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A L S O_ T O D A Y
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_ T A L K Do you worry about other people's kids? Critique your fellow parents in the Mothers area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y The heat is on Black like (white) me A melody of his own making First family on the couch An affair to remember BROWSE THE FEATURE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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I WANT YOU SO BAD | PAGE 1, 2
Jerry Hicks, a 62-year-old former Republican from Torrance, Calif., says Clinton's mistake was he didn't keep lying about his affair. Hicks says his three marriages might have been saved had he not been so monogamous. Like the other older people I interviewed, he's mostly offended by the transgressions of the investigation itself. "Who are these people who are so pure, so righteous, and why are they after the president?" he demands to know. "I think it's a big waste of taxpayers' money, and it's all politically motivated," he says, before elaborating his theory that the dirt-digging excavations so ubiquitous in Washington politics are weeding out more competent (but less milquetoast) politicians. But for a 35-year-old Oakland, Calif., homemaker who watched her husband carry on a flagrant affair just after she gave birth to their first child, the Clinton sex scandal has produced more complicated feelings. After being ostracized by her in-laws for telling her mother-in-law -- a woman who had stood by a cheating husband and defended several adulterous sons -- that the family was a "rat's nest of infidelity," she knows how hard it is to break the silence in a home that accepts an adulterer's compulsive lying. From this vantage, she's decided that Clinton's behavior is patently pathological. "And his wife is not helping him by staying," she adds. "Either she's the world's biggest codependent or they have a deal." In her case, her husband's affair resulted in a separation, but the homemaker and her mate are now attempting a reconciliation. Despite her conviction that Clinton exhibits "deep psychological problems," she also wonders if it's not essential to his power. "Maybe he needs to be this way in his position," she muses. The connection between Clinton's leadership skills and his sexual compulsions is echoed by Lana Staheli, a Seattle psychologist and author of "Affair-Proof Your Marriage: Understanding, Preventing, and Surviving an Affair" (HarperCollins, 1998). Clinton's faults, she maintains, are inextricably bound up with his strengths. "Americans like leaders who are exciting, risk-taking, charismatic, and those leaders are inevitably going to take risks and make mistakes. You can't expect someone who came from the socioeconomic background Clinton did and became the most powerful man in the world not to make some mistakes. He found his own way. If he had followed convention, he wouldn't be where he is today." She draws a parallel between the bargains people make in choosing their mates. "You can't have it both ways in the same person. If you have a partner who's a risk taker, they'll bring you both more pain and more pleasure." According to Staheli, American marriages have become more durable in the wake of adultery. "People are more able to admit to having affairs, and more willing to repair their marriage after them," she says. "Twenty or 30 years ago it was grounds for divorce. Now people take it as a wake-up call to start paying attention." Like many other adultery experts, Staheli contends that if couples can overcome the ravages of adultery, the marriages are often better than before. "Now many of the (political) leaders are saying that they're not going to forgive Clinton, but I think that the anger we're seeing is part of a normal stage," Staheli says. "When people learn of a betrayal, at first they're disbelieving and stunned, then they feel anger, hurt and disappointment. But the next level after that is acceptance." Unlike psychologists who label Hillary Clinton's behavior as codependent or deceptive, she considers her a model of equanimity. "I liked what Hillary did. She was upset, but she didn't react -- she took some time with it. I recommend that my clients take three months before they make any decision." While opinions about Hillary and Monica seem to run hot and cold, the discussion about President Clinton is oddly lukewarm -- and perhaps more subtle than any poll can measure. The awkward dance between the punditry and public opinion during the past seven months offers a glimpse into just how difficult it is to pigeonhole the American people on this issue. Initially, many journalists observed that Americans, with their famous moral earnestness, were less able to brook the contradictions that come with adultery, than, say, the more sexually sophisticated French, who would never consider subjecting a philandering president to public humiliation and psychological scrutiny. But such comparisons didn't square with the polls, which again and again showed that Americans weren't nearly as horrified by Clinton's behavior as predicted. Sexual mores seemed to be changing faster than the pundits could measure. Was this a sign that we were maturing past our Puritan roots and embracing a new, more sophisticated understanding of human foibles? Or had we finally succumbed to the godless ravages of a culture of unchecked hedonism? (Or was that the same question translated into two different cultural tongues?) The day after Clinton confessed in the public square of the TV screens, the major media, including the New York Times, ran stories about a Gallup poll indicating that Clinton's ratings had plunged a full 20 percent in the course of 24 hours. The following day, the Times quietly amended this with an article explaining that a subtle change in wording, not the opinions of the American people, had caused the fluctuation. The poll that had sent Clinton's numbers plummeting asked respondents to think about "Bill Clinton as a person" instead of simply saying whether they had a "favorable or unfavorable opinion of him." John and Jane Q. Public, it appeared, were drawing a distinction between a good president and a good person. "It's an incredibly complicated task -- trying to untangle why people are responding to Clinton as they are," says Don-David Lusterman, author of "Infidelity: A Survival Guide" (New Harbinger Publications, 1998). "People's feelings about adultery depend upon personal experience, educational background, religious upbringing and age. For many young people, the president is like a father figure and their responses are very judgmental." Lusterman, who is 66, doesn't understand why the presidential historians on television, who tend to be young, fail to note that other presidents have been involved in extramarital affairs. "The difference in those days," he concludes, "was that there was a traditional respect for privacy." "Respect for privacy." For the past seven months, my mother, who is turning 70 this fall after 47 years of marriage, has been reciting the phrase to me every chance she gets. "When did we start to bring people up in the public square and shame them for sexual misconduct?" she cries over the phone after Clinton's confession. "That's what happens in totalitarian societies -- the citizens can't escape the eyes of their government. What so many younger people don't seem to understand is that privacy is the cornerstone of a free society." On the day after Clinton's admission, she launched a phone-tree campaign among her elderly friends to save democracy and stop Kenneth Starr's investigation. But amid so much outrage and hand-wringing, excess spin and
under-laundered dresses, some see a bright side in the president's public humiliation. "It's a good weird awkwardness to have out there,"
says Paul Lundahl, a 36-year-old media producer. "Like George Bush throwing
up in Japan -- that kind of vulnerability is really wonderful. It's a
humanizing force, to know our leaders sometimes fail."
Discuss our adulterous culture in Table Talk. |
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