In light of all the grief teen pop star Miley Cyrus received in posing provocatively for Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly shot back with evidence that if Miley were Miles she would not have had to endure the public's disapproval. The magazine dug up at least four instances, in which male teen celebs were given a pass for racy photos:

Vanessa Hudgens apologized after a nude shot hit the Web last year, while Pete Wentz got away with warning fans against taking risqué photos after his own pics leaked in 2006.

When Lindsey Lohan re-created a topless Marilyn Monroe photo shoot for New York magazine, the website received millions of hits--and so did her struggling career. Yet frenzied fans snapped up tickets to see Daniel Radcliffe get naked in Equus.

Sundance 2007: Dakota Fanning's Hounddog--featuring the actress in a rape scene--bows amid a public outcry and calls for an investigation. Sundance 2008: Audiences shrug off a sex scene in The Wackness that involves Nickelodeon star Josh Peck (Drake & Josh).

Blogs went nuts over video of a slurring Ashlee Simpson at a Canadian McDonald's in 2005. But after Shia LaBeouf was arrested for allegedly refusing to leave a Chicago drugstore in 2007? Lots of talk about his supercute mug shot. Oh, and the charges were dropped.

Then again, for the exception of Daniel Radcliffe, I have never even heard of these guys! Nonetheless, there does seem to be a pattern of double standards here. What do you all think?

In related news, R&B singer R. Kelly was charged with child pornography. This is the same guy who married the late artist Aaliyah when she was only 15 -- and has not served a day in prison for it. Ick.

I love Vanity Fair for the people profiles. They are so bitchy, so unfair -- and such guilty pleasure.

Most recently, it uncovered the details of the bitter divorce between billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and his second wife "Ritchie." In case you are wondering, Scaife is the one who bankrolled and peddled -- often false -- stories about the Clintons, including "Troopergate" and "Whitewatergate." He funded the think tanks that coined such Republican marketing terms like "family values," and was the central figure in what Hillary (rightfully) called, the "vast right-wing conspiracy."

So how does Mr. Family Values stack up in his own life? He courted wife Ritchie while both were married to other people. (Of course.) They are now divorcing because he was caught with another woman, who happens to have a police record. (Of course!) The Scaifes did not sign a prenuptial agreement, which means all kinds of stuff have come out, including Ritchie's erratic behavior. (!!) Here is a glimpse of it:

Ritchie once kicked Dick in the crotch, according to a friend, and his testicles swelled to such a size that he had to be taken to the emergency room. Asked about the incident, Dick chuckles and says, almost plaintively, "I'd forgotten." Ritchie issues another denial: "I don't remember ever kicking him!"

...Yet Ritchie, by many accounts, has the more unpredictable temper. Several associates and friends of the Scaifes shudder when they speak of "Ritchie moments." These are high-decibel events--such as the afternoon on Nantucket when she allegedly warned the staff that she would walk into the ocean if a misplaced set of winter slipcovers for the summer furniture wasn't located right now.

"I think this is just the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Ritchie says. "Please. Do I look like somebody who'd walk into the ocean over curtains? Please."

Jewelry, Dick says, reliably restored her equilibrium. After an ultimatum delivered in the kitchen of their Pebble Beach estate, he bought her a ring from Borsheim's, Warren Buffett's Omaha jewelry story--a $600,000, 10-carat diamond that, Scaife recalls, was delivered to his office "by a very nice lady from Rhodesia, very pretty, with two armed guards."

Nice. But let me assure you, "Dick" is just as likable. SNARK. He had his wife arrested for trespassing when she busted him and the "other woman," Tammy Vasco. Later on, he had a sign made and placed on his property, "Wife And Dog Missing--Reward For Dog."

I just find this all amusing from the "philanthropist" who has spent millions of dollars helping build the Republican Party as we know it today. But as you can see, Scaife is no regular church goer. As I have always suspected, he decided to help the Republican Party as a way to protect his assets, which were largely acquired through inheritance, according to Vanity Fair.

This reader letter -- and others like it -- to Vanity Fair’s editors piqued my interest to look for the original article:

IN “Lazy-Ass Nation” (October), Jim Windolf managed to take a serious subject, the fact that Americans are woefully inactive and alarmingly obese, and water it down with examples that were often not only ill-informed but downright mean. Yes, the Clapper may seem to encourage laziness, but I do seem to remember those early commercials for the product showing an elderly woman clapping the lights off from her bed. And attacking cup holders? For crying out loud, it seems to me that these convenient devices actually encourage the questionable but unlazy practice of multitasking. The holders allow a person to drink coffee while driving to work, where they will no doubt perform several tasks at the same time all day.

JIM ROMANOFF
South Burlington, Vermont

I located the original article and Jim would hate me because I could not stop laughing. Sure, the “Americans-are-lazy” trend story is overdone. But Windolf managed to do it with a fresh set of eyes.

