were Ashley's mother (alas, I could be her grandmother) in addition to making sure she got her own lawyer (attorney Don Buchwald was appointed by the court to represent the 22-year-old—although his bio of has the feel of someone QAT Consulting could really use), I might tell her to also get some technical and PR support that will get that MySpace storefront humming again. (Tips on traffic management are available by checking out Tila Tequila's page.) I can picture the stampede of TV bookers now thundering to the Flatiron apartment leased by the young entrepreneur once known as Kristen. Since her male source of support "walked out on me," and she is clearly "not a moron," she might as well be in charge of her own image as straightforwardly ("listen, dude ...") as she took control of clients at her last job. 

What Does a Prostitute Consider "Not Safe"?

How Hard Is It To Get Extramaritally Laid Anyhow??

Welcome to XX Factor Judith, and thanks for your thoughtful post.

My only quibble is with the assumption that Spitzer somehow had to pay for sex (pathetic), which then unspools the freight train of humiliations you’ve just described. Is it really all that hard for someone in high office to “to get extramaritally laid” as you put it, or is it exceptionally simple? I always assumed the latter. Can’t imagine Spitzer didn’t have heaps of women throwing themselves at him. I assumed he simply opted to pay for it (power). Raises a question about whether it’s “better” or “worse” to buy extramarital sex the way you’d buy new loafers. But judging from the way Silda looked just now at the press conference—I didn’t think it was possible for her to look more heartbroken and exhausted than she did 48 hours ago, but I was wrong—maybe that just doesn’t matter.

Read other posts from XX Factor bloggers on the prostitute vs. regular-old-affair dilemma.

Spitzer: Pathos, Not Power

In defense of Spitzer, I have to say that the great-man-abusing-power narrative does not seem apt in his case. In fact, it seems rather out-of-date. If you read the wiretaps closely, you'll discover that, as a consumer of sexual services, Spitzer was actually shockingly powerless. Client 9, the governor of New York State, had to make dozens of phone calls and multiple trips to an ATM machine over the course of three days just to get a single date with a prostitute.

How do I know this? From an abridged transcript of his exchanges with the escort service that ran as a sidebar on page 5 of the New York Times Metro section yesterday morning. I cannot for the life of me find it online; I suspect it only ran in the local edition. So let me summarize:

On Monday, Feb. 11, the booking agent at the Emperors' Club VIP asks a coworker to notify her when an overdue package arrives from Client 9, presumably a deposit of cash sent by mail. On Tuesday, Feb. 12, she calls Client 9 and tells him the package has not yet arrived. He reassures her that the address was the same as in the past, "no question about it." Ten minutes later she calls to say that they cannot proceed if the package does not arrive. The next day, Feb. 13, Client 9 calls the booking agent to tell her that he has reserved a room at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. An hour later she gets a text message telling her the package has arrived. She immediately calls him to suggest that when he sees the prostitute, Kristen, he give her extra cash upfront to avoid such problems in the future. They discuss his debt—$2,600—and he agrees to give Kristen an extra $1,000 toward future appointments. The booking agent urges him to give $1,500 instead. Client 9 agrees to go out and look for a bank. An hour later he calls the booking agent to tell her where Kristen should go in the hotel. The agent tells him again how much he owes her. He promises again to find a bank.

A few minutes later, the booking agent texts Kristen to ask her to text back when her "four hours" begins. Two and a half hours later, just past midnight on Feb. 14, Kristen leaves Spitzer's room.

This, my friends, is pathetic. It's practically an outrage. No one with less to lose would ever allow himself to be importuned and harassed by an employee of an escort service evincing such cavalier familiarity. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that she felt entitled to give Spitzer such a hard time precisely because he was the governor of New York State—because he was so blackmail-able. (Was he being blackmailed? The sums involved make you wonder. And his public anti-prostitution stand would only have added to his value as a mark.)

So I don't buy the thesis that he abused his power by seeking paid sex. Whatever you think about prostitution—I for one don't understand why's it illegal,rather than well-regulated, but that's not wholly relevant here—Spitzer's bumbling, embarrassing effort to buy himself some must stand as another example of how the private lives of public figures have become fearful, furtive, diminished affairs, denied all but the most conventional responses to the urgings of human desire. Not that Spitzer, when a prosecutor, didn't do his bit to make life more miserable for those vulnerable to being shamed by surveillance techniques and technology. But his situation now makes the larger point. Refuse to pity the powerful if you must, but don't think for a minute that running a government in the modern world makes it easier for one of them to get extramaritally laid.

Since All Things Come Back to the Orbit of Hillary-Obama

Like lots of other twentysomething women, I’ve been an unswerving Obama girl from the get-go. Oddly enough it’s taken Spitzergate—not Hillary’s tears, nor her scolding—to make me less dismissive of the feminist “obligation” to vote for a woman. The Spitzer scandal reminded me of a comment a friend repeated to me after her (married) boss from a political internship flirted heavily with her at a fundraising event, something that clearly disturbed her a little despite the gossipy retelling. The comment, from her (nonwhite) father: The most powerful people in the world are old white men and pretty young women. The subtext, of course, was that she should learn to manipulate power.

There are all kinds of reasons why that very bald statement is infuriating, but perhaps chief among them is the very reason it stuck in my head—that it seems true all too often. That’s been something that’s easy to forget in a primary race between a middle-aged woman and a younger black man, but during my supposedly post-feminist lifetime, the women who’ve created the biggest political stir have been the young women who’ve ruined the careers of powerful old men. The Madeline Albrights and the Nancy Pelosis, no matter how much they work to build something of substance, have never grabbed the headlines the Monicas and Paulas got from tearing something down, in a very passive fashion. Obviously, power and sex (in both its meanings) are never going to be fully disentangled, in Washington or elsewhere, but Spitzer’s yet another ugly reminder of the sort that has dotted the political landscape pretty much since I started paying attention to it. I have to wonder if lots of women and girls haven’t internalized certain lessons along the lines of the one my friend’s dad spelled out.

There’s always—rightly—lots of talk about the wife’s perspective when scandals like this happen, but it’s certainly not a great feeling if you’re a twentysomething or younger, trying to figure out the way things operate, to be told, implicitly or explicitly, that your chance at having any sort of real influence might already be on the wane. I’m not saying I’m for Hillary now, and I’m not saying that Hillary’s history with sexual peccadilloes is uncomplicated, but it certainly makes me appreciate the fact that she’s learned other ways of manipulating power.