Pride and Prejudice and Scandal

The imprudent Lydia Bennet (actress Sirena Dib) hanging with some of the young officers from the regiment...

Having appeared so recently in the SC Shakespeare Company’s production of “Pride and Prejudice,” I particularly enjoyed the ending of Maureen Dowd’s column about the Petraeus scandal:

The military might want to have its future stars read Jane Austen as well as Grant and Rommel. “Pride and Prejudice” is full of warnings about the dangers of young ladies with exuberant, flirtatious, “unguarded and imprudent” manners visiting military regiments and preening in “all the glories of the camp.”

Such folly and vanity, the ever wise Elizabeth Bennet cautioned, can lead to censure and disgrace.