I don’t understand how this is possible. I thought we lived in a culture that despises excessive news coverage. Three years later, my ears still ring from "censure and move on!" Poll after poll, I was told, revealed that we didn’t care if the President lied to us and was ready to lie to us about anything else that suited his purposes. News anchors condescendingly explained to me that current events, both domestic and foreign, had only a few minutes in the spotlight before people grew fatigued. Blockbuster awaited, after all. Triple-fudge frapaccinos were waiting to be brewed, sprinkled with vanilla flakes for $6.75 a cup. The real things in life mattered, and we were tired of the news.

Never mind that by consuming air-time to explain this to me, the anchors were practically contradicting themselves. I got the message: News is for nerds. Why then, three years hence, this perpetual thirst for more updates on the Yates chronicle?

Because we’re a nation of selfish bastards, that’s why.

Clinton and Lewinsky don’t hit home; Yates does. Lazy, selfish men are waiting out there to see how much they can ignore the daily maintenance of their young children while their wives handle everything, before those men are criminally culpable. Self-pitying, teary-eyed women, weary of keeping the home fires burning like grandma used to do, want their husbands to pitch in & help - with the force of law. They want a legally-mandated Calgon moment. They want to say to him: If I’m stressed out, you better notice it & pitch in, pal. You are responsible for my sanity. The Russell Yates conviction, or lawsuit, proved it.

For however little it is worth, the men have a better case here. If a woman is on the edge of a nervous breakdown or is legally insane, and someone else is responsible for her, that someone-else has to be as competent as any of the rest of us if not more so. People who have been through such a family crisis know this. They need to have both oars in the water, to make up for the other person’s weakness. Russell may be a lot of things, but he is not that. I’ve followed the case as close as anyone else. He’s a matchstick short of a cord.

Are we really to believe that impregnating your wife time after time after time, against a doctor’s advice, is evidence of negligence - and therefore competence - and then the extinguishing of those young lives is indicative of insanity, and therefore innocence? In John Marshall’s words, this is too extravagant to be maintained.

Besides, this is a misguided and counterproductive way to rejuvenate the carcass of feminism. Such a supervisory capacity would effectively make every husband his wife’s boss. The teary-eyed bitchy women evidently haven’t thought that all the way through. You put legal responsibilities on someone, you have to give them the authority to back that up. I doubt that’s what they want to do.

But it really doesn’t matter. Three years ago, the Lewinsky scandal was universally regarded of having overstayed its welcome. That is much more true of the Yates case, which is more important than many other domestic tragedies only because several of the spectators figure they have a stake in the outcome.

I say, a pox on both their houses, the men and the ladies. This is more selfishness than our society can stand for long. Somewhere out there, someone is thinking "I care more about stories that impact me, and people like me, than stories that impact how the entire nation is governed and affect the lives of millions of other people." And then there are millions of more people, who think like that person. This appears to be a value system held by a majority. If it lasts for long, we, as a free society, will not.