What's silly is the idea that a well-past-puberty 16-year-old is a child. That she's a child is an artificial legal and social construct -- biologically she's a woman. In other cultures women that age are married mothers. In the United States only 50 years ago the average age for marriage for women was 17. Furthmore, she's over the age of consent for more than half the states in the U.S., so even by our laws she's legally entitled to be sexy.

The forces in our society that rail against the sexualization of young women are just as much liberal as they are conservative, and both sides of the political spectrum are equally guilty of sending girls in their mid-teens mixed messages about whether they're supposed to look and act more like children four years younger or like women four years older.

@highlyunlikely ... I'm not a hair care expert, but I believe that's what's called a "spiral perm"

@etaoin_shrdlu... I hate to put a damper on everyone's good time, but I think the reason Obama's left foot is raised is that he's in the process of stepping down from the step behind him (look at the way his body is bent and angled). I suspect that's why he's looking down, and his head is naturally turned toward someone who is moving close to him in the opposite direction.

And wouldn't you like to have been a fly on the wall for *that* conversation:

"Mom, Dad, I had an affair, and because I'm such a righteous guy I think I should pay for my sins ... so could you write some checks for $100k ... some of them should be to her husband and kids so they're non-taxable. Just think how excited those kids will be to be getting 'gifts' from Aunt and Uncle Ensign! It will be like Christmas! Only Mommy was kissing the Senator, not Santa Claus."

How funny that this item is posted today without any mention of the breaking controversy about the fact that neither Fiorina's business nor her foundation is registered with the appropriate agencies. I thought the whole point of this medium was that it was supposed to be up to date?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/09/MNKQ18LN01.DTL&type=business

Actually, Uncle G, looking at the video it turns out I was right about the fact that he was stepping down, and wrong only in the reason that he was turned that direction. So there.

While I agree that the term "mistress" is being mis-used, what other word is there? I'm not aware of a word in English that perfectly describes this particular relationship, and the phrase "married woman he was having an affair with" -- or if we really want to be pedantic "married woman with whom he was having an affair" -- is pretty cumbersome for use in news reports. Actually, I think that it's a fair evolution of the word that it now is used to suggest an adulterous relationship; times have changed, and so many unmarried people openly have ongoing sexual relationships outside of marriage that men have "girlfriends" not "mistresses."

I did enjoy the fact that the some news media took advantage of the rare opportunity to use the word "cuckold" to decribe the lady in question's husband. Although considering how much money he made off the affair, perhaps the word "pimp" might have been just as apt.

My point was that 100 years ago a woman who lived with a man out of wedlock was his mistress. These days the accepted word for the long-term pseudo-marital relationship is "partner" -- you can't get much more egalitarian than that.

The primary distinguishing characteristic of a mistress is that for some reason the woman is not someone whom one can marry. Historically, for upper class men whom they married was constricted by social, political and economic factors. Now "love" is at least ostensibly the reason one marries, and divorce is easy and prevalent, so the traditional barriers to marrying one's mistress have for the large part disappeared, and with it the role of the mistress herself. So it's not surprising the meaning has shifted slightly to describe a relationship that is (1) primarily sexual in nature, and (2) of some duration (not just a brief liaison), and (3) in addition to a primary partner (spouse, recognized partner, etc.).

The Ensign situation is really no different from that of a medieval nobleman who took a vassal's wife for himself and compensated him for the privilege -- and the term mistress would have been used for that situation. It's really quite feudal, and therefore I think the term "mistress" is rather appropriate. Of course in our modern culture, a more appropriate term for their relationship would be "sexual harassment," but there's no specific name for someone who is a victim of sexual harassment, either.

Nathan, you're adorably naive. Conspiracy theorists see any attempt to disprove their theory as further evidence of the extent of the conspiracy. As someone said above, you could have video of Obama being born in front of the Hawaii statehouse and they'd say it was fake. Releasing the full birth certificate would not have proven anything to the hard-core birthers, although it probably would have kept their theory from becoming as widely known and believed as it is.

It's an interesting pathology that in this case is creating a nice synergy with the wing-nuts' inability to accept that they were overwhelmingly voted out of power and replaced by someone who is the epitome of all that they hate and fear.