Hi everyone, My baby brother called me the other day and said, "Listen, I have to ask: Were they raised by wolves...or was I?" "They" being the fresh litany of married elected officials publicly humiliating and damaging their children and their spouses with sex. I know, I know, it's nothing new. But the past few weeks have been especially painful. I'm a centrist Independent, caught dead-center between the left and the right (fiscal conservative, social liberal) and I really looked to Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Edwards and Anthony Weiner as the new guard of male politico. Younger. Smarter. Hell, better looking, and safely so because they had such kick-ass wives. Surely they wouldn't pull a Gary Hart or a Bill Clinton, where would they find the time, right? Wrong. And when I look at pictures of their grown and nearly-grown children, trying to keep it together in front of 100 cameras, I want to cry for the loss of their heroes. Who wants to acknowledge, at that age, that your father has had sex, much less be dressed up and pulled in front of the camera for a waking nightmare like Cate Edwards's? Kit Seelye inked a beautiful paragraph in the NYT Week in Review on June 5, after former Sen. Edwards was indicted for his use of donations to hide his mistress and his child with her from his wife, who was dying of cancer: "Here may be a case where the law is inadequate," wrote Seelye. "Can a jury render the final verdict on a betrayal so vast?" Amen sister. Cue photo of Huma Abedin, Weiner's pregnant bride. And here I really will pull out my soapbox and draw a gender line: As mothers, sisters, aunts, daughters and friends, we cannot allow smart, ambitious, good-looking men in our lives to be rewarded for or to get by with acting like dogs. I didn't elect Schwarzenegger to run California's bedrooms, but I can damned well explain to all the young males in my household that his behavior has emasculated him to this voter. True leadership requires discipline -- especially the discipline to be married or be divorced. "They were," I told my brother. "Just keep being a man, man." I'm not the only one -- enjoy: Grace Hwang Lynch: Huma, Don't Be a 'Pakistani Good Wife' Preggy Project: Schwarzenegger, John Edwards: The Good News About These Cheaters Adrienne Royer: Feminists Continue to Turn Blind Eye to Weiner's Behavior Mona Gable: On Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger and True Lies Marine: Women Break the Silence on Sexual Harassment in France What do you think? Please, send me your links... | 
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