Two stories jumped at me this morning. One about Julie Couillard (Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier’s ex-girlfriend, of past biker-gang and inappropriate décolletés fame) and how she feels “destroyed” and “abandoned” and how “her name has been dragged through the mud” and the other about Miley Cyrus and how “hurting” she is after her monumental bedsheet-picture-on-the-cover-of-Vanity-Fair gaffe.

At the risk of sounding dreadfully old-fashioned [what, again? – ed.], what could you possibly expect? If you spend as much time in close contact with bikers as Ms. Couillard did (marrying one such dude and dating another, one of whom – I forget which – wound up dead in a ditch), or if you display too much skin in inappropriate places as both Ms. Couillard and Ms. Cyrus did, yeah, that kind of thing will stick to your name. It’s called CONSEQUENCES. That doesn’t mean you can’t bounce back from that sort of setback – I’m a huge believer in redemption. But in order to redeem yourself you have to start by acknowledging that you made mistakes for which you feel truly sorry instead of complaining about how “hurt” you are.

You want to be in control of your life, lady? Start by taking responsibility for your actions – the good ones and the ridiculously bad ones.

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Evening update: Make that the former foreign affairs minister…