"Caitlin Flanagan--professional antifeminist, author of a whole book of essays attacking working mothers, herself excepted--is probably the only person in the world who could make me feel sorrier for Governor Mark Sanford than I already do. "Watching the governor of South Carolina cry like a little girl," she kicks off her Time cover story on divorce, "made me wonder whether the real secret to a lasting marriage lies in limiting your means of escape." Trust Flanagan to use misogyny even when attacking a man. "Unfaithfully Yours" ("Infidelity is eroding our most sacred institution. How to make marriage matter again") adds nothing to the familiar conservative lament about the "decline" of marriage: divorce and single motherhood ruin kids; sexual irresponsibility, bad enough in the upper class, has destroyed "the underclass"; and why can't men (all her adulterers are men) stay faithfully married for fifty years, like her father? Flanagan is so moralistic and self-congratulatory--she's married, yay!--I felt tempted to hike the Appalachian Trail myself, and I've only been married for three years."
Read Pollitt's latest column in its entirety here.
