Startling news arrived today from an old family friend who likes to keep me in the loop.

It seems that Hillary Clinton is... a lesbian.

I know it's true because she heard it from someone who heard it from someone else--it's all right there in the e-mail.

The information was forwarded to me, cut and pasted from someone else's message, so I allowed myself to feel miffed that I wasn't on the original distribution list. I mean, am I not important enough to receive gayness-related news about public figures, except second or thirdhand? Apparently, I'm on the Public Figure Lesbianity Mail Alert C List. Or even the D List. Can a girl feel a little hurt by that?

Here is the e-mail, which came with the subject line "lesbian":

you know that [Hillary Clinton] is a a lesbian, that has been verified by the secret service a few years ago (information while I was still working with customs). take care, Edwin

There you have it, in the words of "Edwin," former customs... guy. I don't know what he did with the customs, but it must have been an extremely important job, to allow him access to secret service-verified information about Hillary Clinton's sexual orientation.

Do you need any more proof than that? Did you even ask for any proof? Because I, for one, never asked for any. That just shows my lack of patriotism, but believe me, I'm gonna turn it around and start asking questions that can be answered to my satisfaction with unsubstantiated e-mail messages from strangers. And then I pledge to forward that information to my entire address list, in bcc form so that you can't get each other's addresses and coordinate your own alert lists behind my back.

It is my appointed duty.

P.S.

My godmother received the above-referenced e-mail and copied me on her response, which I think she meant to be indignant, but which also struck me as funny, one element of which was, "Are you excited by the prospect because you are a voyeur and hoping there'll be a video?" which is what I should have written, but didn't.

In other news, I came across a website listing the candidates of Martha Stewart's new show, and while I think it's just terrific that she allowed them all to share the same pair of glasses for their headshots, it's not enough to make me watch. That being said, I'm going to cast my vote for the winner: Sarah. The other women are much too common-looking, even the great, great frosted newscaster from Grosse Pointe. Although, if Martha goes with a guy, I'm going to pick Jeff, owner of Strychnine Designs in NYC. You have to love a man whose design sense will actually kill you.

Star of the day. . .Eleanor Roosevelt