Stan, I read the Tierney piece, which was, as usual from him, thought-provoking, but there’s a major caveat with anything I can say about it: I’m too frugal (half-Scottish, what can I say?) for HBO, so I haven’t, ahem, actually seen Big Love. That said, from the sound of it, I have to doubt whether the show will really do very much to change the mores of a nation where polygamist propaganda is, shall we say, a little thin on the ground.

One observation though: You write that, “in parts of Africa where educated married women have rejected polygamy, men have adopted a system of de facto polygamy involving what Africans call “outside wives.” I’ll certainly take your word for that, but that’s not entirely unknown over here, except that, judging, at least, by the angry ladies of Lifetime TV, women here tend to call these “outside wives” by rather harsher names…