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Today is Aug. 1, and I'm scared.

It is one year plus 24 days until the Democratic convention in Denver, and we've already talked about Hillary's cleavage. What do we do now?

The sheer horror of this sank in when we switched on CNN the other night and the hot breath of political scandal was in the air.

It was bigger than Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl. It was worse than Richard Gere in Bollywood. It was more scandalous than July's Clinton-Edwards open-mike comments captured before the YouTube debate. Which turned out to be a bunch of nothing, so we should have known.

But who can resist CLEAVAGE? Caught by C-SPAN on the Senate FLOOR? By the first woman with a chance at the WHITE HOUSE?

Well, not "The Situation Room," where, we are relentlessly told, The Best Political Team on Television is "keepin' 'em honest."

Honestly. The fact that everybody is blaming The Washington Post for this "pettiness," as it was termed in an e-mail fired off from the Clinton campaign, is absurd.

After all, if idle languor breeds cattiness, there is no city more idle than our capital in late summer. And there is no forum more appropriately catty than the Post's Style section, where the bipartisan foibles of Washington power are chronicled with an even hand (or claw) — from Billy Carter all the way to the much-awaited 21st birthday of the Bush twins.

The problem with television, on the other hand, is that everything is front-page news: That is, even the mildly amusing ruminations of a fashion writer about what it means when a candidate for president feels comfortable enough to wear a V-neck chemise under her blazer.

Of course, by the time it got to CNN, it was just more empty hype, as The Most Trusted Name in News feverishly races Rupert Murdoch's Fox to the bottom. The film clip showed Clinton giving a policy speech — about education, or something like that — but the newscaster told us the import. It's the neckline, stupid!

News, it isn't. But with reports Tuesday night that Murdoch, the Australian-born mogul who brought us "American Idol," was sewing up a deal that gives him control of The Wall Street Journal, the question is more frightening by the second.

It's one year and 24 days until the first national convention, and we've already covered the topic of cleavage.

What do we do now, Rupert?

Dispute on fatal police shooting

Meanwhile, a column in this space a few Sundays back about a Randleman police shooting brought a reply from the Randolph DA's office.

According to Assistant District Attorney Andy Gregson, the family of fatal shooting victim David "Scott" Ridge, 40, was given total access to the SBI's investigative files on the April 2005 incident.

Gregson wrote in an e-mail that after he determined the police were justified in using deadly force, the Ridge family was allowed to read the entire SBI file, including viewing crime scene diagrams and photos, the two Randleman officers' statements and a 10-page synopsis of the case.

"The clear tenor of your article is that the SBI and the District Attorney has something to hide in this matter," Gregson wrote. "This is simply not the case."

The deceased man's father, Greensboro resident Jim Ridge, said in an interview that during a meeting at the SBI field office, he was allowed to see a diagram and two pages of statements from the officers but that most of his questions went unanswered.

Only a judge can order the release of SBI files. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, the family is seeking the release of all the files related to the shooting, including photos and officer and eyewitness statements.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lahearn@news-record.com