Sometimes, they are accompanied by their wives; other times, the cheese stands alone. Here are the 10 best recent press conferences featuring adulterous politicians, and why they were awesome.


1. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford
He cried, he apologized to his kids, his wife, the state, his best friend and his in-laws. He then proceeded to give a play-by-play of the entire romance, including when he started sleeping with her.

Bonus points: In an effort to avoid using his mistress's name, Sanford went for much of the press conference without using a gender specific pronoun, causing many people to speculate that he was gay.


2. New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey
"I am a Gay American." What more can you say?

Bonus points: For doping his hysterical wife up so she smiled the entire time.


3. Idaho Senator Larry Craig
After having pled guilty to soliciting a man for foot-tapping bathroom sex, Larry Craig pulled a Shaggy at his press conference.

Bonus points: Even his wife gave him the "WTF?" look during his press conference.


4. Louisiana Senator David Vitter
David Vitter totally didn't pay a prostitute to change his diapers, yo.

Bonus points: He did let his wife take over the press conference that he called to respond to allegations that he'd utilized an escort service.


5. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer called a press conference to admit that while prosecuting escort services, he wasn't working for his constituents as much as helping eliminate the competition to his escort service of choice. He did have the good sense to resign, though.

Bonus points: No one knows if his balls survived intact long after he and his wife left the podium. From her look, we're guessing not so much.


6. Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards
Appearing alone in a TV interview, Edwards attempted to flirt with interviewer Bob Woodruff, smiled and seemed less than entirely shameful about his conduct, which is the whole point of holding one of these.


7. President Bill Clinton
He totally did have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. And he totally did look like a little kid caught red-handed.


8. New York Governor David Paterson
Paterson confessed to mutual marital infidelity, earning him his look from his wife. He also admitted to conducting it in a Quality Inn.


9. Nevada Senator John Ensign
For all that Ensign's affair involves a campaign staffer married to one of Ensign's own Senate staffers while Ensign was separated and allegations of blackmail, his actual confession was a snore-fest.


10: Speaker-Elect and Louisiana Congressman Bob Livingston
Having spent months inveighing against Bill Clinton's infidelities and how they made him unfit for office, Livingston confessed to all House Republicans that he, too, was a cheat. He was then replaced by notorious philanderer, Newt Gingrich. But it's no fun until someone cries.

• Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is free tonight on $4,500 bail and has absolutely no intention of resigning after being indicted on massive corruption and extortion charges. [CNN, Politico, Chicago Tribune]
• Barack Obama said he'd had no contact with Blagojevich over the Senatorial appointment Blagojevich apparently was attempting to sell. [Huffington Post]
• Blagojevich did, apparently, attempt to trade with SIEU President Andy Stern the appointment of Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in exchange for a golden parachute into an SEIU-funded non-profit. Jarrett dropped out of the running shortly thereafter. [Marc Ambinder, Politico]
• Contrary to early reports, Rahm Emanuel didn't tip off the U.S. Attorneys. [Talking Points Memo]

• Other names that have been flushed out of the indictment by bloggers and reporters: Senate Candidate 2, who Blagojevich was reportedly using to fuck with Obama's team over Jarrett, was probably Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan; and Senate Candidate 5, with whom Blagojevich might have had the most serious quid-pro-quo conversation, might well have been Jesse Jackson, Jr. [Marc Ambinder, Marc Ambinder]
• Obama might have said that he'd had no contact with Blagojevich over the seat, but Axelrod said otherwise a month ago. He's now saying he was mistaken. [ABC News]
• The Illinois legislature is likely to move to impeach Blagojevich, obviously, and they may just change the law and hold a special election to fill Obama's seat. [Politico, The Hill]

• Bill Clinton's going to disclose the names of the 200,000 donors to the Clinton Global Initiative by the end of the year. [Washington Post]
• The Minnesota Court of Appeals is definitely, totally not going to let toe-tapping Senator Larry Craig withdraw his guilty plea. He'll continue claiming he is 100%, totally, utterly, without-a-doubt heterosexual and voting against LGBT rights. [CNN]
• New York Governor David Paterson has agreed to consider United Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat after she contacted him and asked him to do so. If he did appoint her, she's be the first openly gay United States Senator. [New York Magazine]
• Meanwhile, John McCain's going to appear on Letterman Thursday. [ABC News]

JASON: Ugh. I am awake.

