Those figures would be Herman Cain, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, each of whom made statements so outlandish in the past few days -- which deviated so far from reality, however you slice it -- that the normally inscrutable Barbara Walters would be forgiven a spit-take.

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Fear not, though: Newt Gingrich is surging in the polls, and there's plenty of grist for the comedy mill in the former speaker of the House. As Stewart observed:

That's Newt Gingrich's pitch: "I'm the thing that's been in your pantry forever." You could try your newfangled "Popped Tarts" and "Eggo'd" waffles, but if you look way back in there, there's a can of La Choy Baby Corn, a product that may or may not still be offered by the La Choy company. You don't remember buying it -- yet you don't remember ever being without it. And now you have no choice but to elect it president.

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It's fitting that the most revelatory interview with White comes via Leslie Bennetts, who happens to be known both for getting celebrities to let their guard down (while at Vanity Fair) and for her exhortations for women not to leave the workforce (in her book "The Feminine Mistake"). And no, the major nugget isn't that White says she thought about groceries while having sex with Cain. (Cain denies that the two had a sexual relationship.) It's how lack of money made White feel powerless, and sex (which, yes, she didn't much enjoy) proved the next best commodity. That made her miserable .

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Jon Stewart examined the competing claims of Cain and White on "The Daily Show" last night, and came to the following conclusion:

Wow. Thirteen years, no sex. Either one of these two is lying, or Herman Cain is the worst deal closer in the history of extramarital affairs.

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Lori Klein, an Arizona state Senator and Cain's Arizona state chairman, told CBS News she stands by Cain.

Says she has known him for 12 years and he's "never been anything but a gentlemen - and I am not an unattractive woman."

That's a slam-dunk argument, right there. And she's not even done!

Klein suggested that if Cain is innocent he should sue White for libel and went on to attack the media for digging up the allegations. She also said that in politics, "we want a virgin to do a hooker's job."

Yes! Herman Cain is a hooker. But a hooker with a heart of gold, and the constitution to resist harassing or assaulting Lori Klein, a noted attractive woman!

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We've been waiting for months for the race to narrow itself to Mitt Romney and the not-Mitt candidate, and it looks like it's going to be Newt Gingrich. His strong debate performance last week combined with the endorsement of the Manchester Union Leader this weekend means he's unlikely to rise and fall in GOP polling as rapidly as Cain or earlier not-Mitt candidates Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann. No one else is likely to rise to challenge him. Huntsman is too moderate (and Mormon) to be not-Mitt, and Ron Paul is too eccentric for Tea Party Astroturf types to get behind. Rick Santorum is Rick Santorum.

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We already know that Herman Cain is totally butch. Not so butch that he'd need to settle any sexual harassment claims by the ladies, of course! Ha ha! But definitely masculine enough to understand the true measure of a man – not in the achievements he attains, not in the people whose lives he makes better, but by the toppings on his pizza. That's why, in an interview with GQ,  Herman Cain, pizza tycoon, blamer of the poor, viral video star, and man who "totally respects women," philosophized about culinary sex roles.

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Speaking to Greta Van Susteren, the kindly Mrs. Cain said she didn't recognize the man described by his accusers, that her husband "totally respects women." That is to say, "If you understand what old school is, of that generation where men still wanted to open the doors for women, and if we're walking along the street, he wants me to walk on the outside, next to the curb. It's not just me, it's any woman he's walking with because old-school people think they're supposed to be women's protectors."

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Are confidentiality agreements a good thing? They certainly encourage settlement. Most civil litigation, over 95 percent by most reliable estimates, concludes in a settlement. The risks, stress and costs of litigation encourage settling cases. The courts also encourage settlements as measures for judicial economy. And most settlements – in and out of courts – end with confidentiality clauses, which the parties sign, agreeing to keep the charges and settlements confidential. The motive for the defendant is to pay a price to keep a contested charge private, whether or not it is true. Cynics call that practice extortion; realists call it the price of doing business.

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The boyfriend was the reason she called up Cain to use him as a possible contact for a job. It was he who suggested she meet Cain, in person, thereby explaining why she would be alone having drinks and dinner with a strange man. This boyfriend (a doctor!) was the plausible explanation for her room upgrade at the Capitol Hilton. He was the reason she rebuffed Cain's alleged sexual overtures.

Bialek and her legal team wanted no confusion about that fact that she was in a serious relationship and not looking for a date with Cain, a married man who has denied the allegations against him.  But does a woman need a husband or boyfriend to be taken seriously when bringing allegations of sexual misconduct?  Would Bialak’s account of meeting Cain draw more doubt or scrutiny had she not had a knight in shining armor waiting for her at home?

