This is what I’m working on this morning… First draft…

Gen. Petraeus, the former CIA director, is finding his post-scandal life to be quite financially rewarding. He will cash in on speaking engagements and the chairmanship of a company that advises businesses about where to set up their factories overseas.  The clear lesson from the Gen. Petraeus affair, as well as the come-back of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer, is short-term shame, long-term Kaching!  Somewhere in South Carolina, John Edwards is taking notes.

Added to Patreaus’s portfolio of jobs is a one-semester class at CUNY Macaulay Honors College for which he would be paid $200,000. A staff of assistants will help him write his syllabus and grade term papers.  After Gawker first broke the news and the scandal grew, CUNY announced that Patraeus would teach the class for $1.

So far, the media has focused on Patraeus himself and the way that former public officials can find retirement very lucrative, even those who carry on affairs with their adoring biographers. But, really, the focus needs to move to CUNY administrators, as well other higher education administrators who have turned higher education into a reality show for Big Names.

To fully understand the galling conduct of CUNY administrators, one must compare Patraeus’s $200,000 deal with the salary that they offer the average instructor. The average instructor at CUNY isn’t a tenured professor. 80 percent of the courses taught in the CUNY system are taught by adjunct instructors.

More to come.