When we last left John Ensign:

Unlike most philandering politicians, Ensign and his wife were separated at the time that he began an affair with Cynthia Hampton - one which her husband now swears resulted from a relentless pursuit of his wife, since obviously she has no autonomy or sexual desires of her own. It is similar to the affair that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom conducted with his former friend-and-staffer's wife in which the politician is the single one, and the husband the cuckold. There's no official word on why the Hamptons stopped working for Ensign before the affair ended, though the New York Times reported that Ensign reconciled with his wife shortly before Cynthia Hampton left his employ.

Now, thanks to the New York Times, we have the gory details. Apparently, Ensign began putting feelers out for a new role for Douglas Hampton, top Washington aide who was suddenly in need of a new position. Ensign asked around, but neglected to provide the reason why:

The job pitch left out one salient fact: the senator was having an affair with Mr. Hampton's wife, Cynthia, a campaign aide. The tumult that the liaison was causing both families prompted Mr. Ensign, a two-term Republican, to try to contain the damage and find a landing spot for Mr. Hampton.

In the coming months, the senator arranged for Mr. Hampton to join a political consulting firm and lined up several donors as his lobbying clients, according to interviews, e-mail messages and other records. Mr. Ensign and his staff then repeatedly intervened on the companies' behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton.

So what's the problem? In Washington circles, you quickly start to find that everything is political. Especially when you do something stupid and try to cover your tracks:

In acknowledging the affair, Mr. Ensign cast it as a personal transgression, not a professional one. But an examination of his conduct shows that in trying to clean up the mess from the illicit relationship and distance himself from the Hamptons, he entangled political supporters, staff members and Senate colleagues, some of whom say they now feel he betrayed them.

And for Hampton, there wasn't enough money in the world to make him feel better about this affair:

Despite those efforts, Mr. Ensign's relationship with his one-time aide and the husband of his former mistress has ended in bitterness and recriminations. Mr. Hampton grew increasingly frustrated about his financial situation, believing that the senator had reneged on a deal to find him enough clients to sustain his income.

"You have not retained three clients for me as promised, and your poor choices have led to a deep hurt and financial impact to my family," Mr. Hampton wrote the senator in an e-mail message in July 2008. "At your request and your design, I left your organization to save your reputation and career, and mine has been ruined."

For his part, Mr. Ensign has complained that Mr. Hampton tried to extract exorbitant sums from him.

How exorbitant? Try to the tune of $8.5 million dollars! Ensign should have just made an Indecent Proposal, that would have been cheaper all the way around!

And what makes this even worse for Ensign?

Until he admitted the affair in June, Mr. Ensign, 51, was a top Senate Republican leader and was discussed as a possible presidential contender in 2012. The silver-haired senator with a statesman's looks and family money - his father helped found a Las Vegas casino - has championed conservative social values.

But the scandal forced him to resign as head of the Republican Senate Policy Committee and ended talk of any bid for the White House.

Mr. Ensign spent part of the summer apologizing to constituents. Drawing a contrast with former President Bill Clinton, whom he had voted to impeach as a House member during the Monica Lewinsky affair, Mr. Ensign said in August that his infidelity was largely a personal matter and added, "I haven't done anything legally wrong."

Senator's Aid After Affair Raises Flags Over Ethics [New York Times]
Ensign's Ex-Mistress, Husband Sought $8.5 Million [Associated Press]

Earlier:Husband Of Senator's Mistress Will Go To Any Lengths To Get Revenge

In an essay of epic and varied nastiness in the new Atlantic, Flanagan argues that Brown was no champion of working-class women — she was a champion for home-wreckers. Flanagan quotes Jennifer Scanlon, author of Brown bio Bad Girls Go Everywhere, saying,

As Scanlon aptly notes, Brown "appointed not predatory or non-committal men but married women as the sorry counterpoint to her sexy girls." For the reader with moral qualms? "I'm afraid I have a cavalier attitude about wives," Brown announced from the outset of her public life. To Scanlon-whose besotted encomium may constitute Brown's final caress in this vale of tears-the attitude amounts to "she who keeps the man happy keeps the man," a point of view the biographer hails, several times, as being fundamentally "libertarian." By this, she means that when two women bid for a man, no advantage shall be given to the one who might have children with him, or an economic dependency built upon their marriage. There is only the marketplace of feminine wiles, in which a concubine's feigned interest in a man's workday trumps a wife's quiet plea for help around the house, in which young is better than old and new is more exciting than familiar.

