Better than your average car wreck on the interstate, it’s hard not to be fascinated by the public spectacle of powerful white men getting their penises caught in a shredder.

That’s what happening to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who both thought their sexual exploits could be as easily dismissed and forgotten like some unwanted document.

Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, would have gotten away, at least from New York, were it not for the cell phone left at the scene of the crime.

And Schwarzenegger, well, you can’t undo a love child.  A pro-choice Republican while in office, Schwarzenegger made a bad choice.

And now we see how badly he misunderstood the notion of “courting the Latino” vote.

I would have thought that we all have settled in our minds how we felt about philandering politicians after the Clinton/Lewinsky affair.

But I guess it depends on how much you like the philandering pol.

Then you can “compartmentalize” private and public, just like the pol, and allow your guy to get away with the nasty.

Bill Clinton seems to done just splendidly after the affair. But that didn’t happen to John Edwards, who not only cheated on the poor cancer-stricken Elizabeth, but then…. she died on him. 

I’d say serial cheaters like Newt Gingrich, a presidential candidate, need to worry.

The public still expects fidelity and honesty. More leeway is given if they like you. And Gingrich is hardly warm and cuddly.

In Schwarzenegger’s case, everyone loves Maria Shriver, so it’s really no contest for the body builder. He’s done in public life. And in his private life, maybe he’ll find solace among the ethically challenged in show business.

Strauss-Kahn? In America, he’s just known as a man of power.  But he’s also a man of contradictions. The guy heads the IMF and he’s a socialist?  He certainly was a socialist when it comes to sex.

He apparently did it with everybody, many of them journalists and now they’re speaking out.

Curiously, Strauss-Kahn’s victim was a hotel maid from Africa.

Schwarzenegger’s was his household help from Guatemala.

And this is basically why these two sexual exploits are vastly different from some other sexual shenanigans in politics.

You can’t compartmentalize the actions so easy in the realm of  personal vs. public.

Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn’s dalliances become crimes when they cease to be about sex, and turn into imperialistic acts of power and class.

Their actions are all about powerful men taking advantage of the weak, getting what they want, when they want, and thinking they can get away with it.

They can’t.