When it comes to nepotism, there is nothing to beat the apocryphal tale of the Indian politician who was asked why he was pushing his son. 'Whose son should I push? Yours?' was the challenging retort.
Of course, the investigation into the charge that Iain Duncan Smith, the leader of Britain's Conservative party, allegedly created a sinecure at public expense for his wife is too grave for such flippancy.
What interests me most about this ludicrous spectacle of the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality, to quote Lord Macaulay, is the journalist's role as activist.
The obsession with investigative journalism is self-defeating because rare is the scoop that is not a leak by some interested party.
What is called 'Betsygate' is freelance journalist Michael Crick's complaint that Mr Smith's wife Betsy did little to deserve the GBP15,000 (HK$194,000) she was paid annually to work as her husband's diary secretary. According to Mr Smith, she spent 25 hours a week overseeing his engagements.
Mr Crick is a man of distinction. He read politics, philosophy and economics at New College, Oxford, dabbled in Labour politics, and was president of Oxford Union. He also wrote Stranger than Fiction, an unflattering life of Lord Jeffrey Archer, the novelist, and does work for the BBC.
His information came from anonymous emails and internal Conservative party memos. When the BBC shied away from his story, having burned its fingers over the part another journalist, defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan, played in the death of the government scientist, David Kelly, Mr Crick turned from investigative reporter to public-spirited citizen. He handed over the evidence he had collected to Sir Philip Mawer, Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, head of the anti-sleaze watchdog.