MEGAN: I feel you there. I was about to say how it gets worse the longer the week goes on, and then I realized it's only Tuesday. I might cry now.

JASON: Both of us are home sick today. It's a Christmas miracle.

MEGAN: Oh, damn, that sucks. I'm glad I didn't ask you guys if you wanted to get dinner last night.

JASON: We would have declined politely, but it's always nice to have someone thinking of you when you're sick.

MEGAN: I have a biohazard suit somewhere in my car, I think, let me know if you need a chicken soup delivery or something. Otherwise, we should probably discuss Caroline Kennedy's tattoo, which I think — despite being published in the New York Post — is another piece of annoying evidence of how conservative D.C. really is. Also, sexist: tell em Ben Nighthorse Campbell didn't have a tattoo or two.

JASON: Well, remember how worked up everyone got about Elizabeth Kucinich's piercing? Didn't she have a navel piercing or something? You note how I barely remember? That's because I lived in Richmond, WHERE EVERYONE HAD A TATTOO OR A PIERCING.

MEGAN: Tongue piercing. At least then the subtext was that Dennis was getting more blow jobs than the average male D.C. political reporter, present company exempted since I'm sure you and your wife have crazy hot sex all the time. Except when you're sick.

JASON: Not tongue studded sex, and I'm fine with that. My wife has a tattoo on her back (of Eve sitting naked bestride a giant apple) and a navel piercing. Both obtained in Richmond. (My friend Amy gets credit for the art of the tattoo. I was at work one day when our manager Dave came in on his day off, and he was all: "I have to SHOW you something!" And I said, "What, what?" And he lifted up the leg of his pants to reveal a tattoo of a flaming spork on his calf. And I said, "It's a flaming spork." And he looked at me and said, "It came to me in a dream!" Capitol Hill's culture is more conservative, yes. But it's also the culture of a unfrozen idiot caveman. Everything terrifies it. About the only thing it's okay to be out of the closet on is sci-fi fandom. And of course, it's not okay to be out of the closet on being gay.

MEGAN: Flaming spork, huh? Is "dream" some sort of Richmond code for "LSD-induced haze"? But, to the point, I know people in D.C. that speak of their love of sci-fi in D.C. in hushed terms more befitting an admission of a love of S&M at a White House Christmas party. Actually, that probably happens a lot.

JASON: At least on the GOP side.

MEGAN: But no one admits to being gay in D.C. — you can catch a Hill staffer with a dick in his mouth and he'll still try to tell you he tripped.

JASON: Generally speaking, yes, most significant Richmond dreams are chemically induced. Well, it's like that dude who paid a cop twenty dollars to have it off. What was his name again?

MEGAN: Bob Allen. God damn, why do I remember these things? Let's not forget Larry Craig, though.

JASON: You remember those things because you used to write for Wonkette. But, yeah, Bob Allen. This guy will take his whole insistence on not being gay all the way to the Supreme Court. He'll be gobbling Alito's dong, and testifying, "I hate this! I don't know why it's HAPPENEEEEENG!" But, look, I think we all got a little covered with spermatazoa yesterday... Can I just mention that we live in a world of HERO PUPPIES?

MEGAN: But what a great transition to the Supreme Court non-case over Barack Obama's citizenship. I'd bet more than a few not-gay Republicans would've gobbled Alito's dong to get that case heard. Yeah, I'd rather talk puppies, too.

JASON: Just leave that link there for the Jezebel Nation (who got a shout out in the Peanuts Christmas Special) to click on when they need to feel like secret, cuddly, heroic forces are at work in the world. The Obama citizenship case proves just how far you can come in life when you have the right motivation. The folks behind these suits are hopeless, paranoid, dumbasses, and Clarence Thomas was there for them in his hour of need. You know Souter, I think, originally denied the petition. Thomas was all: "You know? I'm going to allow this!" Antonin Scalia probably got misty-eyed: "Look at my idiot protege, he's gettin' to be all grown up!" Then he probably babbled a few sentences in Latin to the false gods of his Opus Dei crackpot religion. "Semper ubi sub ubi!" Then he was wracked with Saint Vitus Dance. AND IT WAS ANOTHER TYPICAL DAY AT YOUR SUPREME COURT!

