Anthony Weiner's scandal should have simmered down after he checked into rehab, but his not-so-trusty confidante Ginger Lee stirred the pot Wednesday by telling the media he'd asked her to lie for him.

It makes you want scold Weiner for being such a jerk. And you can imagine how the skeptics reacted, the ones like the Washington Post's Ruth Marcu who think his stint in rehab is a quick-fix PR stunt to clean up his image. "[Weiner's] episode underscores how rehab has become an all-purpose laundromat for irresponsible behavior, an infuriatingly easy substitute for accepting blame and living with consequences," she wrote.

And it's true: We've seen this face of shame, described (and illustrated) in a New York Times City Room post by Andy Newman and Elissa Gootman, so many times before.

But are the media being too hard on Weiner? It might start to look that way, said the Daily Beast's Eric Alterman: "Weiner may have solved everybody's problem with his 'treatment' gambit. It makes those who continue to milk the story look like heartless vultures for harassing a sick man (with a pregnant wife)." And yet, people continue to brush off a pattern of behavior associated with addiction.

Is it unfair to roll our eyes at a guy with genuine problem? That's the case Susan Cheever made on The Fix, an addiction and recovery website. Here's an excerpt from an excellent article that describes the psychology of addiction:

This seemingly irrational behavior on the part of very rational men and women is at the heart of addiction -- and at the heart of the case of onetime rising star Anthony Weiner, the New York congressman whose bizarre twitter escapades have made world wide news. [...]

[F]or those whose behavior appears both compulsive and inexplicable, where the risks far outweigh the benefits, a diagnosis of sex addiction is a good bet. [...]

Men who are unable to control their sexual urges at any cost need help, just like drug addicts and alcoholics.

Meghan Daum also showed some sensitivity and understanding for the disgraced politician in her Thursday Op-Ed article. In it, she wonders "whether his penchant for erotic self-portraiture reveals not confidence or excessive vanity but an ingrained self-loathing." This guy could be seriously screwed up.

When you consider the context for Weiner's indiscretions -- the slam-book-cum-mosh pit that is Twitter, the way Facebook has turned exhibitionism into "sharing" and voyeurism into a pastime as quotidian as checking the weather forecast -- one thing seems clear: Weiner was using social networking less as a means of communication than as a mirror. Apparently unable to rely on his own judgment when gazing at his reflection, he sought outside appraisers who were guaranteed to issue the approval he couldn't muster for himself.

And, of course, you can't forget the possibility that a "Type T" personality could be at the root of his troubles. It's hard to like someone like Weiner, but given all that could be wrong, it's also hard to see him crucified.

[Update: Bowing to pressure from his own party, Rep. Anthony Weiner plans to resign today, according to Democratic sources. He told Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday.]

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-- Alexandra Le Tellier

Photo: Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) pauses during a news conference in New York after acknowledging inappropriate online communications with women. Credit: Jin Lee / Bloomberg

One of the most interesting things about Weinergate isn't that Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) took photos of a sexual nature and shared them outside of his marriage, but that he was careless enough to send them over the Internet and dumb enough to lie about it when the scandal was first exposed -– and that we, the audience, have remained hooked to a story that basically amounts to a non-issue. What's going on here?  

The kind of guy who takes such a photo:

The dialectic between exposure and concealment in the Weiner scandal offers us a way of conceptualizing the ever-growing archive of politician sex scandals -- the nonstop parade of highly accomplished men performing acts of breathtaking self-destructiveness in public. Just as it was impossible that a congressman sending lewd pictures under his own name wouldn't soon be exposed, it was impossible that anyof the crop of recently humiliated politicians wouldn't be exposed, from Clinton, to Edwards, to Vitter, to Spitzer, and so on. Punishment was inevitable. What we're looking at, in other words, is a species of male masochism. […]

The story of male power has been under revision for some time now. Watching men in power use their positions of power to take themselves down is just the latest twist in a still-unfolding story.

--Laura Kipnis, Slate

 The kind of woman who wants to see it:

I was going to give up on the idea [of taking a photo of my penis] when sex columnist Dan Savage explained that while very few women want to see my photos, the small percentage who do are exactly the kinds of dynamic, exciting women who like travel and exotic foods. At least that's what I got out of what he said. He may have used the phrase "that sort of woman." […]

[L]ike Weiner, I went to Twitter, where I wrote, "Would anyone care to see a photo of my penis?" As Savage predicted, I got a lot of nos and two "I didn't think cameras could zoom in that far"s. […]

But in between the avalanche of "eww"s and some positive responses from gay men, I got -- as Savage promised -- a few requests. Jen Goertler, a 33-year-old married mom of two in Willoughby, Ohio, has been on the wrong side of some unrequested penis photos as well. But mine, she said, would be different, since she likes my column and has seen me on television. This is exactly why I didn't go into banking.

