In Britain, journalists call August “the silly season” because, with Parliament in recess and its members retired to their constituencies or the grouse moor, political stories tend to be trivial or comical, preferably both. But in America the silly season is every season, at least if there is any story that can be sold, however implausibly, as an exposé of the discreditable truths always to be assumed to lie beneath banal appearances. This year the preeminent silly-season story was that of the open microphone in St. Petersburg at the G-8 summit, when President Bush was overheard saying “shit.” The Washington Post Style section thought that this excremental expletive was worth a whole 1200-word story by Peter Baker. “‘What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over,’ an irritated Bush said with his mouth full as he buttered a piece of bread,” wrote Mr. Baker, obviously pleased with himself for spotting the twofer: not only the president’s language but also his table manners were vulgar. “It was the sort of moment that gets technicians fired but offers the world a rare glimpse of a president unplugged.”

Oh please! As if there were anything that the president—or anyone else—says or does out of the public view that remains a mystery or in need of exposure. Both the word and the thing may from time to time be produced in private by those who live in the public eye, but