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Self-hating Spitzer--Why do men who seem to have everything throw it all away?
Jerusalem Post ^ | 3-16-08 | SHMULEY BOTEACH

Posted on 03/16/2008 12:41:03 PM PDT by SJackson

Dr. Laura Schlesinger has a penchant for inane and knee-jerk moralizing. But last week even she outdid herself, as she blamed Elliot Spitzer's long-suffering wife, Silda, for her husband's unfaithfulness with a prostitute.

Speaking on the Today show, Dr. Laura opined: "When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like our hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need."

According to Dr. Laura's approach, these poor, neglected husbands have been pushed by their rebellious wives into being porn and sex addicts. How sad that in the wake of the Elliot Spitzer tragedy we get Dr. Laura's blame-the-victim drivel rather than an honest discussion on the downfall of the American Male.

Men today are cheating not because their wives do not love them, but because they do not love themselves; not because their wives are not caring, but because their perforated sense of self is immune to affection. Were their wives to shower them with all the love in the world, it would simply seep through the shards of their shattered egos.

Propelled to succeed by an all-encompassing fear of failure and thrown into a rat race without limit, the broken American male never feels like he is ever good enough and chooses destructive escapes to compensate.

Powerful men like Spitzer are especially susceptible to the irrational self-loathing that is increasingly affecting the American male. Whatever level of achievement he attains, it is never enough to quiet the inner demons that tell him he is worthless. A culture built on soulless success has raised a generation of men to believe they are anonymous unless they accumulate money or fame, with women being yet another prized possession that accrues to the alpha male.

TRAINED TO feel like they are important only through professional achievement, these men are clueless about being in a relationship. They know how to master rather than relate, how to conquer rather than open up, how to manipulate rather than connect.

For the man to whom power is an aphrodisiac, paying a woman for sex becomes an erotic thrill. And men with low self-esteem are profoundly susceptible to women who are not their wives.

The man who sees himself as a loser sees the woman dumb enough to marry him as a loser squared. His wife's affection, therefore, cannot make him feel like a winner. It is only the woman to whom he is not married, the one that has not been devalued through a merger with a failure, that can make him feel consequential. And a woman who is so desirable that a night with her can set you back thousands of dollars can make a guy feel like a million bucks.

Bill Clinton may have been the most powerful man in the world. But all that power could not inflate an ego so punctured that it sought significance in a liaison with an all-too-ordinary intern who understood the depth of his need to feel good about himself.

LAST WEEK in Los Angeles I debated my dear friend Dennis Prager, the brilliant radio host and public intellectual, on whether men or women are more responsible for the breakdown of the American family. I argued that broken men are undermining their families; Dennis claimed that the blame was equally shared.

Now Dennis has always been a mentor to me. But, come on! You have to be blind not to see that men are in crisis. They are three times more likely to cheat on a spouse, eight times more likely to abandon their children (how often do you hear of a dead-beat Mom?), commit 98 percent of all violent crimes, and stand a decent chance of becoming porn addicts.

Even if they overcome the porn, they usually end up sports and TV addicts, who spend, on average, three hours per day in front of the tube. And that's three hours where they are not helping with the dishes, putting the kids to sleep, or being with their wives.

Sex for men has become a game of mastery rather than intimacy. A shocking statistic from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, published providentially on the same day of the outbreak of the Spitzer scandal, showed that one in four female American teens has an STD. Millions of teenage boys are pushing girls to have sex well before their bodies are ready, and without any kind of protection. Sexual scandals among powerful men should likewise spur us to action.

THE SOLUTION is to set a new definition of success among American men that is dependent not on becoming the competent governor of a state, but on becoming the responsible head of a household. The great man is not only he who can balance state budgets but he who helps his children with their algebra. Not he who hits home runs, but he who runs home to be with his family. Not he who wins primaries, but he who makes his wife and his children primary.

In this political season, it is in vogue to believe that pulling a lever for a particular candidate will bring us the change we desire. But it is we who have to change. America is not wanting in talented senators and industrious politicians. Rather, it is wanting in loving husbands and devoted fathers.

