'Evita' star Ricky Martin (Getty Images)

Newsies (Nederlander Theatre, March 29)

The next crop of child actors on par with the Billy Elliott kiddos or whoever’s riding the War Horse may be the early-edition-toting stars manqué of the season’s first movie adaptation. (They’ll be helped along by a Harvey Fierstein book and the direction of Jeff Calhoun, fresh off Bonnie and Clyde.) We’re not familiar with the source material—there’s one Christian Bale movie we see as having musical potential, and that’s a Huey Lewis-laden American Psycho spectacular—but Newsies has earned a formidable cult following over the years, and has the potential to break the kind of dancing kiddies that attract Tony attention and keep Professional Children’s School in business!

Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, April 1)

America’s most surprisingly-still-alive writer speaks to the present political milieu with a play first performed in 1960, then revived in a well-regarded 2000 production. (Is there some rule that we’re supposed to care about political drama only during election years, when we’re most exhausted by it?) This play tells the story of a presidential nominating convention and the intrigues therein; the cast is to feature a waxwork gallery of legends including Candice Bergen, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury—and Donna Hanover, who knows a thing or two about political intrigues.

End of the Rainbow (Belasco Theatre, April 2)

Between the Michelle Williams blockbuster, Smash, and the stacks upon stacks of books, we’ve allowed Marilyn Monroe her moment in the sun—now it’s time to recognize the 20th century’s true tragic diva. Yes, we’re referring to Judy Garland (for the kids: she was kind of like a rough draft of Britney Spears, but with talent). The Garland tale is reprised in End of the Rainbow, a play with occasional music starring the British veteran Tracie Bennett. Sight unseen, we’re not willing to declare Ms. Bennett the “world’s greatest entertainer”—but we’re looking forward to having ourselves a merry little night at the theater!

Evita (Marquis Theatre, April 5)

Don’t cry for Elena Roger, who reversed the notion that Eva Perón must necessarily be portrayed by someone who’s already a big star. Ms. Roger, herself Argentine by way of London’s West End, is to take over Patti LuPone’s tight bun in the new show about the flashy first lady who wins the hearts and minds of her husband’s constituents on the way to consolidating her own power—has anyone sent a comp ticket to Cristina Kirchner? More established stars are to include Michael Cerveris, of Assassins, as Juan Perón, and Ricky Martin, of “She Bangs,” as Che Guevara.

Magic/Bird (Longacre Theatre, April 11)

Bounding down the court comes this year’s Broadway show for heterosexual males—it’s all about sports, and it’s only 90 minutes long. Magic/Bird is put on by the production team behind the surprise hit Lombardi, who may have been the first people to realize that ESPN Classics viewers also have the disposable income, and the inclination, to go to the theater. Telling as it does the story of the basketball battle between the Lakers’ Magic Johnson and the Celtics’ Larry Bird, it reprises the classic theatrical theme of rivalry—though this isn’t a musical, we practically expect either Mr. Johnson’s or Mr. Bird’s character to burst out in “I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.”

Clybourne Park (Walter Kerr Theatre, April 11)

Last year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama nearly fell apart before its transfer to Broadway; producer Scott Rudin pulled his support after playwright Bruce Norris reportedly declined to perform in Mr. Rudin’s television adaptation of The Corrections. Thankfully, theater owner Jordan Roth came to the rescue. Mr. Norris’s play about a big house packed with history will be seen in a big house packed with—well, for all the public outcry, straight plays tend to draw a discerning audience. Either way, Clybourne Park picks up the story of the home in A Raisin in the Sun and turns it into a modern-day parable of race in Chicago.

Ghost (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, April 23)

Another West End transfer—like End of the Rainbow and Evita; can’t we grow our own hits anymore?—adapts the tale of a murder victim, his lonely beloved, and the psychic who brings them together in an evening of ghostly possession and pottery creation. The cast of relative unknowns will be singing music by, among others, former Eurythmic Dave Stewart and lyrics by Oscar-nominated Ghost screenwriter (remember the movie, with Patrick Swayze?) Bruce Joel Rubin. Fun fact: running concurrently with Sister Act, this production features the second Broadway character originated by Whoopi Goldberg, while the star herself warms cushions at The View.

Nice Work if You Can Get It (Imperial Theatre, April 24)

Forget Matthew Broderick’s tragicomedy of a Super Bowl ad! In his new role on Broadway, Mr. Broderick’s every day shall be a “day off”—he portrays a wealthy gadabout who encounters a stunning bootlegger (Kelli O’Hara) during the Jazz Age. (Mr. Broderick in a period piece? One that’s not about Ferris Bueller? Okay!) Ms. O’Hara is the real reason to see this Gershwin brothers show—the long-rising stage ingénue, most recently seen as Nellie in South Pacific, is the sort of well-liked, not-yet-iconic blonde belter who would actually get cast in the fake musical on Smash.

The Columnist (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, April 25)

Ink-stained wretches like ourselves can’t resist a Broadway dramatization of the newspaper biz, but the new play by Proof Pulitzer-winner David Auburn will appeal even to those who don’t stick press badges in their fedorae. David Alsop, the titular columnist, was a power broker in Washington from the FDR era into that of JFK—all the while keeping his homosexuality concealed. Camelot? Clandestine homosexuality? So many dog-whistles for us even before we knew that the lead actor is John Lithgow, whose appetite for this sort of scenery may never be whetted.

Don’t Dress for Dinner (American Airlines Theatre, April 26)

If the sequel to Marc Camoletti’s surprise hit Boeing-Boeing recreates the writer’s earlier success on Broadway, it will be without the help of star Mark Rylance or a trendily retro flight-attendant aesthetic. This time, little-tested stars like Adam James, Urinetown’s Spencer Kayden, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses’s Ben Daniels read the now-deceased French farce master’s words. There may indeed be hit potential here—this, too, was a smash on the West End, playing for years, and Roundabout Theatre, which has put on a series of pitch-dark shows this season, is likely looking forward to a bit of levity.

One word made all the difference: betrayed . My people said that I felt "betrayed" by my wife's behavior. We selected that word with great care. Notice that we didn't say she was "unfaithful." Notice that we didn't say she was "negligent" as a mother. Notice, in fact, that the word instantly made me into a sympathetic figure-the cheated-upon, broken-hearted husband. That word appeared high up in The Times story, as we knew it would, and everybody noticed.

It worked like a charm. Within a day, every tabloid reporter worth his or her soiled undergarments was sniffing around to find the co-betrayer, and with a little help here and there, they found him. And I won again, because now they're writing stories about her using the words "cavorting" and "polo-playing boyfriend." And me? Oh, I'm just broken up about it all. (Reminder: Get the guys to commission a poll soon to find out how the married-woman-with-children vote splits on this one. My guess is that I'm ahead.)

Once "cavorting" and "polo-playing boyfriend" made their way into the stories, all I had to do was sit back and watch. I knew nobody would remember that just a few months ago, I made a great show of dropping out of the Governor's race because I refused to go negative on Carl McCall. (That was a hoot!) Now here I am, going negative on the mother of my children. And who comes out looking bad? She does.

Nobody ever gives me credit for being crafty. No, that's what they say about them -those other people, with their inherited money and good looks and alleged style. Me, I'm supposedly the guy who takes care of business with a sledgehammer. But I'll show them.

This is no different from a political campaign, which is no different from war-except you don't get to use real bombs and bullets. But the goal is the same: total destruction of the enemy. And now they're the enemy, and they're out of practice. It shows: How could they not have expected me to find some yo-yo in the tabs willing to attack my wife for being a bad mother? God, that one was almost too easy. Don't they remember what happened to Donna Hanover when Saint Rudy (who wasn't yet beatified at the time, never mind canonized) decided he wanted to be rid of her? The yo-yos were out in force, slandering Donna because she wanted to be an actress when she should have been home with the kids, making chicken soup for Rudy's soul. I seem to recall Rudy's lawyer making a rather rude reference to Donna's emotional state. The phrase "hanging on to the chandeliers" comes to mind. Now that's the way to spin a divorce!

