In the workday-existence life of a blogger, tough choices often crop up. Take today. Should I write about the latest developments on the “fiscal cliff,” which include the Republicans apparently conceding the principle of raising more revenue from the highest earners—probably by putting a cap on their total tax deductions? Or should I focus on the latest salacious details in the Petraeus sex scandal?

O.K, you twisted my arm. Since the negotiations between Obama and the Republicans about a possible fiscal deal don’t begin until Friday, there will be time enough to focus on them. For those readers who have no wish to expose themselves to tawdry tales of adultery and obsession, and for those who have already had their fill from Gawker and other celebrity-news sites, this might be a good time to look away. For everybody else, especially those who have been vacationing at the North Pole for the past few days, a quick recap.

Last week, we learned that the head of the C.I.A, former general David Petraeus—a lean, super-fit sixty year old who is sometimes known as “Mr. Surge”—had been whooping it up with his biographer—a dark haired, green-eyed beauty by the name of Paula Broadwell, who is a forty-year-old West Point graduate, an academic (Harvard/King’s College, London), a married mother-of-two, an activist on behalf of wounded veterans, a triathlete, and an all-round whirlwind. In appearing on “The Daily Show” earlier this year to promote her book on Petraeus, Broadwell displayed a set of deltoids to die for and did fifty pushups without breaking a sweat.

You knew all that? Then you probably also knew that “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” which grew out of Broadwell’s doctoral thesis and reached number thirty-three on the Times best-seller list, wasn’t exactly a critical work. In quizzing Broadwell about her portrayal of Petraeus, which we now know to have been based on some exhaustive (and exhausting?) research she conducted in Afghanistan while the general was stationed there, Stewart commented: “I would say the real controversy here is, is he awesome or incredibly awesome?”

So much for the initial installment in the saga, which saw Petraeus resign, saying, “I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair”; President Obama wishing him and his wife of thirty-eight years, Holly, “the very best at this difficult time”; and Broadwell’s Charlotte home being besieged by reporters. A harrowing personal drama for those involved, the revelation of the Petraeus-Broadwell relationship provided the country with a diversion following the rigors of the campaign, and also the headline writers at the New York Post an opportunity to display their skills. (“CLOAK AND SHAG HER.”) At the more elevated papers, meanwhile, reporters and pundits, hamstrung by their Columbia J-School ethics, desperately tried to turn it into something larger—a shocking story about security breaches at the C.I.A., or what happened in Benghazi, or whatever. But, in truth, there didn’t seem to be anything there. It was a straightforward loose-zipper story—or so it seemed.

Then, over the weekend, came the third woman—Jill Kelley, a thirty-seven-year-old Tampa socialite with close ties to military, who turned out to have been the person who put the F.B.I. onto Broadwell and Petraeus. As in all the best tabloid yarns, some details of what transpired remain unclear. At some point, it appears, Kelley started to receive threatening e-mails from an anonymous correspondent, which referred, perhaps cryptically, to Petraeus and, according to the Post, included sentiments along the lines of, “I know what you did” and “stay away from my guy.” (A report in the Times said that one of the e-mails accused Kelley of “touching” Petraeus under a table. Somebody in the Broadwell camp told the Daily Beast’s Michael Daly that her message was more along of the lines of, “‘Who do you think you are? … You parade around the base … You need to take it down a notch.’”) Disturbed by such missives, Kelley alerted the F.B.I., which traced the e-mails to Broadwell’s computer, which, in turn, led investigators to Petraeus.

On the basis of the threatening e-mails, I, like many of my colleagues in the Fourth Estate, initially assumed that Kelley, like Broadwell, had been accompanying Petraeus in some of his extended workouts. Not necessarily so. The wife of a prominent cancer surgeon who is known for hosting parties attended by military types, she apparently befriended the general and his wife when they arrived at MacDill Air Force Base, from whence Petraeus, between 2008 until 2010, led the Pentagon’s Central Command. “We and our family have been friends with General Petraeus and his family for over 5 years,” Kelley said in a statement released on Sunday night. “We respect his family’s privacy and want the same for us and our three children.”

Some chance! Late Monday night, more evidence emerged to support Kelley’s assertion that her relationship with Petraeus was entirely innocent. Unfortunately for her, it came in the form of news that she had been involved in another questionable e-mail chain. The Washington Post reported that Kelley had been swapping some “potentially inappropriate” e-mails with Petraeus’s successor as the head of the allied forces in Afghanistan, Marine General John R. Allen, another four-star military officer, who was recently nominated to head up NATO’s forces in Europe. According to the Post report, Kelley and Allen exchanged several hundred e-mails over a couple of years, beginning when Allen was the deputy commander at Central Command. (A senior defense official told the Post, “He’s never been alone with her. Did he have an affair? No.”)

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that the F.B.I. agent who investigated Kelley’s allegations about harassing e-mails was a friend of hers who had sent her shirtless pictures of himself prior to the Broadwell probe. The Journal story said that the agent, who hasn’t been named, became obsessed by the Broadwell-Petraeus matter and is now under investigation by the F.B.I.’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

So far at least, there is no suggestion that the messages from Allen, who is also married, included semi-naked pictures of himself, or anything of that sort. Thank heaven for small mercies. This entire saga was starting to look like a pilot for a trashy reality show set amid the palm trees, military bases, and mansions of Tampa, with occasional cutaways to scenes of lust and longing in Kabul and Helmand Province. Being a Columbia J-School graduate myself, albeit one who detoured to less ethically tortured precincts of journalism—Fleet Street and, for a time, the New York Post—I am still searching hard for a serious angle to justify all the interest in this story. Even my wife’s mother, a high-minded author of guidebooks who reads the Times every day from front to back and wouldn’t ever be seen clutching Page Six, is hooked.

Thus far, alas, I haven’t come up with anything. But wait. As my colleague Jane Mayer pointed out yesterday, there may be a political angle after all. According to a story in Saturday’s Times, toward the end of October, the shirtless and obsessed F.B.I. agent, fearing that his bosses were going to sweep the Petraeus-Broadwell matter under the rug, told some of what he knew to a Republican congressman from Washington state, David Reichert, who informed Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader. Cantor, in turn, “made certain”—his own words in a statement to the Times—that Robert Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., “was aware of these serious allegations, and the potential risk to our national security.”