MEGAN: You know what's hilarious? One of my friends was trying to argue to me that if they had just shown the crackpots his original birth certificate, none of this would have happened and I was like, they're crazy. Are you kidding me? They probably would have lit it on fire, run out of the room and begun screaming about how they now had evidence that it doesn't exist.

JASON: Or they would found something, anything to brand it counterfeit. You see, evidence does not shut these dimwits down. Adding exculpatory material to the pile just excites them anew. They need to be ignored, or sent out to sea on ice floes (which is currently illegal, I think, or they'd have solved social security by doing it with retirees).

MEGAN: Mike Madden took one for the team and went to their press conference yesterday. His reporting, I think, proves your point.

Two and a half hours later, as dentist-slash-lawyer Orly Taitz harangued reporters for not investigating whether Obama's mother was actually dead, that hope had been obliterated. It was crushed by a torrent of half-baked legal theories, vague platitudes about the Constitution and sinister "facts" assembled by a collection of true believers so extreme that even Michelle Malkin wants nothing to do with them.

JASON: I'm sure Malkin wavered for a second or two.

MEGAN: Dude, seriously, Latoya and I were talking about this last week! We're not sure whether the other commentators on the right are just so crazy now that her crazy seems reasonable, or if she's actually been becoming somewhat reasonable lately. It's a little scary. I'd ask you to hold me, but you're sick. I mean, when this is the competition:

At one point, [Taitz] asked why the government had fined broadcasters for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," but didn't intervene to force the media to report on Obama's allegedly phony birth certificate. She claimed Obama holds passports from at least four countries, compared him to Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, equated the "controversy" about Obama to Watergate, and finished her tour-de-force presentation by saying that if Obama can claim he's a U.S. citizen and win an election, then so could just about anyone. "If a person can become a presidential candidate only based on his own statement," she said, "then somebody like Osama bin Laden, theoretically, can come and write a statement, 'I'm eligible,' and we should put him on the ballot, too?"

JASON: It's an airtight case! OF UNSHUNTED HYDROENCEPHALITIS, anyway!

MEGAN: You know the world's gone mad when the AP is reporting that Susan Rice is trying to set up her own fiefdom at State, which is just, like, either Susan Rice has gone completely insane or Ron Fournier is typing while giving Cheney a rim job again.

JASON: Wha? Susan Rice?

MEGAN:

As Secretary of State-pick Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. envoy-choice Susan Rice separately visited the diplomatic agency's headquarters in Washington's Foggy Bottom neighborhood, persons familiar with the transition said that Rice wants to install her own transition team inside the department.

Such a move by an incoming U.N. ambassador is rare, if not unprecedented, because the job is based at the United Nations in New York, where Rice already has a small transition staff, the sources familiar with the incoming administration.

The push by Rice, an early Obama supporter whose position the President-elect wants to elevate to a cabinet post, is also a signal that she intends to use her influence with the new president to play a more significant role than previous U.N. envoys, they said.

You'd think Rice might know things like that it doesn't work that way, having worked at State before.

JASON: Interesting. I'm afraid I haven't the knowledge on hand to grasp the full implications of that. The Obama administration has a different conception of U.N. Ambassador. The article casts this fundamentally at odds with Clinton. And it may! Of course, I suppose Clinton can do little else than accept the way Obama chooses to set his foreign policy team up. I take issue with "cracks" in that they've actually not yet appeared, figuratively.

MEGAN: Well, but if it's just two people having meetings, there's no story! There must be a fight! They have to still hate each other! What else will they talk about?

JASON: I'm afraid that this probably goes back to what Media Matters calls the Clinton Rules For Journalism. Say, a house burns down in Clinton's neighborhood, but firefighters manage to save everyone inside. The headline the next day is supposed to read, "CLINTONS NO HELP AS FIRE CAUSES EXTENSIVE PROPERTY DAMAGE."

