It looks like the number two threat to marriage is finally responding to the measures taken by the Bush administration to defend the sacred institution of marriage. Q. What is, in the President's view, a greater threat to this enduring institution of marriage, a same-sex couple establishing a stable marriage, or the staggering divorce rate, the out-of-wedlock birth level and travesties like Britney Spear's marital fiasco? (Laughter.) What...

MR. McCLELLAN: I think -- look back to the President's State of the Union address, and he talked about the importance of values that we hold so dearly in this country. And he talked about the importance of changing our culture, and ushering in a responsibility era. He's long held those views.

Q. So he would like to see a lower divorce rate, lower out-of-wedlock births, and Britney Spears behave herself? (Laughter.)

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, actually, I think if you look at some of the steps that we've taken in the welfare reform reauthorization, we have proposals in there to help strengthen marriage and help individuals. (Full text here (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040224-5.html )) Well, it's working: Brit Brit (http://www.teenhollywood.com/d.asp?r=60970&cat=1027) is going celibate. Tired of trying to use food stamps to buy her Pepsi, I guess:She has now decided to stay celibate for a while and to start going to church regularly. She is also seeing two counselors. She knows she had to do this to get her life back in order.Now she just has to work on the getting a job part.

I bet Scotty drinks a fifth every night when he gets home. I am actually starting to feel pity for this guy and the job he has to do in trying to present administration policy as something other than the joke it is.

:m: Peace.

This is getting to be like the old Doonesbury bits from the Nixon White House, with the reporters just laying into him.

What is the performance art value of hounding Scott McClellan over the President's opinion of marriage in light of Britney Spears?

It's one of those things where people are going to be buying the reporter drinks for years when they find out s/he was the reporter who asked those questons. ("Oh, that was you?")

Gee, this raises the possibility that the media has had it. More likely, they're just trying to manufacture headlines. They couldn't spin the Democratic race into a Dean victory no matter how many sugar-plum headlines danced in their heads, so now they're going to take the kid gloves off, perhaps, and unload on the president for three and a half years of disrespect, all crammed in between now and November.