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French Letters

Look how our politics degenerates: prurience hardly worthy of a grammar school playground substitutes for policy debate.

So what if Sam Hoyt had affairs with legislative interns? And who cares about the Internet rumor that Byron Brown is gay? Why should I care about any of this? What sort of people use this sort of stuff to undermine each other in their workplace? What kind of journalist, serious or half-baked, spends time on this tripe?

Seriously, Artvoice advice experts, tell me why I should care? Am I missing something?

—A. Paul DeVoter

Ruthless says: You’re nobody ’til somebody loves you…or starts an internet rumor that you’re gay. And what’s with these interns anyway? Working for free and sleeping with the boss = “unclear on the concept.”

I’d tell you to ignore it, except there’s not an English-speaking person over the age of four and in possession of hearing faculties who could avoid the subject. Sex scandal is our national obsession, and apparently the principal pastime in the political world. Other cultures don’t seem so inclined to talk about it, to dwell on it, to investigate the minute details of it…I’m sure I don’t need to go on.

I’d tell you to move to Canada, but they don’t want you anyway. And Canadian TV, while maybe not as degenerate, is really pretty boring (forgive me, SCTV).

Dr. Sigmund Fraud says: The other day I was speaking with someone who lived through the Great Depression, and she told me that back then everyone knew Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a mistress. Nevertheless, the man was elected so many times that they had to change the law to limit the number of years a president could serve to eight. Back then, the majority of Americans apparently didn’t care what FDR did with his personal life.

At first, they were probably too busy starving in bread lines to care, and later, as the New Deal put the unemployed to work on all kinds of public works projects, they were too busy putting their shoulders to the wheel for the betterment of the nation’s infrastructure.

We live in a sadly different country today. Prudish finger-pointing is commonplace. Those with no specific moral compass can at least ground themselves by pointing at others who may or may not have broken their matrimonial vows. These gossipy distracters are like unpopular teens that try to bring down the cheerleaders by starting vicious rumors. If they can catch the quarterback going to a movie with a girl from a rival high school, you bet your ass they’ll be broadcasting the fact with a flow of text messages more steady than a stock market crawl.

This sort of nonsense doesn’t fly elsewhere. In France, Francois Mitterrand’s 1996 funeral was attended by his mistress—by whom he had fathered a daughter named Mazarine—and it wasn’t viewed as the makings of a sentimental country song. The man led the country for 14 years.

I don’t know and I don’t care if these rumors about Brown and Hoyt are true or untrue. They are private issues that should be kept private. But since you brought it up, and assuming the stories are true, they are merely following in the footsteps of other great, philandering politicians like FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton.

Which is one more reason why I say I’m proud to be a Democrat.

Ask Anyone is local advice by and for local people. Please send your questions for our panel of experts to advice@artvoice.com.

Reader Comments

Richard J. Garfunkel
20 Aug 2008, 20:04

Dr. Siggy Fraud-

First of all there were no breadlines under FDR, that was Hoover's administration, and he did not have a mistress and no one had a clue whether he did or not. Lucy Mercer Rutherford was happily married all during FDR's administration until 1944, and by all accounts they met for lunch and dinner a number of times in the last year of his life. (Read Joseph Persico's new book!) His "friendship" in the late nineteen's was over before he contracted polio,10 years before he was elected president, and was unknown by anyone except family intimates. In fact, no one knew about his later friendship with Lucy. So your sources are full of it. As too Missy LeHand, she was his private secretary, and if you are referring to her, there is no evidence of anything improper. Again no one in those days had any hint of any impropriety and there has never been a "smoking gun" regarding her since her death in 1944. Of course being a Democrat does not exclude you from being an uniformed clod.

RJG, Tarrytown, NY

Dr. Sigmung Fraud
21 Aug 2008, 16:30

Thanks for writing, Richard. Perhaps you should direct your criticism to all of the many Web sites that discuss Lucy Mercer Rutherford. Here's an excerpt from her Wikipedia page:

Lucy Mercer was hired by Franklin's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, as a personal secretary in the winter of 1913; previously, Mercer had worked in the Washington D.C. shop of society decorator Elsie Cobb Wilson.[1][2]

It is unclear when the Mercer-Roosevelt affair began, but in September 1918, Eleanor discovered love letters between her husband and her social secretary when he returned from Europe suffering from the flu of 1918.[3] Eleanor offered her husband a divorce. The future president's mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, however, threatened to disinherit him if he divorced his wife. Eleanor gave an ultimatum to Franklin: stop seeing Lucy Mercer or obtain a divorce. Roosevelt did not want to sacrifice his political career, so he promised never to see his mistress again. However, Roosevelt continued to see Mercer over the years.

The Mercer-Roosevelt affair became public in 1966, when it was revealed in The Time Between the Wars (Doubleday), a memoir written by Jonathan Daniels, a former Roosevelt aide from 1943 to 1945 who was then editor in chief of The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.[4] However, Mercer's daughter and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. denied any romance between their respective parents had occurred; the historical record, however, has established the romance beyond doubt. As Daniels said of the family's denials, "I'm not surprised. They'll be picking away at this story, but it's very true."[5]

Now, in what way are you related to Lucy Mercer Rutherford?

RJ Garfunkel
05 Sep 2008, 11:57

Dear Dr. Fraud!

Quoting Wikipedia begs the issue. You said "his mistress," and I answered accurately. The affair happened when I said it did, she was not his mistress when he was President, as I stated. In their day and until Jonathan Daniels, the son of FDR's boss at the Navy Department during Wilson's administration, talked about their relationship it was not public knowledge. No one knew of their past relationship during his presidency, and Jonathan Daniels was told after his death. You quote someone who said,"every one knew." That is ridiculous, flummery and an outright fabrication. I lecture on FDR and have enough books on him (400) to fill a small library. In fact, even his vitirolic cousin Alice Roosevelt Longworth who sensed something was going on, and supposedly encouraged the relationship because she hated her first cousin Eleanor, never wrote or spoke of the "affair" according to the historical record

Again I commented on your cavalier use of "after the fact declarations." I stand by my remarks, that she wasn't his mistress, past 1918, if their was any consummation of the affiar at all, and according to all records he never saw her until her husband's death in 1944. He may have called her, or may have written her in those intervening years. According to Joe Persico, who interviewed her elderly daughter, (she died in the late 1940's of cancer,) they ate lunch or went for a drive!

No, I am not related to Lucy Mercer Rutherford!

RJ Garfunkel

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