So our backroom coverage of US culture has come to this. A rumored affair gets reported by that bastion of truth-in-journalism, The National Enquirer, then re-reported by Fox News.com, who also points out that the woman's baby is claimed and verified to be another guy's; it then becomes a topic here, whose mangled title sneers 'chile', in a thinly-disguised ethno-bash, and decries a mainstream media cover-up.

Despite heroic efforts to make it into a topic worthy of discussion (the high price in privacy paid by prospective office-holders; the rising (or lowering) of moral standards expected of today's candidates), others are tempted to argue with Moderators' admonitions, so that the general frolic may continue.

(For the record: "HaHa Elizabeth Edwards! You have cancer! " would be ridicule, a deliberate often malicious belittling, not mockery, scorn ironically expressed by mimicry or sham deference, which is what occurred here.)

This pig's ear will never be a silk purse, my friends.

Topic is closed.