Somewhere in this crazy country of ours, another Scott Peterson is plotting to do away with his pregnant wife. A copycat Debra Lafave is romancing a middle school student. And a custody battle is brewing over a woman in a persistent vegetative state. (Remember the name, Heather Lavers. You may be hearing it a lot).

I can almost guarantee that these stories, or stories much like them will emerge like winter wheat as soon as the flow of electoral expectorate is cut off November 4th.  As ready as I am for the commercials and the polling and the punditry to cease,  it won't be two weeks before I'll be grumbling about the wall to wall coverage of tabloid stories that can only gain purchase in a vacuum. 

The campaign of 2008 (which really started in 2004)  has been an embarrassment of riches. Notwithstanding the recent focus on wardrobe shopping and washed up terrorist William Ayers, this contest has been uncommonly substantive.  The time spent debating one candidate's plan to spread the wealth  verses another candidates determination to continue the trickle down tax cutting of the last 8 years is time well spent. Still, enough is enough.

The only thing that might spare us a return to the cable network's obsessive coverage of crime and scandal is a worsening of the economic situation. Not a recession, but a full-on soup kitchen, Hooverville, banjo pickin', boxcar riding depression. But by then, we will all have cancelled our cable subscription.