In a recent Today Show panel discussion about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Dr. Laura Schlessinger said that often when a man cheats its because his wife "does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero."

A couple of comments about her statements:

1. Dr. Laura seems to be missing the point that Spitzer went to a prostitue, or maybe several, for his infidelities. Somehow Schlessinger does not see that actively seeking out the services of a prostitute and being wooed away by the advances of any other woman are very different things. Perhaps had Spitzer actually been wooed astray by the advances of a woman he knew the analysis and outcome of the situation would have been very different, but this was a man actively seeking the services of a prostitute - a move that probably had less to do with the treatment he receives from his wife (or any other woman for that example) and more with Eliot Spitzer himself.

Even if Dr. Laura was correct and Eliot Spitzer sought out the prostitutes due to his frustrations is it really fair to say that his wife shares the blame with him? More so than anything it is Dr. Laura's diction that seems to be the most disturbing part of these statements.

2. Statements like this prove that for as much as conservatives want to say they are "disgusted and outraged" by the treatment of women around the world as justification for military, economic, or religious action against a nation (the sudden resurgence in stories about the treatment of Afghan women under the taliban just after 9/11 serves as a good example) they may in fact be just as backwards thinking as they claim the rest of the world to be, only in a less obvious manner.

Granted, Conservatives don't call for the stoning and lashing of women, but statements like Dr. Laura's are nothing more than a systematic form of oppression. To blame the woman and make her subservient to her husband's needs, wants, and whims in unthinkable circumstances does not really sound like the "liberated, equal, and modern" American woman they would like to portray as the antithesis to the barbarism they believe runs rampant throughout much of the rest of the world.

In fact, I'd like to pose a question to Dr. Laura:

How would she feel if an educated Muslim were to go on national television and state that a woman should give in to the whims, desires, and needs of her husband and if she somehow does not she is to be blamed for her husband's indiscretions because she was not willing to do everything for him?