The bizarre biases of major media outlets emerge just as clearly from sins of omission as sins of commission. Consider a recent review in USA TODAY of a new novel about "The Love Story of the Century" -- the romance between King Edward VIII and the American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. The new book, "Gone with the Windsors," takes an appropriately dim view of this distinctively dim (and ultimately pro-Nazi) couple, but the newspaper provided a sidebar with historical background that showed the typically selective press sympathy for Edward and Mrs. Simpson. Under the heading "A real, royal mess" the editors provided the following "brief history of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor."

  "1932: Edward, the Prince of Wales, meets Wallis Warfield Simpson, an American divorcee married to her second husband

    Jan. 20, 1936: Edward's father, King George V, dies. Edward becomes King Edward VIII.

    Dec. 10, 1936: Edward becomes the only British monarch to abdicate his throne voluntarily when he is not allowed to marry a divorcee.

    June 3, 1937: Edward marries Simpson after her divorce from Ernest Simpson becomes final. The exiled couple are called the Duke and Duchess of Windsor."

   These details may be accurate as far as they go, but they end up distorting the essential nature of the controversy that led to the abdication. As far as the opponents of Edward's love affair were concerned the main problem with the relationship wasn't the fact that Mrs. Simpson was a commoner, an American, or even a divorcee-- it was that she was a MARRIED woman, who was living with her husband when she began her relationship with Edward. In other words, there was a little matter of adultery-- and the valid concern that the whole nation and the institution of the monarchy would suffer if the king could very visibly steal another man's wife with impunity.

   By ignoring the essential nature of "The Love Story of the Century," sympathetic reporters then and now managed to suggest a self-sacrificing nobility in the Windsor's connnection that hardly matches the tawdry nature of their real-life affair. Of course, that affair bears more than a passing resemblance to the similarly inexplicable connection between another Prince of Wales, Edward's relative Charles, and his formerly married inamorata (now wife), Camilla. The fact that the Charles-Camilla marriage provoked so much less controversy than the Edward-Mrs. Simpson nuptials illustrates the decline in both public morals and, of course, the monarchy itself.