MEGAN: For real, though, what else aren't they going to talk about? Charlie Rangel's new ethics problems? Ha! He paid his son $80,000 for doing nothing? So what!? Not going to step down from his Chairmanship because, he says, "I don't think reporters should be in the position of removing Chairmen.”

JASON: Getting your son money for doing nothing is an ethics violation? For white people, it's called Late Night Shots.

MEGAN: Hey, Doolittle took heat for it. (His wife, not his son). And so did DeLay. From Rangel, even. When did the lions of the Democratic party start emulating the Republicans we all despised 4 years ago?

JASON: When they took power!

MEGAN: Damn Lord Acton for nailing that one.

Within 24 hours, I snapped and replied to some unwitting e-mailer that I found the comments disgusting and that what we really needed to think about was who we were trying to convince — and what we were trying to convince those people of. Well, if the polls that show women flocking to the McCain ticket and the response she's engendering from conservatives is any sign, we've convinced some people of one thing — that many feminists are feminist only to other feminists.

Now, naturally, few of these conservatives are exactly noted feminists themselves, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist (or a Wasilla mayor) to smell an opportunity to marginalize feminists or point out hypocrisies obvious enough to drive a wedge between liberal feminists and the very women that many of us have been trying to convince to vote for Barack Obama. Take Michelle Malkin, for example — hardly the kind of opinionated conservabloggier that I tend to agree with. Last week, she pointed out the opprobrium that rained down upon Sarah Palin's head for working late into her pregnancy, returning to work early and staying in a demanding job while parenting a special-needs child. She also pointed out that plenty of it came from female journalists who themselves have children and extremely demanding careers. Of course, she called them hacks and water-carriers for Obama, but that's Malkin for you — and it doesn't make her point less valid or accessible to the women that Obama needs on his side.

Then there's noted feminist scholar Jonah Goldberg, who manages to decry sexism and feminist hypocrisy even as he compares feminists to "stuck pigs" and says that one might resemble "a childless feminist who looks like a Bulgarian weightlifter in drag." But, he also hits up Gloria Steinem's OpEd, Cintra Wilson's screed and professor/columnist Wendy Doniger's truly offensive statement that Palin's "greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." Because, really, there's no better way to win over independent women voters than to question their gender because of their political or religious beliefs. Women on the left should not be denying one another's womanhood because of disagreements about abortion and religion anymore than we should be allowing men like Rush Limbaugh to decide who is or is not a feminist. The problem with Goldberg's piece is not his glaringly offensive stereotypes and generalizations about feminists, it's that he can say all kinds of offensive things about mannish, childless women and it's still only barely as shocking as a feminist saying a person cannot be a Republican and a woman at the same time. And the latter bit is the only thing that's going to get a lot of traction in Central Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado and Michigan among the women that have swung every election for the last two decades.

Libertarian Cathy Young (who really could never annoy me as much as Goldberg or Malkin) writes a far more reasoned and compelling piece today in the Wall Street Journal asking why feminists hate Sarah Palin seemingly beyond reason. She hits some of the same shock quotes as Goldberg before her (and me before him, actually) and says that, from her perspective, Palin's "pro-life feminism [and] small-government, individualist feminism" is more attractive than a kind of feminism that requires government intervention to achieve equality. That's the kind of argument that will play well with independent women voter. It also makes its point about the feminist "hatred" of Palin without reverting to stereotypes about looks and doesn't dismiss the notion that choice is a concern for American women. This is far, far more convincing to the people that need to be convinced — you know, those 30-40 percent of voters in the middle — than arguing that Sarah Palin isn't "really" a woman.

Finally, even Elle's political blogger, Lucy Morrow Caldwell, gets in on the action, chastising South Carolina Democratic Party chairwoman Carol Fowler for saying that Palin's "primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion" (even as she mucks up Fowler's position in the party). Caldwell also says that no one ever suggested about Obama that "his race was the only reason he'd become a candidate in the first place," a statement that is not entirely true, as Geraldine Ferraro no doubt remembers. But few people are going to take the time to point out these inaccuracies in the politics blog of a fashion magazine, and the issue of feminists "bashing" Palin for gendered reasons allows Caldwell to gloss over the part where she herself would be "more cautious [than Palin] on certain foreign policy fronts" in favor of hitting up the mean, mean feminists.

