Wife puts troubling face on the Spitzer scandal

Silda Wall Spitzer did not say a word as her husband, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, brusquely apologized to his family and the public after he was allegedly caught on a wiretap doing business with a high-priced prostitution ring. Her face was drawn. But she took her husband's hand as they left the room.

This scandal has many salacious details, but it was the image of Silda Wall Spitzer at her man's side that dominated conversations across the country Tuesday.

That moment of public humiliation stayed with people -- men and women, Democrats and Republicans. At a beauty salon in Brooklyn Heights, at the Mellow Mushroom pizzeria in midtown Atlanta, at a Denver office building, at a bar in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the same questions came up:

How could she?

Why did she?

Haven't we seen this play one too many times?

Why do we go through this ritual of public shame and repentance, with the political wife standing mutely before the TV cameras as her husband admits his sexual indiscretion?

"I find it nauseating . . . phony and awful," said Leah Schanzer, 38, a doctoral student who stopped for coffee at a Starbucks in New York City. She gave an exaggerated shudder.

"It makes it seem like she's Susie Homemaker," said her friend Leslie Heller, 47. "She shouldn't be standing there, next to him."

As attorney general and -- for a little over a year -- governor, Spitzer set himself up as a crusader, bent on exposing unethical behavior. The allegation that the Democrat frequented an international call-girl ring has proved an irresistible twist.

"The story is juicy because of the sex, but it's really about betraying the trust that you hold," said Roz Perlmuth, 66, a retired teacher from Palm Desert, Calif.

Newspaper websites have been swamped with thousands of comments on the case; gleeful barbs are being tossed around the blogosphere.

But to many -- especially women -- the tawdry details added up to more than another generic scandal. When they looked at Silda Wall Spitzer's weary face, it felt personal.

"She should've said, 'This is your fight. This is your battle. You stand there and get yourself out of it,' " said Linda Walters, 61. The Denver resident said she divorced her own cheating spouse.