Both are being investigated for misconduct, and, as the Daily News notes, both of the "good-looking" language teachers were very popular with their students. • General Mills has announced plans to reduce the amount of sugar in cereals marketed to children. This means that munchie-favorites like Lucky Charms and Count Chocula could drop at least 25% of their sugar, until there are less than 10 grams per serving. Wonder if that will effect the taste. •  According to an Italian newspaper, Amanda Knox still has hope that she will be freed. She reportedly told Italian lawmaker Walter Verini that she "has faith in the Italian justice system," including her pending appeal. • New York State's oldest registered sex offender could be released from a halfway house soon. Prosecutor Frank Sedita has warned against the dangers of releasing the 100-year-old convicted child molester, who he calls the "personification of evil." •  A 10-year-old British girl has made the news after she wrote an angry letter to the man who broke into her house. Her letter, which describes her feelings of fear and sadness, will be sent out to known burglars with the hopes that it will deter them from robbing again. •  In the past few weeks, three top female newspaper editors have announced that they are leaving their jobs, and do not intend to continue careers in journalism. The timing of their resignations has lead some to worry about diversity in the newsroom. However, Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of the Oregonian says it is not always gender-specific issues that force editors to seek new opportunities, and that times are tough across the board. •  The New York Times helpfully reminds us of the number one rule of any affair: don't put anything in writing. Oddly, many otherwise intelligent-seeming people (Tiger Woods, Senator John Ensign) seem to think that this does not apply to text messaging, which has led the NYT to deem texts the "new lipstick on the collar." Professor Shirley Turkle rather poetically describes our cellphone-blindness: "Like Peter Pan, we do not see our electronic shadow until it is pointed out to us. We assume it is not there." • Kumari Fulbright, the former beauty queen and University of Arizona law student accused kidnapping of her ex-boyfriend, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and aggravated assault today. She'll spend the next two years in prison. • A Pennsylvania woman who drank herself unconscious at her 20th birthday party is suing a hospital for medical malpractice because she passed out while sitting on the floor in the emergency room and was left in that position for 12 hours. This cut off circulation to her legs, and they were later amputated at the knees • The International Olympic Committee has reallocated two of the three gold medals Marion Jones was stripped of in 2007 when she admitted to using steroids. But for the first time the IOC is leaving a gold medal spot vacant because 100-meter silver medalist Katerina Thanou of Greece is still facing charges for staging a motorcycle accident to avoid doping tests. "She disgraced herself and the Olympic movement by avoiding three doping tests. We are not legally bound to give medals," said an IOC spokesman. • Police arrested a Florida woman for allegedly throwing a raw steak at her disabled live-in boyfriend when he asked for a roll instead of sliced bread with his dinner. Authorities say she beat the man, who has terminal cancer and an injured left leg, in the face with the meat and threw a bag of clothing at his bad leg. She repeatedly told a deputy that she only slapped him "so that he can learn." •

An interview in the Daily Beast answers a few of our burning tepid questions: first, it seems Ron Weinstein ("a lean, youthful-looking salesman in his sixties with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a rather intense manner which he attributes to his ADHD") did indeed discourage his wife from writing the ill-judged Madoff's Other Secret, despite the fact that they'd been collectively cleaned-out by her boyfriend's ponzi scheme. Oh, and he only learned about the affair last year, after she started shopping the book.

Of the affair, he says he kinda gets it because his ADHD made him difficult to live with and sent him into rages, and because Madoff was rich and powerful. "Affairs are commonplace and shouldn't be such a big deal," he says. "However, having an affair with the person who is the biggest crook in the world and stole all my assets is another issue entirely."He hasn't read the book, but as long as it's out, hey, he hopes it does well. "Half of the profits are mine."

