Revenge of the scorned

Alessandra Stanley:

One reason so many Italians — and quite possibly at least one American ex-president — love Silvio Berlusconi lies in his response to his wife, Veronica Lario, after she complained publicly about his womanizing and demanded a divorce. “Veronica will have to publicly apologize to me,” Mr. Berlusconi, the 72-year-old Italian prime minister, said grandly. “And I don’t know if that will be enough.”

Politics Italian-style looked particularly comical and benign this past week as Americans relived John Edwards’s marital betrayal on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in all its sad, sordid detail. Elizabeth Edwards, who has written a book, “Resilience,” about her personal trials, told all to Ms. Winfrey while her penitent husband slunk to another part of their North Carolina mansion, waiting his turn to answer to Ms. Winfrey — an Ethan Frome of his former self.

It’s tempting to see these two political scandals as a contrast of corrupt Europe and puritanical America — an aging, wily Italian statesman using sex, and sexism, to boost his image, while a young American politician wrecks his career — and unforgivably wounds his admirable wife — for a brief, forbidden dalliance.

But that only works under the sexist assumption that it is the men who matter. Mrs. Edwards’s star turn on “Oprah” doesn’t quite fit the template of naïve New World idealism; it looked more like an exquisite form of revenge, the kind of well-oiled comeuppance that the Marquise de Merteuil concocted in “Dangerous Liaisons.”

Mrs. Edwards, who spoke bravely about her cancer and her husband’s deceit, explained that she didn’t want his misstep to define her or their 30-year marriage; she made sure, however, that he will never live it down.

Ms. Lario, 52, thought she could exact revenge by shaming her skirt-chasing fool of a husband. Instead, the skirt-chaser made a fool of her. (His is a Mediterranean version of Richard Pryor’s famous riposte: “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”)

Like many an American innocent abroad, Ms. Lario should have known better. She is not without experience: she, too, was once a comely young starlet cavorting with an adulterer. The couple met in 1980 when he was a married real estate tycoon and she was on stage in “The Magnificent Cuckold.” Not that Ms. Lario doesn’t have a point — Mr. Berlusconi does flirt with younger women, he does bestow political patronage to beauty pageant contestants and starlets, and he did travel to Naples to attend a birthday celebration for an 18-year-old aspiring model, whom he described as the daughter of a friend. (“This surprised me,” Ms. Lario said in a news release. “Because he never attended the 18th birthday parties of his children, even if he was invited.” )

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There is no opera buffa to Mrs. Edwards’s pain and anger at a husband who betrayed her twice — first by having an affair with Rielle Hunter and then by assuring her it was only a one-night stand until The National Enquirer proved him a liar a year and a half later. Mrs. Edwards said her cancer played a role in helping her through a second wave of rage. “Being sick meant a number of things to me,” she told Ms. Winfrey. “One is that my life is going to be less long and I didn’t want to spend it fighting.”

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Mrs. Edwards’s disclosures underscore the curious silence of Silda Wall Spitzer, who stood by Eliot Spitzer’s side when he admitted to hiring call girls, and stayed there after he resigned his post as governor of New York. Mr. Spitzer spent a few months in isolation, and is now back on the circuit, writing articles and giving interviews about the credit crisis and corporate greed.

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I suspect it is probably easier to compartmentalize rental sex in private in Spitzer's case with affairs that produce children or with public flirtations that seem extreme. The Edwards affair also has some elements that suggest enablement by Mrs. Edwards who continued to support his candidacy after the affair became obvious. That said, her pain is still understandable as is Mrs. Sitzer's private pain. Affairs tend to feed one's ego and one's insecurities about growing old. But the sense of betrayal probably lives much longer.