I think something more basic is going on here. For a lot of people, cyberspace and the Internet aren't quiet real, so they do all sorts of things they wouldn't dream of doing in real life. One example is theft of intellectual property, such as pirating software, music, and videos. Another is making slanderous, libelous, or defamatory remarks (I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if these things are the same thing or different ones). These involve actual violations of the law. Other manifestations don't rise to that level, but are still worth mentioning. There is, for example, the kind of self-revelation one gets, mostly from teeners, on My Space and similar social sites. And we and then we have e-mail, where we often write in a casual and breezy style to perfect strangers or business associates we wouldn't ever do on paper. And of course virtual-sexual encounters in chat rooms and so forth (not without some very sinister trolling by some very sinister trolls). Probably the list could be made longer. Add them up and we have a rather important profile of a new wrinkle in human behavior: whatever the reason may be, it's becoming an important feature of our contemporary culture that people simply behave differently in cyberspace. Somehow or other, Sanford's particular form of idiocy deserves to be deciphered against this background. I've read some journalistic coverage that suggests that the guy is pyschologically disturbed. Maybe so. But part of the reason is that there's something about cyberspace that positively invites people to be loony.

You are definitely on to something. Just in the past month or so that I've been lurking on the Fray I have seen more looniness than I ever hope to see in real life.

Cyberspace has desensitized us, and now behaviors that we would have been appalled by in the past are now more acceptable in real life. Hostility for others and having affairs are now more prevalent in everyone's life, and it has to be directly related to internet usage.

I think affairs are no more common-- just harder to hide in our 24/7 connected world.

San was caught because his actions were trackable. In the 1920's, he might have gotten away with it. Trackability makes it obvious that people lie a lot more than people used to think they did.