This has been a hallmark time for tawdry exposes of cheaters, mistresses, love children, and alleged sexual aggressors. If you have any skeletons in your closet or lewd photos in your Twitter account and are a public figure, now’s the perfect time to bring them out. There such a media firestorm going on about the current scandals that hopefully yours will fly under the radar.
Here’s a recap of the biggest infidelity stories over the last two years:
- Governor Mark Sanford’s extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman he said was his “soul mate”
- Nevada Senator John Ensign paid $96,000 to his mistress
- Tiger Woods
- New York Governor Eliot Spitzer who was caught in a federal investigation of a high-end prostitution ring
- Spitzer’s replacement David Patterson who held a press conference to say, “Yeah, I’ve cheated on my wife.” Just to clear the air and all.
- apparently Jon and Kate of TLC reality show fame splitting up was a big deal for some (not really in my book)
and most recently
- former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger confessed to his wife Maria Shriver after she confronted him about his 14-year-old son with former housekeeper Mildred Baena who gave birth to the child a week after Maria gave birth to a son
- former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn allegedly sexually assaulted a hotel maid and was arrested on a plane minutes before takeoff
- and last but not least, North Carolina Senator John Edwards who received six indictments from a federal grand jury for making false statements and violating campaign finance laws in an effort to cover up an extramarital affair and son with former campaign worker Rielle Hunter while he was running for president and his wife was dying from cancer
I think the last one takes the cake. And we’ll have to wait and see whether Democratic NY Representative Anthony Weiner is telling the truth about the photo of Weiner Jr. I think he’s lying about something.
For more stores, last week This American Life did a show on the theme of infidelity.