Hey, America! Your Puritan roots are showing

I've been thinking about the Eliot Spitzer affair lately. Not his actual affair with that high-priced hooker. But the whole media firestorm surrounding the scandal.

No matter how hard I try, I just can't imagine something like this happening in Canada.

I mean, I can certainly imagine Canadian politicians getting down and dirty with interns and prostitutes. Marital infidelity among the political elite is probably just as common in Canada as it is in America. The only difference is we simply don't care.

Think about it. When was the last time we had a Canadian sex scandal? We don't do sex scandals in Canada (well, except for that Toronto cooking show host whose husband ran off with Tori Spelling).

Let's Canadianize the Eliot Spitzer affair for a moment. Let's pretend a Canadian premier was discovered spending thousands of dollars (of his own money) to do things (on his own time) with expensive call girls.

Would journalists in Canada report this story? Would there be a media firestorm? Would the premier buckle under pressure and resign?

While political sex scandals make Americans foam at the mouth with moral outrage, most Canadians would probably just shrug their shoulders.

We don't care if a premier cheats on his wife. Yes, it makes him sleazy and duplicitous. But if he's doing it in his private time and it's not interfering with his job, it doesn't really matter.

I don't understand why people down in the States are getting so worked up about Spitzer.

I also can't wrap my head around these American wives who stand up on stage to support their lying, cheating husbands. If I was married to Eliot Spitzer, I'd be too busy filing for divorce to be up on stage looking all sad and victimized beside the two-timing sleazebag.

Even more puzzling is David Paterson, the man stepping in to replace Spitzer as governor of New York. One day after being sworn in, the new governor felt compelled to tell the world that he and his wife both had extramarital affairs.

Wow, America. Has it really come to this?