--Joel Stein, Time

The kind of media beast that wants to cover such a scandal and what it says about the audience:

Reporters who would never dare challenge powerful political figures who torture, illegally eavesdrop, wage illegal wars or feed at the trough of sleazy legalized bribery suddenly walk upright -- like proud peacocks with their feathers extended -- pretending to be hard-core adversarial journalists as they collectively kick a sexually humiliated figure stripped of all importance.  The ritual is as nauseating as it is predictable.

What makes the Anthony Weiner story somewhat unique and thus worth discussing for a moment is that, as Hendrik Hertzberg points out, the pretense of substantive relevance (which, lame though it was in prior scandals, was at least maintained) has been more or less brazenly dispensed with here.  This isn't a case of illegal sex activity or gross hypocrisy (i.e., David Vitter, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, who built their careers on Family Values) or Eliot Spitzer (who viciously prosecuted trivial prostitution cases).  There's no lying under oath (Clinton) or allegedly illegal payments (Ensign, Edwards).  From what is known, none of the women claim harassment and Weiner didn't even have actual sex with any of them.  This is just pure mucking around in the private, consensual, unquestionably legal private sexual affairs of someone for partisan gain, voyeuristic fun and the soothing fulfillment of judgmental condemnation.  And in that regard, it sets a new standard: the private sexual activities of public figures -- down to the most intimate details -- are now inherently newsworthy, without the need for any pretense of other relevance.

--Glenn Greenwald, Salon

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--Alexandra Le Tellier

Photo credit: BigGovernment.com / AP Photo

It would have been nice to see the force behind the misguided anti-circumcision campaign in Santa Monica divorce herself, voicing appropriate disgust, from a movement that created a repulsively anti-Semitic comic to advance its cause online. Instead, we have to content ourselves with being grateful that Jena Troutman is too busy as a working mom to continue with her attempt to tell others how to parent.

This, of course, doesn't stop the equally outrageous San Francisco ballot measure from being voted on in November.

Matt Hess, the San Diego resident whose MGMbill organization is behind both signature-gathering efforts, created the comic "Foreskin Man" in which a blond, hunky superhero saves a baby boy from the "Monster Mohel," portrayed as a caricatured and hideous ultra-Orthodox Jew in traditional hat and prayer shawl, salivating as he wields a knife. A mohel is trained to perform circumcisions in the Jewish faith.

In a New York Times article, Hess says that the comic is simply told from a baby's point of view. But last time I looked, most babies didn't harbor outlandish anti-Semitic stereotypes.

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Photo: In San Francisco, Benjamin Abecassis rests on a pillow following his bris, a Jewish circumcision ceremony. Credit: Noah Berger / Associated Press

Nancy Pelosi may have called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate Anthony Weiner to determine whether "any official resources were used or any other violation of House rules occurred," but among many in the public forum, the congressman’s already been found guilty. He lied, he’s immoral, and he’s not who we want representing the American people.

That’s Jeff Shapiro’s take, a reader who waged a provocative debate in the comments section of Jon Healey’s latest post on Weinergate:

When you or I screw up this bad, there are CONSEQUENCES, but when a liberal member of congress does it, it's just "Well, bless his horny little heart, a week of shame ought to put him back in his place." What's forgotten here is that he got into this situation because he HAD no shame in the first place.

 Also calling for his resignation:

The New York Post editorial board [via The Week]:

Given that Weiner had more than just his shirt off, it's "hard to see how he can possibly ride this out." If he has "a shred of personal honor," he won't even try, says the New York Post  in an editorial. After his disgraceful behavior, Weiner is "fit only for cable-TV comedy punchlines," and "he needs to quit," now. 

Boston Globe editorial board:

Weiner’s indiscretions involved a massive breach of decorum; how can anyone in public life tweet a picture of his own crotch without thinking it might get out? Wanting voters to move past that is just too much to ask.

Reince Priebus [via Politics Now]:

Reince Priebus, the chief political spokesman for the Republican party, said Tuesday morning that Weiner's "actions and deception are unacceptable" and that the Democrats' call for an investigation was insufficient.

