The smearing of Sarah Palin is getting uglier. Time's Mark Halperin has posted an advance copy of the cover of US Weekly magazine, the tabloid published by Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner. That cover shows a smiling Sarah Palin, holding her youngest son Trig. The screaming headline: "Babies, Lies and Scandal: John McCain's Vice President." Wenner has contributed $5300 to Obama's campaign since 2007 and the Wenner media official that has distributed the cover is the former director of television communications at the Clinton White House. The McCain campaign sees a political attack. "It's unfortunate that Barack Obama's celebrity friends are using the same kind of smear tactics they used against Hillary Clinton to try and bring down Governor Palin," says spokesman Michael Goldfarb. The cover was sent to select news organizations by Mark Neschis, the head of corporate communications for Wenner Media and former director of television in the Clinton White House. An email from Neschis that accompanied the cover read: "Thought I would send over our Us Weekly/Sarah Palin cover story, on stands Friday, if helpful in your coverage. Might be useful as an illustration of how the news is playing out.(Us Weekly has 12 million, mostly female readers)" "How the news is playing out." That's an interesting way of putting it. In one sense, it's accurate. The mainstream media have been focused instead on pseudo-scandals about McCain's runningmate. Does it matter at all that Palin's husband, Todd, had a DUI in 1986? Should we even know that? Who cares? And yet I've seen and heard news organizations mention -- even discuss -- the issue several times over the past couple of days. The "news is playing out" that way because irresponsible journalists publish cover stories promoting "Babies, Lies and Scandal," without any evidence of an actual "scandal." Maybe US Weekly will publish news of an actual "scandal" by Friday, when the magazine is scheduled to hit the newsstands. But the three it mentions on its cover are not scandals. ("Under attack, admits daughter, 17, is pregnant" and "Investigated for firing of sister's ex-husband" and "Mom of Five: New embarrassing surprises.") There are legitimate questions about how Palin was vetted. But many news organizations are using those serious issues to allow their coverage to be dominated by questions about Palin's family and her role as a mother. Instead of asking whether McCain knew that Palin wanted "an exit plan" from Iraq in December of 2006, an issue that McCain used against his primary rivals, reporters are obsessing about the identity of Bristol Palin's boyfriend and whether Sarah Palin can serve as vice president and be a good mother. The greater irony, of course, is that the same establishment news organizations consumed by such tabloid issues not long ago refused investigate reports that John Edwards was having an affair and had a child out of wedlock. Why? The story was originally broken by the National Enquirer and deemed too tawdry to touch. And, perhaps as important, Edwards was running for the Democratic nomination for president as a protect-the-poor populist. One final question: How many news organizations are looking into the background of Mrs. Biden?