Standing room only on the fainting couches

Let's stipulate that no one really wants to think about Donald Trump's, ahem, private parts, other than his wife. Let's also stipulate that it would have been better for everyone concerned if The Donald would have let the topic pass without further comment.

Now that we've said that, can we please, please stop with the fainting couch responses that we've reached some sort of cultural nadir because a presidential candidate really ought to have a two-drink minimum? How long have we been making these sorts of jokes? Well, Bill Clinton was the subject of a million of them, but you can go back further than that. Here is an image from an episode of Saturday Night Live that aired on December 2, 1978:

It's short, it's sweet, and everybody wants to see it

That's Dan Aykroyd playing Richard Nixon, proposing a comeback campaign for president and showing his aide (Walter Matthau) a prototype bumpersticker. I remember watching that episode well, as I was a teenager and didn't have anyplace in particular to go that evening. But it goes back even further than that. Jimmy Carter famously discussed his own libidinal urges with Playboy magazine in the run up to the 1976 election, which he further discussed in a debate with President Gerald Ford. And Lyndon Johnson. . . well, let's just say he had a healthy regard for his own equipment. We could go further back than that (hello, Grover Cleveland!), but you get the point.

Let's just say this -- if you are a fan of Bill Maher, or Jon Stewart, or anyone else who talks about politics while working blue, and you are saying that what Trump said is scandalous, just stop it, because you have no credibility.