I know the authorities think otherwise, but I’m sorry — REALLY SORRY — to say: this woman (PDF) seems pretty credible. (We do not know for sure what happened, of course. But this is highly unsavory on its face.) Crikey, who is left?!

For the love of God, Franken, keep it in your pants.

Have you ever lied that you have cancer to get out of a relationship? What if the relationship is already pretty out-there, as in the case of the 19-year-old lad dating the wife of Northern Ireland’s First Minister? Young Kirk McCambley told Mrs. Robinson (yep, that’s her name!) he had testicular cancer to end the affair.

In honor of Ireland’s sex scandal, The Globe And Mail‘s Dave McGinn susses out what lies might be okay to tell when breaking up. And when Ireland calls, BG answers:

“A white lie that is okay to tell is one where what you are really doing is trying to preserve the other person’s feelings. A whopper is where you’re just trying to not even deal with this at all. You’re trying to save yourself,” says Lynn Harris, co-founder of the relationship advice website BreakupGirl.net.

Read the article here and tell us your own breakup whoppers!

Just one more thing — as promised — about John Edwards, now that BG is back from her trip to Elizabeth. I hesitate to add even this, given that we, as a blog (thanks, commenters!) and a nation, have said plenty. But just for the BG record, here goes.

Cheating is bad. GIVEN. No argument there, no intention of diminishing it on its face. Painful, too, is disappointment: finding out that those (dwindling few) whom we admire — for helping the humble! — have fallen slave to their own hubris.

But in the political, national, even human picture, this has only as much importance as we give it, which was way too much even before the maudlin mea-culpa-fest (which, huh, no one watched). It is not possible to name a political perpetration from the last eight-ish years that is less important than this. And yet we don’t hear Dick Cheney saying, “…All of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want: you know, like lie your way into war” while he wells up to Woodruff. “Also, the baby? I ate it.”

Okay? Done. Keeping focus, readusting priorities; moving on. But — on the subject of oldish news about politicians and their spice — I’ll be happy to talk about this (or, hey, this) anytime.

Crap.

More later. BG’s busy with Elizabeth.

Now that Eliot Spitzer has resigned, we can put this sex business behind us and get back to BUSINESSbusiness.

Oh, wait.

First we find out that a former aide to former New Jersey governor James McGreevey has come forward, classily, to allege that he was the third wheel, as it were, in a series of three-way “sex romps” with Mr. McGreevy and his ex-wife-to-be, Diana Matos McGreevey. (Or, more to the point, that she was the third wheel.) My first reaction to this revelation (which the missus has denied, by the way) was a resounding “TMI!”

Then we hear about the Patersons. We hear a LOT about the Patersons. Boils down to this: things got rocky. He had affairs. So did she. They dealt.

Then I realized: this is more than a matter of TMI. The universe, my friends, is trying to tell us something. That we should focus as much as possible on the prurient details of politicians’ private utterly human failings — failings that are not at odds with their ability to govern or gain public trust — instead of on ending poverty and war? No, the other thing: remember how easy it was to judge Silda Spitzer? With these new revelations (regardless of their veracity) we are reminded: you never, ever know.

Now can we please get back to work ?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: With every breaking political sex scandal — and the ensuing awkward press conference/photo opp — it becomes more and more tempting to imagine little thought balloons over the heads of the apparently stoic, forbearing wives. (“Well, this explains a lot.” “Game face game face game face.” “Dude. Diapers?”)

And man, is it easy to judge. The wives, not the husbands. (Well, them too.) What are they doing at the press conference at all? What sort of public display of solidarity do they possibly owe these guys? Can they really be such doormats? Why aren’t they home changing the locks?

In situations like these, though, I think we’d do well to remember the wise words of Bridget Jones’s friend Magda. “No one from the outside ever really understands what makes them work.” Really, who knows what has gone on Chez Spitzer? Maybe she is cheating too. Maybe he promised her a quick and clean divorce if she’d do just this one thing. Maybe she is even acting out of savvy self-interest, as Anne Applebaum suggests at Slate: “I can see one clear advantage to this option: It’s all over quickly. And no one asks you for a follow-up interview. You appear once—and then you vanish forever, along with your husband’s career. If you’ve been clever about it, you’ve kept your maiden name and can thus return to your own career. Those who make other, more attention-getting choices will later be forced back into the limelight to explain themselves, which is gruesome.” That, or if you simply don’t appear at all, you can bet they’ll come after you.

I’m not saying she should or shouldn’t show up; I’m just saying that in a scandal such as this, her conduct, of all people’s, is not for us to judge. (I’m talking to YOU, lady I just heard on WNYC saying that this whole thing was Mrs. Spitzer’s fault in the first place because she didn’t kink things up enough.) The real thing to question is not each wife’s motive, or her backbone. The real thing to question, I think, is why these women are expected to show up in the first place. (And what will happen someday when the “stoic wife” is the husband.)