"Either Leader Pelosi and DNC Chair [Debbie] Wasserman Schultz believe members of Congress are held to a different set of standards or they believe these actions demand his resignation," Priebus said.

Edward Morrissey [via the Week]:

A week ago, Weiner could have addressed the media by admitting to the inappropriate social-networking behavior, apologizing to his wife and his supporters, and promising to learn his lesson and end all such contacts in the future. He would have looked foolish, immature, and perhaps even somewhat predatory and creepy. But the story would have ended in hours, and remained as nothing more than a political punchline. The national media would happily have turned their attention elsewhere, with any further disclosures disarmed by a full admission.

Instead, Weiner lied. He lied all week. He allowed his associates to attack the media for asking questions about a story that clearly did not add up. Weiner even allowed his staff to call the police on a well-known TV reporter from his city simply for wanting to ask Weiner more questions. In the end, Weiner still looks immature, foolish, creepy -- and now he looks like a liar as well.

Joshua Green at the Atlantic:

Already, a debate has arisen over whether this kind of behavior should be disqualifying in a politician, and whether Weiner can survive the scandal. On some level, I suppose that the moral, cultural, and sociological elements of this affair are worth thinking through and writing about. But there's a tendency among bloggers, maybe among everybody, to over-analyze and over-intellectualize scandals such as this one that has the pernicious effect of obscuring what I think is a very basic point: Weiner had so little regard for his office, his constituents, and his duty as a member of Congress that he apparently thought nothing of tweeting pictures of his genitals to random women. Does the analysis really need to go any further than that?

But Weiner does have some supporters, and not just Rush Limbaugh, who’d like to see Weiner become the Democrats' poster boy. Here’s one such endorsement, care of Howard Kurtz at the Daily Beast.

What the congressman did was monumentally dumb, as he is the first to admit. He lied about having tweeted the original underwear photo to a 21-year-old student, again and again, on national television.

But let’s review what Weiner didn’t do. He didn’t, if he can now be believed, have an affair with any of the women he flirted with online. He didn’t send sexually explicit messages to underage House pages. He didn’t solicit sex in an airport men’s room. He didn’t pay high-priced call girls. He didn’t show up in the phone records of a D.C. madam. He didn’t carry on with the wife of his top congressional aide. He didn’t have a love child with his campaign videographer, or, for that matter, a member of his household staff. He didn’t disappear from government service with a tale about hiking the Appalachian Trail. He didn’t put his gay lover on the state payroll. He didn’t have sex with an intern who delivered the pizza. He didn’t have an affair with a House staffer while leading the impeachment drive against the president who had sex with the intern.

Should Anthony Weiner resign?Market Research

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Don't blame Anthony Weiner, blame his 'Type T personality'

 -- Alexandra Le Tellier

Photo: This is the photo that Meagan Broussard claims Rep. Anthony Weiner sent her as proof of his identity. Credit: BigGovernment.com

Although psychologist Frank Farley hasn't weighed in on Anthony Weiner on our pages, he did recently write an Op-Ed article pegged to Arnold Schwarzenegger's sex scandal about why successful politicians are predisposed to sexual indiscretions: They're hardwired that way. Farley introduces the "Type T personality":

There are many possible factors: a need to express power, a love of conquest, perhaps narcissism — all characteristics that may serve a politician well in other arenas. But in my view the factor most responsible for philandering in public officials is a predisposition for risk-taking, which also happens to be an essential quality for politicians. My label for it is the "Type T personality," with the "T" standing for thrill.

Being a Type T doesn't have to be a problem: Many of America's great successes and achievements couldn't have happened without risk-takers. The nation was founded by Type T men who weren't afraid to rise up against one of the world's great empires. I believe the United States can be characterized to some extent as a Type T nation, tilting in the risk-taking direction. But Type T individuals may also be prone to negative types of risk-taking, including crime, drug use or sexual encounters that end badly.

Risk-takers want to live exciting, interesting, challenging lives. They tend to believe they control their fates. They are often attracted to variety, novelty, intensity and uncertainty. They are often creative, show independence of judgment and tend to have strong sexual drives and high energy.

Though Farely doesn't assign a gender to the "Type T personality," all of the misbehaving politicians he cites are men.

