The artificial dust-up between John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the actual dust-up between Hillary and Barack is both amusing and annoying. Probably due to their laziness, the mainstream media conspired to allow Edwards to inject himself into the story, which -- originally -- had nothing to do with him.

The story began when Clinton called Obama "irresponsible" and "naive" for saying that, as president, he would be willing to meet with leaders of Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Syria without preconditions.

Clinton said she wouldn't risk allowing these dictators to use her as a propaganda dupe. (One wonders where Hillary was when House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi served as propaganda dupe for Syrian President Bashar Assad -- not to mention grossly undermined the commander in chief.)

The media ooh'ed and ah'ed as if it was daring for Hillary even to take issue with Obama. Obama, who has made a big deal of holding himself out as a uniter, not a divider, lashed back with an impressively divisive rejoinder, tagging Hillary as "Bush-Cheney lite."

The great conciliator, Obama, held his ground in a conference call with reporters, insisting Clinton should explain how attaching conditions to meetings with foreign leaders would differ from Bush's approach to diplomacy.

Clinton shot back, through a spokesman, that an experienced president doesn't set out those kinds of hypotheticals, by which Hillary presumably meant to reinforce her point that she, not young Barack, was seasoned and presidential. (It will be interesting to see how Hillary explains away these comments if and when she chooses the charismatic, but young, inexperienced, irresponsible and nave Obama as her running mate.)

Excuse the aside, but have you ever noticed how often, when Hillary gets cornered with a tough question, she refuses to answer on the grounds that she doesn't do hypotheticals, which is monumentally absurd, since everything she would consider doing, as president, is hypothetical, by definition? Then again, "hypothetical" has five syllables, and her frequent use of the word definitely contributes to her image as the smartest woman in the world.

Returning to the story, we next see the forced entrance of Johnny Edwards on to the stage, reminiscent of the little boy in the classroom frantically waving his hand in the air and yelling, "me, "me," to get the teacher's attention. Continued...