Mrs. Rosenthal Writes: My Erectile Dysfunction is Nothing but an Insane Inference on Your Part

A new character emerged from the wings over the weekend to briefly command center stage in the ongoing public spectacle of the Chuck Rosenthal Saga, a house with way, way too many mansions for us to fully enumerate in this limited space. It was none other than the previously unvoiced and possibly cuckolded Cindy (Mrs. Chuck) Rosenthal, who took pen in hand to author a very long letter to the Houston Chronicle in which she defended her husband the D.A. against what she claimed were “insane inferences” apparently assembled by the media out of thin air. Mrs. Rosenthal’s handiwork took up a sizable amount of space on the paper’s Saturday op-ed page---a volume of newsprint usually given over only to letters from flacks for trade associations who believe their products have been defamed, or to potential libel plaintiffs (a category that excludes both Mr. and Mrs. Rosenthal)---and it was hard to tell whether the writer’s presumed audience was the general public or the newspaper’s editorial leadership, or whether she was just muttering to herself (which we have been told can be therapeutic).

In case you were up in Lufkin on Saturday and couldn’t find a Chronicle, you can read the letter here---and it’s well worth a minute of your time---but we feel obligated to call attention to two of the choicest excerpts. For some reason Mrs. Rosenthal was moved to take issue with what seemed to us to be the media's fairly straightforward coverage of the $11,000 raise for Rosenthal executive secretary Kerry Stevens, the object of those recently revealed semi-amorous emailings from the district attorney, a raise which he recommended last year (pre- Saga) and which took effect a week or so ago. Mr. Rosenthal has acknowledged carrying on an affair with Ms. Stevens in the 1980s when he was married to an earlier wife, pre-Cindy, but has denied that he and his secretary have of late been conjoining in a manner that would violate the 7th Commandment, despite the intimate tone of his electronic communications to her. Mrs. Rosenthal, a former FBI agent who is, at the very least, the victim of emotional cuckoldry, will brook no suggestion that her husband showed favoritism to the Other Woman. (We previously noted that Stevens’ $78,000 salary did not seem too far out of line for the executive secretary of a big-city D.A., but close to $90,000 … that’s just too much). The very notion, in fact, is “ludicrous,” Mrs. Rosenthal wrote ( meaning, apparently, that the media should have ignored it altogether), and besides

… no one has the right to be upset about my husband's relationship with his secretary but me. I was the party aggrieved — no one else. Not once in any of these sensational inferential stories did anyone complain about the job Chuck did as district attorney for eight years (after all, Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton still did their jobs and still do!). It all relates to personal issues, and Chuck and I are dealing with those. Shame on the Chronicle and the tone of the media today, which only want sensational stories and not factually news-related stories.

I told friends that the only way to get Chuck out of the news was to bring Britney Spears to Houston because her life struggle seems to be of more interest to all of the media. But, the fact of the matter is, neither should be newsworthy. People's personal lives are not what newspapers should be about!

You’ve got to admit that it takes a peculiar talent to draw Clinton, Kennedy, and Britney into the Rosenthal orbit.

Then there was this:

… six to eight out of 1,100 to 2,800 e-mails (both numbers have been reported) are "questionable." The media is complaining about six to eight e-mails that Chuck did not originate or draft. What is the deal? I defy anyone at the Chronicle to pull out a pristine hard drive. We all get that junk all of the time. If the Chronicle looked at my hard drive, they would infer I had a serious case of erectile dysfunction! We cannot control what people send us, and, to me, six to eight out of those numbers is pretty darn good! Sometimes I get six to eight bad jokes or chain e-mails in a day! Instead of focusing on the six to eight that are bad, focus on the fact that 2,794 are good!

One thing we can safely infer from Mrs. Rosenthal’s letter is that she definitely does not have a case of erectile dysfunction, serious or mild.