Mr. Mayor: Shut up, grow up, slow down

Okay, let me be frank:

I’ve made mistakes in my life, I’m still flawed, and there is something to be said for the line about the hypocrisy of sinners casting stones.

But I can’t help myself.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s halfhearted mea culpa Monday, about his broken marriage, was a disaster. I’ve tried to give him a break, given my own past sins, but in the end I just can’t let it go without commenting.

We all knew what we were getting with this guy. He’s a man of insatiable appetites, and anyone who needs to be loved as much as Villaraigosa is setting himself up for big disappointments and even bigger mistakes. Mistakes like the news conference in which he said that he and his wife of 20 years were splitting up.

Just as I shouldn’t have to tell City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo to speak up about the caper involving his wife and his smashed city vehicle, I shouldn’t have to tell Villaraigosa to shut up about his broken marriage. But somebody has to.

It would have been far more graceful for Villaraigosa to leave things as they were, with the statement from his office last week confirming the breakup and asking the public to respect the family’s privacy.

But Villaraigosa can’t help but indulge his own worst instincts. At his core, he’s an insecure soul who believes there is no better place to hide his weaknesses than in front of a camera, where he can emphasize his strengths.

And so instead of moving on with his new life and focusing on his job, while Corina and the kids stay behind in the awkward limbo of the mayoral manse, the mayor called a news conference for Monday, ostensibly to further explain himself.

Fine, if he intended to offer new insights or say something about the toll an all-consuming job can take on a marriage. But he said little beyond what was in the earlier press release, when he asked that “the media and the public respect our privacy through this period of transition.”

You want privacy?

Don’t call a news conference.

Otherwise it looks smarmy and self-serving, and yet another slight to your wife and children.

A few relatives, including two daughters from prior relationships, were present, which made the whole thing seem all the more like a surreal episode of “This Is Your Life.”

What are we supposed to take from their attendance? That the mayor’s not such a heel that he can’t talk a few relatives into serving as props?

“I want you to know that I take responsibility for what is happening, and I feel a personal sense of failure about it, and that’s all I’m prepared to say on this question,” Villaraigosa said when asked if an affair caused the split.

Unless he has had an affair with someone who reports on City Hall, or he otherwise compromised the office of mayor, it probably is none of our business. But Villaraigosa said nothing to dispel the raging rumors, and Corina Villaraigosa filed for divorce the next day, citing irreconcilable differences.

I wouldn’t bet on it, but maybe when it all sinks in, the mayor will wake up and realize it’s time to tame his incorrigible, teenage ways and do at least one job right. The 15-hour days haven’t done us, him or his family any good. He’s spread so thin, all his major goals are unmet.

With a long trail of close friends and supporters who feel Villaraigosa betrayed them to advance his own cause, let’s hope this latest failure, as he calls it, could finally bring the humility he so badly needs.

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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com.