Dear ShawTaylor,
"Got any figures to back that up?"
Divorce statistics are notoriously difficult to do. Even calculating the basic "divorce rate" is tough.
I've seen this particular figure thrown about once or twice, but most folks who deal in divorce statistics never really deal with the phenomenon statistically - that previously-divorced folks are more likely to divorce again.
However, it doesn't take much more than a small application of common sense to figure out that some folks divorce more than once, thus the divorce rate for all MARRIAGES will be higher than the divorce rate for all married PERSONS.
In my own family - my siblings and my wife's siblings - the divorce rate is nearly 50%. Out of 11 distinct marriages among us, five ended in divorce.
However, of eight different siblings involved in these marriages, only two have ever been divorced, which is only 25%.
Mr. Giuliani, himself, is a prime example of the phenomenon.
"The point being, divorce is is commonplace and so mainstream in America, that no one even gives it a second look."
I agree with you, as far as that goes.
But folks care about the details.
Thus, Jane Wyman's leaving Ronald Reagan high and dry, and Mr. Reagan marrying Nancy Davis a few years later, and then remaining married to her until his death, produces little, if any moral twinges in the vast majority of folks.
But someone who dumps one wife after 14 years, and another wife after another dozen or so years, sleeping around and openly, notoriously, and publicly squiring around the "other women," and trying to shove one of the "other women" down the throats of the wife's children IN THEIR OWN HOME WHILE STILL MARRIED TO THEIR MOTHER is rather unseemly behavior that will disgust all but the most hardened of the amoral.
sitetest