In the final analysis, what the people of New York think of Elliot Spitzer is not nearly as important as what his wife and children think of him. Because you are not a success in life if the people who mean the most to you think the least of you.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: boteach; drlaura; psychology; rabbishmuley; rabbishmuleyboteach; shmuleyboteach; spitzer
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Dueling pundits, Shmuley vs Dr. Laura.

His opionion base on the false assumption that our's is the firstculture built on soulless success has raised a generation of men to believe they are anonymous unless they accumulate money or fame, with women being yet another prized possession that accrues to the alpha male. of that this is the first generation to deal with the age old temptations of enlarged, misdirected egos.

1 posted on 03/16/2008 12:41:06 PM PDT by SJackson
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To: SJackson

Because having sex with $4000/hr hookers is a perk for the rich and powerful. The Shah of Iran used to fly in hookers from Switzerland.


2 posted on 03/16/2008 12:43:56 PM PDT by Perdogg (Reagan would have never said "She's my girl")
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To: SJackson
“These days, women don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need.”

Needy, needy men? C’mon! Women are too busy taking care of themselves, the kids, the job, etc. these days to be worried about their “needy” man. I doubt Spitzer needed anything but to continue his obsessive power trip.

3 posted on 03/16/2008 12:47:06 PM PDT by Melinda
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To: SJackson
Powerful men like Spitzer are especially susceptible to the irrational self-loathing that is increasingly affecting the American male.

To an ordinary sod, it looked like the Governor of the State of New York was just doin' the horizontal bop with a fancy whore. To the more sensitive soul, like Shmuley Boteach, it was actually a cry for help.

4 posted on 03/16/2008 12:48:35 PM PDT by Steely Tom (Steely's First Law of the Main Stream Media: if it doesn't advance the agenda, it's not news.)
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To: SJackson

“They are three times more likely to cheat on a spouse, eight times more likely to abandon their children (how often do you hear of a dead-beat Mom?), commit 98 percent of all violent crimes, and stand a decent chance of becoming porn addicts.”

What a bunch of BS particuarly the abandoning the kids part. Define “abandoning - does a Dad whose kids are taken away from him by a spiteful ex fall under that column? What about the fact that women initiate the VAST majority of divorces often times for no reason other than boredom?


5 posted on 03/16/2008 12:48:35 PM PDT by KantianBurke (President Bush, why did you abandon Specialist Ahmed Qusai al-Taei?)
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To: SJackson
"Greg, ask the box what we should do now."

Greg has my permission to cheat.

6 posted on 03/16/2008 12:48:59 PM PDT by martin_fierro (I'M NOT DEAD YET!)
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To: SJackson

In the Middle Ages, judges convicted of taking bribes were sometimes condemned to be flayed alive. But, this is neither the middle ages nor was Spitzer a judge, so we should be merciful: There must be some Gambino-family soldier rotting away in some federal pokey who’d welcome a new prison “wife”.


7 posted on 03/16/2008 12:49:41 PM PDT by E. Cartman (Huckaboob will never be Vice President.)
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To: SJackson
Speaking on the Today show, Dr. Laura opined: "When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like our hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need."

Seems like a reasonable argument in this day and age. Maybe it's true in Spitzer's case. Who knows?

8 posted on 03/16/2008 12:50:29 PM PDT by DTogo (I haven't left the GOP, the GOP left me.)
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To: SJackson

Dr. Laura never addressed any of her remarks specifically to the Spitzers. In fact, she went out of her way to say she would NOT talk about them because she did not know them. She spoke generally about marriages where men cheat. Unlike columnists who sit around on their high horses, Dr. Laura has treated a lot of couples in her time, and clearly she sees men straying in part because their wives stop trying.

The other thing is, no one knows the innards of the Spitzer marriage except them. For all we know, Mrs. Spitzer knew about her husband or turned a blind eye to it all in exchange for the power and status he brought her. She had her own office in the statehouse in Albany and apparently saw herself as a player of some sort. For all we know, that “grief-stricken” look on her face was her response to her loss of power.

