NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about that Mike Pence sexual self-segregation thing that was going the rounds last week. Among the outtakes, Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke defending Pence's unwillingness to eat alone with women to whom he's not married with an analogy:

I am fairly sure that I could smoke a large number of cigarettes before I became addicted, and, indeed, that I could indulge in them casually without ramping up my habit. As such, I’m not averse to having the occasional smoke. But suppose I were averse to that. Suppose, instead, that I was unwilling to embark on even the first step of that journey. Suppose that, in defense of my health and my wallet, I drew a much harsher line in the sand. Well, why the hell would that matter? What possible failing could that be held to imply? Caution is no vice when the end is so undesirable.

So, women are like cigarettes: Some people just can’t handle them, and by “people” I of course mean men.