I don't know, Janie. It's just sex. People in the U.S. get so torqued about things that have some parts of the world scratching their heads in wonder at us (we fall somewhere in between the live-and-let-live French and the off-with-their-heads Saudis). When Gary Hart challenged the press to find him he deserved to get caught on the 'Monkey Business,' but he seems to have started an open season pursuit that continues to this day: see who you can stake out and catch in the act. Most people probably suffer enough via the personal consequences at home when they are found out. Being slammed by the press and the American public has always seemed stupid and none of our business.

My first impulse isn't that someone caught in such an embarrassing situation should completely quit their jobs. If you're a big crime fighter and commit a crime, like Spitzer did, in soliciting a woman across state lines blah blah blah, then he was asking to take a fall. But a lot of the rest of this reaction is overkill and events like this show the extreme Victorian underpinnings of the seemingly parochial American education that somehow teaches that some ethical lapses are worse than others, even when they aren't. It's all a sliding scale, it's a value judgment. Moral relativism? Maybe. I'd rather the media got upset about violent crime than sneaky sex.

I haven't followed this fellow's story closely, and I didn't listen to the press conference, I've heard excerpts. It seems to me that disappearing as far away and as long as he did requires a little better cover story and preparation than vaguely saying he's going hiking. (Dave Letterman addressed it well this evening--just come clean, say you're going to Argentina, but have a good excuse for being there.) I suppose the number and character of lies told versus the casual concealment of what was going on will have a qualitative effect on his family response--was he carelessly trampling his family's feelings, or had he done this often enough that until someone got curious, it was just his little peculiarity, wanting time away. Apparently his wife knew about this. I think the fallout of this misadventure is up to her.

I know there are Mudcatters who have strict religious opinions that dictate their own behavior and would try to dictate the behavior of others. I'm not posting this opinion to engage them in debate and no one need pass judgement on my philosophy of politics and sex. I'm just stating a point of view.

SRS