The New York Times, typically, tip-toed around the question of who the other woman was in the Pirro love-boat-bugging triangle (while the Daily News had no such qualms, giving us pictures and practically the address of the hottie), preferring instead to put Pirro’s plight in the light of her history with the husband-from-hell and linking it — natch — to the saga of that other Westchester wannabe, Tammy Wynette Clinton. (Unmentioned in all this is the specter of Geraldine Ferraro, who hovers over the scandal like one of those ghosts from Tony Soprano’s dreams.)

But the Times should have looked a little closer to home — like right there on the same front page, where former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman Patricia Dunn is pictured looking on stoically while a pair of identical bald lawyers whisper behind her as she testifies before a House panel. Like Pirro, Dunn (synonomous with finished) played with fire, or wire, when she bugged board members she suspected of leaking info to the press. Pirro simply talked to Bernie Kerik about bugging her husband’s boat to confirm her suspicions regarding the other woman. When Kerik, captured on tape, said he couldn’t find anyone to do the actual bugging, scared as they were of doing something extralegal for a former prosecutor and possible future attorney general, she asked, rhetorically I suppose, “What am I supposed to do, Bernie? Watch him fuck her every night?”

Yeah, baby.

Leaving aside the wisdom of seeking counsel from Kerik in this matter (this is a man who missed the chance to be director of Homeland Security when it was revealed that, among other things, he used a city-owned apartment to cheat on not just his wife but his mistress), Pirro and Dunn could have saved themselves a lot of time, not to mention a couple of pretty good jobs, if they had just assumed the worst. Yes, your husband is cheating on you, your board member has the Silicon Valley beat reporter on his speed dial — all of your worst fears are confirmed. Now what? By trying to prove what you already knew you just screwed yourself, so to speak. Nixon, forever dangling in history in a spider web of wire and tape, bugged the Democrats in 1972 when they were already headed for a self-created defeat. He proved to himself that John Lennon hated the US government when he could have just bought an album. Assume the worst and you’ll never be disappointed, someone said. Just have the upholstery cleaned before you get on that boat.

JUDGMENT DAY: To all you readers within the sound of my voice — that is, my neighbors in downtown Brooklyn — today is the last day to comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement created to give us an idea of what life will be like after the Atlantic Yards is built. If you like sunshine and being able to park, and think schools are quite crowded enough and traffic is plenty snarled already; if you love Brooklyn for its low-rise quality-of-life, your neighborhood for its neighborhood feel; if you think a community should have some say when an outside, Cleveland-born, Upper-East-Side residing developer decides to change the face of your city because he is well-connected and stands to make a billion dollars on the deal, speak now. Today. Before 5:30 pm. You can read up on the DEIS on the Develop Don’t Destory Brooklyn website or (if you’ve heard quite enough) email atlanticyards@empire.state.ny.us and let your voice be heard. Someone actually reads these things, and as union members who live in other places and housing advocates who have been hoodwinked or paid to believe Ratner is going to build them a workers’ paradise are sure to flood the zone with their own cookie-cutter responses, your concerned complaint will register. Go ahead, take five minutes. It’s your community, too.

I heard a story on the BBC World Service this morning about people in the UK borrowing more than their European counterparts and it was definitely of the been-there-borrowed-that sort to these American ears. There was the testimony of several debtors who complained they found themselves thousands of pounds in the hole thanks to the sort of zero-percent credit card offers with which we are regularly deluged. Capital One is probably crossing the pond as we speak.

Then for counterpoint there was a spokesman from the credit industry who took the hard line. You could not blame the banks for their spendthrift ways, he argued. Personal responsibility and all that. They only had themselves to blame.

It occurred to me that the same conservatives, here or there, who argue you can’t blame banks for the growing number of debtors just because they make it ridiculously easy to borrow (just as you can’t blame McDonald’s for making people fat, or tobacco companies for giving people cancer) are the same people who love to blame Hollywood for encouraging wanton sexual behavior by giving us images of Brad Pitt shagging Angelina Jolie.

Banks and credit card companies have tried to deflect criticism by offering courses in getting out of debt and managing your finances, just as Philip Morris or whatever they’re calling themselves now have a whole cottage industry devoted to keeping kids from smoking. (Goodbye, Joe Camel.) But Hollywood has yet to find a way to make us stop thinking about Angelina’s lips.

I’d like to see them try.

Fall must be lice season in New York because kids are being sent home in droves to have their heads checked and deloused in record numbers, it seems. Record since last year, anyway. My daughter was caught up in the latest purge and I tried to assure her she was not alone: our neighbor, my shrink, the man in the moon. All their kids were itchng and scratching.