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Rep. Anthony Weiner, tweeting with fire

Anthony Weiner: No photographic memory of his underwear drawer

--Alexandra Le Tellier

Top photo: An undated photo taken from the website BigGovernment.com, run by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, purports to show Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) shirtless. Credit: BigGovernment.com/ AP Photo. Bottom photo:  Weiner pauses while speaking at a news conference in New York on June 6, 2011. Credit: Jin Lee / Bloomberg

Most viewed: In California, 'job killers' that aren't

Donald Cohen of the Cry Wolf Project takes on the California Chamber of Commerce's annual list of bills it deems "job killers."

The chamber's argument is always the same: If "job-killer proposal X" passes, companies will go bankrupt, shrink or move out of California. Excessive taxes, regulations and paperwork, especially on small businesses, will crush private sector investment. […]

But if we look backward, we find that the job-killer predictions are often wrong. Despite the chamber's political clout, some of the bills on its lists became law. So it is possible to evaluate whether the organization was providing honest analyses or crying wolf and engaging in scare tactics. Here are some examples.

Read on for Cohen's examples.

Most commented: DSK and France's code of silence

"Somewhere between the French embrace of satyriasis among political leaders and Americans' puritanical intolerance of sexual impropriety is a happy medium," the editorial board writes in regard to the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

Does it matter if a brilliant leader is also a sex addict? Not necessarily. The American media, like the French, tended to ignore such things half a century ago, and what the country didn't know about President John F. Kennedy's affairs didn't hurt it. But sometimes it does matter. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is Exhibit A in the case against ignoring a politician's personal life. His alleged adventures with an underage prostitute have not only embarrassed his nation, but the ongoing revelations about his sexual escapades and the criminal charges connected to them have made it difficult for him to continue governing. A politician's sexual misdeeds can reflect more than his attitudes toward marriage; they can indicate his respect for women and adherence to moral, ethical and legal codes.

In response, reader quixote7 writes on our discussion board:

There is a huge difference between anyone's private life -- not just a politician's -- and committing physical assaults on another human being.

The fact that those assaults involve sexual organs and victimize women does not somehow make them "normal."

Private lives should be private.  Crimes must be prosecuted, and leaders should not be criminals.  They should be in jail.

What is so hard about that concept?

Most shared: 9th Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu deserves a vote

The editorial board asked that the U.S. Senate give Goodwin Liu a straight up-or-down vote.

Republicans -- and Democrats -- inclined to oppose Liu's nomination are free to vote against it. But they would do an injustice to Liu and the Senate by refusing to allow his nomination to come to a vote. The Senate should make such a vote possible -- and then approve Liu.

Republicans blocked the appeals court nominee for which our right-of-center readers offer some perspective. They say:

Liberals seemed perfectly okay back in 2003 when the Democratic minority in the Senate used the filibuster to block the nominations of Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen, Charles W. Pickering, Carolyn Kuhl, David W. McKeague, Henry Saad, Richard Allen Griffin, William H. Pryor, William Gerry Myers III and Janice Rogers Brown.

Question: Where was their outrage for THESE qualified nominees?

Answer: Cloaked in liberal hypocrisy.  You see, their calls for a "straight up-or-down" vote are always dependent on the situation and according to whom is being nominated and who is doing the nominating.

Democrats forget they INVENTED Borking.  If they want this silliness to end, then they need to act a little more contrite about the shrillness and hyper-partisanship that they, themselves, have brought to the judicial nomination process.  Also, they ought to refrain from using the courts as a fallback position for enacting laws via judicial fiat that they cannot otherwise get passed through the normal, legislative process for lack of votes.

--GregMaragos

Liu is an active leftist, and the Republicans would not be serving their constituency if they did not do everything that's legal and proper to prevent his appointment.  We already have to live with the many horrid rulings of the wacked-out 9th Circuit; we don't need another of their ilk.

-- Jaded Cynic

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The universe sure has a droll sense of timing.

First there's Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund who was, until he was yanked off an Air France flight and now sits in jail at Rikers Island on suspicion of sexually assaulting a hotel maid, the leading candidate to take on Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency of France.

The French press, deeply skittish when it comes to covering the personal lives of its public figures, evidently for legal as well as cultural reasons, is looking at itself in the mirror and asking whether it's been too forgiving or too timid in light of complaints now surfacing about DSK's "past conduct."

Most of France only found out about former President Francois Mitterrand's "second family" as Mitterrand was ailing, and the outrage was directed largely at the press that reported it not at Mitterrand. (That changed a bit when it turned out Mitterrand had sometimes put up his "second family’’ in public buildings at public expense.)

Many Europeans have sneered at Americans for getting our knickers in a twist over politicians' sexual misconduct (although Americans have been more likely to criticize "family values" politicians who had been caught hypocritically with those self-same knickers down).

