“The scandal-plagued politician and his stoically supportive spouse.” We’ve seen this scene a thousand times and yet, for whatever reason, it continues to transfix.

But what is it about this so-predictable-it’s-almost-cliché tableau that nonetheless has us so entranced? Is it, as some lady we’ve never heard of* postulates, that “if you see a guy standing next to his wife, it offers some explanation that he might be telling the truth?”

Or is it that we’re all, essentially, voyeurs, overgrown high school girls prone to spurts of schadenfreude and juvenile meanness, and invariably drawn to moments rife with awkwardness and public depravity?

After all, whether it’s delighting in a YouTube video of Miss South Carolina flubbing her lines, subscribing to a weekly tabloid because it purports to divulge the gruesome details of Owen Wilson’s private battle with drugs or turning the death of Anna Nicole Smith into a five-ring media circus, we’re all occasionally guilty of rejoicing in someone else’s decline.

But, of course, that’s nothing new.

Nearly two thousand years ago, Aristotle defined tragedy as “a form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear,” and wrote that “its action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune, involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be written in poetry embellished with every kind of artistic expression.”

Which brings us back to the Suzanne Craig, the picture of stoicism, standing by her husband’s side as he apologizes to the American public and explains that he only “mistakenly” pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting sex (from an undercover officer) in a Minneapolis airport.

Will she go the way of Dina McGreevey and write a scathing tell-all about her husband’s illicit affairs and quarter-century of lies and deception? Or will she continue to stand by the father of her children, and subject herself to the relentless gaze of the mainstream media?

That all remains to be seen. As of yet, Suzanne Craig has still refused to speak publicly about the controversy surround her husband’s arrest, which means all we have to go on are her past interviews and, of course, the infamous picture. And if a picture alone is worth 1,000 words, just imagine the kind of offers Susanne Craig must be fielding for a book deal.

Which makes us wonder, assuming the allegations about her husband turn out to be true, and Susanne does decide to divorce her husband and write her memoirs, will we, the public, condemn her for selling her life story to the highest bidder?

More importantly, will we buy it?

*But who wields an impressive, albeit irrelevant title