And who comes out looking dirty? The woman, of course. You have Donna Hanover, whose husband the saint was catting around on her, hanging on to the chandeliers. And now the yo-yos attack my wife because-get this-she went to India to help the poor, leaving the kids with Grandma.

But nobody says anything about the fact that I was running around the state for a couple of years trying to be Governor-and before that, there wasn't a photo-op anywhere in the country that I'd pass up if I thought it would help me. (Remember that one of me carrying a hunting rifle? Those upstate gun owners had to know that I wasn't just another gun-hating Democrat!) Does anybody ask me where my kids are if I'm campaigning in the suburbs of Watertown? Heck, no-I'm a man!

I know this is a risky strategy, and things could get out of control. Some reporter loyal to them will attack me or my motives. They have their people out there, and I know who they are. But in the long run, I have to spin this problem so that I preserve my political viability. Is that so wrong? This is what I do for a living. It's all I ever done.

One of the guys in my camp just called to warn me that I might lose points in the next poll I take. Shows you how much he knows-as far as I can tell, I can't lose any popularity points.

It's a mathematical impossibility.

We Californians had focused briefly and sympathetically on Mayor Giuliani last fall at the time of the primaries, when it came out about his prostate cancer and he was replaced as a contender by what seemed an interchangeable Italian-American Republican, Rick Lazio; but the West Coast press has not been paying such close attention since then. What a world of events has passed, what a lot of moral confusion to untangle, what an absence of victims as these principals scramble for the leading role in some sort of sweepstakes to be the worst villain, least sympathetic human being and biggest groveling, publicity-seeking, seemingly oblivious fool.

Since the beginning of the Giuliani-Hanover-Nathan saga, it has been hard to decide which is the most fascinating aspect of what has been, for New Yorkers, a long, slowly unfolding drama: the resolute compulsion to humiliation; the depth of marital hate (so unlike political and other forms of hate); the absence of shame; the sheer mismanagement; the intrusive and strident nature of the press coverage; the lawyers ( always the lawyers); the riddle of how Americans get these public officials anyhow; the satisfaction of seeing that other people's families are worse than one's own, that art cannot come up to life (soap opera, Sopranos ) for sheer disgusting excess, unless we think of a play like John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi for the thrilling Elizabethan quality of the mighty overreacher's fall. A friend recently pointed out to me that the denouement of the Nepalese royal dinner party played like the end of Hamlet .

Family hate, Nepalese-style–though more dramatic than we have reason to expect from the Giulianis–leaves no doubt about the irrational intensity of household passions. Marital hate, with its annual toll of batterings and corpses, is especially intense because of the large component of self-hate. How can I have been such a fool? Will this person, to whom I have revealed my weakest and silliest selves, reveal them in turn to the person who will take my place? The chagrin of knowing that once one loved a person now so clearly revealed to be faithless, ugly, poor, altogether unworthy and unsuccessful! What this shameful blunder says about oneself is nearly unbearable. Logically, we ought to wish the wildest success on the person who leaves us. We never do.

The slow unrolling of events–each day a new, dismal installment–gives an effect that's absorbing and suspenseful. Yet taken all together, the Giuliani divorce isn't much worse than anyone else's divorce: The girlfriend is always a problem, teenagers always add an exasperating note, money is always an issue (like all divorcing men, this deadbeat is claiming to have only $7,000 to his name), the injured party is always bitterest–and Ms. Hanover is bitter. So is Ms. Nathan when it comes to her custody battle–nothing new, really.

Among them, this crew has some experience with divorces and annulments: one failed marriage each among the principals (and this without knowing the marital history of Mr. Nathan and Mr. Hanover). Experience might have helped them avoid some of the mistakes they seem eager to make. Provocations–like the Mayor inviting Ms. Nathan into the family home–should have been prevented by responsible lawyers if Rudy and Judi didn't have common sense themselves.

It's too bad. Divorce probably ought to be thought of and presented more positively. It can be a happy experience, or at least a relief, freeing the bridled spirit from a disagreeable bond, reconstituting a bleak future, setting everyone up for the better. Usually it is not, but maybe only because society views it negatively, sometimes even forbids it, and really hasn't worked out any adequate rules about those important components, kids and money, that the Giulianis and Nathans are thrashing out in our view.

And here the difference is that politics and publicity are involved, and also what the courts have called a tangible and material asset, that which the lawyers refer to as the "celebrity status" of the principals, though who would want such celebrity can be answered briefly: Only they would. All three, or four, or eight (counting judge and lawyers) seem to cling to the futile idea that if somehow a public-relations battle could be won, the war would be won, rather like Palestinians. Meantime the poor couple has broken the cardinal rule of successful divorce: hold no face-to-face discussions. They have faced off in the public arena, and everyone hates all sides. (Though I have the impression that Donna Hanover may have a slight edge, owing to the Mayor's tarnished record–wasn't there someone called Christyne?) The lawyers are trying to get the rest of us to break the cardinal rule about friends' divorces: don't take sides. "Remember," our mothers used to say, "there are always two sides to every story." But not to choose sides would spoil the bit of fun we're entitled to, for bearing our own feelings of regret and responsibility for voting these people into office.

Does all this sell newspapers? Is the New York Post doing better than before all this? The role of the press need hardly be discussed, since we don't expect any better. If the thing weren't covered, we wouldn't be disgusted; meantime there's the public's right to know, the seeming compulsion of the lawyers to say quotably revolting things, and so on. For me, the weirdest sign of a looming sensibility chasm may be when the Mayor's lawyer, Raoul Felder, trying to vilify Ms. Hanover, announces that the Mayor, on chemotherapy for his prostate cancer, has to clean up his own vomit because he doesn't have a wife. How even to deconstruct such a revelation? Why would the Mayor tell his lawyer such a thing? It isn't that one wouldn't hold the head of a loved one, it's that–what? That the Mayor doesn't receive adequate medical care? That intimate health care is part of a wife's job description, no matter how weak her stomach? That the Mayor would allow someone to watch him throw up? Is cleaning up vomit expected of wives, no matter what their health-care training? (If not, of whom then?) Should the Mayor be on medical marijuana? This lawyer assumes a definition of family relationships that many people can't imagine. Who is supposed to clean it up, actually? And are there no basins in Gracie Mansion?

Next to the Giuliani-Nathan-Hanovers, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were models of reticence, generosity toward each other and good will: "Oh, Monica is a good girl." One hates even to advance this idea, but–can this shameless self-destruction be a Republican thing? Can the sense of election among Republicans be so profound that any sense of personal moral culpability is unknown to them?

Or is it merely religion itself, whether Catholic or fundamentalist, that intensifies in people a search for Justification? And religion also introduces the idea of confession, which the principals are so enthusiastically availing themselves of here. It's just that these things are usually private. In either connection, think of Newt Gingrich and his many wives. Remember Congressman Henry Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? In the Clinton impeachment affair, the most truly embarrassing thing was the prurience of the so-called House managers, all of whom professed to be religious, and most astonishing of all was their inability to see any connection between their own acknowledged behavior and the behavior they were so anxious to excoriate–remember the famous remark by Mr. Hyde that his own infidelity was a "youthful indiscretion" (at 41) and therefore had nothing to do with the situation at hand? (In retrospect, the delicacy of Congressman Bob Livingston in resigning seems almost un-American.) But now all these proud role models are exceeded.

