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Men Behaving Badly Again

As U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner joins the pantheon of powerful public figures making fools of themselves, we have to ask an obvious but discomfitting question: Why are they all men? Why does Time magazine’s list of the Top 10 Political Sex Scandals have nary a woman on it?

There are plenty of foolish women in public life (see: Palin, Sarah), but none seem to have the toxic mix of hubris, hormones and recklessness that propells such dumb sexualized behavior. Will that change when, or if, women obtain their rightful place as half of the nation’s leaders? Is this driven by gender, or enabled by the circumstances of power? Is this where equality ends, or where it begins?

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This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

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