The New York Times reporter who called Melania Trump a “hooker” turns out to be Carl Bernstein’s son, Jacob. He was reprimanded for this comment by his bosses, but it looks like his job is safe. After all, it is not like he called Sandra Fluke a prostitute. Besides, his father may have planted the thought in his mind, what with all of his research into hookers in Eastern Europe. Just a few weeks ago, his father was hinting at hookers on Trump’s payroll in Moscow.

By the way, this isn’t the first time Jacob has gotten into trouble for his outré gossip. As a little boy, he blurted out to a friend at summer camp that Watergate source “Deep Throat” was former FBI official Mark Felt. That friend of Jacob’s, Chase Culeman-Beckman, then repeated the story in a high school paper. In that case, Jacob’s gossip was true, which put his father in an awkward spot, as I wrote here in a 2005 column:

Chase Culeman-Beckman had attended a posh Long Island summer camp with Carl Bernstein’s son Jacob roughly a decade earlier and had heard Jacob (then all of 8) popping off learnedly about “Mark Felt” as Deep Throat.

“We entered into a very precocious discussion of politics. Somehow the conversation degenerated to talk about Watergate and in a burst of braggadocio, he said that Deep Throat was Mark Felt,” said Culeman-Beckman to the press in 1999. “He said I’m 100 percent sure that Deep Throat is Mark Felt.”

Now that Felt has identified himself as Deep Throat in Vanity Fair, this young man’s “idiot” history teacher owes him a retroactive A+. Showing considerable enterprise, he, according to 1999 New York press accounts, heavily footnoted his 20-page term paper, copyrighted it, attached a two-page bibliography, and went to the trouble of subjecting All the President’s Men to rigorous textual analysis, noting that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had identified their source at one point as My Friend, the initials of Felt’s name.

Carl Bernstein owes his son’s summer camp pal an apology too. Bernstein had conducted a little cover-up after his story reached the press. Judging from his bobbing and weaving in press accounts, Bernstein was sweating. He appeared to be alternately playing dumb, lying, and putting his son up to squashing the story. The Hartford Courant reported that Bernstein “didn’t have time to call Jacob to ask him about it” and asked its reporter innocently, “Is Mark Felt still alive?” Then it looks like Bernstein tried to fake the paper out through lying bluster: “I hate to ruin your story, but Jacob Bernstein has not a clue as to the identity of Deep Throat. Bob and I have been wise enough never to tell our wives, and we’ve certainly never told our children.”