The ego of politicians explains a lot. The rest of us cannot imagine the serenity of such inner conviction of importance. But history affords lots of examples of the disastrous collusion of ego and power–think Nero, or Idi Amin. Originally, Mr. Giuliani presented himself as a serious and dignified person: He was the Mayor who promised to improve the quality of life of New Yorkers. He did. He got all that squeegeeing stopped, crime reduced, graffiti down; and he continues, it appears, to function as a serious Mayor, protecting the city against, among other things, ferrets. It was reported that the Mayor's office even circulated memos like "Talking Points against the legalization of ferrets," and that passions ran high among both pro and con. Mayor Giuliani is strongly anti-ferret. It's not clear what sacrifices the citizens of New York will be making by having no First Lady now that the Mayor has "stripped" his wife of her duties. In any case, from being an effective Mayor with a political future after he leaves office next year, Mr. Giuliani has moved into being a public suicide.

But of course, it is celebrity–that is, publicity–that has made all the protagonists cease to be pitiable human beings, suffering and angry, and degraded them into being television-sitcom characters, especially for the rest of the country, non-New Yorkers who undoubtedly are not following as closely, and feel less keenly, any local loss of pride that may be involved here. (In San Francisco, Mayor Willie Brown was revealed to be the father of an illegitimate child, but this news was received with indifference, or actually a feeling of general satisfaction at having at least one question that has lingered locally resolved.)

New Yorker and Californian alike must feel some sympathy for the self-destructiveness of the doomed protagonists. With cancer, his fall from power, impotence and the ruin of his political future, the Mayor clings to a version of his life involving himself as a romantic protagonist sacrificing all for love, and there's something sort of sympathetic about that. He even seems to feel a kind of relish for a smoldering finish, blood, a heap of broken bodies. Once the situation spun out of control, it became a kind of soap-box derby of powerless vehicles hurtling downhill toward an appalling crash. No one's steering, not even the embarrassing lawyers.

There's the 12-step idea that you have to hit bottom before you can pick yourself up. These people seem to be testing that proposition, and maybe as a country we are testing the same proposition, involved in a kind of collective cultural self-destruction, with the leading Mayor vicariously enacting the expressive role, like a priest or a ritual designated human sacrifice. Though we thought the bottom was Congress dragging the country through the mud in the name of some hypocritical version of purity thinly masking partisan hatred, now we know that at the bottom is our own surrogate dragging us all through the mud in the name of ratings.

We Californians had focused briefly and sympathetically on Mayor Giuliani last fall at the time of the primaries, when it came out about his prostate cancer and he was replaced as a contender by what seemed an interchangeable Italian-American Republican, Rick Lazio; but the West Coast press has not been paying such close attention since then. What a world of events has passed, what a lot of moral confusion to untangle, what an absence of victims as these principals scramble for the leading role in some sort of sweepstakes to be the worst villain, least sympathetic human being and biggest groveling, publicity-seeking, seemingly oblivious fool.

Since the beginning of the Giuliani-Hanover-Nathan saga, it has been hard to decide which is the most fascinating aspect of what has been, for New Yorkers, a long, slowly unfolding drama: the resolute compulsion to humiliation; the depth of marital hate (so unlike political and other forms of hate); the absence of shame; the sheer mismanagement; the intrusive and strident nature of the press coverage; the lawyers ( always the lawyers); the riddle of how Americans get these public officials anyhow; the satisfaction of seeing that other people's families are worse than one's own, that art cannot come up to life (soap opera, Sopranos ) for sheer disgusting excess, unless we think of a play like John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi for the thrilling Elizabethan quality of the mighty overreacher's fall. A friend recently pointed out to me that the denouement of the Nepalese royal dinner party played like the end of Hamlet .

Family hate, Nepalese-style–though more dramatic than we have reason to expect from the Giulianis–leaves no doubt about the irrational intensity of household passions. Marital hate, with its annual toll of batterings and corpses, is especially intense because of the large component of self-hate. How can I have been such a fool? Will this person, to whom I have revealed my weakest and silliest selves, reveal them in turn to the person who will take my place? The chagrin of knowing that once one loved a person now so clearly revealed to be faithless, ugly, poor, altogether unworthy and unsuccessful! What this shameful blunder says about oneself is nearly unbearable. Logically, we ought to wish the wildest success on the person who leaves us. We never do.

The slow unrolling of events–each day a new, dismal installment–gives an effect that's absorbing and suspenseful. Yet taken all together, the Giuliani divorce isn't much worse than anyone else's divorce: The girlfriend is always a problem, teenagers always add an exasperating note, money is always an issue (like all divorcing men, this deadbeat is claiming to have only $7,000 to his name), the injured party is always bitterest–and Ms. Hanover is bitter. So is Ms. Nathan when it comes to her custody battle–nothing new, really.

Among them, this crew has some experience with divorces and annulments: one failed marriage each among the principals (and this without knowing the marital history of Mr. Nathan and Mr. Hanover). Experience might have helped them avoid some of the mistakes they seem eager to make. Provocations–like the Mayor inviting Ms. Nathan into the family home–should have been prevented by responsible lawyers if Rudy and Judi didn't have common sense themselves.

It's too bad. Divorce probably ought to be thought of and presented more positively. It can be a happy experience, or at least a relief, freeing the bridled spirit from a disagreeable bond, reconstituting a bleak future, setting everyone up for the better. Usually it is not, but maybe only because society views it negatively, sometimes even forbids it, and really hasn't worked out any adequate rules about those important components, kids and money, that the Giulianis and Nathans are thrashing out in our view.

And here the difference is that politics and publicity are involved, and also what the courts have called a tangible and material asset, that which the lawyers refer to as the "celebrity status" of the principals, though who would want such celebrity can be answered briefly: Only they would. All three, or four, or eight (counting judge and lawyers) seem to cling to the futile idea that if somehow a public-relations battle could be won, the war would be won, rather like Palestinians. Meantime the poor couple has broken the cardinal rule of successful divorce: hold no face-to-face discussions. They have faced off in the public arena, and everyone hates all sides. (Though I have the impression that Donna Hanover may have a slight edge, owing to the Mayor's tarnished record–wasn't there someone called Christyne?) The lawyers are trying to get the rest of us to break the cardinal rule about friends' divorces: don't take sides. "Remember," our mothers used to say, "there are always two sides to every story." But not to choose sides would spoil the bit of fun we're entitled to, for bearing our own feelings of regret and responsibility for voting these people into office.

Does all this sell newspapers? Is the New York Post doing better than before all this? The role of the press need hardly be discussed, since we don't expect any better. If the thing weren't covered, we wouldn't be disgusted; meantime there's the public's right to know, the seeming compulsion of the lawyers to say quotably revolting things, and so on. For me, the weirdest sign of a looming sensibility chasm may be when the Mayor's lawyer, Raoul Felder, trying to vilify Ms. Hanover, announces that the Mayor, on chemotherapy for his prostate cancer, has to clean up his own vomit because he doesn't have a wife. How even to deconstruct such a revelation? Why would the Mayor tell his lawyer such a thing? It isn't that one wouldn't hold the head of a loved one, it's that–what? That the Mayor doesn't receive adequate medical care? That intimate health care is part of a wife's job description, no matter how weak her stomach? That the Mayor would allow someone to watch him throw up? Is cleaning up vomit expected of wives, no matter what their health-care training? (If not, of whom then?) Should the Mayor be on medical marijuana? This lawyer assumes a definition of family relationships that many people can't imagine. Who is supposed to clean it up, actually? And are there no basins in Gracie Mansion?

Next to the Giuliani-Nathan-Hanovers, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were models of reticence, generosity toward each other and good will: "Oh, Monica is a good girl." One hates even to advance this idea, but–can this shameless self-destruction be a Republican thing? Can the sense of election among Republicans be so profound that any sense of personal moral culpability is unknown to them?