And then there's this, which is as inscrutable and complex as late Joyce - but we're guessing doesn't reveal much when actually analyzed:

Citing the Judeo-Christian principles "this country was built on," he says he told her, "I think the masses are not going to feel a whole lot of empathy for you. I don't think they understand. I read blogs, I read the comments, and I get nauseous. As hurtful as [the book] is to me, it was probably necessary or she'd be a basket case. It doesn't mean I have to agree with her, but I understand it. When people write these things on these blogs, what the hell do they know? They're looking at the surface." He describes the cliché-ridden attacks-"She cheated on her husband, she's a money hungry slut"-stops talking in order to collect his emotions, then explains: "I dislike the choice she made. I am not okay with it, but I try to understand it."

Oh yeah, no rage there! But, as he explains, bitchy as she may seem to the outside world, his wife is really in turmoil: she's depressed, her ego's been trashed by her financial losses, and all the publicity is "taking a toll" on her. In short, this is as passive-aggressive and creepy a few paragraphs as we've run across in many a moon. "She said it was her book and that if I wanted, I could write my own," says Weinstein, and adds that he's thinking about it. Now, on the one hand, there's something undeniably intriguing about exploring the dynamics of these affairs; while Weinstein is quick to deny any similarities between his situation and that of disgraced political wives like Jenny Sanford or Elizabeth Edwards, the very contrast in the dynamic - and his wife's - and the continued shame of being a "cuckold" in our society, is pretty hearty food for thought. That said, we're not sure anyone would line up to read The Secret Behind Madoff's Other Secret: My Wife Cheated On Me With Bernie Madoff 15 Years Ago, But I'm Not Bitter, Really.

Bernie Made Off With My Wife [Daily Beast]
Related: Former Mistess Feels Good About Airing Winky Dink Madoff Dirty Laundry

Well, luckily for everyone, she answers this and a number of other questions in Time. Not to anyone's satisfaction, maybe, but she's certainly not avoiding an issue that most of us would steer clear of for at least five reasons. Weinstein, who at the time of her year-long affair was the CFO of the Jewish women's Zionist organization Hadassah, lost her shirt to Madoff financially, too: she and her family were wiped out by his Ponzi scheme, and it's not hard to see why she's using what she's got.

Harder to understand, maybe. Weinstein claims the book's not a revenge ploy, that she's only talking about his small member in the interests of psychological inquiry ("I think it started with feeling of inadequacy, his inability to accept failure, his fear of failure"), and that she plans to send him a copy in jail. She also says that her husband and son are totally cool with it. "It wasn't like, "Surprise, I've been having an affair for 20 years." It was more like, Surprise, I had an affair 15 or 16 years ago. We've really worked hard on our marriage since then, and things have come around, but this really terrible thing happened to us."

Well, I'm sure sordid tell-alls, revelations of spectacularly poor judgment and publicly humiliating your husband will really serve to mediate that. While we may find this an unlikely means of "trying to put this behind me as much as I can," I guess good for her that "there was a good deal of catharsis. I started feeling that by sharing it I was getting stronger, not weaker." I don't think I've ever agreed with Madoff's slimy lawyer, Ira Sorkin, before, but I'm kind of feeling his statement on the book: "She's entitled to her free speech, I suppose...Why one would go public with something like that, I don't know."

Well, I'm guessing she's not the only woman Madoff dallied with: maybe she figured she'd better make the most of her material before it became a cottage industry. Although, frankly, we wonder who will buy it: it seems like the target audience - those swindled by Winky Dink (which she claims arose from his winking habit) - will be the least likely to throw their money away.

Bernie Madoff's Mistress Speaks [Time]
Sheryl Weinstein, "Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, And Me" Author, Claims Affair With Madoff [Huffington Post]

Alleged Mistress To Forward Book To Madoff In Jail [AP]
BERNIE'S 'FLAME' WHO GOT BURNED [NY Post]

In an excerpt from his "memoir," Ménage, the author, a naive 22, "stumbles into" an arrangement with his bohemian landlords. He's an artist; she was his muse, he insults her by calling her "bourgeois"; you get the picture. Ewan and the discontented wife start an affair and, yup, it perks up the marriage!

[The husband] reported one day that he and "the bitch" had started having sex again after a period of many stale years. Their fights did not abate but now led to furious lovemaking. His smile secretly thanked me.

