Three readers have asked me to comment on the story about the Iowa dentist who fired his assistant because he was attracted to her and felt this was jeopardizing his marriage. All I can say, folks, is that I really don’t want to comment because this is a story about weird people doing bizarre things, and it makes no sense to analyze the story where there is too much unexplained weirdness.
The man wanted to save his marriage and this is why he made his extramarital erections a subject of discussion on thousands of blogs, articles, radio shows, and news programs? Does anybody really believe this shit? Of all the strange things people do to save their marriages, creating a very public brouhaha about the exact physiological symptoms of your attraction to somebody other than you spouse seems too outlandish even for Iowans.
The fired assistant is running a close race with the dentist for the prize of the weirdo of the century. She receives sexually charged comments and answers text message from her employer asking how often she orgasms and just takes it in her stride because she “saw him as a mentor”? A mentor in what exactly, if I may ask? And then she goes to court because she wants to keep working in a place where she is harassed and where her presence has become hugely conflictive? Yeah, makes total sense. Of course, it is entirely possible that everything she did (including putting up with harassment) was simply a way of accumulating evidence in order to sue and wrench a good settlement out of him. Which makes the whole story even more disgusting.
I believe that the participants of this brouhaha are lying. For some reason, they need all this drama and exposure and they are very successful in manufacturing interest towards themselves. Maybe the dentist’s business wasn’t doing all that good. Dentists lose a lot of profit in a recession. I know that my dentist is positively desperate to get patients to her office. Alternatively, they might simply be bored. Imagine living in Iowa all your life. You just might get to a point where turning some tawdry office flirtation into a major media event will sound entertaining.
In any case, contrary to what people are suggesting (see linked post), I don’t see any feminist issue here. Just a bunch of weirdos who are probably huge fans of the Jerry Springer show.
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