Or is it merely religion itself, whether Catholic or fundamentalist, that intensifies in people a search for Justification? And religion also introduces the idea of confession, which the principals are so enthusiastically availing themselves of here. It's just that these things are usually private. In either connection, think of Newt Gingrich and his many wives. Remember Congressman Henry Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? In the Clinton impeachment affair, the most truly embarrassing thing was the prurience of the so-called House managers, all of whom professed to be religious, and most astonishing of all was their inability to see any connection between their own acknowledged behavior and the behavior they were so anxious to excoriate–remember the famous remark by Mr. Hyde that his own infidelity was a "youthful indiscretion" (at 41) and therefore had nothing to do with the situation at hand? (In retrospect, the delicacy of Congressman Bob Livingston in resigning seems almost un-American.) But now all these proud role models are exceeded.

The ego of politicians explains a lot. The rest of us cannot imagine the serenity of such inner conviction of importance. But history affords lots of examples of the disastrous collusion of ego and power–think Nero, or Idi Amin. Originally, Mr. Giuliani presented himself as a serious and dignified person: He was the Mayor who promised to improve the quality of life of New Yorkers. He did. He got all that squeegeeing stopped, crime reduced, graffiti down; and he continues, it appears, to function as a serious Mayor, protecting the city against, among other things, ferrets. It was reported that the Mayor's office even circulated memos like "Talking Points against the legalization of ferrets," and that passions ran high among both pro and con. Mayor Giuliani is strongly anti-ferret. It's not clear what sacrifices the citizens of New York will be making by having no First Lady now that the Mayor has "stripped" his wife of her duties. In any case, from being an effective Mayor with a political future after he leaves office next year, Mr. Giuliani has moved into being a public suicide.

But of course, it is celebrity–that is, publicity–that has made all the protagonists cease to be pitiable human beings, suffering and angry, and degraded them into being television-sitcom characters, especially for the rest of the country, non-New Yorkers who undoubtedly are not following as closely, and feel less keenly, any local loss of pride that may be involved here. (In San Francisco, Mayor Willie Brown was revealed to be the father of an illegitimate child, but this news was received with indifference, or actually a feeling of general satisfaction at having at least one question that has lingered locally resolved.)

New Yorker and Californian alike must feel some sympathy for the self-destructiveness of the doomed protagonists. With cancer, his fall from power, impotence and the ruin of his political future, the Mayor clings to a version of his life involving himself as a romantic protagonist sacrificing all for love, and there's something sort of sympathetic about that. He even seems to feel a kind of relish for a smoldering finish, blood, a heap of broken bodies. Once the situation spun out of control, it became a kind of soap-box derby of powerless vehicles hurtling downhill toward an appalling crash. No one's steering, not even the embarrassing lawyers.

There's the 12-step idea that you have to hit bottom before you can pick yourself up. These people seem to be testing that proposition, and maybe as a country we are testing the same proposition, involved in a kind of collective cultural self-destruction, with the leading Mayor vicariously enacting the expressive role, like a priest or a ritual designated human sacrifice. Though we thought the bottom was Congress dragging the country through the mud in the name of some hypocritical version of purity thinly masking partisan hatred, now we know that at the bottom is our own surrogate dragging us all through the mud in the name of ratings.

None of the three believes the rules of law or civility apply to him. Mr. Sharpton seems to think he can break the law without paying the appropriate penalties. Mr. Giuliani acts as though we would never hold him accountable for the treatment accorded the mother of his children. And Mr. Torricelli apparently lives by an indecipherable code of ethics that, it seems fair to say, bears little relation to most voters' sense of propriety. All three are so self-absorbed and self-important, so convinced of their own absurd righteousness, that they have little idea how foolish, mean and petty they seem to the rest of us.

The Mayor is Exhibit A. In what must be the most painful chapter of his life, his narcissism and arrogance have ruined his judgment and clouded his thinking. He is determined to humiliate his estranged wife, Donna Hanover, in public, regardless-or so it seems-of the consequences for their two children. Mr. Giuliani has expended no small amount of energy over the last seven years hectoring New Yorkers about civility, respect and common decency. And he's been right more often than he's been wrong. But in this hour of extreme personal pain, Mr. Giuliani has been anything but civil, respectful and decent.

Before they were muzzled, Mr. Giuliani's allies saw fit to slander Ms. Hanover as an uncaring mom, which is among the most vile charges a man can hurl at the mother of his children. And even when a public truce of sorts was called, Mr. Giuliani continued to maneuver. Most recently, he stripped Ms. Hanover of her ceremonial role as co-host at city receptions, and he is cutting back on her city-paid staff.

With only seven months remaining before Mr. Giuliani leaves office, the Mayor's actions seemed particularly nasty and unnecessary. The Mayor no doubt believes he has his reasons for acting this way, and because he is so self-absorbed, he sees no reason to justify those actions. He has his reasons, and therefore, by definition, they are beyond reproach.

So he doesn't see what so many of us do: a spiteful, mean-spirited husband ridiculing his wife, even as he conducts an extramarital affair. This kind of behavior will likely preclude Mr. Giuliani from ever holding elective office again and, for all intents and purposes, makes him almost unemployable come Jan. 1. Given how insensitive he has been to a woman who once shared his life and dreams, given how he has let his ego get in the way of his judgment, wouldn't any business or professional enterprise think twice before offering him a job?

Mr. Giuliani's self-destruction in the waning days of his administration parallels our ex-President, who was too blind to anticipate the reaction to his last-minute pardons.

As for Mr. Sharpton, he too is so impressed with the glory of himself that he can't see how silly he looks with his latest publicity stunt. He flew to Puerto Rico to protest the U.S. Navy's training exercises on the island of Vieques. Fair enough; we all have the right to protest government actions. But Mr. Sharpton, as is his nature, carried his protest to the next level of publicity-seeking and got himself arrested.

At this point, a person with character would submit to the justice system he or she flouted. But not Mr. Sharpton. Faced with a sentence of 90 days in a federal lockup in Puerto Rico, Mr. Sharpton asked to be brought back to New York to do his time at the Metropolitan Detention Center. His allies protested the sentence. And U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton-whose husband did nothing to stop the bombing of Vieques when he had the chance-naturally visited him in prison. The latest dispatch from Mr. Sharpton's jail cell, dutifully recorded as if it were actual news, contains word that he will commence a hunger strike to force an end to the bombing in Vieques.

Mr. Sharpton has compared himself to Nelson Mandela. That comparison is ludicrous, for reasons that should require no elaboration.

As a repeat offender, Mr. Sharpton deserves his sentence. He wants us to believe that he is another Martin Luther King Jr., but he is nothing more than a loud-mouthed troublemaker whose financial dealings leave open a host of unanswered questions. When he is confronted with the consequences of his behavior, he whines and complains, never guessing that the public regards him not as a leader, but as a civic joke.

Senator Torricelli, the third and final exhibit in this parade of narcissists, carries on as though he is a victim of zealous government prosecutors and investigative journalists. The Senator's campaign is under investigation for an assortment of alleged shenanigans, from dubious fund-raising practices to the acceptance of unreported gifts. Yet the Senator continues to insist that he has never done anything to disgrace the public's trust in him. Meanwhile, this slippery pol dodges and weaves behind the cover of a U.S. Senate seat, and quite simply doesn't believe that he can get caught.

He may soon find out otherwise, just as Mr. Giuliani will discover that there is a price to be paid for cruelty, and Mr. Sharpton will find out that there is nothing so pathetic as an aging clown.

Mr. Giuliani picked up the telephone to call a top executive at the Daily News . He was very upset. The picture on page 1 showed him bent forward in a chair, glowering at the ground in what appeared to be a state of despair. With his graying head receding between two hunched shoulders, the Mayor looked like he was on a heavy dose of downers.

Mr. Giuliani had good reason to be enraged. The Daily News is run by longtime boosters of his: Publisher Mortimer Zuckerman's support helped get him elected Mayor in 1993; executive editor Michael Goodwin was often kind to City Hall as editor of the editorial page; and Richard Schwartz, Mr. Goodwin's replacement on the editorial page, was once a top adviser to Mr. Giuliani. But now, it seemed, his onetime allies had turned on him. The lurid two-page spread included a sidebar comparing his life, with its fractured marriage and mid-life romance with Judith Nathan, to a B-movie. There was no mistaking the message: The News essentially pronounced him irrelevant-just in time for his birthday. When Mr. Giuliani looked at the front page that morning, it must have been a bit like that episode of The Twilight Zone where a man looks into a mirror and is startled to see an unrecognizably old and decrepit version of himself gazing back.

