"First Girlfriend" in the Bedroom

This profile of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's "girlfriend" Sandra Lee caught my eye. The unofficial "First Lady" of New York is happy to discuss spending the night in the New York Governor's mansion, in the bedroom of her "boyfriend," the governor.

Personally, I don't care where these people spend the night, or with whom they do it. But it isn't necessary to telegraph one's sleeping arrangements in the pages of the newspaper. Like it or not, governors (and their significant "others") do set an example, of one kind or another.

Given that the Governor is now presiding over a state with a serious spending problem, he'd be well advised to remember that -- among "regular people" -- the real "root cause" of poverty is the collapse of marriage.

Certainly the well-to-do like the governor and his "girlfriend" can afford to flirt with alternative lifestyles. But when they help to normalize and glamorize them, they make the problem worse -- and children are, most often, the ones who pay the heftiest price.