What Rice reportedly said was this: "As I was telling my husb—" before abruptly breaking off and correcting herself: "As I was telling President Bush." Jaws dropped, we're told. And though nobody thinks Bush and Rice are "actually an item," we were nevertheless reminded that the unmarried Condi does regularly spend weekends with the president and first lady.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2099516/

+ a good quote in there by Oscar Wilde

This view is now so standard that it can serve as a regular premise for sitcom humor without requiring the least explication of the principle. But even those who reject the premise generally still adhere to some version of the inner-life/outer-life dichotomy, and whether it's a soul or just some vague inner being residing in there, what's "underneath" is invariably understood to be more true than what's exterior. You do find the occasional dissenter who rejects the whole model, notably Oscar Wilde, for whom surfaces were far more interesting: "It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."