The XX Factor: What women really think.

Powerful Women and the Men Who (Sort of) Love Them

So here's a question to the men out there: Do we think this story will get less play because of an undercurrent of pity for Thomas Athans; i.e., Men who are married to more powerful women are justified in their straying, to satisfy their sense of manhood? Michael Lewis once wrote a sort-of-but-not-really joking column in the Los Angeles Times about how the mark of a great man these days was marrying a woman more famous than he was and then destroying her career. Sir Denis Thatcher was always a figure of some fun in Great Britain, endlessly spoofed in Private Eye, known for calling his wife "The Boss," and subject of cuckold jokes featuring Ronald Reagan.

As for starting a new XX Top 10 List of Pols Who Don't Cheat: The only problem with that is, it will lead us to glorify the overly ascetic types, such as the latest incarnation of Barack Obama, as portrayed in Maureen Dowd's column this morning: no chocolate, no chocolate cake, no white-chocolate frosting, ("too decadent for me"). Affairs, presumably, also fall into that category.