The Fellowship Quiz

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

Lately, every day brings a surprise. You’re hanging out, waiting for the Independence Day fireworks to start, and suddenly there is Sarah Palin on TV, announcing that she’s quitting her job because she’s not a dead fish. And now we’re hearing that San Diego is under attack from giant flying squid with razor-sharp beaks.

And then there’s the string of weird political sex scandals. Illicit lust is not, in and of itself, a novelty in our nation’s capital. But over the past few weeks we’ve gotten one story after another about politicians whose extramarital affairs turned into public displays of strange behavior, conflict and hysteria.

For instance, the estranged wife of Chip Pickering, a very conservative, toothy ex-congressman from Mississippi, has filed a lawsuit against Pickering’s alleged mistress. Leisha Pickering blames the woman, Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, for ruining her family and forcing Pickering to turn down an offer to succeed the departing Trent Lott in the Senate. If it weren’t for Creekmore Byrd, Mrs. Pickering contends, her husband would have been promoted and she would still be happily married.

(More here.)