Disputes over real estate are as common to divorce proceedings as hot dog vendors are to Manhattan streets, but this is a different order of magnitude. When a sitting mayor is rebuked by a state Supreme Court justice for emotionally harming his children by allowing his mistress into the official residence, well, even a New Yorker raises an eyebrow or two. One of the amazing things about the public dissolution of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's marriage is that it makes Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship look like a model of decorum.
Nothing is private because the parties involved have made everything public.
She, though much more reticent, has had a few public words to say herself. The diminution of marriage is not just a New York phenomenon, by the way. The scaffolding that once held marriage in a position of chief importance has all but tipped over everywhere. The latest census figures show that only 52 percent of U.S. households are headed by married couples with children. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, the divorce rate in many parts of the Bible Belt is roughly 50 percent above the national average.