I am on the same page with syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts. Well, not literally. His column runs on the op-ed page and mine runs on the front page of the Lifestyles section. But when it comes to this whole issue of men in the public limelight exposing themselves to scandal by letting their nether bits rule, he and I are in agreement.
As he points out in his most recent column, "men rule when it comes to sleaze in politics." This isn't meant to be a gender slur....but when was the last time a women in the political arena was caught with her pants down, so to speak?
As Pitts points out, and I heartily agree, this isn't about morality, it's about judgement. And I will go one step further and conject that it's about another problem that seems to come hand-in-glove with being in the public spotlight: inflated ego and narcissism, which I believe is at the crux of this rash of cheating and outrageous behavior. These men believe, truly believe, that the rules of decorum do not apply to them. It's as if something switches off (or on) in their brains.
When I covered politics at the state level I watched this happen to even the most innocent of the neophyte elected legislators. Over time, as they got comfortable in their offices and used to being courted by lobbyists and voters alike, they began to breathe rarefied air. That air inflated their egos and skewed their perspective, often times causing these otherwise straight-thinking men to make very stupid decisions.
I guess the question to ask is, if Weiner or Edwards or Spitzer never ran for public office and just plodded through their lives like the rest of us average Joes, would they have fallen prey to their egos?
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