It's not like I don't understand where the anger is coming from. I have heard often enough from liberal women that they don't understand how women can even be Republican...without, of course, ever actually asking one and listening to the answer. I also understand that, in the absence of comprehensive public record of Palin's stances on issues like pay equity or government-funded childcare, it's easy enough to attribute McCain's (bad) stances on those issues to her, especially since, as his running mate, they in effect are her new stances on those issues — and it's easy to conflate hating her positions with hating her as a person. For many women, she seems to be trying to have it both ways, to trumpet her family values and her careerism in a way that Republicans have often bashed other women for doing.

But, most of all, I think the attacks are coming from a place of insecurity that Palin (and all that comes with her) might soften the McCain campaign enough for him to triumph in November. And so if we rail against her, if we play the game of politics by their supposed rules and castigate her for the things conservatives have castigated liberal women for for decades (see: Hillary Clinton) then maybe they won't vote for her and him. The problem is that each party stands by its own hypocrites (see: Congressmen John Mutha and Jim Moran on the left and Senators David Vitter and Larry Craig on the right), so all we're doing by bashing her is inspiring a defense by her ideological compatriots and re-branding feminism as something that defends only liberal women against bias (and that denies a woman's womanliness if she dares to disagree politically, which is straight out of the Republican play book). That's not my feminism and that's not my idea of equality — and, for a lot of moderate women, it's not theirs either.

Polls Show Big Shift To McCain Among White Women [Reuters]
Is Sarah Palin a Feminist? Friday Feminist Fuck NO. [Feministing]
Sisterhood of the Protected Female Liberal Journalists [Michelle Malkin]
Feminist Army Aims Its Canons at Palin [National Review]
All Beliefs Welcome, Unless They are Forced on Others [Newsweek]
Why Feminists Hate Sarah Palin [Wall Street Journal]
Right Angles [Elle]
S.C. Dem Chair: Palin Primary Qualification Is She Hasn't Had An Abortion [Politico]
Ferraro’s Obama Remarks Become Talk of Campaign [NY Times]

