This post will probably piss off pretty much everyone, but I think the world is making way too much of the revelation that the former governor of KAH-li-FOR-nia had a child outside of marriage.
So did Gallileo. So did Albert Einstein. So did Jesse Jackson. So did Grover Cleveland. ("Ma, ma, where's my Pa?" "Gone to the White House -- ha, ha, ha!") So did Thomas Jefferson. So did Warren Harding (whose love child is, in fact, still alive). So did Francois Mitterand. So did John Forbes Nash (who treated the kid quite shabbily -- and this was before he went wacky). So did Charles Lindbergh. So did Henry Ford. So did Franz Liszt. So did Eddie Murphy. So did Jack Nicholson. (Hey, it's Jack.) So did Thomas Merton. So (it is said) did Charles Dickens. So did Alexander Dumas.
It's not just a boy's club, of course. I could mention Ingrid Bergman...Mary Wollstonecraft...Marion Davies...
Of course, the modern rules hold that any man who strays is a beast, while any woman who has a child by a man not her husband is simply expressing her personhood or seeking self-fulfillment or communing with the Goddess. Or something like that.
(Side note: My beloved Bernadette had two illegitimate nieces. In the Pyrenees, the term for that was "farting at Vespers.")
Here's another admission that'll freak out my readership. Arnie wasn't that bad a governor. I expected him to be awful, especially in light of the slimeball way he got into office. But any Republican who pisses off the Republican establishment to the degree that he did must win my grudging admiration.
On an unrelated note: Say what you will about Barack Obama, this was pretty ballsy. Well, ballsy by the standards prevailing in modern American politics. By most other standards, it was from Wimpsville.
18 comments:
"So did Warren Harding (whose love child is, in fact, still alive)."
On the topic of presidential progeny, I recently learned that John Tyler, the 10th president, has two surviving grandchildren.
Well ... he is a member of the party that claims a moral superiority. GOP = god's own party, ever heard that?
Big deal, no. Funny, yes.
Not sure about the point here, Joseph.
So, the more the merrier?
-or-
Einstein did it (he was super smart), Ford did it (he gave us cars!), Wollstonecraft did it (but she was feminist)...so it's okay?
-or-
That fireman did such great job saving my house from burning down, so it's okay that he goes home and beats his wife every night?
Clarification would help.
And these are just the bastards we know about. So to speak.
ST, I'm asking if outsiders have much right to pass judgment.
I'm also asking why the people who say they are disgusted with Schwarzenegger would never think of screaming "that slut!" when they see Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca."
There IS a double-standard, and you know it.
Wasn't Bergman's infidelity quite the scandal in it's time? I don't know if I was even alive at the time but, I thought it was a pretty big deal.
Salacious stories are always popular with the public. And really, this one has elements you don't often get. Did any of those listed in your post raise the child in their own household? Did the birth of the (so-callled) legitimate & love children coincide so closely? Did the wife and the mistress live in the same house (although calling Maria & Arnold's mansion a house is stretching a point)
Besides all that, the idea of live-in servants is pretty alien to most Americans. Even the throw-away details are something new.
katie: I think there was a double standard when the whole Bergman/Rosellini/Lindstrom thing broke, and it worked the other way. As it happens, I just came across Life magazine's coverage of the birth of Bergman's baby, which they treated as a major event. Life, in an apparent attempt to get people to put everything in perspective, did a sidebar on famous people who had children out of wedlock. Which is kind of what I've done here.
I think everyone pretty much assumed that the Schwarzeneggers had live-in help. With THAT kind of money...
I'm just saying that now we get to hear about life with the live-in help -- and I really didn't remember the details about the Bergman thing. I thought there was some kind of talk even when she accepted the Oscar for Cactus Flower.
My mother in law is really torn up about this story (I think she had a bit of a crush on Arnold) but, is anyone else really taking it personally?
I'm squicked about the story, only because of the power diff between a powerful man and a woman on his household staff, but that possibility doesn't preclude of consent, so I withhold judgement on the issue.
I'm upset at the apparent betrayal of his wife, but at the same time, she surely knew about this, and the current seperation appears to be unrelated to his promiscous nature, and that's a personal story unrelated to his ability to do the job he was elected for.
He apparently ensured the child was provided for, something 70% of unwed mothers don't get, so props for that.
I think the personal sex lives are politicians should be ignored, unless they demonstrate an inability to treat their partners as full human beings, with the ability to consent, or aren't treated with respect.