So Franny and I paid a repeat visit to Abigail Rosenfeld, Brooklyn’s premier nit-picker (for all those who have asked, her number is 718/435-2592). Abigail lives on an Orthodox block in Flatbush and I would say that she has so many children she doesn’t know what to do, but that’s not true. Clearly the answer is “have more” since there was a new baby since we saw her last fall (Shlamme? she translated it as “Sammy” and he was about the cutest thing either my daughter or I had ever seen) and another one on the way. She had been hit with so many requests in recent weeks that she was sending people down the block to other Orthodox moms who did the same thing.

Who knew? Turns out there is competition for this timeless, tiring, time-consuming job (you need a ocean of Pantene, a fine-tooth comb and endless patience) which revealed itself as she quizzed Franny about the people who had come to her school to help the nurse check heads. “Lice Advice?” she said. “I gave that woman her start. I was hoping another friend of mine would get that job.” She wished her competitor no ill, she assured me. But clearly she had favorites.

Franny was clean, btw. A few nits. Now we’re on to the endless washing and drying of everything in her room. I offered to do a Freaky-Friday role-reversal with my wife once — I would run her magazine while she did the domestic scientist/writer/teacher bit — and she passed. She couldn’t handle the scene at Abby’s, I bet, what with beleagured parents shlepping their kids in from Hastings and toddlers running amok on the floor (one of them asked me if I wanted to kiss the Torah, which smelled distinctly of Doritos). But she didn’t get to see that baby.

I got a phone call from Susan Sarandon just before the primaries (date some women once and they never leave you alone) and I was disappointed to find it was just a recording. Turns out she was endorsing Jonathan Tasini over Hillary Clinton in the US Senate race because Hillary had supported the invasion of Iraq and still did not want to bring the soldiers home — unlike Tasini who was ready to start loading the troop transports in Baghdad tomorrow.

I have a lot of reasons to distrust Hillary — she seems only too willing to fudge or pull a complete reversal on any number of positions, from a woman’s right to choose to a consumer’s right to declare bankruptcy, if it’s politically expedient or there is money for her future presidential race involved. And if nominated she will surely cost us the election again, given the Satan-like associations she has for many — though the simple fact that so many hate her that she is doomed from the start does not seem to be enough to stop her from becoming her party’s first presidential nominee, an honor she doubtless thinks of as her birthright.

But though I can’t forgive her and the rest of the Senate their decision to give Bush a blank check going into Iraq, I believe she sincerely thought Saddam posed some kind of global risk. And as wrong as she and Colin Powell and Tony Blair and millions of others were on that score, and as much as I hope the Vulcans who drove this bus are punished in international courts if not eternal hellfire for their pursuit of this policy, I don’t see how we can just pull out of Iraq. What do we say to the people whose nation we have destroyed? “Sorry about that”? Even if the idea of dividing Iraq into three sovereign states (Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurd) is a non-starter as many Iraq-watchers believe, the US has no choice but to stick around and do some nation rebuilding.

We cannot magically turn our soldiers into peace-keeping troops because there is no peace to keep. We cannot unscrew this pooch, even once the Vulcans are out of power. (And as they head for the exits, look for more blame to be shifted to past presidents, the press, anyone but the people who got us into this mess.) But we cannot walk away from a disaster of our creating. We have to reinvent our role in this war. Start by restoring electricity.

So sorry Susan et al. This position puts me deeply in the purple category in this very blue city — but I always hated that division anyway. I lost a lot of friends on the left coast since 9.11, specifically in the uber-blue Bay Area, people so blue they think it’s unfair to the other colors to characterize blue as liberal or Democratic, people who want to show solidarity with colors on the other end of the spectrum — and who decided to make blue and red primary colors, anyway? Periwinke has rights, too. These were people who thought even going after Al Qaeda was unfair. (A typical comment before the Iraq war: “Who is this majority in the polls who support this invasion? I don’t know a single person who is for the war!” Having not been outside of Alameda, Marin or SF county in 20 years…)

So don’t look for me at the peace rally, shouting “Troops out now!” I’m going to take my purple crayon and write right here.

I was stuck in the house all day, working on the Rushing book and measuring the occasional showers. Before the sun set I thought it was sufficiently dry to take the dog for a walk. As we perambulated up Lafayette to Washington, over to DeKalb and down to Clermont, I was posed three questions, after having been asked nothing all day.

“What’s Bonerama?” a man said, reading my T-shirt. (A New Orleans band composed of four trombones with a sousaphone for a bass, I told him, and he looked suitably amazed. You should hear their covers of “Crosstown Traffic” and “The Whiffenpoof Song.”)

“A gas station attendant pushed me when I asked him for money and I punched him in the mouth,” a homeless man told me. “Can I be arrested for that?” (If he walked away, I said, he probably won’t press charges. But stay away from that gas station, just in case.)

“What’s the desperation?” a man on DeKalb asked as a woman barrelled past, running for the bus. “If she is that desperate, why not take a cab?” (Maybe she doesn’t have the money, I said. Besides, have you ever tried finding a cab on DeKalb?)

Glad to be of service, folks. Now it’s back to work.

“Gentlemen songsters off on a spree/Doomed from here to eternity…”