So David Petraeus Had an Affair—Who Cares?

No one is saying what everyone's thinking about David Petraeus' sex scandal, which is: "Hey, what the hell? The man had an affair," writes Michael Wolff in the Guardian. For some reason "we have to pretend that sexual scandal is, well, a scandal." In politics, if you have an affair, you're supposed to be toast. "But we don't actually believe that," Wolff argues. People in the loop know that loads of politicians have affairs, or "just, in every way, are obvious dogs," and suffer no ill effects.

"This is hypocrisy on a ludicrous scale," Wolff writes. "Jesus Christ, he had an affair. So what?" But no one will say that, even after an election that supposedly signaled a decline for the religious right. Some people are unconvinced that America has evolved past sex scandals, and others are waiting for some detail to make this more than a sex scandal. So Petraeus is on his own. "We would all give him a pass, if we could. But because we are weak, too, we can't." Click for Wolff's full column. (More David Petraeus stories.)