SOURCE: Kaus, Mickey. “Not Tonight, Dear.” New Republic 197, no. 3793 (28 September 1987): 43.

In the following excerpt, Kaus criticizes Sheehy's article on Senator Gary Hart published in the September 1987 issue of Vanity Fair.

In her widely publicized article on Gary Hart in the September issue of Vanity Fair, Gail Sheehy spends 12,000 words trying to explain why a 50-year-old man would want to have sex with a succession of gorgeous models. She seems to think this is a great mystery. Maybe it was his mother. He “grew up in a severely restricted manner.” Part of him “could not believe he deserved to be successful, because he was a sinner and a backslider.” It seems Hart could “be very intense … but once the passion was consumed, the fantasy fulfilled, and the specter of the start of a relationship reared its head,” he would “shrink back” and the “inner steel door between his two...