For Mr. Giuliani, a tightly coiled man who detests untidiness and disarray, it is all unraveling at once-his health, his marriage, his Mayoralty and, perhaps, his hopes for a political future. Mr. Giuliani's identity has long been bound up with power: the acquisition of power, the consolidation of power, the exercise of power to bend a stubborn, unwieldy city to his will. But now he is no longer in charge of his body; the treatment he chose for his prostate cancer has left him impotent. On Jan. 1, Mr. Giuliani will surrender command of the city to a new Mayor. And, according to sources, Mr. Giuliani is upset with himself for losing control of the story of his personal travails.

"His comments and actions show that the countdown is getting to him," said former Mayor Edward Koch. "But it shouldn't. He should just do his business as if he is going to be there forever. And then, on Dec. 31, he should allow the [Police Department] Emerald Society to bagpipe him out of City Hall. They did it for me, and I enjoyed it."

As Mr. Giuliani looks on, the final chapter of his tenure is being written for him, and it's all about his collapsing marriage and his grounded sex life. His Mayoralty, a reign comparable to that of Fiorello La Guardia, his hero and role model, is ending with neither a bang nor a whimper, but rather a barrage of sordid and salacious headlines.

Watching Mr. Giuliani go about his daily business, you can tell that the countdown is weighing on him. According to sources, Mr. Giuliani is acting increasingly sentimental in private about the mundane trappings and duties of the Mayoralty, even those that once held less interest for him.

At public events, he sometimes seems preoccupied, even introverted. At a Memorial Day parade in Queens on May 27, for instance, Mr. Giuliani was striding forward alongside Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman who is a likely candidate for Mayor. When Mr. Bloomberg suddenly veered off to introduce himself to some little girls holding "I like Mike" signs on the parade's sidelines, photographers swooped after him in pursuit. But rather than join his fellow Republican in a bit of gripping and grinning, Mr. Giuliani marched on, quickening his step and fixing his gaze on the ground.

After the parade, Mr. Giuliani shared a stage alongside some veterans. As the old soldiers stiffened to salute the flag, the Mayor put his hand over his heart. He began to stare at the floor. With his mouth bent in a rigid, upside-down U, he seemed entirely preoccupied and withdrawn, and held that position for a full 30 seconds, his figure as still as his wax double at Madame Tussaud's museum. He was entirely unaware that the veterans had long since dropped their salutes.

Moments like these have grown more frequent. After all, Mr. Giuliani didn't want it to end this way. He is upset, sources said, because the story of his messy divorce got away from him. And, as he well knows, it's partly his fault. He is all too aware that his decision to allow his surrogates to leak the intimate details of his life in Gracie Mansion has backfired. By bringing Ms. Nathan into Gracie Mansion for civic ceremonies, by turning his impotence into the subject of a public-service announcement, and by stripping his estranged wife, Donna Hanover, of some of her duties as First Lady, he has merely made it easier for Ms. Hanover to play the role of the aggrieved party.

Amid this administration's final months, there does appear to be a certain amount of consistency on Mr. Giuliani's part. The mother of his children-like Patrick Dorismond, like former Police Commissioner William Bratton, like a succession of schools chancellors, like the traders he handcuffed in the late 1980's, like the mobsters he tore apart in cross-examination as U.S. Attorney-was treated as just another enemy to be vanquished. In Mr. Giuliani's universe, enemies always meet the same fate: They are marginalized by a careful campaign of leaks carried out by members of his entourage.

But, as Ms. Hanover may have suspected would happen all along, Mr. Giuliani has become the unwitting victim of his final act of aggression. Having lived with him throughout his years as a prosecutor and as Mayor, Ms. Hanover could have predicted that, by asking a judge to bar Ms. Nathan from Gracie Mansion, she could get Mr. Giuliani to flip into vanquish-the-enemy mode and hence damage himself. In light of these latest episodes, after all, it seems hard to imagine that Mr. Giuliani could run for Governor next year or return to City Hall in 2005.

The Fun's Gone

Whatever pleasure Mr. Giuliani once took in his daily sparring with reporters seems to have waned. It isn't that he no longer has any taste for fighting with the press when he thinks they've been unfair-he launched a fierce counterattack on the Daily News on May 27-it's that he no longer seems to take even a glimmer of pleasure in combat, as he once did. The game sometimes seems to bore him.

On a recent morning in City Hall's Blue Room, after a routine press conference detailing a new initiative involving the city's Children's Services Administration, for instance, Mr. Giuliani was asked to comment on the latest developments in his divorce case. After getting double-teamed by a pair of reporters for a few minutes, Mr. Giuliani said: "Why don't you both debate each other? Maybe you'll be more comfortable debating with each other. I'm not going to discuss the matter. Would you like to ask me again? Or would you like to ask me about [this initiative], that actually could affect the lives of babies and children in the city?"

There was a time when Mr. Giuliani would have reveled in the contempt he felt for the press corps. But this time, he just seemed dispirited, even depressed, by the tedium of it all.

A similar dynamic was at play at a press availability on the edge of a cemetery after the May 27 Memorial Day parade in Queens. The Mayor gripped a portable lectern and hunched over it, as if trying to push it into the ground, into its own grave alongside the dead populating this modest resting place.

Asked for his response to the Daily News story, Mr. Giuliani went on the attack. "I think the newspaper should be ashamed of itself," he said. "It not only has descended to levels of indecency where it's following people around and jumping out of bushes to take their pictures …. It now has descended to the level of total and absolute dishonesty."

Where Mr. Giuliani once would have been animated by his counterassault, this time he just seemed subdued, as if he was weary of stewing about the News story and just wanted to finish up the arduous task of completing this scripted counterassault.

In many ways, the final months of Mr. Giuliani's Mayoralty are similar to the last days of Ed Koch in 1989. Like Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Koch had experienced a brush with mortality in his final term; he had a stroke in 1987. Like Mr. Giuliani, whose domestic life is in shambles, Mr. Koch, a lifelong bachelor, had no family to turn to as his Mayoralty came to an end. Mr. Giuliani himself has said that he hopes his relationship with Ms. Nathan lasts forever, a clear sign he intends to turn to her for solace in what will certainly be a difficult period in his life. And like Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Koch's identity was entirely bound up with being Mayor. Indeed, many of Mr. Koch's friends were worried about how he would adjust to life after City Hall.

It seems safe to assume that the loss of City Hall will weigh even more heavily on Mr. Giuliani than it did on Mr. Koch, who lost his bid for a fourth term (this was before term limits). Mayor Koch was more of a talker and performer, and thus could more easily adjust to a post–City Hall life as a pundit and radio personality. For Mr. Koch, the Mayoralty was a stage; for Mr. Giuliani, a manager to his core, it has been a vast control panel. It's hard to imagine him being content, as Mr. Koch has been, dispensing justice on The People's Court or squaring off against Alfonse D'Amato in an "I'm Right, You're Wrong" column in New York magazine.

But, inevitably, Mr. Giuliani will have to adjust, because the day will come when the bagpipes sound for him.

This may seem like the only reasonable position to take when two adults discard convention, taste and common sense by bringing the dark arts of spin to the private business of divorce. The Mayor and the non–First Lady, or their friends and allies, seem determined to contest their divorce not in a court of law but in the arena of public opinion, as if the citizens of New York will ultimately decide who gets to keep the silverware and how custody shall be divided.

The public's non-rush to judgment has come despite the efforts of advocates in the public prints, anonymous aides, odious divorce lawyers and other sycophants who have sought to rally opinion to one side or the other, like the citizen of Verona who calls out: "Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike! Beat them down!"