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So, this morning, were the lead stories on television that Nancy Pelosi, whose belittling and famous “Are you serious? Are you serious?” response to being asked about the challenge to the ObamaCare individual mandate, was the perfect illustration of her radical and out-of-touch mental state — and that she is as out of touch as former President Bush was when he expressed amazement at grocery store price scanners?

Uh, no. (The media’s obsession with the Penn State sex scandal can be explained by the fact they think it will hurt Herman Cain.)

Emphasis very much mine, because, wow.

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BLOCK: Karen Kraushaar had come out as one of the women. And we’ve come to find out her son works at Politico, the organization that originally put the story out.

HANNITY: Have you confirmed that? I've been hearing that all day, rumors about that. You've confirmed that.

BLOCK: We've confirmed it that he does indeed work at Politico, and that's his mother, yes.

See? It's all a liberal media conspiracy, because the son of one of the five women to have accused Herman Cain of inappropriate behavior works in some sort of capacity at the news organization that originally ran the story reporting that Cain had been accused of sexual harassment (a story that was proven completely true shortly following its publication, meaning that even if it had been a plot, it was still a plot based on complete factual accuracy).

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Bialek, the public face of sexual harassment charges against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, told CNN's Piers Morgan last night that: "There's going to be a lot of backlash and I'm going to have to suffer through that and I'm sure I'm going to be portrayed as different things. I'm willing to handle it. I'm a tough girl."

On NBC's "Today," she recalled her boyfriend telling her that if she said publicly that Cain made unwelcome advances, "It's gonna be one of those he-said she-said things." But Bialek insisted that the focus belonged on Cain, not her. "It's not about me. I'm not the one running for president." She repeated on every show that she wasn't getting paid and neither was attorney Gloria Allred.

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That tactic -- suggesting a liberal media conspiracy set on unjustly discrediting the candidate -- is one enthusiastically adopted by conservative pundits. The only problem, as "The Daily Show" pointed out last night, is that their arguments don't add up to a very convincing case.

Part 1:

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Cain, of course, strenuously denies the allegations of sexual harassment against him, but when it comes to charges that he's too close to the rapacious Kochs, he pleads guilty. “I am the Koch brothers' brother from another mother,” Cain told an Americans for Prosperity summit Friday, insisting he was “very proud” to know the right-wing Kochs, who run oil and gas behemoth Koch Industries.

But now Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics is asking for a probe of the ties between Americans for Prosperity and the Cain campaign. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported this week that Block used Prosperity USA funds to pay for Cain's travel and other campaign expenses. Block headed Prosperity USA before he joined Cain, and before that he was with Americans for Prosperity. Back before that, of course, he ran a Wisconsin judicial campaign that went so afoul of campaign law Block found himself barred from politics in Wisconsin for three years.

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This lack of damning details has so far allowed Cain to enjoy support from some of the right's most influential voices, like Rush Limbaugh, who once again used his show on Thursday to paint Cain as the victim of "a largely irrelevant media ambush." And so far, there's been no drop-off in his support among Republican voters. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released this morning finds him at 23 percent in the national GOP horse race, just one point behind Mitt Romney (24 percent).

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The survey says Romney is tied with Perry for public endorsements from "influential Republicans," and he's barely beating Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich (!) in the "potential support" race, but as Bernstein says, the point is that Romney has a much better shot of winning elite support in the future than any other candidate.

But the key for Romney isn’t having support now; it’s whether or not he’s ultimately acceptable to most party groups and leaders. And here, the news is very, very good for the former Massachusetts governor. Of the entire group, while 23% have already endorsed another candidate, only another 10% say they have “no chance” of supporting him for the nomination.

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Still, just in case you were looking for a more complete exegesis of the logic behind Coulter's statement, Jon Stewart, along with his "Daily Show" correspondents, extended the argument to its logical extreme last night.

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Wednesday brought several new developments that expanded the story's scope, prompting some on the right to express new doubts about whether Cain might actually have engaged in improper behavior and reinforcing criticism of the improvisational, self-defeating way he's handled this entire mess.

The day's biggest news was that the number of women who allegedly were subject to troubling conduct by Cain grew from two to five. First came a report that a woman who worked at the National Restaurant Association under Cain in the late 1990s is now alleging that he made "inappropriate" remarks to her and asked her to join him at his apartment. The woman, who was tracked down and granted anonymity by the Associated Press, said she never filed a formal complaint against Cain but was aware of one other NRA employee who did.

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