People are so funny. Way back in the 1970s Barbara Walters, then a youngish, twice-divorced rising female journalist and Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, a married, liberal Republican, African American, had an affair that lasted a couple of years. Both had a lot at stake should word get out. But they were clever and managed to keep it all secret, ruining no one’s career or marriage over the dalliance. As these things go — and she was surely not the only reporter who slept with a married politician over the years — that is a good outcome. So why would Walters, who is now old and elegant enough to personify a certain amount of class in her role as dean of The View, tell all in her new memoir, Auditions? OK, we know the answer: money. Sex sells. But I am constantly amazed by those who are so removed from understanding the value of maintaining a truly private, personal sphere in their own lives, that they would rather out themselves than take their tawdry secrets to the grave, as true ladies and gentlemen have traditionally done.