I think it’s patently clear that governors get more love on the side than any other politician. Mere hours after being sworn in, Paterson drops an extra-marital affair scandal bomb–giving Republicans a nice two-in-a-row opening, having come straight after Spitzer’s own prostitution scandal.

Paterson openly admitted to macking several other women, including a state employee. According to the newly-appointed governor, the whole affair business happened on both sides–a new leap in the fight for gender equality. Their marriage was in a slump, but after they both admitted to their extra-marital affairs, they sought professional counseling. Now, Paterson joys in being part of a strong and healthy marriage with his wife, Michelle Paige Paterson.

I’m not sure if it’s the best start for this new page in Paterson’s career, but it sure is nice to see a little down-to-earth honesty here and there.

I’ve spent the past year or so crafting a beautiful memoir: a story of the challenges I had to overcome growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, my hard core elocution training after my emigration to the US, and how I worked my way through a top university to my current job working in the Spitzer administration (whoops! Not so glamorous anymore!) But I’ve been having second thoughts about signing that contract pledging that everything I wrote is the unadulterated truth, in wake of the latest revelations of fabricated details published in memoirs. Yeah, it’s probably not a super great idea to legally verify as true something that is as false as Elizabeth Taylor’s eyelashes.

For those of you who need a brush-up on the literary scandals of the past few weeks and years, the New York Times has a nice summary. James Frey is arguably the most infamous, after his Oprah publicly scolded him when it was revealed that large portions of his “memoir”, A Million Little Pieces, were fabricated.

The falsified memoir saga continued last week with Margaret “Jones” (actual name Margaret Seltzer), the author of Love and Consequences. Her “memoir” tells the story of her hard childhood and adolescence in gang-ridden Los Angeles as a half Native-American, half white girl raised by a foster family, overcoming all her hardship to write about it. But when Ms. Jones nee Seltzer’s sister saw her picture in the New York Times, she told the truth about all the hardship that family had to overcome in their upper-middle class Los Angeles home.
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The New York Times has a great piece today pointing out the inconsistencies between McCain’s ethics policies and his own actions. Among a slew of scandals cited is his bizarrely close relationship–during the 2000 election–with a young female lobbyist who happened to represent some of McCain’s biggest beneficiaries. Sensing there might be more to the relationship than just business or politics, aides separated the two and took steps to distance her from the campaign. Though both parties deny they were involved sexually, I find the whiff of an affair tantalizing–Family values, bah.

It just keeps getting stranger. It was unfortunate that, after decades as a respected scholar of race relations in the classroom, most people only know TC counciling and psycholgy prof. Madonna Constantine as the victim of one of the ugliest bias incidents in Columbia’s history. But she’s about to get a label that will a lot harder to live down: academic fraud.

Or will she? The Spec’s writeup is tantalizingly vague, and it’s obvious that there’s more here than our reporters are letting on. From the Spec story:

The statement explained that “the investigation, which was conducted by Hughes Hubbard & Reed, a law firm with a substantial practice representing universities and academic institutions, concluded that Professor Constantine’s explanation for the strikingly similar language was not credible.”

First somewhat obvious question: who the hell is Hughes Hubbard & Reed, and why is the university contracting them to investigate professors? Also, what qualifies a lawyer to reach a conclusion that’s of a fundamentally academic nature–namely, whether a particular scholarly practice constitutes plagiarism?

Second somewhat obvious question: Why is Spectator publishing the names of the people who blew the whistle on Constantine, and why were they made public in the first place? And who are they, anyway?

The article drops an inadvertent hint:

One TC faculty member said that nine other students did not come forward against Constantine because they were unable to seek indemnity in time.

Wow. Indemnity. So that means that the law firm (possibly) wasn’t contracted by the school, but by whichever agrieved party is seeking damages from either Constantine or Teachers’ College. Had this been a purely internal matter, the president of TC would have convened an ad hoc comittee and kept it in-house–as usually happens with accusations of plaigarism (at least according to this CHE backgrounder).

But if the some outside accuser is seeking monetary damages–and if Constantine is published under a TC imprint–the issue can no longer be kept internal, especially if a scholar skirts the ever-ambiguous line between “innocent” plagiarism and aggravated copyright infringement. According to the CHE report, “plagiarism inquests are a dense thicket of tangled jurisdictions, misunderstandings, rumors, and lawsuits.” There doesn’t seem to be much misunderstanding here, what with a formal sanction, a specific (and named) outside accuser, and an investigation by a high-powered law firm with a specialty in intellectual property rights.

One last damning piece of this sordid puzzle: Spectator failed to mention that Yeh is a professor in U. San Fran’s counseling and psychology department–which means that Constantine and Yeh were in the same department at Teacher’s College. More to the point, both Constantine and Yeh are specialists in ethnicity, education and mental health.

