In an earlier post I attempted to apply some of my grandfather's wisdom to today's political mudslinging -- especially his advice to my father to "never get in a peeing contest with a skunk, because you'll smell like him."

I figured, if the scandal-saturated Clintons are like skunks, then the more Barack Obama reduces himself to their level, the more he'll damage himself, because he'll smell bad while they remain unaffected.

The Clintons are of course the quintessence of tabloid material, so for years it's been natural for me to see this sort of thing staring at people in supermarket checkout lines:

Yesterday, though, I saw clear evidence that this type of tabloid coverage, which has long been associated with the Clintons, has finally reached out and sprayed Barack Obama:

Let me assure readers that only very rarely do I read tabloids, much less buy them. But when I saw the above I had to buy it, because I recognized the story and Obama's accuser from their WorldNetDaily incarnation. I was dismissively skeptical when I posted about it, but to see that the scandal had risen in respectability from the conspiracy-minded WorldNetDaily to a major tabloid like the Globe, I found myself stunned!

However, once I got it home and read it, it turned out that the cover had been little more than a tease, because the article revealed, the accuser not only failed his lie detector test, but he admitted to Globe that he "spent years in prison in Florida, Colorado, and Arizona on various fraud charges..."

Yet still, there's a dramatic interior headline -- OBAMA SCANDAL ERUPTS! (Along with the accuser's claim that the Obama camp set him up, and rigged the lie detector test.)

I probably wouldn't have bothered with this post, except that Glenn Reynolds tantalizingly posted the National Enquirer cover after noting that he "just got back from Kroger's and the National Enquirer is really letting Obama have it."

And indeed they are -- or they certainly seem to be.

But was the Enquirer story as juicy as the Globe's?

Unfortunately, I couldn't make out the headlines, because the picture is too small, and when I tried to magnify the image, I got blurry pixels, and not readable text. I was disinclined to go out for another supermarket tabloid run, but fortunately, Brendan Nyhan had a closeup

In contrast to the exciting standard set by the Globe, the Enquirer is almost boring. The headlines involve aging but real news, and while the stories might be sensationalized, they're derived at least in part from factually true accounts (like the Bill Ayers story).

As to "Screaming matches with wife -- over other women"

Come on.

I mean, how gay is that?

By Clintonian standards, where's the stench? (The way they're acting, you'd almost think Obama was a Republican or something.)

Personally, I think the Globe does a better job of upholding the traditional raunchy values that made tabloid journalism great.

And while my admitted bias may be showing, I hate to see the tabloids neglecting Hillary.

Can't I have a little Huma to go with my raunch dressing? (There are plenty of anonymous sauces.)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all!