This is not, mind you, anything so above-board as "three in a bed." Rather, it's one partner taking a lover. He cites various successful (?) such menages: Henry Miller and Neal Casidy aren't really my ideal of stability - or feminist enlightenment - but then color me bourgeois. The trick, the author explains, is that everything has to be secret.

No, for a mènage to flourish, everything must remain unsaid, there must be secrets and deceptions, all conflicts must be kept alive, inflamed, eroticised. Flying in the face of our modern values, it is not self-expression but the constant suppression of truth that is empowering.

Open polyamory this is not: it's old-fashioned cheating teamed with classic male rationalization. I shudder to think how many guys like to imagine spouses and partners are giving unspoken permission with "secret smiles," and if it sounds like I speak from bitter experience, I do. He acknowledges that this sort of secret liberation is not for everyone:

The ménage is certainly not for everyone, its demands are taxing and there are victims. Many now claim that the affairs of Sartre and De Beauvoir were exploitative, that their "third parties" were abused. Their lovers were certainly not treated as equals (ironic, as they were both Gauchiste radicals). To the modern mind, which advocates equality, fairness, and the avoidance of all conflict, this must seem utterly undemocratic - a tyranny of the passions...Nonetheless, one must look at the many artists and radicals who were involved in ménages and acknowledge the power of the artworks and concepts that have been unleashed from living in such a way.

It should be noted that the author mentions at the end that he's never managed to succeed at "a monogamous union." Fancy that. Maybe hid girlfriends didn't understand that secret affairs, rather than trust and communication, are the way to stability.

The Magic Of A Ménage A Trois [TimesUK]

She writes,

I'm starting to think that Internet romances, including Mark Sanford's, are not romances between people at all. They're affairs with the Internet. Watch people who are newly in love, especially any kind of love that requires that the participants keep stealthy and apart, and they're all over their iPhones and Palm Pres. It's P.D.A. with P.D.A.'s. Romance seems to have become an online multiplayer fantasy-adventure game, no less thrilling than World of Warcraft, and open to all ages.

Ignore the lame jokes (from the Maureen Dowd school of technological humor), and she kind of has a point. The Internet, whether you use it to meet or just correspond with a partner, and whether said correspondence is adulterous or not, provides a whole new platform for romance. It allows lovers to communicate with far more frequency and granularity than physical dating affords. You might only see someone once a week — especially if you're not supposed to be seeing them — but in that time you can exchange thousands of e-mails, IMs, and Facebook messages (does anyone really flirt via Twitter?).

These modes of electronic communication don't just augment a relationship — they create a whole new relationship, parallel to and existing apart from any actual face-time. Anybody with both a computer and a heart has probably known someone who sends really charming e-mails but is a dud in person, and anyone who grew up with the Internet has probably had a few IM-only friends or more-than-friends. As Sadie points out, a correspondence can be as exciting as a meet-cute story, and Heffernan notes that frequent e-mailers tends to fall into a certain simpatico groove with one another.

But are they really "with one another"? Or are they just in a relationship with their chosen medium? Maybe a little of both. I know that when I'm stressed out, I find myself checking my e-mail the way others might reach for a cigarette, and I know that online communication itself can satisfy other cravings as well. Getting a lot of e-mail can make you feel successful and desired in a different way than locking eyes with a crush; quickly crafting a witty IM that you can refer back to later is different than simply telling a joke. Especially with the advent of Google's saved chats feature, all my online correspondence can now be archived forever. Critics say the Internet is ephemeral, but the typed word is now more indelible than the spoken one, and lovers can carry on a romance with their inboxes long after the actual affair has ended.

