Well, since you put it that way

The whole bizarre aspect of the Sanford thing (and when you get down to it outside of the immediate family, that's what it is, bizarre [much like Edwards and his affair]) it makes you lose focus on other types of infidelities.

For example, the one that combines all types of "affairs" and blends them into a big stew of hypocrisy:

[John] Ensign, 51, admits to an eight-month intimate relationship with Cynthia Hampton, 46, longtime wife of Doug Hampton and longer-time friend of Darlene Ensign, the senator's wife. Cynthia and Darlene have known each other since high school in Orange County, Calif.

The affair started in December 2007, flared dangerously when the Ensigns separated the following April, then finally ended last summer, with the senator and his wife reconciled and in counseling. By autumn everyone was back in their handsomely landscaped houses in gated communities on opposite sides of Crestdale Lane.

"Darlene, Cindy, John and Doug are all kind of the same decent-character people," said Darlene's brother, Jeff Sciarretta, who owns a tile business in town. "The story really begins and ends with, you simply had people who had known each other for a while and were having problems in their marriage, and that's how they got together.

"John not being innocent, Cindy not being innocent, they found mutual companionship, sympathy. The typical thing."

Except: Both of the Hamptons worked for John Ensign. Doug was a senior aide in the Russell Senate Office Building. Cindy was treasurer for his campaign. The employment situation alone presented whole new vistas of complication in a situation that, in the least public workplace, would already have been as delicate as emptied eggshells. And this was in the Senate.

Do Terry Hatcher and Eva Longoria work their way into this somewhere?