Lisa Belkin writes about another cheating politician.
It is tempting, on this day of love and lust, to think we’ve found some answers in the tale of Iris Robinson — yes, Mrs. Robinson — the 60-year-old member of Parliament whose husband is the first minister of Northern Ireland. Last month the BBC revealed her affair with a 19-year-old. Her lover was the son of her local butcher, whose deathbed wish was that she “look after” the boy, and so she did, financing his small cafe during their seven-month liaison with $80,000 supplied by local developers and supposedly taking an $8,000 kickback.
She tries to make some points about sex and power and how men and women celebrities are treated differently with regard to cheating. She makes claims about the components of narrative that are applied to women but not men. Then she adds:
We accept complexity in male leaders far more readily than we accept it in women — perhaps because we have fewer examples to draw from. So here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson — for being just as flawed and complicated as any man.
Yo, lady, clue up. Cheating is a selfish act undertaken by narcissistic people. They do it for the same reasons that a substance abuser takes a drink.