Of course, where there's a new platform for love, there's also a new platform for hate. People are notoriously willing to say things in, say, blog comments that they'd never voice to someone's face, and one reason advice columnists tell you not to break up with someone via e-mail is that it's so (comparatively) easy. The Internet divorces us from the human reality of our interlocutors — we are names typing at names. As such, it's easy to respond to the smallest slight with a burst of vitriol, and to care more about how many followers we have than about whether we've hurt someone's feelings. So has the Internet simply freed us up to express our true enmity for one another? Or have email and blogs and message boards and Twitter actually created a new hatred, a hatred for what other people become when they're no longer forced to deal with us physically, but also for what we've become, and for the medium that has transformed all of us? Is what we have with the Internet a love affair or a hatefuck? Again, maybe a little bit of both.

Love, Virtually [New York Times]

Earlier: Has Online Dating Really Lost Its Stigma?

Her husband, Gordon Lee Churchwell 3rd, was a handsome bon vivant who first asked her out in front of his girlfriend. In his memoir of his experience of her pregnancy, he wrote, "While the party line is that Julie remains ‘my beautiful partner to whom I am devoted,' to Mr. Weenie, she is beginning to look like Danny DeVito in ‘Batman Returns'. ..."

After he died, friends found emails to other women, including one in which he discussed "the mediocre sex he'd had with his wife." Evidence piled up - including that which pointed to a close family friend. Says the Times,

In an act of extraordinary cheating chutzpah (this friend) arranged for Ms. Metz and her husband to seek marriage counseling with her very own therapist. The women's 6-year-old daughters were also best friends. The morning Ms. Metz learned of the affair, her daughter was staying over at Cathy's house.

As a young woman, Ms. Metz had a brief affair with a married man. "When the man's wife, whom she knew slightly, learned of the affair, she sent Ms. Metz a Valentine's Day card with dead cockroaches. Ms. Metz kept it for many years," says the Times. Clearly, this made an impression, vis a vis the code of conduct towards Other Women. What she learned from the experience, she says, is that "you will pay for it if you harm someone else." And that, apparently, when you're scorned, anything goes? In her case, Metz called and confronted all the women. "What did you think you were doing, getting involved with a married man with a kid? You weren't really thinking about me, were you? How would you feel if some woman did this to you?"

Now, normally, we wonder, what about the husband? He's the one who had five known affairs, did so with your best friend, and seems to have been an asshole to boot? Of course, because he's dead, she "couldn't ask him." But what's interesting is, even when the husband is very much on the scene, this is how the thinking often goes: the Other Woman gets blamed. It becomes about an act of betrayal of female solidarity, a far worse crime than a man's peccadilloes. Ms. Metz's book, Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal, has become a bestseller. I wonder if part of what appeals to people is the removal of the ambiguity: here's a case where it's appropriate to totally blame the other woman - because there's no alternative! And as a result, it places the blame squarely on their shoulders. Maybe in a world of chastened political wives standing dutifully on the podium, their faces masks of pain, readers get a vicarious thrill out of seeing a wife assert herself. But is there a more anachronistic kind of appeal for people, too?

None of this is to say that Metz's isn't a genuinely compelling narrative - or that the women shouldn't have been confronted. Nor is it purely an eye-for-an-eye story: Metz says she accepted all the women's apologies, is friends with one, has moved on and is happy in a new life, in a new town, free of bitterness and incidentally living with a new partner. But clearly people are drawn to the lurid. Take some of the reporter's very gendered language: Metz is "a tranquil and composed slip of a thing." When she confronts the women, she "tore their little hearts out." The "act of extraordinary cheating chutzpah" is recounted with incredulous relish. Plenty of people may gravitate to this as a story of strength, betrayal, and closure. But if this is any indication, no one can resist an old-fashioned girl-on-girl throwdown.

Update: Comments turned off. No one needs this drama.

One Dead Husband And 5 Other Women [NY Times]

Well, for one, they get to deal with the fall-out from her husband approaching Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly to report on the affair because they couldn't figure out any legal case against Ensign. He wrote:

"It appears there may be nothing the law can do to correct and bring justice and restitution to this terrible wrong that has been done us," he wrote. "I have sought a number of lawyers who are having difficulty finding charges that may hold up in court."

Instead, Hampton was willing to expose his wife's extramarital activities to broad public scrutiny in an effort to ruin his former boss.

