During the latest fin de siècle, when Garrison Keillor still had a soul and satiric wit, he wrote a short and funny-because-it's-true piece about the institutionalization of Remorse.

I'm not about to dig it up-- I think it's in his "We Are Still Married" collection-- but it jumped on the the dopey pop-morals emphasis on the utter necessity of Showing Remorse to observers' satisfaction as essential to rehabilitation. I dimly remember the piece featuring Remorse Counsellors and other social-service or criminal justice entities tasked with evaluating the quality of Remorse in criminals and delinquents, etc.

That smarmy, vaguely prurient commentary on whether a public figure is more to be pitied or censured has grown like a malignant tumor over the years into the Parade of Guilt culture you reference. Good call!

The Wrong, or Sin, is prologue; the real significance of the event in our debased popular culture is whether the yearning masses deem the Show of Remorse sufficient to pity the Wrongdoer, or Sinner, and welcome him or her back to the fold of respectability.

Alternatively, if there is Insufficient Contrition or Admission of both the Emotional Anguish of Guilt and factual guilt, in that order, the Wrongdoer will be censured. (Or, as with John Edwards, when preliminary Satisfactory Remorse is invalidated by evidence of further Unconfessed Sin.)

It's reminiscent of the 19th-Century fundamentalist revival dynamic that persists to this day in the substance abuse rehab racket: the sinner stands before the audience and tearfully confesses and breaks down emotionally, allowing the audience to Forgive and Comfort the brave penitent to facilitate further rehabilitation. As with Letterman, it's a win-win outcome.

Male philandering is to the chattering classes what a spectacularly gruesome murder or car crash is to local teevee news: catnip. Mark Sanford, John Edwards, and now Dave Letterman have all starred in episodes of the most popular reality teevee show since "Survivor": I Got Caught With My World-Wide Pants Down.

Dave Letterman is OK, as entertainers go. Speaking of Keillor, Letterman's shtick is also based on his being, first and foremost, a Decent, quasi-dorky entertainer who Always Works Clean. Like his colleagues, he is insufferable when he either sucks up to VIP guests, or shows contrived flashes of Moral High Dudgeon.

Many, many years ago I happened to catch Cher appearing on Letterman's show. Dave was joking with her about how long they'd unsuccessfully tried to get her on the show. Cher didn't disagree. She looked Dave right in the eye and said in her characteristic deadpan tone, something like, "Well, everybody told me you were an asshole."

They bleeped out "asshole", but it was obvious what she'd said. Letterman was clearly knocked off his pins! He stammered repeatedly, and without mirth, that he's really not an asshole, and he didn't understand why he had that reputation.

The show went on, but Letterman seemed truly freaked out at Cher's point-blank riposte; she obviously touched a nerve.

Cher's informants were quite right, of course.

But I'm not surprised that a Salon chick-mag writer would give Dave a gold star for "classiness" for putting on a determined Remorse performance. He apologized to his wife on the air-- that's like sticking the landing!

I'm sure that "The View" and "Oprah" are conducting parallel inquisitions.

Yeah, Dave's real "classy". And you can be sure that he'll never do it again. Get caught, that is.

I love a parade.

It's about time that we took on the rabid menstrual deniers, opponents, and objective anti-menstruists!

I'll go further than that: I don't see why vasectomies can't be enhanced with a permanent orifice, scrotal or penile, that would subject men to spontaneous crotch discharges!

I think the US has already begun to develop these surgical techniques in cooperation with our grateful detainee community. Who says good things can't come from bad? Or is it the other way around?

In any case, pardon my clinical explicitness, but this is no time to mince words.

This is about solidarity.

• K. Trout, omooex's clarification speaks for me too. To stick with my barroom arm-wrestling metaphor, if you're not into arm-wrestling, and the place just happens to be dominated by the wrestling crowd on a given night, the noise and commotion does "get old".

But it's not your fault; it just seems to go with the territory. Despite the pejorative aspect to the term, commenting is a form of self-indulgence protected by the Golden Rule. So by all means have at them; as I've noted recently, the responses invariably outclass the competition.

• Speaking of self-indulgence, during periods between Glenn posts I do graze other comments sections-- strictly from hunger, as the saying goes. I see a few of "you" around, but I notice far more familiar troll nyms posting to other stories.

And it's interesting that other comments threads at Cosmo-- whoops, "Salon"-- typically are more pedestrian overall.

In still another burst of shameless self-promotion, please check the link@sig for a recent comment to another story that sank like a stone. I wish I had a reason to publish it here instead, where it would reach a quality audience.

I know they were out there; I could hear them breathing.

Well, this is a welcome turn of events!

Doctor Frist's diagnostic skills are improving now that he's not distracted by the demands of public office.

A couple of years ago, he would never have been able to effectively diagnose a "patient" from afar, and correctly pronounce it DOA.

One must give credit where credit's due.