Advice To Mrs. Spitzer

Ancient Gossip Hag Cindy Adams weighs in from the moral high ground of the NY Post -

March 12, 2008 -- NO way to write today about the Lindsays, Parises, K-Feds, Katies, Toms, Nicoles or whocares. No body cares about anything except New York's Gov. Must be something in the water in the Northeast because we've managed to upend three governors - McGreevey of New Jersey, John G. Roland from Connecticut and now Spitzer the shpritzer. But while the world addresses his situation legally and politically, I want only to address his wife.

I want to tell her - so what. She may not longer be New York's first lady, but a husband hooking up with a hooker is not reason enough to no longer be a married lady.

Sex, a primal need, outpoints fear, hunger and love as mankind's No. 1 driving force. Unless you're a pig or a monk, many an able-bodied - and I use that term deliberately - 48-year-old husband of 21 years has grazed. I'm not advocating it. I'm merely saying, so what? It's like takeout food. Less work for mother.

In Louisiana it's the currency. In Nevada those odds beat the tables. In DC it's a revolving door. In California they marry the hookers. In France he becomes president.

A man who adores a woman enough to make his family with her and wants her forever as No. 1 in his life in a drawing room or dining room might also respect and treasure her too much for what he wants in a bedroom.

Paying a pro isn't disrespect to his wife. Disrespect is keeping, supporting, housing a mistress with whom there's an ongoing relationship and with whom you share not only time but emotions and thoughts and life. Disrespect is dumping into a trash bin that partner, long out of the workforce after giving her all including her youth, to marry whatever new twinkie works your male menopausal pinky. This "f - - - ing steamroller" didn't do either. If he did, it wouldn't be enough for his wife to hate him - we'd all hate him.

George Washington buried his wooden teeth in ladies other than Martha but, predating the Internet, texting, computers, cellphones and cable TV, his itch was kept quiet. Grover Cleveland's illegitimate son fostered this 1884 ditty: "Ma, ma, where's my pa; gone to the White House, ha ha ha." Married Warren Harding laid on so many mattresses he could've died of bedsores. There was a little Andrew Jackson stickiness. And Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary Lucy Mercer took more than dictation. She took FDR.

Forgetting Bill Clinton, there was Dwight Eisenhower and his WWII driver Kay Summersby, who went riding even out of the car. JFK? Please. I mean, please. Jackie supposedly knew about Judith Exner, Angie Dickinson, Marilyn Monroe and the cast of thousands. Lyndon Johnson's healthy appetite was never satisfied by Angus beef. Jimmy Carter and his peanut? We know he actually said he'd "committed adultery in my heart many times."

The one-time candidates? Womanizer Wendell Wilkie? Newt Gingrich, who had an affair then divorced the missus then had an affair then divorced the second wife who was suffering from cancer. And 1988 gave us Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who left Mrs. Hart home while he dandled and diddled Donna Rice and blew his election chances. And everyone knows about R. Giuliani.

The Bushes. Adulterous brother Neil zapped his longtime wife who bore him three children, Sharon.

And these holier than thous - besides the Catholic priest scandal, there's Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Jim Bakker, Rev. Ted Haggard and the heavy into family values Sen. Larry Craig, who's getting an airport bathroom named after him, and something named Livingston, who was forced to resign en route to becoming House speaker.

What exactly it is about men in power needing some extraspecial release, I don't know. I only know that sex - missionary style, whambamslam style, deviant or pristine - is so primal a force it has been known - as in the OJ and Robert Blake cases - to end up with the wife suddenly dead. But whereas these guys are free to golf, Spitzer's facing jail.

Look, with only addressing his situation humanly and personally, not legally or politically, the plain fact of handling your needs with a professional is a so what. It's maybe the only way out (or in) for those in the white-hot spotlight. In any case, not a reason to walk away from long-term marriage.

Probably the real reason for this highly intelligent woman to react with fierce anger is toward her husband's stupidity. He's Mr. Clean, who has himself wiped out prostitution rings. He's a law enforcer who knows from the Mann Act. Even apart from the headlined Joe Bruno and Dick Grasso and Hank Greenberg, he's made powerful enemies up the kazoo. So, who knows who tipped off whom?

I love Silda Spitzer. In truth, handsome, educated Silda might want to smack him. But leave him purely and simply because he grabbed a little sex on the side? Or wherever he grabbed it? Naaahh. If this lawyer wife really wants to get him, she might just cool it a few years then run for president.