Reverse Culture Shock

I find few news stories as compelling as political scandals. So I was hooked by Mark Sanford’s press conference yesterday, when he admitted he had been unfaithful to his wife.

I appreciated that, unlike Silda Wall Spitzer, who stood by her husband when he admitted to using hookers, Jenny Stanford wasn’t standing next to her husband, looking wounded, yet supportive.

Political scandals that erupted while I was living in the UK make the South Carolina’s affair with another woman look small scale. Mark Oaten, a politician who preached about the sanctity of family values, was exposed for engaging a male prostitute.

That story played out in the tabloids (with all sorts of graphic details about the politician’s shenanigans with his “rent boy’), rather than on American-style live TV. I can’t decide which is more gripping…