If you wonder why folks can't take the news seriously, here's Exhibit A, said one blogger. Lord Jesus, how can the reporter file this story with a straight face?

Edith Wharton, a foodista who knows better, links only unidentified cheeses to unhappy love affairs in Summer and Hudson River Bracketed.

He has been in all situations and occupations of life, according to his own account ; a potboy at Hampstead, a shoeblack, a chimney-sweeper, an East India Director, a kennel-raker, a gold-finder, an oyster-woman, a Jew cast-clothesman, a police justice, a judge, a keeper of Newgate, and, as he styles it, 'His Majesty's law iron-monger for the home department:' nay, he has even been Jack Ketch, and has hung hundreds; he has been a soldier, and has killed thousands; a Portuguese, and poniarded scores; a Jew pedlar, and cheated all the world; a member of Parliament for London, and betrayed his constituents; a Lord Mayor, a bishop, an admiral, a dancing-master, a Rabbi, Grimaldi in the pantomime, and ten thousand other occupations, that no tongue or memory but his own could enumerate.

What is your name? she said. … My name's Ermengarde St. John, she answered. / Mine is Sara Crewe, said Sara. Yours is very pretty. It sounds like a story-book.