Eliot Spitzer, the governor of NY, blows tens of thousands of dollars on whores but Dr. Laura is the “bad guy”—??

Gimme a break.


9 posted on 03/16/2008 12:52:53 PM PDT by CZB
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To: SJackson
Men today are cheating not because their wives do not love them, but because they do not love themselves; not because their wives are not caring, but because their perforated sense of self is immune to affection.

I think that Dr. Laura has a point in spite of the psychobabble above. However, what Dr. Laura is saying is probably a percentage of the time; how large that percentage is, we do not know. Relationships are complex and changing over the period of a lasting marriage. The relationships between couples is too complex and dynamic to generalize.

Most of what the writer of this article seems to me to apply to Democrats and others with disordered minds.

10 posted on 03/16/2008 12:54:47 PM PDT by olezip
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To: Perdogg

actually it was Sweden.

ummmm Sweden


11 posted on 03/16/2008 12:56:17 PM PDT by jabotinsky ("I die with Jabotinsky's name on my lips" - Shlomo b.Yosef, moments before his hanging by Brits)
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To: SJackson

Nobody has a clue anymore. DrLaura was about to drop the show a couple years ago because correcting the society seemed a lost cause. Savage, the same. But they continue because what else is there to do. It’s over.


12 posted on 03/16/2008 12:58:35 PM PDT by RightWhale (Clam down! avoid ataque de nervosa)
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To: SJackson
It is only the woman to whom he is not married, the one that has not been devalued through a merger with a failure, that can make him feel consequential.

So a drug addicted airhead makes him feel like a man? This Spitzer is a fool, he could have found a better looking and more interesting woman at a local bar and it would have only cost him a couple of margaritas.

What may be true of the Gov is not true of most men.

13 posted on 03/16/2008 1:02:54 PM PDT by oldbrowser (Ideologues are impractical.)
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To: SJackson
For the man to whom power is an aphrodisiac, paying a woman for sex becomes an erotic thrill.

Thats all fine and well, Shmuckly, but some men pay for sex because they aint getting it at home. Does it take a PHD to know that?

I feel pretty sure Shmuckface doesent get out enough to know what goes on in the real word, outside of his PC journals and other misandryst literature.

14 posted on 03/16/2008 1:03:13 PM PDT by Nonstatist
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To: SJackson

Couldn’t he just be a horney, self-centered cad? Why all the psychological BS.


15 posted on 03/16/2008 1:03:25 PM PDT by joebuck (Finitum non capax infinitum!)
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To: SJackson
This author mis-characterizes what Dr. Laura actually said, probably on purpose. On top of that, the question is answered in the headline, which means the article is superfluous. Here endeth the lesson.
16 posted on 03/16/2008 1:05:26 PM PDT by Republic of Texas (Socialism Always Fails)
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To: SJackson

I think because some men are immoral.


17 posted on 03/16/2008 1:07:48 PM PDT by onedoug
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To: DTogo

Why would any real man need a woman to stroke his ego? Good Lord. If a man is self-confident, strong, self-assured, his wife should not have to play the ‘praise and adoration’ act.


18 posted on 03/16/2008 1:07:57 PM PDT by yorkie (The FEW. The PROUD. The MARINES. Semper Fi)
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To: jabotinsky

Well, according to this it was France.

He was one of the chief architects of Opec’s policies - he thought he could drag his people into the modern age - yet was surprised when the West refused to give him shelter when he needed it. (He who controls the oil, controls who our friends are.) He was also naive. The man was impressed by our Western ways, having gone to the Rosey, having partied with Gianni Agnelli in St Moritz, having used Madame Claude’s hookers and all that. But he forgot one thing. As it turned out, the most important: the power of religion and tradition.


19 posted on 03/16/2008 1:09:21 PM PDT by Perdogg (Reagan would have never said "She's my girl")
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To: SJackson
Then she must have been really neglectful of Robert W. Morgan, otherwise he wouldn't have put pictures of her naked on the internet.
20 posted on 03/16/2008 1:11:04 PM PDT by Excellence (Bacon Bits Make Great Confetti)
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