This, as well as the sheer number of accusers (one professor plus 11 students) means that Constantine’s academic fraud was something of an open secret. Or maybe it was something worse–maybe Constantine plagiarized Yeh, who fled to the west coast as soon as she began bringing legal proceedings against her former colleague.

This is all speculation. But if you fill in some of the gaps in Spec’s coverage (which are completely understandable, since this is complicated stuff), it becomes clear that TC had–and has–a huge problem on its hands.

Despite the fact that Big Bad Wolf stole my secret girl-crush thunder, I’m going to post AGAIN on Fire Crotch because hell, this is the first time we’ve seen her give it away for money and not for the love of displaying her little red riding hood.

Ok, listen.  I am unashamed to admit that I have a morbid fascination with Lindsay Lohan.  It’s not in that ‘I’d hit that’ nudie magazine stuck to the bathroom floor sort of way, but more in the ‘Omg it’s Monday, I can’t wait to see the latest dumb stunt she’s pulled this weekend’ sort of way.  And, if you know me, you know I’ve force-fed you really strong drinks and made you watch I Know Who Killed Me more than once.  And you know what, you enjoyed it.  So stop resisting, people—it’s a simple equation.  Lindsay saves you money.  The more you let Lindsay into your life, the better you’ll feel about yourself, thus the less you’ll spend on therapy bills and black market prescription drugs. 

Don’t worry, there’s a point to all this.  Lindsay has graced the latest cover of New York Magazine posing as the iconic Marilyn Monroe.  However, she does a completely terrible job and looks like Britney in a bad wig.  What makes even less sense is that you get an unabashed full-frontal view of her nips, but yet in I Know Who Killed Me, in which she played a double-amputee stripper, you get no nudity.  You do, however, get a double-amputee sex scene that goes on for an absurdly long time, multiple extended scenes of her flossing the stripper pole with her ass in a semi-sheer bikini, and you see her smoke a cigarette through her pikachu (that means vajay-jay for those of you who don’t watch Chelsea Handler) and then hand it to a dirty old man who smells it.  Yes, he smells it.  Remind me again—is this movie a bio-pic or a poor attempt at an art film?  Why do we see more of her privates when she gracefully exits a car than in a movie ABOUT A STRIPPER?!  But you know, since this leggings craze she’s putting us all through started, we haven’t seen so much as a single fire crotch, so I guess I’ll stop bitching about that…

[The Commentariat's Reid Hall correspondent examines the love life of Nicholas Sarkozy, who could be one of the world's most physically attractive heads of state. Granted, he's no Vladimir Putin...]

When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president of France in May of last year, he had been married once, divorced, and remarried. His second marriage was on the rocks (he and his wife had both had very public affairs) and it seemed unlikely that the couple would be able to patch things up.

Despite his marital difficulties, Sarko (as both supporters and opponents call him) was consistently seen as the frontrunner in the 2007 campaign and eventually won the presidency with relative ease. The French people found his proposals on the economy, immigration, and national security far more compelling than his personal problems.

In the eight months since he took office, however, things have changed. His second divorce was finalized in October, sparking a tabloid media frenzy. Speculation on potential new presidential partners ran rampant until, in December, Sarkozy was photographed at EuroDisney with singer/model Carla Bruni. The pair was seen again, later that month, vacationing together in Egypt; things looked to be getting serious, although Ms. Bruni’s avowed opposition to monogamy still seemed to pose a problem. And two weeks ago, without warning, the couple had married.

Sarkozy’s approval ratings fell steadily over the course of this whirlwind romance, reaching a new low of 39% the week following his wedding. Surprisingly, given the public’s past indifference to his private affairs, poll respondents have overwhelmingly indicated that the state of President’s love life is the primary reason for his decline in popularity. Have popular priorities here really changed so drastically in such a short time?

No, as a matter of fact. In the past, Sarkozy’s domestic existence had been quietly turbulent. Though the divorce of a prominent politician is sure to be mentioned somewhere, the first time around he made sure coverage was kept to a minimum. Recently, however, he has behaved more like a Hollywood starlet than a politician, seeming to invite excessive media scrutiny of his amorous adventures.

It is this exhibitionism to which the French object. Government officials here are supposed to be statesmen, not celebrities; they should make news with policy, not personality. As long as Sarkozy’s business remained his business, it was irrelevant, but as soon as it became our business, it was shameful.

Given social tendencies in France, such an attitude is not surprising. People here are very private, much more so than in the United States. They do not share much, and they expect others not to pry. Even among friends, personal problems are rarely discussed; you are supposed to solve them on your own.

Sarkozy grew up in that culture, and his career has been a model of self-sufficiency. But his home life, at least recently, has not. Now he is paying the price. Sarko should have known better.

-GREG KEILIN