MEGAN: i am sooooo sorry
MOE: NP.
MEGAN: there's also a taxi strike today. i actually wonder if they are blocking bridges
MOE: Happy Valentine's Day!
It's cool Jane Fonda said "cunt" on the Today Show! That bought us some extra time.
But not that much!
MEGAN: Whoa!
MOE: Anyway I decided that today we were going to do it free-association style
just for Valentine's Day.
No real agenda.
MEGAN: Someone this morning sent me an old link of Shepard SMith saying "blow job" on air, but yours is better.
MOE: Just some riffin on the whole politics makes strange fuckbuddies or whatever.
What's that sayign?
MEGAN: "Bedfellows," because Washington is so gay.
MOE: Airport bathrooms for the gays!
Srsly though I was just jokin.
I used to have this editor at my college paper.
Yochi Dreazen.
He was also my housemate for awhile.
But that's another story.
MEGAN: Aw, they should totally be decorated. Senators need love too.
MOE: Anyway Yochi Dreazen, whose full name "Yochanan" means Gift From God apparently, was allllways using those dumb little aphorisms as his story ledes. And it annoyed me. He was obsessed w. the strange bedfellows line. Now he works at the Wall Street Journal. I hope he is well! Shout out Yochi if you're listening! That story on the soldiers keeping the underground railroad of stray dogs in Iraq was a Tjerker for reals! Anyway.
Oh yes they do. Shout out to our troops! I sure hope they tell those kids in training camp that if there's one thing that will make their lives easier upon return from the warzone — besides Ecstasy — it's getting their wives and girlfriends really expensive vibrators before they leave.
But back to Valentine's Day!
Do you have plans?
MEGAN: Which is now your constitutional right! (Except in Mississippi).
MOE: Jesus Motherfucking love of Christ.
MEGAN: Um, well, my initial plan was to watch Resident Evil:Apocalypse with a bottle of red wine. But, now I'm meeting a friend of mine for wine first, in a place where they serve wine but not dinner in the hopes that DC women demand dinner on Valentines Day.
MOE: I didn't know Texas had a sex toy ban.
MEGAN: Texas and Alabama, and Mississippi.
Also, in Texas, the law said not only that the sale of them was illegal, but ALSO the gifting or sharing of them was. What the fuck goes on in the Texas legislature that they felt the need to regulate the sharing of sex toys?
MOE: Who fucking passes something like that? Nevermind. That's just insane. INSANE. I guess we should go look up the proceedings. I'm mad. And today is all about love. I wanted to talk to you about your all time fave Capitol Hill couplings! But first I suppose I should get the news out of the way: some Hezbollah guy was killed and waterboarding is illegal so no more of your crazy pranks, John McCain doesn't believe in earmarks, and...more hand-wringing about Hillary.
Oh yes and Larry Craig acted improperly.
MEGAN: I have a mark on my ear from an ill-considered piercing!
MOE: But he acted improperly in the name of love!
Or sex.
MEGAN: Yes, but not by trying to get some anonymous gay ass! Just by trying to withdraw his guilty plea. I love moral relativism.
The sex thingie was fine, it was everything he did after taking responsibility for his creepy actions that they had issues with.
[Side note: if you're curious, I have links to the relevant sex toy case documents here, but the link is very NSFW.]
MOE: Good to know so I can stab myself later. Can we talk about sex in Washington for a sec?
MEGAN: Yes! I'd like to have some sometime soon.
Or, do you mean cute couples?
MOE: Whatev! How do we feel about Jenna and Henry?
MEGAN: I think she's cute. He doesn't do anything for me, but he must really love her to have put up with Laura calling him not a serious boyfriend back in the day and all the picture-taking pressure and stuff.

But Laura can only be thinking, "Well I could be married to Larry Craig." And Suzanne Craig can only be thinking, "Well I guess I could be married to Judi Giuliani. (In some states anyway!) But Hillary has been through the worst, marriage-wise at least, and worked very very hard, to suppress all of it for the good of our country.

In a similar vein, I am now about to order my fourth drink.

That's Heidi Klum and Seal today, somewhere, thanks to X17.

Commenting on the Clinton scandal, Wendy Vitter told the media in 2000, "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he [Vitter] does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

Before deciding to stand by the president, the current New York senator had denied she would do any such thing during her husband's first run for office in 1992 amid allegations that he had an affair with Gennifer Flowers.

"I'm not some little woman, standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette," she told CBS's "60 Minutes."

The Vitters, like the Clintons, remain married.

Because women's bathrooms are simply too crowded and gross and tapping one's foot while in one is already a universally-accepted way to convey the sentiment, "OMG I am about to urinate down my pant leg; please please please please let me cut in front of you just this once?"

Craig's Wife Stands By Her Man [ABC News]

• Senator Craigslist says that not only is he not gay, he has never been gay, including when he was arrested three months ago and also back in 1982 when he had to deny he was gay on account of all the young boy Congressional pages he'd plied with drugs and alcohol and fucked, which very neatly explains, you see, why he plead guilty.
  
• Fidel Castro, back writing editorials for his mouthpiece newspaper after being crucified last Friday by Pontius Perez Hilton, writes that a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket would be almost as "invincible" as him — and he's not exactly stoked.
  
• Illiterate L.C. ex Jason Wahler afforded a 4-karat diamond rock for his barely-leagal honey. [TMZ]

• The United States has a gun for every person and that's how come our crime is so low because weapons are deterrents against using them. [http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-08-28T174254Z_01_L28348938_RTRUKOC_0_US-WORLD-FIREARMS.xml&src=rss&rpc=22&sp=true">USA Today]
• Iran's crazypants leader Ahmadinejad is not only a great cook, he's prepared to (fill the Iraqi power) vacuum and also that jacket is so totally contraband American Apparel. (Ha ha, "contra")
• The market sucked again. Time to invest in tent mortgage lenders!