Donna Hanover has been accused of neglecting her lawfully wedded spouse and of committing marital treason by dropping the use of her husband's last name. It is almost too cruel to cite the latter slander, hurled as it from some of the dimmer lights of the big city. But it does seem necessary to note that in the television anchor job that she gave up when her husband ran for office, Donna Hanover was known as ... Donna Hanover. This being New York in what was then the late 20th century, Ms. Hanover's failure to conform to convention was never an issue (as it was when a certain current Senator from New York tried to separate her identity from her husband's in Arkansas, circa 1982).

Ms. Hanover's supporters have had an easier time with calumny, for the public record supports their view of Mr. Giuliani as a wayward husband. Still, the public seems disinclined to assign blame to Mr. Giuliani, in keeping with the fashionable notion that the private flaws of politicians, even when conducted in the open, bear no relation to their public duties, chief of which is to make sure that the markets are content. Recent history indicates that there is no greater force for moral agnosticism than a roaring stock market.

What partisans and agnostics alike appear to have forgotten about this state of affairs is that it could have been, and likely should have been, foreseen from the moment Mr. Giuliani first promised that he would be on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This notion was turned into a mantra in the earliest days of the Giuliani administration, spouted by any number of aides as if they felt obliged to calm the city's jittery nerves. Don't you worry your collective head, the Rudy crew told us, our fearless leader never sleeps and does not take a breath without thinking of how he might rescue New Yorkers from their lack of discipline, civility, etc.

The minute the Mayor bought into his own ridiculous promise, his marriage was doomed. Perhaps Mr. Giuliani believed we'd think it admirable that he would put his job ahead of everything else, including his spouse and children. Worse, maybe he even believed that only by such effort could New York be saved from itself. What is beyond dispute is that he placed his job ahead of everything else-and now, as his job ends, everything else has collapsed. He can make the argument that the city is better off because he was Mayor for eight years, because he had a hard hat for every disaster, an E.M.S. blazer for every after-hours tragedy. But are his children?

The soap opera at City Hall, then, is but a variation on a familiar theme: the celebrated workaholic who is a stranger at home. There are many reasons to wish for more women in politics and the workplace in general, and among them is the certainty that women can and will see the idiotic macho culture of the 24-7 executive or manager or editor or Congressman as evidence of latent barbarism.

Anecdotal evidence and instinct suggest that Mr. Giuliani's family life is different from that of most other politicians only in decibel level. We have become accustomed to politicians carrying on about family values without considering that they have chosen a career that values families only as campaign props. There are exceptions, of course, and George W. Bush appears to be one of them. He is content enough with himself, his life and his place in the world that he fearlessly exchanges his cowboy boots for slippers when the sun goes down. Most big-shot achievers find this amusing and even ridiculous.

Personally, I think we're talking role-model material.

years has left many Americans feeling queasy about the priorities of his

administration. Consider, for example, that

the same amount of money could guarantee that every American born over

the next 10 years, regardless of income or race or family situation, would have

access to higher education.

This is not idle fantasy. The idea of so-called "baby bonds"

was introduced recently by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and brought to

U.S. attention by two law professors at Yale University, Bruce Ackerman and

Anne Alstott, in an Op-Ed article in The

New York Times. Mr. Blair's idea is to give every child a bond that would

be worth $7,500 when he or she turned 18. Mr. Ackerman and Ms. Alstott suggest

that President Bush could have done likewise. For example, over 10 years, $1.3

trillion would finance an annual bond program of $135 billion. Each of the four

million children born annually in the U.S. during the next decade would receive

a bond of $34,000, which would be worth approximately $50,000 when they turned

18. That's a good start.

We have a better idea. Why not fine-tune the professors'

proposal and provide 18-year-olds with $120,000 to give them a terrific start

in life? To accomplish this, a

cut-off point would be determined: Of the four million babies born each year,

three million would come from financial circumstances that would qualify them

for a baby-bond educational scholarship. Those three million would each receive

$45,000 in zero-coupon bonds. At 6 percent interest, that would grow to

approximately $120,000 by the time the child turns 18, at which point the money

would have to be spent on higher education, be it college or a vocational

school. It would be up to the government to decide the taxability of this

grant.

The results would be profound. Every 18-year-old in the

country would have a wealth of options currently not available. A

better-educated work force would add to the nation's prosperity and greatly

reduce the need for social services and other government bureaucracies which

struggle to correct the failures of education. And the government would not

have to lay out a nickel until 18 years after

the program was initiated.

It has been a long time since America had a President who

truly aspired to greatness through improving the lives of every citizen. This

would be one way in which such greatness could be achieved.

Graceless Mansion

It's fairly obvious that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his

estranged wife, Donna Hanover, do not

particularly care for each other anymore, but why they have chosen to

air their private problems in public is beyond understanding. Their

lawyers-particularly Raoul Felder, who represents the Mayor-have engaged in

crude character assassination, and the principals have displayed none of the

discretion one would wish for in parents with impressionable children.

No divorce is easy, but apparently the Mayor and the

putative First Lady are determined to wage

an ugly full-scale war for public opinion. But neither can win such a battle:

The fact is that most caring and sensitive people sympathize with the two

Giuliani children, not with one spouse or the other. A divorce is not an

election, so the attempts to "spin" this matrimonial case reflect poorly on all

concerned.

Mr. Giuliani exhibited incredible foolishness and

insensitivity by bringing his friend Judith

Nathan to Gracie Mansion. It is, after all, the home of the mother of his children and the children themselves. There is

no good reason to invite Ms. Nathan to Gracie Mansion, and Ms. Nathan

ought to have had the grace and common sense to decline Mr. Giuliani's

invitations.

Ms. Hanover, in the

meantime, should have moved out of Gracie Mansion months ago. Her marriage was

over, and since she no longer considered herself the city's First Lady, it was

unseemly for her to accept the privileges given to a Mayoral spouse,

which include a city-paid staff. She and Mr. Giuliani could have shared residential custody of the children, as many couples

in similar circumstances do.

Instead of thinking through the issues, Mr. Giuliani and Ms.

Hanover are more concerned with scoring public-relations points at the expense

of the other. Their children are undergoing enough psychic trauma as it is.

Seeing their parents fling mud at each other in public can only make a bad

situation that much worse. The children are old enough to read newspapers, and

so are their friends.

Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Hanover should tell their lawyers to be

quiet, and should keep their own comments to themselves-if not for the city's

sake, then at least for the sake of their children.

Positive Greed

New Yorkers are not particularly shy about making money. It

is generally understood to be one of the reasons people live here. New Yorkers

are also famous for spending a great deal of their money in the pursuit of

emotional satisfaction, be it psychotherapy

or a house on the beach. New research is showing, however, that the

motives behind making piles of money may be the key to whether that money ends

up bringing happiness or sorrow.

Researchers at the

University of Maryland studied hundreds of business students and entrepreneurs to determine what lay beneath

the drive to bring home a sizable salary.

They found that those whose pursuit of wealth was driven by social climbing,

a lust for power or building up self-esteem

were unfulfilled emotionally, no matter how much money they accumulated.

But those whose desire for money was linked to a goal, such as supporting a

family, were found to enjoy a greater sense of well-being. The wish to earn

large sums of money is in itself value-neutral-what matters is the reason

behind it. As reported in the American Psychological Association's Monitor on Psychology , the researchers

conclude that "a confident, able person may seek to earn a lot of money, but it

does not necessarily follow that money will be the only or most important thing

in this person's life."

Future research will have to be done in New York, of course,

to determine whether earning millions to

send the kids to Dalton or Brearley counts as supporting one's family or

supporting one's social climbing.