I don't know where you get the idea that single mothers are revered, as gay marriage is more popular than single parenthood.
And in all actuality, the revulsion only increases exponentially the more fathers that are involved. Take it from someone who can speak with experience.
I don't think that you could have given three more unlikely women as examples to even your male/female score. Ingrid Bergman was denounced on the Senate floor for god's sake, refused TV spots, called "Whore" throughout the land and forced to leave for Europe for six years!
Once Mary Wollstonecraft's widower wrote a memoir about her "transgressions", her reputation remained in tatter's for more than a century.
Marion Davies never received recognition for being the fine actress she was until after her death, but rather as the "grasping opportunist whore" of Randolph Hearst. Even today there are people who believe that Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane is an absolutely true portrayal of Marion Davies.
The men you mention were objects of scorn like the women you mention? Rubbish!
Sophie
the current seperation appears to be unrelated to his promiscous nature, and that's a personal story unrelated to his ability to do the job he was elected for.
Not sure that's true. I thought a recent positive paternity test was the precipitating factor, but I may be mistaken. Also, there was the recent firing of this person, which led to her confirming what she had previously denied.
On the other hand, Ms. S mentioned the additional factors of a) the end of the governship, and b) the death of her parents. So it might have been a long-planned divorce, held off for appearance's sake.
Whatever Arnold did well as governor, his original sin was pandering to the outrage that the car title tax had to be returned to its former rates. He never could find the $15 billion (iirc) he was losing by not reinstituting that rate, and ended up with the borrowing that he had criticized Davis for. Certainly a clown figure out of his depth, IMO.
XI
Sophi...you seem to have missed my comment.
"I think there was a double standard when the whole Bergman/Rosellini/Lindstrom thing broke, and it worked the other way."
Re-read the last five words.
The point is Joseph, it's that culturally and professionally, it's still women more stigmatized by illegitimacy than men. My own partner's father begrudgingly married his mother, days after birth in the mid-70's. He speaks often of the fact that being married still didn't alleviate all the prejudice directed toward her. though his father was mostly exempt from scorn, active with local groups like the Masons, and publicly kept a mistress.
I myself am one of those scarlet whorish women, unsure of the paternity of my child until months after birth. So, honestly, that a man is finally getting to taste the medicine women have been getting for years, doesn't really concern me, even if I can admit that the public outrage is stupid and misdirected.
Actually, I believe that this whole thread and your post misses the salient point...that if this information had been revealed at the time of the recall election and been confirmed, Schwarzenegger might not have won the election. The fact that all the gropenager rumors were not only based in fact but greatly understated the truth, that the media refused to adequately investigate charges that were in fact true, that his now humiliated wife stood by his side and in his defense supposedly believing in her husband's innocence, and all those women who had come forward with their stories of his crude advances were held in general disdain and dissed by the press -- that is what makes this revelation so profoundly nauseating. Whether he eventually did a good job or bad job or whether or not it is criminal to dip one’s stick elsewhere when you're married, is not at issue. Just as with W and Obama, he won through lies, the complicity of the press, the silence of those who knew better, and the star struck naivete of the public. What is at issue is the fact that Schwarzenegger gained office through dissembling. Given the broader reality - that may not be so shocking anymore. But it is still nevertheless despicable.
I think something is being overlooked here. It's not just that Arnold had a kid out of wedlock, it's that he kept it a secret the entire time he was governor.
On top of that, he put his wife in DANGER. The person he had an affair and child with was an integral part of HIS HOME!
"If only Shriver weren't around...."
Arnold got to choose the time and place for his "confession", and 10 years or more after the fact makes his situation different from probably every situation mentioned in this article.
Damn!
Nobody I know got Raptured so I have to keep working for a living. No free stuff!
Great post -- none of our business what happens in Arnold/Maria's private lives. Of course she knew he was a world class philanderer. None of our business that Spitzer saw hookers -- of course the missus knew as well. Both were pretty good governors -- actually, Spitzer had been a truly remarkable New York State Attorney General (keep ur eye on the new guy in that seat) and was on his way to similar accomplishments in the Gov mansion. Arnold deserves real cred on the enviro front -- he led the fight against the Texas oil cabal that tried to snuff out Cali's national model clean air standards. Maybe wasn't so great re:labor.
Standing ovation for makana44, who gets it and nails it.
Pretty shocking that anyone else here would miss that.
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