{"id":14928,"date":"2008-03-18T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14928.html"},"modified":"2008-03-18T11:00:30","modified_gmt":"2008-03-18T15:00:30","slug":"does-anyone-care-about-patersons-adultery-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/does-anyone-care-about-patersons-adultery-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Does anyone care about Paterson’s adultery controversy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a minimum, this<\/a> is a little embarrassing. Just a week after Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal, his successor publicly acknowledged having an adulterous affair several years ago.<\/p>\n

The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state’s new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs.<\/p>\n

In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.<\/p>\n

In the course of several interviews in the past few days, Paterson said he maintained a relationship for two or three years with “a woman other than my wife,” beginning in 1999.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paterson acknowledged marital problems at the time, but he and wife “went to counseling and we decided we wanted to make it work.” The governor’s wife was aware of the affair long before yesterday.<\/p>\n

What made Paterson come clean? The New York Daily News, which treated this as a blockbuster story, reported, “The First Couple agreed to speak publicly about the difficulties in their marriage in response to a variety of rumors about Paterson’s personal life that have been circulating in Albany and among the press corps in recent days.”<\/p>\n

The timing of the announcement makes sense. Paterson wants to get the dirty laundry out into the open now, so it won’t be a distraction later.<\/p>\n

That said, I’m a little surprised the right is raising a fuss about this.
\n
\nPaterson’s problem, by all appearances, was a personal one. No laws were broken. His family stayed together and the whole unfortunate incident was years ago.<\/p>\n

And yet, quite a few conservatives seem outraged<\/a> this morning.<\/p>\n

One said<\/a>, “Define irony? Booting a governor out of office in disgrace due to a sex scandal while at the very same moment swearing a new one who has already had a sex scandal…. I guess NY Democrats are just happen [sic<\/i>] he didn\u2019t pay for services, he just cheated on his wife the old fashion [sic<\/i>] way. Unreal.”<\/p>\n

Another said<\/a>, “Is it really that hard to stick to the rule against adultery? … If you can’t keep that one solemn promise you make in front of everyone important to you, why should you be trusted to keep any<\/i> of your promises? … So Gov. Patterson [sic<\/i>] cheated on his wife, and vice-versa. Okey-dokey. Hand him the keys to the governor’s mansion and let him have at it. I’m sure we can trust the man. Right?<\/i>”<\/p>\n

I can appreciate the fact that conservatives want to take advantage of Paterson’s previous marital problems, but is this really where Republicans want to go? A years-old extra-marital affair is, in and of itself, a major scandal and front-page news? Someone with adultery in their past should necessarily be considered untrustworthy?<\/p>\n

If so, why exactly did the party just make John McCain<\/a> its presidential nominee?<\/p>\n

McCain was still married and living with his wife in 1979 while, according to The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, “aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich.” McCain divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, then launched his political career with his new wife’s family money. In 2000, McCain managed to deflect media questioning about his first marriage with a deft admission of responsibility for its failure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just sayin’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a minimum, this is a little embarrassing. Just a week after Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal, his successor publicly acknowledged having an adulterous affair several years ago. The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state’s new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}