Men behaving badly.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged - Infidelity

News of the disintegrating case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn broke on the Fourth of July weekend and made for awkward fireworks at barbecues. I haven't seen that many near-fistfights since intermission at a Neil LaBute play. Or dinner parties when I would defend Hillary Clinton's Presidential bid.

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At a holiday clambake, a friend witnessed one old salt doing air-pumped quotation marks with his gnarly fingers: "The 'victim's' bank account did not balance." She gave him a steely look, wagged her finger, and said, "You do not want to go down that road."

It has been a bumpy ride.

Newt Gingrich said that the strength of his political passion sometimes made him step outside his marriage. Which is how he met his third wife, Callista, an Oopa Loopa Dei cheerleader. Seems Newt is quite the catch.

California's ex-governor, cigar-chomping Arnold Schwarzenegger revealed a relationship and love child with a long-time household staffer. This brazen infidelity does offer a chance to study the long-range effects of steroid use.

New York Representative Anthony Weiner finally admitted to online ickiness. Everyone has a right to be icky, but it made for an odd gay-straight reversal in New York. There were the junk shots, greased ab shots, accusations, and tearful denials from a straight guy while the gay people were fully clothed in Albany, lobbying for the right to gentrify marriage.

Clearly with married men acting out so extracurricularly, straight marriage is in disrepair. Despite their absurdly Twinkie-ish defenses--consensual nonsense, misplaced political passion, gubernatorial stress, lack of social network savvy--men somehow manage to attain a frisson of victim hood. Perhaps they are using the same reputationdefenders.com that Rupert Murdoch has retained.

Murdoch's newspaper...