And best of all, the different technologies he mentioned, like the electronic fork twirler (for spaghetti) and the motorized ice cream cone -- I really wish these were joke items and not serious patented inventions! -- were hilarious:

Could it be that our increasing willingness to get through life in a nearly comatose state has kept us physiologically stagnant? Catering to this tendency, the Motorized Ice Cream Cone, a device invented in 1999 by Rick Hartman of Seattle, rotates a scoop at the pleasant speed of 15 revolutions per minute. Press the button, stick out your tongue, and the automatic cone does the rest. Who knew licking was such a chore? Asked if his invention would make children lazier than they already are, Hartman says, "I don't think so. I think that eating ice cream is genetically encoded in the human tongue, and so I think that we, as a species, have that fairly well under control."

I wouldn't be so sure. Meeting our desires through the products they turn out, various corporations seem to sense an American craving for an almost total passivity. Since 2002, Pfizer has peddled Listerine Cool Mint Breath Strips, which melt into nonexistence upon meeting the flat of your tongue, as an improvement on lozenges. Chloraseptic, too, has introduced its own dissolving strips. As Ellen DeGeneres asked in a recent routine, "Can we not suck anymore?"

The gold standard of dubious laborsaving devices is the Clapper, from Joseph Enterprises, in San Francisco. Since 1982, Clapper owners have been able to control their lights and appliances with a syncopated double clap of the hands. This fall, the company is launching the Clapper Plus. With its wireless remote, the new Clapper is a Clapper for people who can't even be bothered to clap. In its review of the product, even the technophilic Web site Gizmodo.com was moved to remark, "WTF?"

I had the exact same question, so I called up Clapper Plus inventor Mark Grossmeyer of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and asked him what was on his mind. "I was in bed one night," he tells me, "and I was thinking, Why aren't I using the Clapper in my house? And I was thinking, Well, my wife's sleeping next to me. If I start clapping right now to turn off my light, she'd probably hit me. So I basically said maybe it would be nice to have a remote switch. You push the button and it'll work from inside or outside your house. You can also clap if you're not by your remote at the time.”

Ooh! Ooh! I recently ate up this Vanity Fair piece as it had the proper dose of salacious gossip and the GOP.

The profile, aptly titled Giuliani's Princess Bride, had to do with Rudy Giuliani’s wife, “Do not call me Judi!” Judith, and her conspicuous spending. Excuse my giddiness, ladies, but I think she is a huge liability for the presumed GOP frontrunner!

Apparently, Mrs. Giuliani has been married three times -- all for money. She practically bankrupt her second husband, Bruce Nathan, and has clawed and lied her way to the top. The things that she lied about -- like Nathan’s salary -- were simply bizarre:

Her second husband, Bruce Nathan, was, Barbara Walters mentioned in a March interview with Judith, a man of "means"—a notion Judith promoted. A former boyfriend tells me that after the divorce Judith often referred to her ex-husband as a "millionaire." But in 1991, the year before their separation, Nathan earned exactly $72,775. Judith would later insist that Nathan had a trust fund worth perhaps $1 million and a yacht. However, as Bruce has informed friends, there was only a boat—and no trust fund at all. "Do you honestly think I'd be selling wallpaper if I had all that money?" he would ask.

Inside the marriage, according to friends, Bruce considered himself a "golden retriever, who put a lot of faith and trust in things," only to find that trust misplaced. "Some people can fool you," he would declare sorrowfully. There were expenses incurred by Judi—large sums, considering his modest salary, he complained, mostly for her clothes or tuition for their adopted daughter, Whitney, at elite schools. Toward the end of their marriage, when Bruce's credit cards were no longer at her disposal, Judi was incensed.

The family was then living in a small rented house in the pricey neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, California. Although Judith also claimed on ABC that she had to "re-enter the workforce, after, oh gosh, more than a decade of being a wife and mother" following her divorce, she had actually resumed working in surgical sales months before leaving Nathan.

Oh, but this story gets better. Remember how the Repubs freaked out over John Edwards’s $400 haircut? Let’s see how the presumed GOP frontrunner and the missus stack up: They take private Gulfstream IV jet rides to Europe, own both a  $4 million home in the Hamptons and a $5 million home in the Upper East Side, and the missus is always adorned with Dolce & Gabbana even though she insincerely claims there’s “no room for shopping in my life.” My favorite detail of this story: She even has a seat in their private jet for “baby Louis.” Her Louis Vuitton handbag that is.

Of course, the details of this VF piece will only magnify once the general election rolls around. I can’t imagine the “values crowd” overlooking Rudy’s own multiple marriages, his estrangement from his children or his current wife’s misbehavior. To the horror of bystanders, Mrs. Giuliani and her entourage of body guards apparently trampled Hillary Clinton at a Ground Zero event. “"The nerve of that woman!" Hillary exploded, adding that her own daughter’s Secret Service detail was dismantled as soon as hubby Bill left office. “Who does she think she is?”

I, for one, will be watching this story unfold. So what say you, MotherTalkers? Are you sitting back and waiting for Judith’s next misdeed? Or, should the candidates’ wives be off limits to the press?