In principle

Some time ago, commenting on SC's writings about Camille Paglia, Mark Liberman introduced your host to the genre of Radio Yerevan jokes, which go like so:

Question to Radio Yerevan: Is it correct that Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev won a luxury car at the All-Union Championship in Moscow?

Answer: In principle, yes. But first of all it was not Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev, but Vassili Vassilievich Vassiliev; second, it was not at the All-Union Championship in Moscow, but at a Collective Farm Sports Festival in Smolensk; third, it was not a car, but a bicycle; and fourth he didn't win it, but rather it was stolen from him.

SC couldn't help but be reminded of that upon the occasion of seeing this transcript of CNN's Aaron Brown, discussing the selection of John Edwards as the Democratic VP nominee:

We begin tonight with a confession: I dated John Edwards' wife. Well, not dated like plural, dated like singular. We went out to dinner. Well, we didn't actually go out to dinner. We went to a dinner, just the two of us -- and 2,000 other people.

It was one of those correspondents dinners in Washington where you get all gussied up in a tux and pretend to enjoy yourself, and she was my date. Everyone brings a date to these things. Greta brought Ozzy Osbourne, but I'm not that cool, so I asked Mrs. Edwards.

Again, not exactly linguistically salient., but: Ozzy Osbourne and Greta van Susteren are both married to other people (SC has no idea about Mr. Brown's marital status). Is there some kind of rule that to go to these dinners, you have to look like you're cheating?