Foolish Men and the Idiot Women Who Enable Them

Mark Hemingway at The Corner writes about the phenomena we've witnessed once again this week of a powerful but foolish man doing a mea culpa press conference where he admits he treated his wife like trash, and does so with the wife standing nobly at his side:

I’m not willing to criticize the wife of a politician on the issue of whether she stands there or doesn’t. Certainly not on the issue of whether she remains married or doesn’t - I was always taken aback by those (many of whom at least talk in bumper-sticker terms about “family values”) who wanted Hillary Clinton to divorce Bill.

Whatever we may think about when it is appropriate to divorce, it is wrong to encourage a person (and in a bow to real life, I’ll say “a person who is not a close relative or friend”) to dissolve a marriage unless that person is incapable of making competent decisions.

What I would like to see, however, is a politician show up without his wife and say: (1) she wanted to stand here with me; (2) I am grateful for her support; but (3) I told her “no” - I’m the one who failed and I’m the one who should bear the public scorn.

But that would require that one of these knuckleheads was, emotionally, a grown man.

I can't imagine why any woman would agree to stand their and bask in her husband's foolishness after he's just told the whole world that she's an inadequate partner requiring him to pay thousands of dollars to bed some young cookie. The idea of committing such a crime against my wife is unthinkable to me, but the thought of putting her through that humiliation is even worse.