That may explain why 54 percent of the respondents in a recent poll felt that Rep. Anthony Weiner should not be forced to resign in the roiling wake of Tweetgate. He is, after all, just a man.
And quite a man to hear him tell it. His, ah, stature seemed to grow with every tweet in the seamy show-and-tell he shared with anyone who wanted to catch his act on the Internet.
I haven't seen the pictures yet. But unless they are reminiscent of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, I can't imagine why he felt proud enough to share them.
I did peruse some of the mash notes he sent to the women who corresponded with him. They read like an anthology of phrases etched into the walls of a middle-school boys' bathroom.
Despite this, more than half the people in a recent poll seemed to say that he is man enough to represent them in the salons of power. That's not an expression of compassion or forgiveness; that is an example of lowered expectations.
Truth be told, men have turned these lowered expectations to our advantage. The advice I share with young married men is that they should strive to attain what I call heathen status.
Heathen status is conferred when your wife abandons all hope of reform. One day, she sees you stretched out on the couch with the remote in one hand balancing a beer on your belly and tells herself that this is as good as it's ever going to get.
So, boys will be boys because we get a pass on a lot of stuff. But I'm about ready to relinquish my pass after this recent spate of boys behaving badly.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn have redefined the term "maid service."
