#348

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The Profumo affair was a major scandal in British politics in 1963. John Profumo was Britain’s Secretary of War, and while he was in office he had a brief affair with a beautiful young model named Christine Keeler, who was 19 at the time. When the news broke, Profumo denied it at first but eventually had to admit the truth. He resigned from his office, and the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, soon followed. There were allegations that Keeler had also been sleeping with a Soviet naval attaché at the same time, so this was doubly juicy in the Cold War environment, and obviously big trouble for everyone involved. In the other reference, Dante is famous for The Inferno, of course, the author’s imagined tour through Hell, and Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet, wrote the poetry collection titled A Season in Hell. B.’s point is that the hell these two imagined was “structured,” whereas the hellish “oblongs” unleashed on Profumo and Macmillan by a woman B. is calling “whore Keeler” are the kinds of things shared by Henry and his surviving friends. It pisses him off that she gets to go on with her life, be reformed, have a career, raise a family, after ruining the lives of two prominent statesmen and effectively bringing down the whole government. “Her pimp killed himself / she pursued her career.” Ouch. The last reference is to Cheryl Crane, Lana Turner’s daughter, who killed Lana Turner’s lover, Johnny Stompanato, with a knife in 1958 when she was only 14. The relationship was abusive and tempestuous, and Stompanato is described as a “small-time hood” with Mafia connections. He had threatened to kill Lana Turner, so the daughter came to her mother’s defense, waiting for him outside their room and stabbing him with a butcher knife. (There’s something to be said for a boring life after all…) So, it was ugly, ugly. B.’s take on the lives of Christine Keeler and Cheryl Crane?

            Can anyone reach that stupidity of sin?

            Complacent, laughing, as      in America we have Lana Turner

            whose daughter killed her mother’s gangster lover, to

            an access of box-office.

Cheryl Crane’s story was put to film a number of times, but events in her life triggered a downward slide and she ended up in a mental institution. To call this “stupidity of sin,” and to say that she was “complacent, laughing” seems lavishly unfair.

In fact, I don’t think it’s too much to call this the most misogynist Dream Song yet. In Keeler’s case, it’s hard to say what actually went on, and I have little interest in going deeper into it from here, but one thing seems certain: She was 19, young, and she certainly wasn’t acting alone. Was she seduced, mistreated, harassed? Don’t know. But for sure, she was not solely to blame for the downfall of a politician who knew what he was risking. Happens all the time of course. Was she a scheming little temptress? Even if she was, she doesn’t get sole blame for the scandal. B. doesn’t extend that courtesy. Then to compare this with the desperate act of a fourteen year old girl who was terrified she was going to lose her mother to a gangster’s rage? No. Not buying it.

No one needs to hear from me about double standards and misogynistic fury, directed at women who kill or ruin men. This may be changing slowly now, but to read B., things hadn’t gotten that far yet in his day. Power looks out for its own. Bernie Madoff was a crook and swindler, absolutely, but so is half of Wall Street. Madoff’s mistake was stealing (in part) from rich people. He didn’t get bailed out like they did, he got put away. When a young woman ruins a man or kills him, she doesn’t get off easy in the world B. inhabited, doesn’t matter why she did it or what role the guy played. I’m leveling this at B., but only because he didn’t have the desire to question the roles the men played: The women were whores, they brought down men and got off scot-free. Disgusting.

Well, it’s not so simple because there are plenty enough scheming little temptress psychopaths in the world I suppose. I never met any that I know of, but I travel in well-adjusted circles—I think. Still, I seriously doubt these women were that bad, but B. lays blame on the women. They brought down men as their victims, and that’s all he needs. Bullies like to rationalize their behavior with victimhood posturing. I don’t see B. as a bully, but his loyalty is squarely with his gender. The stories of these women are not afforded the complexity of real lives, with all the suffering that came with the situations they were involved in. They’re reduced to whores in his estimation. Lip curled in contempt, he turns his back. Case closed.