Disposable Husbands, Disposable Lives.

In todays Los Angeles Times, columnist James Rainey writes about Sandra Tsing Loh's article in the Atlantic about her recent divorce, called "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off". Rainey calls Loh out a bit, writing

"I suspect I will not be the only Loh fan dismayed by a piece of work that simultaneously goes too far -- letting the "flaming jet fuselage" of her own wrecked relationship cloud all marriage -- and not far enough -- failing to address any of the specific details that sent her partnership into a tailspin."

I would take it a little further, perhaps pointing out the rich irony of a woman who makes her living as the self-described "Mother on Fire"; exhorting mothers across the State to march on Sacramento this Sunday to fight for their children's rights would toss her marriage aside because marriage is in essence Too Much Work.

I suppose it was inevitable that when a public persona has a personal crisis that said persona will have to come up with a public mea culpa. It's rather interesting in this day when some Californians are fighting for the reinstatement of their right to marry that there's a public figure blaming the wreckage of hers not on the fact that she and her "fellow transgressor" got caught, but on the idea that the institution itself is so fundamentally flawed it should just be dropped as a social construct.

Image of Charles and Diana's divorce decree from CNN.com