Here Flanagan takes the worst kind of antifeminist rhetoric — the kind that speaks of women in terms of quasi-monetary sexual "value" — and makes it run both ways. Now women are "bidding" on men, using their riches — the "concubine" (!?) her youth and "wiles," the wife her children and "economic dependency." Both men and women are reduced here — men, for a change, are commodities, but women are merely sexual pocketbooks competing in an auction. And wiles win out, but not for long.

Flanagan jumps from Brown to John Edwards's paramour Rielle Hunter, a loose woman perhaps influenced by Brown's celebration of single sluttiness (because, of course, adultery was invented in 1962). Flanagan has some incandescently insulting things to say about Hunter, including this:

Hers is not an intelligence or an ambition difficult to plumb, and her dream is almost certainly to have Elizabeth shuffle off the mortal coil so that she can instate herself in the North Carolina pleasure dome and become the fun, hip, "Being Is Free," bleached-blond, super open-minded, videographing, Power of Now stepmom, a prospect so hideous that it makes Elizabeth Edwards's last-chance book tour look like what it is: a desperate attempt to protect her sweet, sad children from the influence of this erstwhile cokehead and present-day weasel after she has died.

Flanagan (who, as the tabloids say, does not treat Rielle Hunter) knows exactly what Hunter wants, down to the intellectually lightweight cultural references. And she knows she's not going to get it:

Deep within Rielle-this little minx of pleasure and profit-guess what there is? A heart that aches like a woman's but breaks just like a little girl's. [...] I don't imagine that Rielle's decision to have her baby (whoever the father) came from a strongly pro-life position, or from a plan to jack some cash out of the ambulance chaser. It came, surely, from the powerful emotions that accompany all pregnancies, but especially those that occur in women who probably thought they would never get to have a baby, and who find out, at the 11th hour, that the dream might come true after all, and they might have a home and a child, and (please, God) a husband and father to go with that child.

So, to recap, Helen Gurley Brown made it sound like it was okay to steal someone else's man, but it really isn't, not only because marital commitment should override "wiles," but also because a married man will never leave his wife for you. The wages of sin are ... still being single, a prospect Flanagan seems to abhor. She writes of "the desperate, Blanche DuBois tinsel of [Brown's] new creation-the single girl" and "the possible pitfalls and sorrows of life as a sexually liberated, 'all the time in the world' unmarried woman" in such a way as to leave no doubt that she views Hunter as the ultimate loser in the affair — and to imply that unmarried women in general are really kind of sad.

But it's men who fare the worst in Flanagan's moral reckoning. Amy Benfer of Broadsheet offers a smart roundup of Flanagan's many insults (Brown was "pee-on-the-side-of-the-road white trash;" the "ladies of the steno pool" include "Bertha in Accounting, with the hair on her chin;" anyone who hasn't had a kid is "just guessing about love, gesturing toward it, assuming it's the right name for a feeling you've had"), but she doesn't mention Flanagan's implicit denial of male autonomy. Flanagan makes much of Rielle Hunter's pickup line to John Edwards: "you are so hot." She writes,

"You are so hot," Rielle Hunter said to John Edwards 10 years after he and his wife buried their first boy, and after they had started a new family, and after they had given their all to a presidential campaign-with the personal losses and long separations that come with it-and after Elizabeth had been diagnosed with cancer and undergone a disfiguring surgery and chemotherapy and lost her hair and been handed a recalculated set of odds about her life expectancy with two very small children who needed their mother. "You are so hot," Rielle Hunter said, because she turned out to be another woman with a cavalier attitude toward wives.

Interestingly, these words were also the subject of an article in last month's Cosmo, about how to keep your man from cheating. Both Brown's former magazine and her modern-day critic act like Hunter made Edwards sleep with her using these simple words. But Rielle Hunter didn't break John Edwards's vows. She didn't cheat on his wife in her hour of need. He did.

