Oh, you Barbara Walters. Always titillating us. Always dishing the good dirt while amusing us with your funny R's. Always getting people to confess their little secrets like they're just among old friends, and not with millions of strangers watching. How very naturally curious and devilishly ditzy you are, besides being one saucy media mama with a very open view of love and romance and adultery and all that good stuff.

Promoting her new autobiography, Ms. Walters is a guest of Oprah Winfrey's tomorrow. Because we are psychic -- and also have a copy of an Associated Press article, based on a transcript of the pre-taped show -- we predict she will discuss her hay-rolling done three decades ago with Edward Brooke. Mr. Brooke was a moderate, African-American, Republican U.S. senator back when that combination was atypical. (What, you mean it's still rare? Who knew?)

Mr. Brooke had one trait that was more common: He was married at the time of an alleged affair that Ms. Walters is now happy to tell the world about. We say alleged because Mr. Brooke declines to dignify her girly gossip by confirming it, and for all we know she's making the whole thing up, like people in the media are so fond of doing. (But am I telling you the truth when I tell you the media try to deceive you? Since I'm in the media, you don't really know, do you? Ahhh, such a tangled web Morning File weaves.)

In any case, Barbara tells Oprah -- I think we girls can all be on a first-name basis here -- that the then-senator was "exciting" and "brilliant" and she was "infatuated." But she and Mr. Brooke were crossing moral, ethical and racial lines that could have caused them plenty of headaches at the time. Media types, for one thing, shouldn't sleep with the people they cover.

If Baba could have infatuated herself with other sexy, exciting men (I'm thinking Eric Sevareid here, but if you want to picture her instead with Harry Reasoner, be my guest), everyone would have been better off.

What a dull place the world would be with no adultery.

What would anyone write any books or make any movies about? It's a good thing more people don't go to religious services together, as that seems to be the only thing that keeps those adulterous instincts at bay.

Researchers from the Fuller Theological Seminary last month came out with findings that just because people say they pray or that they're close to God, it doesn't make them any less likely to cheat on their spouses. If, however, they regularly attend church, synagogue, mosque, etc., they are truly much more likely to be faithful.

Let's hope the newswoman and senator weren't carrying on any of this nonsense in North Carolina. They have laws there about such things.

North Carolina is one of eight states with an "alienation of affection" stature, under which jilted spouses can sue someone who has tampered with their husband or wife, and people there actually do make use of it.

In December, a jury forced one man to pay another $4,251 after he "began to willfully and deliberately seduce, entice and alienate the affections" of the plaintiff's wife, in the words of the suit. Granted, $4,251 seems an odd and perhaps meager sum, but anything is welcome if it will buy a few gallons of gas.

Just to show we're not dealing with some trailer-trash stereotype, one of North Carolina's most famous cases involved three Harvard University graduates, who went on later in life to become a Duke University professor, his wife, and the chairman of Johns Hopkins University's psychiatry department, who had sex with the wife. A judge awarded $42,800 to the Duke prof, finding that "despite the trappings of intellect, self-perceived culture, fine wine and academic atmosphere, the adulterous conduct ... can be described as no more than common as pig tracks."

South Carolina lawmakers, apparently in envy of their neighbors, this spring have debated restoring their jilted-spouse law that was struck down by the state's supreme court as antiquated in 1992. "You know, we protect our automobiles. We protect our homes. There's laws to protect everything and we just need laws to protect the family," said the bill's sponsor.

In national surveys, about one of five men admit to having had an adulterous affair during their lives, a rate nearly twice as high as that for women. But a full 88 percent of the public believe it is morally wrong for married people to have an affair, according to a 2006 Pew Research Center survey.

The Pew surveyors, who seem even nosier than the U.S. Census Bureau types who want to know every 10 years how many bathrooms we have, asked Americans how they felt about 10 different types of possibly inappropriate behavior that some of us might be guilty of from time to time.

The idea of adultery fared worst on the moral compass, followed by cheating on income taxes (79 percent say that's morally wrong); excessive drinking (61 percent); having an abortion (52 percent), smoking marijuana (50 percent), homosexual behavior (50 percent), lying to spare someone's feelings (43 percent), sex between unmarried adults (35 percent), gambling (35 percent) and overeating (32 percent).

We don't know about Mr. Brooke, but we're guessing Ms. Walters has been guilty of more than just one of the above. (In the interest of full disclosure, I once lied to one of my many male lovers at a poker table that it was OK with me if he ate the last corned beef sandwich, but that was only because I was drunk and had already consumed five of them.)

The nice thing for Babs is, the more of them she did, the more books she's gonna sell. You go, girl!