I'm feeling oddly tongue-tied in the wake of the pop psychology gabfest spawned by the ever-evolving sex scandals of the New York governor's office. Even though I happened to be in New York when the whole Eliot Spitzer thing was unfurling, and every other conversation had something to do with hookers or managed to incorporate cheesy innuendo about "Client 9." I'm still not entirely clear as to what we're supposed to take away from this.

This newspaper alone declared, among many other analyses, that Silda Walls Spitzer's cuckolding killed feminism (courtesy Elizabeth Wurtzel on this page, March 18) or that it revived it (Hugo Schwyzer, gender studies professor from Pasadena, the next day in a "Blowback" opinion piece on latimes.com). The Times brandished dueling interpretations of evolutionary biology (David P. Barash, in a March 12 Op-Ed article about harem-forming males, and Jennie Dushek, in a March 18 "Blowback," standing up for female infidelity in the animal kingdom as proof of gender equality).

The Spitzer affair also turned serious broadcast channels into subsidiaries of Lifetime, while the non- and semi-serious had a field day. On NBC's "Today," Dr. Laura insinuated that men were driven to cheat because "these days women don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need." Moments later, anthropologist Helen Fisher explained that Spitzer's "high cheek bones and very heavy brow ridge" were "signs of extremely high testosterone." (Translation: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver are either completely doomed or perfectly matched, depending on how you look at it.)

So why, despite this avalanche of chatter, do we still seem hungry for even more chatter? Why are so many people continuing to chew on the Spitzers as if the secret to marital happiness is embedded in the talking point of the next pundit? More important, why didn't Spitzer's replacement, David A. Paterson, manage to defang the whole subject by announcing on his second day in office that he and his wife had had extramarital affairs in the past?

Paterson's admission, of course, was a damage-control measure, but it also slapped down certain naive American ideas about marriage in a way that was almost French (after all, the funeral of French President Francois Mitterrand was attended by his wife, his mistress and his illegitimate daughter).

Paterson wasn't bragging about his exploits. For a moment, I thought he might show us all just how unsophisticated our sanctimony was starting to make us seem. For a moment, I thought he'd shame us into moving on. But somehow, we're still here.