Ultimately, Flanagan and Brown make the same mistake: assuming that women can control men. Sex and the Single Girl wasn't all that far off of the seduction manuals George Sodini read, in that both taught readers that fulfilling relationships with the opposite sex could be had through manipulation. Flanagan might not agree with the "fulfilling" part, but like Brown, she seems to see an adulterous affair not as a choice made by both a man and a woman, but as a competition between wife and "concubine." The man is just the prize.

Of course, they're both wrong. Rielle Hunter may not be a good role model, but ultimately the blame for Elizabeth Edwards's pain rests with her husband. Because women — single or married — can't actually control men. Luckily, it's not our responsibility — it's theirs.

Sex And The Married Man [The Atlantic]

Relate: Who You Calling White Trash? [Broadsheet]

A British court has granted the woman anonymity, but she reportedly comes from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, and is married to a member of the royal family. (Her husband and her relatives have cut off contact with her.) Her fears of stoning are not unfounded — 40 women have been executed in Saudi Arabia since 1990, and one currently awaits stoning for adultery. (She had a child six years after her husband died.) Another princess, Mishaal bint Fahd, was executed by "gunshot to the head" after admitting adultery in 1977. After a British documentary was made about her execution, the Saudi government expelled the British ambassador, pulled members of their royal family out of Britain, and canceled lucrative export contracts.

It is likely fear of such retaliation that makes the British government keep asylum deals like the princess's a secret. Robert Verkaik of the Independent writes that to make public such deals "would in effect be to highlight the persecution of women in Saudi Arabia, which would be viewed as open criticism of the House of Saud and lead to embarrassing publicity for both governments." (Interestingly, the Obama Administration, as reported last week, is softening the United States' stance on granting asylum for victims of domestic abuse.) But in keeping secret Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses, Britain is essentially protecting the Saudi government from any international pressure to change.

Note: The Muslim pilgrims pictured are stoning a pillar as part of a religious ceremony; they are not participating in an execution.

Princess Facing Saudi Death Penalty Given Secret UK Asylum [Independent]
Saudi Princess Given Asylum In UK Over Fears She Faces Execution For Having Illegitimate Child With British Lover [Daily Mail]
Saudi Arabian Princess Seeks Asylum In Britain Over Illegitimate Child [Telegraph]

The man, known by his last name Fan, couldn't afford to support so many mistresses so he had the women compete in categories of appearance, singing, and how much alcohol they could hold. The winner would remain his mistress and receive $800 per month and an apartment. A 29-year-old woman, identified as Yu, was eliminated in the appearance round. She invited Fan and the other women to accompany her on a sight seeing trip and drove the car off a cliff, killing herself and injuring the others. Fan shut down his company and paid Yu's parents $85,000. The mistresses and Fan's wife left him. [CNN, Time]

[Image via Stock Exchange]

• Try not to get murdered It seems like an obvious thing, but even reading about the case I feel kind of weird wondering how my life would look to a zillion strangers.
• Make sure someone always knows where you are It might've helped Chandra (or at least would've helped the case) and — if he actually was innocent the whole time — it totally would've helped Condit.
• Remember that sometime's there's no explanation As a crime victim, the hardest thing for my family to accept on some level was that sometimes violence really is random. While it was important for the cops to know that Chandra and Condit were an item, anyone who recalls the case probably remembers how hard they pushed him as a suspect. In part, it's probably because he was a less-random explanation than the unimaginable horror of random violence. Did they do right? Possibly not — Condit was never charged and the cops didn't seemingly look that hard for an alternate explanation.
• Don't fuck a married man Look, seriously, whatever he says, just say no. If he's betraying her, he'll betray you. It's comforting to believe that you're different, that you're special but, really, as Chandra never really got the chance to find out, she wasn't. Congressman Condit was nicknamed "Condom" during his stint in the Statehouse.
• If you are going to fuck a married guy, don't buy his bullshit Fine, so you've made your choice. But don't fall for the whole, "I'm totally going to leave my wife and marry you" line. Is there anything more cliché? If he was going to leave his wife, he would've already done so or or would be in the process of doing so, which is a long and painful process. Instead, he's inserting his penis into your vagina. He's got exactly what he wants.
• Don't fuck around on your wife This is 2008, that was 2000, you are not required to be married, even as a Congressman. If Condit had been a single skirtchaser, no one would've had as much cause of question his motives and he wouldn't have faced the same opprobrium (see: Ford, Congressman Harold).
• If you are going to cheat on your wife, don't like to the cops about it Fine, you've also made your choice, and I'm judging you. But the cops aren't there to judge you for where you stick your dick, and lying about it makes you look sketchy and guilty.

