Today’s Read Of The Day has to be Vanity’s Fair’s bitchfest about the deeply authoritarian and monetarily doubtful Republican presidential cadidate and former NY mayor Rudi Guliani‘s social-climbing puppy-butcher of a current wife (she can’t think she’s permanent, given his history, the former Junior Leaguer and latterday surgical staple sales rep lJudy Nathan.
If you think what I just said was harsh…
There have been so many different Judiths. As her second husband, Bruce Nathan, has told friends, “She is in an ever changing mode upward.”
I sense Mrs Giuliani is not popular in NY social circles. Mind you it says a lot about those social circles that it’s her pushiness that bothers them so, and not her deliberate cruelty to helpless animals.
Q: When does the Post become touchy-feely about animal welfare? A: When it helps torpedo a Giuliani. Turns out that in the seventies, Judith then-Nathan used to shill for a medical-supply firm that put surgical staples on live dogs during sales demonstrations. Ew. [NYP]
You’d think cruelty to dumb creatures would be a plus when choosing a President, if Bush is any guide – maybe the spousal puppy-torture won’t impede Rudi’s progress at all, may be it’ll endear him and the missus to the ’24’ loving, torture endorsing wingnut base. On the other hand, it was frogs that Bush blew up alive with firecrackers and frogs are icky and puppies are cute, big-eyed and utterly adorable, so it could go the other way.
But why is the wife of a candidate even important? She’s not up for election, he is.
As if to emphasise the US media’s full-on, no-holds barred approach to political spouses and in stark contrast to the Vanity Fair article, the Independent’s Mary Djevsky considers the role of ‘first ladies’ in the persons of the very public Cherie Blair and the subfusc, stay-at-home mother, Sarah Brown:
ASarah Brown has so far made an even more stellar job than her husband of not being a Blair. For a start, she has been nigh-invisible, except at the ceremonial opening to his premiership. She has kept their children out of camera shot, her shopping to herself, and her public outings to solo appearances for charity. Should she return to paid work – and some nifty property reassignments by her husband have secured her an income and him a tax saving until she does – she could do so without press or public outcry, so long as she steered clear of anything remotely seen as a conflicting interest. Mrs Blair was vilified not for her professional life, which many rather admired, but for seeming to exploit her spousal role for profit.
Ah, that spousal role … Why, in this day and age, is it still thought necessary for a national leader to be travel with the spouse? Where royalty is concerned, it is understandable. It is the stuff of feudalism and fairy tale that a king has a queen. Through the Empire until not so very long ago, you could also argue for the practice. Tours could be long and tedious; evenings empty and natives hostile. In the Cold War, spousal travel was to keep the public figure out of trouble in countries where the authorities habitually sought advantage by springing “honey traps”.
Yes, why? I can see there’s a case to be made for spouses accompanying politicians on foreign trips – great insight can be had into fellow leaders when you see how they relate to their significant other in a social situation. It all adds to international understanding – but that can happen regardless of gender. So why the focus on female spouses, aside from their numerical preponderance?
Politicians are, let’s face it dull. In the case of political wives it sometimes seems as though it’s all about what what the media wants, the husbands play up to it and the wives go along in deference to their husbands’ ambitions (or to their own). take Fred Thompson and his trophy wife, for instance. But if he thinks America is ready for a walking bleached blonde boobjob in the WH, he can think again).
Obviously what the US media would like is for every politician to have a devoted, photogenic handmaidem contsntly to hand for eyecndy purposes, preferably a twentyish vestal virgin with no past whatsoever, a good rack ( but not too good, cf Mrs Thompson) and no voice either, who looks good in posh frocks (which she is to find at her own expense).
Conversely, many political wives are blatantly using their husbands as proxy for their own political ambitions. Cherie and Hillary both spring to mind, and so too does the now-infamous Judy Giuliani.
They know and we know that despite their considerable individual intellects and achievements it’s unlikely they would have become QC or Senator respectively, had they not gained name recognition and influence by being married to who they were married to. In the case of Clinton it’s enabled someone who’s been a Senator for barely five minutes, who’s never run any government body or even a city or state, to potentially step into one of the most difficult jobs in the world; in the case of Cherie Booth/Blair she’s had the opportunity to make massive amounts from speaking fees she would never have got as a simple human rights and employment lawyer; Nathan somehow find herself catapulted from being a sales rep for Bristol Myers Squibb ( which was when the puppy-torture occurred) to becoming a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the $216 million Twin Towers Fund, appointed by Giuliani. No nepotism there then.
The feminist view is that couples are individuals; I don’t disagree; who could, it seems obvious. You cannot tie one spouses’ achievements to that of the other – but then again how can you not in political terms, when nepotism like this is so ingrained in the political culture?
I can think of only one female politician who’s turned the tables on the man-as-proxy for wife’s-ambitions pattern and that’s recently sacked Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who channels her partner’s political ambitions by putting him on the payroll. She continues to employ husband Leo as her ‘PA’ at public expense, despite the fact he’s now over retirement age.
He may not be decorative, but at least he’s useful and boosts the family income too. But that’s just as nepotistic as Cherie and her QC – was Leo’s name ever on the ballot? Who voted him into Parliament?
Many male American politicians also hire their spouse: look at the number who’ve put their wives on the office or campaign payroll (or even in some instances on a lobbyists’ payroll). yet those same politicians will complain should those pouses be attacked for it as citing ‘privacy’, as did Beckett when challenged.
If only if the media, political spouses themselves and the voting public could be honest – if we’re electing couples, we’re electing couples. Lets put them both on the ballot.
The current virulent media stew of mysogyny, prurience and backdoor ambition in regard to political spouses benefits no-one and turns politics into little more than a prom king and queen contest. It benefits political women least of all – they are consequently cast as always the adjunct to the man, the coattail-grabber, the golddigger. How many political male spouses is that said about?
That said, Judy Nathan Giuliani is still puppy-torturing slime.
