There are such things.
I’ve said this before: the Japanese believe that every man is composed of four men; the one who is known to the general public, the one who is known to his associates, the one who is known to his closest family and friends, and the one who is known only to himself.
Men who love women…and we’ve known a few public figures in our lifetimes who probably fit this definition…generally love women behind those last two closed doors; 1) among closest friends and 2) to themselves.
I always think of JFK, and then Bill Clinton, both of who are seen as men who love(d) women, yet, on closer inspection, they were very different. Then, next to them, up very close, I think of my mentor, a senior business executive in a Fortune 500 company, who I followed around closely for ten years.
Compare.
What all three bear in common is that they always were this way, from puberty on in all likelihood.
JFK was a child of privilege, so always had people coming up behind him cleaning up his messes, which was a Kennedy tradition going back to Old Man Joe. His tastes in women were in keeping with his wealth and station. His trysts, and there were many, were always carried on behind closed door #3, for a lot of other people had to know his comings and goings. It was also attended by bartenders, a little combo, and a guy driving the boat. His bevy of babes were little more than camp followers, their major requirement that they could fill out a bikini (the kind you saw girls doing the Swim in all those Annette-Frankie movies), but who also dressed out nicely in a cocktail dress, and were, well, of easy virtue.
The rich and famous have a casting couch not unlike Hollywood, and party girls are always standing in line to audition.
Although rumors persist about Marilyn Monroe, some mafia gun moll, and others, there is no history that JFK ever had a serious relationship behind Door #3, just fun.
Bill Clinton on the other hand, was raised poor, in a broken home. The type of women he liked also reflected his upbringing, as I think he spent a lot of money in Hot Springs on corner hookers as a kid, in part because, as the typical fat kid in the band, while the football players were getting all the mystiques in school, he had to satisfy himself with mistakes instead. And sometimes for hire.
All JFK had to pay for was the booze.
We also know from his days as governor that Clinton used his office as a form of access to sexual favors from ladies, a thing JFK never had to do. Clinton was more of a masher, who even used the state police to procure for him.
If JFK’s and Clinton’s worlds were reversed one wonders if Clinton would still have been the masher, or still preferred high-haired bimbos, or JFK would have resorted to heavy-handed (sic) aggressive grope-and-grab tactics to sate his appetite. I can’t say.
But as history now stands we have an example of two men who loved women behind their respective Door #3 in a totally different manner.
Enter my boss, who I worked for 1979-1989.
He was raised on a farm, played college football before the war, and became the number four senior executive in his company in 1972. He had a home in a small factory city of 20,000, had an office in the main plant in that town and another executive office at the corporate headquarters about 100 miles away.
Unlike JFK and Clinton, he loved women almost entirely behind Door #4. A good family man, in church every Sunday, a close circle of perhaps 20-30 friends of 25 years, none of whom were involved in his business, I suspect fewer than five of them knew about Door #4 at all.
I knew only because he told me, as a very subtle heads-up. In the country club locker room one Saturday, he waved me over to his locker, and produced a little black book…yep, a little black book…and said, if anything ever happens to me, make sure you get to this first and destroy it. Then he handed me a key.
That was that.
I traveled with my boss all over the south, visiting plants, conferences, golf events (he was a 3 handicap, I was a 9). We stayed in the same hotels/motels. I always drove the rental car.
At the office, he was, as I have said about Herman Cain, one of the very, very few bosses with easy access. He had three secretaries. He probably spent 1-2 hours a day just listening to problems…from family to other personal matters to a dispute in the boiler room.
At several events out of town, especially cocktail parties, I would observe him with other women, chatting and smiling, without even the slightest sign of paying special attention to any specific part of the women. You know what I mean. But on a few occasions I did notice him show discomfort around a few of them. Real physical discomfort. In ten years, I never knew if it was the cleavage, the sequins, the hair color, the aroma, or smile, but within a few minutes he’d come over to me and tell me he was going back to the room, he was tired.
Only he never took one of them with him. Nope, I never saw a single woman trail along after him. For all I know he really was tired and I may been drawing the wrong conclusion. Or maybe he had his black book.
That was how well he kept Door #4 closed to every peering eye.
And that, believe it or not, is how real men who love women behave. The don’t kiss the help. They keep every dalliance away from town, two states away if at all possible.
The point is, because of this sort of discretion you’ll never know who is and who isn’t a man who loves women, because they generally live that part of their lives in a world in which no one else is invited.
I’ve always thought of Clinton as a horndog and masher, and possibly a rapist…and a crude one at that. Unlike JFK and my boss, he really was trying to score with the girls in part to show off to the football team. As one “made guy” in New Jersey told me in the 1990’s, “To us, the babes are an “accooootrement” of power. For Clinton, it’s a reason for power.”
Today, Clinton does not have to mash anymore, but he still likes to project what he did as governor of Arkansas, ” a guy who can get gals.” This is not a sign of virility, nor entirely of sexual lust, but of some deeper psychology. In my view, this is not a sign of a man who loves women.
Again, if the roles were reversed, I’m not sure JFK would not have turned out the same.
But the charges levied against Herman Cain today are not those of a man who loves women but rather a masher like Bill Clinton. What we do know is for the groping charge to be true, Herman would have been that way for many years. College girls would have remembered him. Certainly some women at Godfathers. One does not simply go out and start mashing at 51 years of age, during a three or four year stint in Washington.
That doesn’t happen.
Men who love women are almost impossible to count for they are invisible. They are not rapists or predators, for their sexual proclivities are to satisfy a real physical urge, and to enjoy the company of a woman. They are not projecting power, or some deep psychological need to get even with women. (see Clinton).
What we do know is that men who love women are outnumbered by a factor of 10,0oo to 1, by women who hate men. And in the sexual climate of the last 20 years, when these events were alleged to have occurred, all men have to be prepared to protect themselves from predator women who think that a wink, a smile, any gesture of familiarity is an unwanted sexual advance and attempt to create a hostile male-dominated environment.
Herman’s old school on that, so on that last charge, of being “familiar,” I am certain Herman Cain is guilty. And I am sure he loves the company of women. He pays special attention to them, which, if you went o church, you’d notice as commonplace among many men, to make over the ladies…which is one reason they dress up so.
I’ve seen him in several public venues, e.g., in hotel lobbies after a speaking engagement, where many people just walk up, shake hands, plant a kiss on his cheek, and yes, whisper (to be heard over the din) in his ear (Probably a “God bless you”), and ask for a hug while the hubbie takes their picture.
I’m sure Herman can count these in the hundreds the past several months, just as I am sure, having met Mr Cain on four different occasions, including a 2-hour private briefing in his hotel suite and a one-hour interview, he still would not recognize me today if I walked up to him.
Men who love women? Yes, there are such things but Herman Cain isn’t likely to be one of them.