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.

Whatever the circumstances, Craig Hampton has reportedly made his wife the latest political mistress in an effort at exacting some sort of revenge on the man that he believes is responsible for their ruination. The Politico's Erika Lovley has a look at what some other now-infamous political mistresses are up to.

More than two decades ago, model Donna Rice Hughes was thrust into the spotlight when a photo of her sitting on the lap of married Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart caused him to drop out of the race. She also lost her job with a pharmaceutical company and all but disappeared for nearly seven years.

She is now an internationally known Internet safety expert and president of Enough Is Enough, an organization that fights child pornography. She has testified before Congress several times, co-authored a book on child Internet safety and served as an expert on the "Dateline NBC" series "To Catch a Predator."

Rice decided to channel her infamy and embarrassment into hard work in an effort to make her life about more than her affair (and about doing well for others).

Eliot Spitzer's infamous call-girl is cashing in, but not as much as she could be.

The former $4,000 call girl caused an upset when she appeared at New York Fashion Week this year, and she is reportedly working on an album and film opportunities. She's also blogging and has turned down offers to appear in Playboy and Penthouse.

She's not willing to be famously naked (other than her reported appearance on Girls Gone Wild), but she's trying to nonetheless be famous in the entertainment industry.

Many of the political mistresses whose affairs resulted in children have, more or less, eschewed the spotlight, including the mother of Jesse Jackson's child, Karin Stanford and Rielle Hunter, the mother of John Edwards' alleged love child. Other women, like Judith Nathan and Calista Bisek went on to marry their lovers (Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, respectively). And some, like Monica Lewinsky, flirted with celebrity and then got out of the spotlight.

But how about Ruby Rippey-Tourk, whose affair with the separated Gavin Newsom prompted her husband's angry resignation and months of stories in the local (and national) papers? Despite reports that she was working on a book, she's stayed out of the spotlight as well. Which, frankly, might have been what Craig Hampton should have allowed his wife to do. But apparently, his ego was more important.

Spouse in Ensign affair sought help in letter to Fox News [Las Vegas Sun]
The Other Women [Politico]
Jilted husband forced Ensign's hand [Politico]
Ensign's office: Woman's husband approached media with story [Las Vegas Sun]

Related: Aide Quits As Newsom's Affair With His Wife Is Revealed [San Francisco Chronicle]

76% of American moms are still having sex 2-5 times a week, even with their babies bawling in the background. In addition, only 24% of women fantasize about fucking the delivery man. Slate's XX factor wonders if Cookie's upscale demographic is skewing the statistics towards cheating. Hanna Rosin describes the Marc Jacobs-obsessed six year olds featured in Cookie and posits, "A mom who sends her 6-year-old to school looking like an expensive hooker could certainly not be expected to put up with a little middle-aged husband paunch or to resist the come-on from the hot new Israeli gym teacher." Hahaha, what would the 1939 Marital Rating scale have to say about that?

1939 Marital Rating Scale For Wives [Boing Boing]
Are YOU Having An Affair? [Slate]
Sex And The American Mom Survey [AOL/Cookie]

No two girls in the club are here for the same reasonsome girls were sexually abused, some prefer intimacy over sex, some think that abstinence is the new laid. For me, abstinence is part of a personal quest. It is the realisation that freedom in its purest form comprises of not being addicted to anyone, especially the male body. I gave up having sex and, though the first few months were torture, I am now as free as I can be in a capitalist world.

There are a few odd things about the PPPC; for one, its exclusivity. A woman can only become a member if she's been invited by another member. Also, the women don't flaunt their association with the PPPC; instead, they remain anonymous and assign pseudonyms to themselves. They also don't have Facebook or MySpace groups. Are they ashamed of their re-virginity? No, they say. It's in the interest of keeping it "young, fresh and interesting." They fear the club going "mainstream," thus stripping it of its coolness. That's kinda how we felt about Green Day when we were in high school.

Celibacy Can Be Rebellious [The Guardian]
Related: The Silver Ring Thing [Wikipedia]