When it comes to the public discourse on public matters, personal behavior can distract voters and reduce politics to matters of personality and not policy; it's much easier for the media to report on, and much easier for the public to understand and to judge, sexual misconduct than it is to master complexities like, say, raising the debt ceiling, which requires the marshaling of facts as well as morals. 

And now there's Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is revealed to be the father of a 10-year-old child by someone who worked for 20 years right in his house, both before and after the child's birth.

When it comes to DSK and Schwarzenegger, it is beyond question that rape is altogether and entirely different from infidelity -- by a long shot.

But the world that is now tsk-tsking Schwarzenegger for apparently consensual extramarital sex that produced a child surely includes some of the same people who heaped scorn on The Times in 2003, for stories before the recall election that made Arnold Schwarzenegger governor.

Those stories recounted unwelcome and unwanted groping incidents detailed by women who had encountered and worked with Schwarzenegger. After the stories ran, Schwarzenegger responded, with his wife, Maria Shriver, backing him up. He didn't go into detail, but he did apologize thusly: "Yes, I have behaved badly sometimes. Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets," and did things "I thought were playful that now I recognize that I have offended people." Right after the election, he also said he'd hire private investigators to look into the women's allegations -- a plan he abandoned within a month.

What's stupefying now -- epoustouflant, as the French say -- is to realize that when he was making these apologies and denials and explanations, a child he had fathered out of wedlock with an employee was already a year or two old.

Some readers who hammered the reporters and the reportage in 2003, complaining about "invasion of privacy" and "irrelevance" during the gubernatorial campaign, may now the same ones now demanding of reporters, "Gee, why didn't you tell us about this child before?"

DSK's arrest will surely change French politics.

What about Schwarzenegger and California? If California had known about the existence of this child before the 2003 recall would Schwarzenegger have lost? The fact that his wife left him in January, right after she found out about the child, says to me that she probably wouldn’t have stood by her man and tolerated that behavior as she did in defending him in 2003 against the groping allegations. This "incident" was orders of magnitude different.

Alternative history time: How different might those seven years have been with a governor not named Schwarzenegger in Sacramento? And how much better off might California have been? Seriously -– how could things have been much worse?

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-- Patt Morrison

Photos, from top: IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn; former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Credits: Horacio Villalobos / European Pressphoto Agency; Mandel Ngan / Getty Images

Long before Photoshop, the Soviet Union was known for airbrushing leaders who were on the outs from published group photographs. But tinkering with photos isn't just a Communist plot. A Hasidic newspaper in New York removed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a female aide from its version of the now-famous shot of President Obama and his advisors following developments in the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The rationale for the no-women policy is that the images might be too suggestive. If this sounds like the argument for veils in the Islamic world, it's no coincidence. Paternalist -- some would say patriarchal -- ideas about the need to preserve female virtue aren't confined to any one faith. There is a also a Christian tradition of forced modesty. Remember the nearly all-enveloping habits Catholic nuns wore before the Second Vatican Council?

So Der Tzitung, the Hasidic newspaper, is part of a long tradition. Still, obliterating Clinton and counter-terrorism official Audrey Tomason wasn't necessary to preserve their modesty. Superimposed veils or chadors would have done the job just as well.

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 -- Michael McGough

Top photo: President Obama and members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room on May 1, 2011. Credit: Pete Souza, White House

Bottom photo: Der Tzitung's photoshopped version of the above photo, via FailedMessiah.com.

All I can say is: Wow, man, far out.

I've seen the Volkswagen Bulli, and it blew my mind. 

Introduced at the Geneva Motor Show this week, the Bulli is a kind of magical mystery tour bus. It's so groovy, it’ll make you want to pack up your old lady (or your old man), pull on the bell bottoms and the tie-dye, throw Rover in the back and head for Woodstock.

Heck, take Sky, and Cheyenne and Dweezil with you.  And don't forget the Ripple.

Automakers have been on a nostalgia trip in the last few years.  Volkswagen gave us the New Beetle in 1998.  BMW brought back the Mini Cooper in 2001. Ford redid the Thunderbird, then the Mustang, and then Chevy gave us the new Camaro and Chrysler the new Challenger.

Thankfully, AMC is defunct, so we don’t have to worry about a new Pacer or a new Hornet -- kids, ask your parents.