The wise person stays mute around the issues of other people's divorces. After all, what do we know of who did what to whom first, second or last? Maybe Donna didn't love him right. Maybe she wouldn't serve him toast in bed. Maybe she was as cold as ice or thought he hogged the media, or maybe time after time-even when he told her how much it bothered him-she left her panties in the sink. Maybe he has a whole set of very good reasons why he preferred other ladies to her. Then again, maybe he doesn't. Not knowing the true scoop should silence a columnist. However, silence is not part of the job description. So ….

I think the Mayor and his soon-to-be-former wife are treading water in a nasty soup, i.e., the divorce process. The person who moves out has the most to lose. The deals are being cut as we speak: Who gets Grandma's silver, which asset was truly earned by one or the other, how much time the children spend with each parent. While the city goes on purring, the scratching and hissing in Gracie Mansion pollutes our communal atmosphere, adds a little to the average New Yorker's heartburn and ups the amount of aggravation that floats in the air at unacceptable levels.

This is the civic leader who announced to the world that he was going to get a divorce from his wife before he told her. I don't believe this came as a real surprise to Donna, but it still wasn't good form. I prefer the morals of the squeegee guys to this kind of dirty water dashed in the wife's face. Now he wants the woman he loves to sleep in the mansion where his wife and children still live. She must have already been there for Donna to take the issue to court. Think of it: Donna and the children are watching TV when along come Rudy and his lady. They want to sit on the couch, too. Donna knows she mustn't yell at Rudy in front of the children. She doesn't look at Judi. Judi feels awkward and complains to Rudy that Donna isn't looking at her. Just imagine what fun it is to be those children. Daddy's girlfriend seems nice, but Mommy doesn't want to pass her the salt at the dinner table. Mommy stares into space as if she hasn't heard the request.

Of course, it isn't really like that. Rudy and Judith must eat out most nights or have takeout in their bedroom. They can have the children visit them in the library while Donna waits in the parlor. We all know that this fuss is being made on both sides to gain some likely financial advantage in the final stage of divorce negotiations. Nevertheless, no matter what one has to say about our Mayor, he has nerves of steel. All that talk about how everyone in this city needed discipline in order to shape up has come home to roost. Now we know whose chaos he was hoping to banish with all his self-righteous posturing. True to his Republican creed, he is no bleeding heart-at least as far as the other members of his family go. Why should he stay at Judi's pad when he has this nice one near the river? Why should he help his children avoid tension or trauma? That stuff is for sissies.

In this kind of situation, the rules are hard to play by, and sore feelings make for sore losers. Rudy may be trying to hurt Donna for practical reasons (advised by his lawyer) by flaunting his new flame in her pajamas, but I for one am shocked. What kind of callous, anti-family behavior is this? Didn't they tell Rudy in Catholic school that other people's feelings count? The presence of a man's new love can only humiliate the former love, the mother of his children. This Mayor is into humiliation, such as revealing to the press a dead man's juvenile-misdemeanor record after his body lies cold on the ground. This man, who seems to have no end of caddish behavior up his sleeve, scolded the Clintons like he was the parish priest instead of the parish scamp. Want some hypocrisy? Rudy Giuliani is your man. He has enough to spare.

All of this has made me think about ex-wives and ex-husbands, the unspoken protocols that should exist and sometimes do. When I see my husband's ex-wife of 35 years at a child's marriage or graduation, I get the shivers. My eyes are wide. I smile politely and try not to stare. But after all, this is a person entangled in my life, even though the divorce occurred before my spouse and I met. She is entangled with me financially. Her children are also his, thereby connecting them-like it or not-to me and mine. It feels weird. When circumstances bring us together, for a moment or two I feel like I am flying without the benefit of an airplane. I am so nice at those times that I practically disappear.

When I pass the school where my ex-husband of 38 years sends his son from his second marriage, I get goose bumps. I have never seen this child, but as he walks the earth, he carries with him a piece of my story. Maybe not, but I can't help thinking how weird, how discombobulating it all is.

This extra vibration that one picks up from the old neighborhoods of loves that we've dumped or are dumping, from vacation spots where one once carried on with so-and-so, adds shine to our lives as well as melancholy, as memories illuminate the black-and-blue marks that never go away. So I certainly understand that Donna must feel like a ghost passed when Judi approaches.

We're all sophisticated people here, and we know that men and women fall in and out of love, mess around with other people and do real bodily damage. But my sympathies are nevertheless with Donna. Keep the new lady out of her living room. If Mr. Giuliani can turn our city into a place where you can end up in jail for jumping a turnstile, perhaps there should be a special jail for folks who are cruel to those who once trusted them.

That cover–and the story inside it carrying the crudely curdled quotes of Mr. Giuliani's attorney, Raoul Felder–belonged to the old New York: the one from the 80's, where the boom of wealth and power gave way to a lifeboat mentality laced with cynicism and mean-spiritedness. We reveled in our wickedness then, because we were survivors in a city that had come back from the brink. The rest of the country had shunned us as too coarse, too sybaritic, too sharp. And when we bounced back, we delighted in flashing our incisors, our money and worse.

But Mr. Giuliani changed that. He growled louder and more tenaciously than anyone in this town. He left no question that he was the lead dog, and though we often howled in resistance to his picayune quality-of-life decrees, we listened. And changed. When we rose again, this time we did it with a measure of dignity. It started small, with bans on jaywalking and ferrets, and trickled up into a pervasive atmosphere of humanistic respect. You can see it in the subway stations, as straphangers wait for disembarking passengers to get off the train before boarding. And you could hear it in the way that the power elite discussed the marathon Ron Perelman-Patricia Duff divorce proceedings, not with Schadenfreude , but with genuine dismay for the welfare of the couple's child.

So it was especially unsettling to wake up to that front page of the May 15 Post , because we knew when we saw that photo and that headline, "Cruella DeHanover," that the Mayor responsible for restoring the city's dignity was allowing his lawyer, Raoul Lionel Felder, to humiliate his wife. "She's howling like a stuck pig," Mr. Felder had told the press. "She reminds me of a little kid who murders his parents and complains he's an orphan."

It's a strange paradox–one that threatens the sanctity of the Mayor's family. Certainly, Ms. Hanover has not refrained from occasionally sticking her thumb into her husband's eye. But no matter who's hurting whom, and whether they divorce tomorrow or five years from now, they will be forever linked by their two children. So they should be thinking about the future, not channeling the acrid fumes of their failed past.

And for the citizens of this town, each assaultive hyperbole handed down by Mr. Felder– "I suppose we're going to have to pry her off the chandelier to get her out of there" –whether disavowed by Mr. Giuliani or not, desecrates the atmosphere of civility and straightforwardness that the Mayor reinstilled here. Moreover, Mr. Felder's dissemination of the ravages of Mr. Giuliani's prostate-cancer treatment as a weapon against Ms. Hanover is a sad counterpoint to the newfound humanity and humility that Mr. Giuliani exhibited last summer shortly after his diagnosis, when he even expressed contrition for having tyrannically and corrosively shot his mouth off in the wake of the murder of Patrick Dorismond.

Mr. Felder's function as the main carburetor of this noxious mess does not come without its risks, either. "At 9 o'clock in the morning, he's telling the judge he wants a gag order. At 10 o'clock in the morning, he can't stop talking. He has given a new meaning to the word 'insincerity,'" opined divorce attorney Norman Sheresky, a longtime rival of Mr. Felder's.

The tension between Mr. Sheresky and Mr. Felder dates back to 1988, when the former was quoted in the Miami Review saying, "Felder pretends to be a trial lawyer when he is not. He has no familiarity with how to try a case." Mr. Felder sued Mr. Sheresky for libel, but in July 1989, a New York State Supreme Court justice dismissed the $7 million suit, saying that Mr. Sheresky's comments about Mr. Felder were Constitutionally protected opinion.

Asked if he had an opinion about Mr. Felder's jabs at Ms. Hanover, Mr. Sheresky replied: "Somebody ought to put a muzzle on him."

