In 2003, a college- and then San Francisco friend of mine, Matt Gonzalez, ran for mayor in SF and, as a Green, nearly defeated a Democrat in a practically one-party Democratic city. It was a very heady time, and working on the campaign, and hanging out with the candidate and his burgeoning entourage in the waning days of the election was really fun and invigorating and gave me a shred of belief in our democratic process. It was the first political activism I’ve engaged in in many years. The guy who defeated Matt, Gavin Newsom, has since been pimped as one of the Dems’ golden boys for the future: featured in a Vanity Fair pictorial with his (then) wife Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom; written of in sentences featuring words such as "Kennedy" and "White House," the works.
Gavin Newsom has always been repulsive to me, from everything I’ve seen and heard, a slick, plastic, fake of a man, the kind of guy I’d vote for because of his policies but would do so with gritted teeth and a plugged nose (see also: Joe Biden). The Halloween that came a few weeks before Matt and Gavin’s SF mayoral runoff, I went out dressed in a snazzy suit and a really disturbing bug-eyed businessman mask. The mask (handmade, from Guatemala, if I remember correctly) was so scary people constantly avoided talking to me or else asked me to take it off. With the suit and the mask, I wore a sticker: “Hello, My Name is: GAVIN GREUSOME.” (I wish I had a picture to show you.)
So I must admit that I took some pleasure this past week in the scandal that’s erupted in my former home-city. It seems Mayor Newsom was having an affair with his most trusted aide’s wife – oops – and the cuckolded fellow confronted the mayor and then quit. But what’s of special interest to M.A.I.D. is a follow-up column in the SF Chronicle entitled, “Unforgivable Breach of Man Code.” In it C.W. Nevius discusses how men are less forgiving of Newsom’s sins than are women:
Apparently it is the Man Code, a set of rigid but unwritten boundaries over which no man may step. Break the Man Code, and you’re toast.
"It’s a huge betrayal," sputtered Jason Mundstuk, 67, a business owner from Oakland who got upset just talking about it. "It’s big. It’s mythical."
C’mon, you say, what is this, a TV beer commercial? Evidently not. These guys were dead serious. Make no mistake — having an affair with the wife of a trusted male colleague is an irrevocable Man Code violation.
Chris Lehane, a consultant who worked for Clinton and other top Democrats, says the split isn’t a total surprise. Although he stresses that gender generalizations are always dangerous, he thinks some trends do emerge. "The reality is that men tend to be less forgiving and more ideologically conservative," Lehane says, "while women tend to be more sensitive to human foibles. We see in the poll numbers that women are more likely to come back and be supportive than men."
This interests me in relation to the outrageous male hatred of Hillary Clinton that I posted about recently. I attributed much of the Hillary vitriol in part to hatred of Bill, and thus hatred of Hillary for seemingly letting him get away with his conoodling. For me, the reaction of men to the Newsom mess backs this up – men are more bitter and vindictive when it comes to philandering. Perhaps, Nevius’s article suggests, this is in part because women are more used to such behavior then are men. But perhaps, in part, whether due to nurture or nature, women are just more forgiving. And, as I mentioned in the Hillary piece, because what’s even worse than immoral behavior, to many men, is immoral behavior they wish they could get away with but couldn’t, or wouldn’t even dare try in the first place.
How do I feel about the issue in general? Well, it’s hard for me to separate what Newsom did from what a sleazebag he’s always seemed to me. That aside, though, on the whole, I do find that I am more moralistic and absolute than a great many women I know, and judge myself and others more harshly than do those same women (and, frankly, a lot of men, too). If a friend of mine had done what Newsom did, I would be very upset, and hope that said friend felt equal parts contrition (after the fact), and (before and during the fact) that he was helplessly, passionately drawn to the woman (or man) in question, not just having a fling – at best extremely inconsiderately, if helplessly, at worst intentionally – at his friend’s expense. If he were doing the latter, he would no longer be my friend, if he were doing the former, he’d maybe be forgivable. But Gavin Newsom’s just a prick who got caught – I’m guessing he didn’t give a shit about how his aide felt one way or the other, he just took what he could get. Not fair of me, as I really have no idea what went on, of course, but who says I gotta be fair.
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On a lighter note. During Super Bowl week, on one of the live-from-Miami sports radio programs (No, I don’t know why, I really don’t know why I keep listening to it. I need an intervention.), one of the hosts read an ad for what I think was a moisturizer or body spray for men. The gist of the ad was that “skin” was a namby-pamby word, real men should come up with something better, how about MAN SUIT! Yes, friends, “man suit.” The tag line for the product was “Whatever-the-product-name-was: Maintenance for your Man Suit.” Wow. Googling the phrase or “man suit” netted me zero results for said product. If anyone can tell me what it was, I’d be much obliged – it’s real cold here in Western Mass., and my dry, chapped man suit needs some serious maintainin’.