And while you're at it, kids, have your parents -– or your grandparents -– tell you their VW Bus stories.  Watch their eyes get misty.  Then watch them squirm.  Then watch them change the subject.

A Times story Friday said that fewer teens and young adults are having sex. Researchers couldn't explain why. But if VW brings back the Bus …

Anyway, the Bulli  is shockingly cool.  And it's also 21st century:  Powered by a 40-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack, Volkswagen says it’ll go 180+ miles on a charge, with a top speed of 87 mph.

Which, as anyone who ever owned a VW Bus knows, is about 40 mph faster than the original, and about 100 miles farther than an original would go before breaking down.

No word yet on whether the new model will also catch fire unexpectedly. Or if it will have a heater that heats, or a defroster that defrosts, or windshield wipers that wipe. 

Sadly, being electric-powered, it probably won't backfire every 100 yards either.

What the concept does have is a single bench seat in the front, and a rear bench seat that collapses. (See "fewer teens having sex," above.)

Also, there’s no eight-track. Instead, there’s an iPad in the center console that, according to The Times' story, "works as a multifunctional touchscreen, controlling the car's Bluetooth and navigation functions, as well as entertainment media, including Internet access."

All that, but no bong holder?

Volkswagen won't say whether it's going to produce the Bulli. A VW spokeswoman said the manufacturer sees "great opportunity for it in the U.S." 

But if you can't wait, you can always buy a nicely restored original.  There’s one on EBay right now, a beautiful 1967.  The owner wants $59,500.

Which, as we used to say, is a lot of bread, man.

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--Paul Whitefield

Photo: A study of a Volkswagen named Bulli is on display at the International Geneva Motor Show at the Palexpo fairground in Geneva. Credit: Uli Deck / EPA

They don’t make sex symbols like they used to.

Thursday's Times offered up the yin and the yang of Hollywood starlets. 

On the Opinion page, columnist Meghan Daum wrote about Farah Fawcett's famed 1976 swimsuit poster -- and the swimsuit, of course -- going to the Smithsonian, where it will be displayed alongside other icons of American pop culture.

Meanwhile, the main news section -– along with two or three other media outlets -- managed to find space to cover Lindsay Lohan's latest brush with the law.

(Also getting front-page play was a story about a movie on the life story of 16-year-old pop icon Justin Bieber, and a story on U2 guitarist the Edge's proposed Malibu home -- somewhere, Gen. Harrison Gray Otis is rolling over in his grave.)

But back to our starlets. Fawcett was a tousle-haired Texan who rose to fame in the ’70s on the basis of her sexy swimsuit poster and her star turn on "Charlie’s Angels."

As Daum writes: "It's tempting to look at Fawcett’s one-piece bathing suit, lanky golden limbs and unaugmented breasts as emblems of a simpler time."

Daum then traces the phenomenon of the It Girl, from Clara Bow to Mae West to Marilyn Monroe. Perhaps, she says, Fawcett was the last It Girl -- that today, we have It Girls.

Hello, Lindsay Lohan.

Lohan is a tousle-haired train wreck from Long Island who rose to fame making Disney movies and, lately, court appearances. On Wednesday, she strode into the courthouse wearing a white dress ("This old thing? I've had it in the closet forever; I just shrink-wrapped it on this morning.") but luckily not the necklace she's accused of pilfering.

The judge got things rolling by telling the actress: "You're no different than anyone else, so please don't push your luck." Presumably, the rest of his remarks were drowned out by laughter.

And just to prove to her that this time the justice system really, really means it, The Times reported that Lohan was "booked at the courthouse rather than arrested by police. She was taken into custody, but outside the view of TV cameras," then was "released on $40,000 bail and was escorted out a back entrance of the courthouse."

Now, Daum may be right. As she writes, today It Girls are "found not only on bedroom walls but also on countless cable channels and deep inside the hard drives of anyone who can type 'hot chick' into a search engine. They're not just models and actresses but socialites and reality stars and people who don't do anything much."

Which, of course, pretty much sums up Lohan right now.

On the other hand, who's to say that, 40 years from now, you won't be able to visit the Smithsonian and say: "Look, there's the alcohol monitoring anklet Lindsay Lohan wore while on probation!"

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--Paul Whitefield

Photo: Actress Lindsay Lohan during her arraignment for a felony count of grand theft on Feb. 9, 2011, in Los Angeles. Lohan was charged with a felony count of grand theft for allegedly stealing a $2,500 necklace from a jewelry store in Venice. Credit: Mario Anzuoni-Pool / Getty Images