Later in the day on May 15, there was the sense that Mr. Giuliani, who had publicly expressed regret over some of the comments about Ms. Hanover in the press, may have put the breaks on Mr. Felder. Ms. Hanover's attorney, Victor Kovner, told The Transom: "We now have some hope that he is going to exercise some control over his lawyer. From reading the papers, the Mayor appears to be troubled about some of the wild, baseless and scurrilous statements that Mr. Felder has made." Mr. Kovner added: "Today I haven't heard that they're out there making the same statements. And that's a degree of progress."

If the case progresses to the courtroom, it will be interesting to see what Mr. Felder does.

More than 10 years after he sued Mr. Sheresky, Mr. Felder got a shot at payback last October, in the courtroom of New York State Supreme Justice Joan Lobis. Mr. Felder defended the husband of a client of Mr. Sheresky's (because they are not public figures, they will remain anonymous), who was seeking divorce on the grounds of abandonment. Mr. Sheresky recalled that when the judge asked Mr. Felder why he was going to try the case, Mr. Felder replied: "I want to see how good Mr. Sheresky is." Mr. Felder denied saying this, adding: "I hadn't seen him in years. I didn't recognize him. He looked like he'd had a facelift."

In this case, Mr. Sheresky's client was the breadwinner of the couple. Mr. Felder's client, on the other hand, had fathered a child out of wedlock while he was still married to the plaintiff.

In his cross examination of the defendant, Mr. Sheresky caught his client's husband in a number of lies, among them that he had failed to report income that he had gotten from his wife's company on his tax returns.

During his summation, Mr. Felder addressed his client's admissions by telling the jury (according to the court transcript, which was obtained by The Transom): "I'd like to say a word about lies. You know lots of people lie.

"Mr. Gore, running for office, told lies–he invented the Internet, he invented the Love Canal. That doesn't mean he's going to be a bad President. President Reagan lied about Iran-contra," said the lawyer, in a baroque aria celebrating the vagaries of verisimilitude. "Bush lied about taxes, and yet all of these people were successful Presidents–particularly Clinton, he was a very successful President. So life is not all about lies. But it's all about lies, what you are to consider here. That's what it's all about: who's telling the truth here. You can't have both people telling the truth." (Later in the proceedings, Mr. Felder also told the jurors that "as far as finances are concerned," his client was "not the sharpest knife in the drawer.")

When the summation was read back to him, Mr. Felder replied: "I didn't think I was that articulate."

But then he explained: "I was trying to say there are lies and lies . This was an ambiguous situation where the wife gave the husband money but the husband didn't report the money on the tax returns. This was a transaction between a husband and a wife. I don't think it should reflect anything more than that."

Mr. Sheresky was up next.

"Well, maybe a liar could make a good President–I don't even want to touch that one," he said in response to Mr. Felder's summation. "But a liar can't make a good witness.

"Imagine, imagine that anyone, a lawyer, would say that," Mr. Sheresky continued, according to the transcript. "What we sell in this courtroom, what her Honor is here to protect, what we do for a living, is search for the truth." Then he added: "This case is about money. That's all it's about."

The jury found unanimously that Mr. Felder's client had abandoned his wife.

Mr. Felder did not see the verdict as a loss, though. "It's a question of whether my client gets a lot of money or more than a lot," he said.

Asked about the outcome of the case, Mr. Sheresky said of his old rival: "He used to look good on the diving board, but he wasn't so hot in the pool. Now he doesn't even look good on the diving board. He's a disgrace."

Mr. Felder's only response to Mr. Sheresky's comment: "He's a sad person."

Asked if he regretted any of the comments he'd made about Mr. Giuliani's wife, Mr. Felder said, "Not at all." He had the sound of a man telling the truth.

Meeting Across the River

As if Meadow Soprano and Jackie Aprile Jr.'s troubled romance wasn't attracting enough attention …. On May 8, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Jason Cerbone, who play the star-crossed characters on the HBO series The Sopranos , caused a real-life sensation at Blue Hill restaurant in the West Village when they dined at a table for two. Fellow diners reported that the pair, "looking chic"–he in a sport coat, she in a denim jacket and full makeup–arrived at the restaurant around 11 p.m. and came off "like kids on a date." Ms. Sigler has just finished a run at Madison Square Garden in the musical production of Cinderella, while the world waits to see if Mr. Cerbone (first seen in Suzanne Vega's "Luka" video!)–whose character has run afoul of both Meadow and her mob-boss father, Tony Soprano–survives his first season on the series.

Seven people who sat cater-corner from the young celebs concluded that both actors looked nervous around each other, or maybe just uncomfortable with the fact that so many of the restaurant's diners seemed to have them under surveillance.

A spokesman for Ms. Sigler confirmed that the pair dined together but maintained that "it was not a date. They are just friends." Mr. Cerbone's spokesman had no comment.

–Rebecca Traister

Rock & Sole

If you made a reputation for yourself in the old days, you used to get a sandwich named after you. Now you get a shoe. On May 14, Christ-worshipping independent-rock eccentrics the Danielson Famile (or Tri-Danielson, as they are also known) appeared at the opening of the new John Fluevog shoe store at 250 Mulberry Street, both to christen it with a song and to celebrate the release of their namesake footwear, the Familevog, a clunky white leather loafer adorned with a red heart that clearly was designed to complement the doctor's scrubs and nurse's uniforms favored by the band members. According to a company employee, the shoe is made of "100-percent natural" and "biodegradable" materials.

The Danielsons reciprocated this honor by performing a new song dedicated to the Familevog that will be given away with the purchase of a pair. The tune was titled … well, what was it called, anyway? The shoe company's founder, John Fluevog, identified the song as "'Flim Flam Fluevog Flam,' I think? Something like that."

Actually it's "Flip Flop Flim Flam," and with lyrics such as "Fancy free juice flop flim flam / A Fluevog toe jam," Danielson leader Daniel Smith characterized it as a song about "the spirituality of feet."

Mr. Danielson told The Transom that he initiated the idea of a Danielson show with Mr. Fluevog. "I build houses. I first thought of this exchange while working on a roof," he said. "I was having troubling thoughts. I was thinking, 'Why am I doing this? Shouldn't I be writing songs?' I was daydreaming and thought of Fluevog," Mr. Danielson continued. "I had a strong feeling John's shoes were coming from a creative Christ." Perhaps this was evidenced by the proverb "Sole blessings on all who enter" scrolled over the portal to the store's back room.

But later, Mr. Danielson admitted that he may also have been motivated by less spiritual impulses. "Of course," he said, "I was also hoping all along that he would make some shoes for me."

–D. Strauss

Spray Anything

Apparently there are still a few artists left in Soho. The folks at the Reggio Emilia-based MaxMara designer label found this out recently at their still-under-construction boutique at West Broadway and Broome Street. To gussy up the work site, the company pasted large posters from last season's print ad campaign, featuring blond model Melanie McJanett, on the construction barriers surrounding the space, which is scheduled to open this summer. In no time, they were covered with graffiti–but not your run-of-the-mill illegible scribbling. According to Suzanne White, director of production at Dente & Cristina, the advertising firm behind MaxMara's ad campaign, the artistes weren't simply spray-painting their names. "They would use the correct color spray paint to put a beard and mustache on her," she said. "You know those little devil triangle beards? They'd be the right shade of blond."

The job fell to Ms. White to make weekly visits to the store with a few cans of Easy-Off oven cleaner ("an industry secret," she said) to remove the offending marks. But the retouching of Ms. McJanett's image continued until MaxMara's president, Luigi Maramotti, and his advertising team decided to approach the problem from another angle. They stretched a blank 8-by-32-foot canvas across the barricade (beneath an unreachably high sign reading "MaxMara Soho") and invited all comers to spray, splatter and tag it. After three weeks, there's not an inch of white space left. Even the Dente & Cristina people have made their mark. "It was one of those anything-could-happen spaces," said Ms. White. "But now it's really beautiful. Maybe we can keep a section–one of the prettiest."

–R.T.