My apologies for the title of this post, but that's what this is:
A California lawmaker who resigned after he was caught on tape bragging about his sexual exploits with two women, one of them reportedly a lobbyist, denied on Thursday that he was having extramarital affairs.
Mike Duvall stepped down from the California Assembly on Wednesday, one day after a videotape surfaced in which the married legislator is heard telling a colleague that he enjoys spanking one of the women -- who he boasts is 18 years younger and favors skimpy, "eye-patch" sized underwear.
"I want to make it clear that my decision to resign is in no way an admission that I had an affair or affairs," Duvall, a 54-year-old family-values Republican from Orange County, said in a statement posted on his website.
"My offense was engaging in inappropriate storytelling and I regret my language and choice of words. The resulting media coverage was proving to be an unneeded distraction to my colleagues and I resigned in the hope that my decision would allow them to return to the business of the state," he said.
Let's take him at his word, then. So what he is saying that it's less serious to tell made-up sex stories of two women who in fact did not have sex with him? And he's only concerned about his colleagues!!!!
What about the women whose lives he has wrecked this way? They are both married, after all, and both in careers where his insinuations certainly would not help them.
I have no idea what the truth is. But I think telling made-up stories is a violation of the women in the stories. A big one, too.