Women of the world, don’t be fooled. Men can multitask – if they have powerful jobs and are not expected to be faithful.
Silvio Berlusconi, Mark Sanford, Gordon Ramsay and Eliot Spitzer are all superb multi-taskers who check all of these boxes:
Big time job, tick
In the public eye, tick.
Gaining considerable fortunes, tick.
Discovered to be having extra-marital affairs, tick. In some cases, tick tick tick.
As any multi-tasker will tell you, it’s not easy doing ten million things at once.
All that obfuscation and intrigue, sneaking around and flying long distances for short interludes, composing romantic text messages and flower arrangements for more than one woman as well as turning up to the office/kitchen/football field and getting your mug in the newspapers – it’s enough to make you want to go and live in rural Argentina in a hut.
Just yesterday I was looking at a photograph of Veronica Lario, Silvio Berlusconi’s second wife and the mother of three of his children. It wasn’t her blue eyes or defined cheekbones, but her predicament that was most captivating.
Originally an actress, Lario married Berlusconi in 1990 but filed for divorce in May this year claiming she could no longer be with a man who “consorts with minors”.
Her public reproach was met with equally public exasperation from Berlusconi who claimed his wife was working against him ahead of the national elections, a crucial time in his career.
Unfortunately for Berlusconi, his wife’s accusations triggered a series of scandals involving an 18-year-old aspiring model and actress Noemi Letizia.
Publicly humiliated and claiming that her dignity “had been besmirched” Lario last week wrote a letter to Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading newspaper damning the invasive media attention.
You can sense her rage at the sheer injustice of it all and the way the events unfolded, leaving her - not him - to answer questions and face public scrutiny.
She’s not alone. A string of men have been dragging their spouses, who have in most cases been married for over ten years, into the spotlight after having affairs.
Eliot Spitzer was the first of the group to make the news when in March 2008 he stepped down from his elected role as Governor of New York. He’d only be in the job for 18 months before it was revealed he was a client of a prostitute ring.
A press conference followed shortly after with Silda Wall Spitzer standing beside him, pale and drawn as he made his confession and apologised.
Then there was Gordon Ramsay who in November 2008, having only just been named the worlds highest-paid chef was snapped coming out of the ritzy Marriott hotel in London with a woman identified as being not his wife.
Days after the press got hold of the photograph of Ramsay, the woman that is his wife, 33 year old Tana who claims to have a worse temper than her husband was seen arm in arm in a united front along the food aisles at Harrods.
And last but not least, there’s Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina.
His wife, Jenny Sanford who was the Senator’s top political advisor and said to have “launched his career” discovered his indiscretion in January of this year after going through their finances. She claims to have confronted her husband who then agreed to end the affair.
Mrs Sanford told friends her husband asked permission to visit his lover on several occasions after that to which she firmly declined. Yet only a week ago, Senator Sanford lied to colleagues and his family and escaped to Argentina to see his lover, Maria, under the pretence that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Only after serious concerns were raised for Senator Sanford’s welfare did he re-emerge and publicly confessed to the affair.
His wife on the other hand, packed up to their beach house and held a frank and exclusive interview with the press.
“When I found out in January, we both indicated a willingness to continue working on the marriage, but there’s not room for three people in a marriage,” she said.
“I’ve done everything in my power possibly to keep him from going to see her and to really make sure she was off the table, including asking him to leave.”
But perhaps it’s just as Meghan McCain, Senator John McCain’s daughter and now a witty and insightful columnist and blogger, says, it really shouldn’t matter.
“Sex and politics are two very different things, even if sometimes they seem hopelessly entwined,” she wrote for the Daily Beast.
“What he [Sanford] does in his personal life, I believe, would have nothing to do with how he balances his state’s budget or conducts business.”
There are a heap of success stories. Bill Gates, Bob Geldof, both George W. Bush and his dad George H. W., John Howard and Russell Crowe - these guys have success in their work and managed to avoid the trap and most have been married for a significant amount of time.
So, can men be powerful and remain faithful? What do you think?
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