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Wlady: Those posts do suggest that either Reeve and Beauchamp were friends for a while before they became romantically involved or that they've had an on-again/off-again type relationship, but I don't find that all that interesting. (For the record, I do have some admiration for Reeve as a writer; while I remain a harsh critic of Ann Coulter, I found Reeve's feminism-informed defense of Coulter extremely thought-provoking.) What is interesting is how that relationship has affected TNR's handling of the controversy. (Frank Foer never did respond to the questions in the last few paragraphs of my Monday column, by the way, even though I emailed them to him.)

Anyway, Ace notices some evidence that Reeve and Beauchamp are indeed already married; the reason for the sparsely-populated gift registry might be that the wedding was moved up. The evidence isn't all that solid -- it comes from MySpace comments -- but it does explain why Ace's conversations with his source contain references to Beauchamp as Reeve's "husband." I'm busy with other stuff this morning, but when I get a chance I'll try to nail this fact down.

Finally, I've noticed lots of bloggers, Ace among them, accusing Foer of "lying" when he says the piece was fact-checked before it was published. I think that's a bit unfair. Obviously they could and should have been more thorough, but fact-checking systems are designed to catch honest mistakes, not lies, and it's not easy to double-check things that are being reported from a war zone. I'm not saying that to excuse TNR for running the "Scott Thomas" pieces, but to assume bad faith is going too far.