Notes on a scandal

With the latest sex scandal--NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's involvement in a prostitution ring--I think I have reached political sex scandal fatigue. Not that such scandals are undeserving of exposition and attention, but I couldn't help but wonder why they seemed to happen so often. I found some possible answers to my question in a NY Times article which historicizes the trend and looks to a variety of scholars for explanations. Here are the possible answers the article presents:
-male politicians become the alpha male and thus think they have a right to sleep with whomever they'd like
-this happened all the time before and we just didn't hear about it as much
-politicians feel entitled, which makes them ignore the consequences of what they do
-politicians are risk takers who think nothing can bring them down
-politicians are thrill-seekers
and my personal favorite
-sex and power both express "this huge energy these people have"

Notice that none of these explanations have anything to do with things changing in our society--these scandals have always gone on. There's such a lengthy history of them that my alma mater George Washington University offered a seminar on the topic, and you have to scroll to get through Wikipedia's list of them (which is pretty incomplete, at least for the early years).

The most acrimonious one in early America was probably the Eaton Affair, in which Washington high society was thrown into tumult over the appointment of a cabinet minister whose wife, Peggy Eaton, was alleged to have been sexually improper. A strange post-script--at nearly 60, Peggy married a 21-year-old painter who then ran off with her money--and her grand-daughter. Let's hope Gov. Spitzer has a better fate.