christiefan915
Catalyst
David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell. He leaked classified state secrets, she paid the price. He gets a slap on the wrist, she gets her life ruined. How typical the double standard with men and women behaving badly.
"As far as infidelity scandals go, this one had everything. He, with a Ph.D. from Princeton, was the revered “thinking man’s general”: honorable, visionary, charismatic, credited with turning around the failing war effort in Iraq and doing more one-armed push-ups than anyone his colleagues knew. “There was talk,” The Washington Post put it, “that, one day, King David would be president.” There was hubris: the man tasked with guarding the nation’s secrets revealing them; a woman who had achieved incredible journalistic access committing the ultimate journalistic sin.The downfall was swift: Mr. Petraeus, now 63, resigned, apologized to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material related to eight personal notebooks he’d shared with Ms. Broadwell.
Nearly four years later, Mr. Petraeus is now a partner in a New York private equity firm, and has advised the White House on the war against the Islamic State. He publishes op-ed articles, speaks publicly and has affiliations with three universities, including Harvard. He was recently listed among five former military leaders suggested by a Washington Post columnist whom Republicans might have considered drafting for president. “I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see him in some senior role in the next administration, Democratic or Republican,” said Vernon Loeb, the managing editor at The Houston Chronicle, with whom Ms. Broadwell wrote her biography of Mr. Petraeus.
This is that Paula Broadwell, the mentee-turned-biographer of David H. Petraeus; the West Point graduate and military intelligence officer... She was the younger, equally ambitious overachiever: Olympic-distance triathlete; two master’s degrees; deputy director of the center on counterterrorism at Tufts University; a research associate at Harvard, where she had first met the general six years before. This is also the Paula Broadwell who would be publicly portrayed as a “homewrecker,” a “stalker,” a “temptress,” the woman who “brought down the director of the C.I.A.” And, perhaps with the most frequency, as the “mistress,” a word for which there is no male equivalent. And so the public inquisition into the “mistress” began, with everything from her fitness acumen — could she really run a six-minute mile? — to her body fat (13 percent) to her “usually tight shirts and pants” scrutinized. She was called, by a senior military source, “a shameless self-promoting prom queen” who “got her claws” into him. She was “curvaceous,” with “expressive green eyes.” One general described her as “seemingly immune to the notion of modesty,” referring to the attire she was said to have worn in Afghanistan.
She lost her military security clearance; her promotion from major to lieutenant colonel was revoked when the news broke. The F.B.I. still has her computers — including her dissertation research — and she withdrew from her Ph.D. program. She said she was told in more than one job interview that, while she was qualified, hiring her would be a public-relations nightmare. That may be, in part, an unfair standard between men and women caught in an affair,” said David Bradley, the chairman of Atlantic Media...
Mr. Petraeus, meanwhile, was described by former aides as “the consummate gentleman and family man.” He had “let his guard down,” The Washington Post said in a headline. Supporters said he’d done the “honorable” thing by quitting. When he resigned, the president offered his prayers for the general and his wife; the Petraeus family, friends lamented in the news media, would get through this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/fashion/david-petraeus-paula-broadwell-scandal-affair.html?_r=0
"As far as infidelity scandals go, this one had everything. He, with a Ph.D. from Princeton, was the revered “thinking man’s general”: honorable, visionary, charismatic, credited with turning around the failing war effort in Iraq and doing more one-armed push-ups than anyone his colleagues knew. “There was talk,” The Washington Post put it, “that, one day, King David would be president.” There was hubris: the man tasked with guarding the nation’s secrets revealing them; a woman who had achieved incredible journalistic access committing the ultimate journalistic sin.The downfall was swift: Mr. Petraeus, now 63, resigned, apologized to the Senate Armed Services Committee, and later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material related to eight personal notebooks he’d shared with Ms. Broadwell.
Nearly four years later, Mr. Petraeus is now a partner in a New York private equity firm, and has advised the White House on the war against the Islamic State. He publishes op-ed articles, speaks publicly and has affiliations with three universities, including Harvard. He was recently listed among five former military leaders suggested by a Washington Post columnist whom Republicans might have considered drafting for president. “I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see him in some senior role in the next administration, Democratic or Republican,” said Vernon Loeb, the managing editor at The Houston Chronicle, with whom Ms. Broadwell wrote her biography of Mr. Petraeus.
This is that Paula Broadwell, the mentee-turned-biographer of David H. Petraeus; the West Point graduate and military intelligence officer... She was the younger, equally ambitious overachiever: Olympic-distance triathlete; two master’s degrees; deputy director of the center on counterterrorism at Tufts University; a research associate at Harvard, where she had first met the general six years before. This is also the Paula Broadwell who would be publicly portrayed as a “homewrecker,” a “stalker,” a “temptress,” the woman who “brought down the director of the C.I.A.” And, perhaps with the most frequency, as the “mistress,” a word for which there is no male equivalent. And so the public inquisition into the “mistress” began, with everything from her fitness acumen — could she really run a six-minute mile? — to her body fat (13 percent) to her “usually tight shirts and pants” scrutinized. She was called, by a senior military source, “a shameless self-promoting prom queen” who “got her claws” into him. She was “curvaceous,” with “expressive green eyes.” One general described her as “seemingly immune to the notion of modesty,” referring to the attire she was said to have worn in Afghanistan.
She lost her military security clearance; her promotion from major to lieutenant colonel was revoked when the news broke. The F.B.I. still has her computers — including her dissertation research — and she withdrew from her Ph.D. program. She said she was told in more than one job interview that, while she was qualified, hiring her would be a public-relations nightmare. That may be, in part, an unfair standard between men and women caught in an affair,” said David Bradley, the chairman of Atlantic Media...
Mr. Petraeus, meanwhile, was described by former aides as “the consummate gentleman and family man.” He had “let his guard down,” The Washington Post said in a headline. Supporters said he’d done the “honorable” thing by quitting. When he resigned, the president offered his prayers for the general and his wife; the Petraeus family, friends lamented in the news media, would get through this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/fashion/david-petraeus-paula-broadwell-scandal-affair.html?_r=0
