My Judith Giuliani Problem -- and Yours?

Having written my first two Huffington Postings on earnest investigative subjects involving young people who got sick and died because of corruption in powerful places, I figure I can now scoot from the highest to the lowest form of posting: the unadulterated, will-I-respect-myself-in-the-morning-for-pressing-SEND? id-dump. Here goes:

This morning, upon reading the revelations of Judith Giuliani's third marriage, I said to my husband: "This will be trouble for Rudy." Not because Rudy's been married three times" -- people who've already approvingly slotted him as the results-producing pol and the antiterrorism candidate will excuse his "messy" personal life (they might even find it touchingly "human") -- but because she has been. And because, all along, she's been kinda, sorta, maybe revealing herself as...well, dangerously close to a certain kind of spine-tinglingly icky archetype that sets off alarm bells in even the most commitedly feminist heart. And that archetype is: The Bosomy, Decolletage-Trotting, Husband-Shnoogling, Gold-digging, Getting-The-Man-Comes-First, Everything-Else-Comes-Second, Three-Times-Marrying Babe.

Phew. Got that off my chest.

Show of hands: Anyone out there ever have one of these women in your family?

I did. My Aunt Y.

Aunt Y was a showgirl type person. She married my uncle, who owned a big nightclub. She was beautiful and calm and she had a huge dressing room with mirrors and powder puffs and crystal bottles of liquids that smelled of islands and meadows. I was in awe of her, and she scared me -- with good reason, it turned out. She started having an affair with my father. My uncle tried to kill my father (and almost succeeded) and then Aunt Y and my father ran off together and got married. I was not happy about this and told my father so quite bluntly-- and my relationship with him ended on a dime. When he died (as a result of my uncle having tried to kill him over Aunt Y), Aunt Y quickly married a third time. She outlived everyone in her first family -- her first husband (my uncle), their daughter (who was murdered by a serial killer), her grandson (a schizophrenic who jumped off a building), her son (who blew his brains out when his schizophrenic son jumped off the building) -- as well as her second husband (my father). As a matter of fact, she also outlived her third husband. I shudder: She's still alive!

I don't know, maybe it's just me. But my mother, the first feminist I ever met and my role model -- the one who was the working journalist when everyone else's mother was the PTA mom: she saw Aunt Y coming from a mile away (not that forewarned was forearmed).

In 1963, Norman Podhoretz wrote an essay in Commentary called "My Negro Problem -- And Ours." The essay revealed his bigotry and his prejudice, but I guess in it he got some very non-p.c. feelings off his chest and maybe that felt good. Now, as a feminist, I've done the same. So: If there are other women out there who have had Aunt Ys in their lives, and if they (unlike me) are inclined to vote Republican, and if Rudy Giuliani does get the nomination, then I'll tell ya something: As much as he is going to have to re-prove some things that he is (or was), she is going to have to go up against these women's...(I'll be big and call it) prejudice ...to prove that she's not something else.