I mean, basically, the whole thing was apparently a mess from start to finish. Maybe Condit had nothing to do with her disappearance, maybe she would've been murdered anyway, maybe the police would've fucked this up so bad from the get-go regardless that no one will ever know what happened to her. But, if there hadn't been so much dirty laundry to look through before they started looking for Chandra, maybe we would know the answer to those questions.

Who Killed Chandra Levy? [Washington Post]
Judge Dismisses Ex-Congressman Condit's Slander Suit Against Author Dominick Dunne [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]

Weiss writes:

Sitting in Schiller’s, I…suggested that we could change sexual norms to, say, encourage New York waitresses to look on being mistresses as a cool option. “That’s fringe,” my friend said dismissively. Wives weren’t going to allow it, and we men grant them a lot of power; they’re all as dominant as Yoko Ono. “Look, we’re the weaker animal,” he said. “They commandeer the situation.” He and I love our wives and depend on them. In each of our cases, they make our homes, manage our social calendar, bind up our wounds and finish our thoughts, and are stitched into our extended families more intimately than we are. They seem emotionally better equipped than we are. If my marriage broke up, my wife could easily move in with a sister. I’d be as lost as plankton.

Despite his potentially-wandering weiner, Weiss stays with his wife. Why? Because he's weak? Because she plans his vacations and deals with his mother? Perhaps I'm naive, but I'd like to think that most men stay with their wives because they have things in common with them; because they appreciate their human qualities. Not because their wives are their jail house wardens, keeping their free-floating sexuality under heavy lock and key. I don't have some romantic view of marriage: I don't think it will satisfy every urge and create a state of ecstasy populated by unicorns and sunflowers. But Weiss's description of his wife's role in his life is so ultimately mercenary.

I think some people will read this article and think all men feel the way Weiss does. As previously established, women think about fucking other people, too. I'm even willing to grant him the biology — that men are more tormented by their sex drives than women are. But even if that's the case, marriage is about compromise. And if the agreement you've made is to be faithful, then you need to compromise your desire to fuck other people. I'm sure Weiss's wife is currently compromising her desire to punch him directly in the nuts.

The Affairs Of Men [New York Magazine]

Earlier:Chronic Male Horniness Is Not An Excuse For, Well, Anything

Holly, 26, met a guy in a bar and, after they'd been seeing each other for two months, found out that he'd been married for three years. Emma, 29, cheated on her boyfriend, Sam, but felt "horribly guilty" about it. Ruth also cheated on her boyfriend and not only felt "terrible" about it, but was "anxious about being caught." Although the article's author, Sadie Nicholas, would have us believe that this posse of women are cocktail-swilling homewreckers, aren't they actually just representative of the rough conditions in any urban dating pool? Since when are married men willing to cheat on their wives victims? And while cheating on a boyfriend isn't ideal behavior, at least the women didn't enter the legally binding contract of marriage and then have an affair. Since the climate around them is such that trust is hard to come by and promises mean little, is it so shocking that these women are a product of their environment? The article's headline asks the questions: "Liberated feminists? Or selfish and deluded?" We think the answer actually "Neither".

Liberated Feminists? Or Selfish and Deluded? Meet the very Modern Mistresses [Daily Mail]

Earlier:
Woman Who Dates Married Men Makes No Apologies But Plenty Of Excuses
Why Do Wives Blame The "Other Woman" For Their Husbands' Wandering Weiners?

If that other woman is current Manson squeeze (and not-of-drinking-age actress) Evan Rachel Wood, our heads might just explode. Fresh-faced, innocent blonde steals guy away from raven-haired, big-lipped stripper? There may karmic justice for the Jennifer Anistons of the world yet!

Dita Von Teese Talks About Manson's Other Woman [People.com]