It's not "wea culpa"

Dear Silda Wall Spitzer, First Lady of New York,

You have an awesome-sounding name. It's different, it's elegant, I really dig it. Also, you are pretty hot. But, anyhoo, I digress. I'm writing to ask you to please please pretty please sign my petition below. Thank you for your consideration. (Seriously, though-- you're a fox.)

The previous century yielded exponential progress for women's freedom, including suffrage, equal pay, contraception, "no fault" divorce, Title IX, Coco Chanel, tampons, cotton spandex undies and Madonna.

With these landmark achievements now firmly rooted and blossoming, we believe that it is time to shed light on the plight of the Political Wife.

Our modest proposal is this: when a Powerful Man screws up --for instance, by ferrying a thousand-dollar Hooker across state lines to screw her in dubiously "safe" ways under the nose of half the DC Establishment in an historic Washington hotel-- and then has to issue a public mea culpa, he should have to face the cameras without his Dutiful Wife at his side.

Simply put, we, the undersigned, believe that a Dutiful Political Wife is entitled to bear her agony in private, without the added indignity of being trotted out as proof that her powerful husband is not a douchebag at the precise moment when he appears, obviously and indisputably, to be a total douchebag.

Indeed, we, the undersigned, would like to send a strong message to Powerful Men and the Minions who advise them, that the Public is firmly united in the belief that no matter how low the Powerful Man has stooped, nothing is lower than using the very woman you have humiliated, and the very relationship you have profaned, as a silent, hollow-eyed character witness while you scramble to save your professional ass.

Finally, we, the undersigned, call on First Ladies and all Political Wives to recognize that the 21st century is well underway and, as such, the world relieves them of any obligation to perform self-annihilating acts of martyrdom in the name of "partnership" or any such anachronistic horseshit.

Seriously, Ladies, please locate your spine and flip the switch. If you find it's missing, rip off your pearls and fashion a prosthetic. Because we can't bear to watch anymore.

x WOMANKIND

x ___________

(Design work courtesy Jess-Cat. Mwah!)