And now he is gone, in a flash on a clear blue Sunday, gone like dial telephones and penny candy. Scandals unfold in a natural, almost mathematical progression, and this one is no different. First that morning's shocking news, a spare gathering of fact: Bob Greene has resigned and "will no longer appear in the pages of this newspaper." He was forced to resign after an anonymous e-mail touched off an inquiry uncovering "inappropriate sexual conduct some years ago with a girl in her late teens whom he met in connection with his newspaper column." The Tribune "deeply regretted the conduct, its effect on the young woman and the impact this disclosure has on the trust our readers placed in Greene and the newspaper."

If the Tribune expected this vague scrap of fact to satisfy the local media, hungry on a quiet Sunday, it had, again, failed to grasp what people consider news. Bob is married, with two kids, one of whom he celebrated in the 1984 bestseller "Good Morning, Merry Sunshine," the book that began the trend of writers commoditizing their children. Merry Sunshine is about the age of the girl he admitted to having sex with.

Reporters fanned out, hot on the trail of Bob and the girl, and battering at the Tribune corporate doors, which were barred. The Trib's spokesman said merely that the statement stood on its own with no need for elaboration. Greene issued the standard, passive apology fragment, that he was "sorry for anyone I have let down." The story led the local TV newscasts in Chicago on Sunday, except of course for WGN (which, remember, stands for "World's Greatest Newspaper"), the station owned by the Tribune, which buried it deep in the program. So much for synergy.

There is a certain indignity that follows Bob like a cloud. When the Tribune inserted a "time capsule" CD-ROM in the paper the previous Sunday, it included a special warning -- due to a glitch, clicking on the Bob Greene column caused the program to shut down. The scandal a week later was no different. Despite the seriousness of the reports, a subtle mockery filtered in. The local NBC station misspelled his name, "Green," in its ID tag. The Fox reporter initially gave his name as "Mike Greene."

Newspapers leak like paper bags filled with water. By Monday, the details were dribbling out: The girl was a high school student visiting the Tribune for a project. There was sex in a hotel room and Bob wrote about her in his column -- not about the sex, of course, but a fond look at her naive questioning as part of the high school project.

As with all things Bob, there was a weird twist. After the girl -- now a woman in her 30s -- called Bob on the phone, twice, she was contacted by the FBI, who told her, her e-mail to the paper claimed, that she was threatening the columnist. Even the Trib, which at first tried to stonewall, carried a next-day story on the vigorous debate over Bob's dismissal.

There was plenty to ponder. Just why was Bob forced to quit? For the sex? That seemed odd -- his reputation for goatish pursuit of young women was an open secret. Everyone seemed to know women who had stories of Bob creepily singing his love song at them. I myself knew four. Why would the Tribune decide to act now, on this particular complaint? It couldn't be the first.

Was it because he then wrote about his little missy in his column? That would be more in keeping with the Trib's recent high-profile moralizing. The paper had refused to even look at the photos of a photographer at ground zero after learning he had accepted a free T-shirt from Chicago firefighters. That set people's heads shaking -- we've come a long way from the days when City News reporters occasionally kicked in the basement windows of a crime victim's home to steal a photograph of the deceased off the mantle. They couldn't let the path to coverage in the Tribune lead through Bob Greene's bed.

Or was it something else? News stories do not always emphasize the most salient facts, and Bob's apparent terrified rush to the FBI was a fact that was easy to overlook, particularly as the image of Bob Greene having sex with a teen was seared into the collective consciousness. His running to the FBI was not buried safely in the 1980s, but recent, this year. The Trib takes its ombudsmanship seriously, and can't have complaining readers ratted out to the feds.

And what did the woman call about, anyway? The assumption is that, if she was actually threatening or blackmailing Bob, that would be somehow exculpatory, and the Trib would have mentioned it. What did she say?

At midweek, we are at the point where, traditionally, the wrongdoing, which initially was passed off as an isolated indiscretion, is found to have been a longstanding pattern of behavior. Radio talk-show phone lines heated up with women claiming to have approached Bob as admiring young fans and left him as despoiled groupies.

So far, the Trib has refused to entertain the issue of whether this was the first complaint or, like the Baby Richard columns, one in a chain of 100.

"We are dealing with one specific allegation, and that's what we addressed," said Ann Marie Lipinski, the Tribune editor.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this entire episode is how quickly the Tribune cast its premiere columnist's being fired for using the newspaper as a chick magnet into a moral triumph. The newspaper positively glowed with pride, in a flurry of self-administered back-pats.

"I'm also intensely proud of the people who run this newspaper," wrote metro columnist John Kass. "Because they had the courage to do something painful to repair that trust."

"Tribune journalists must," noted an editorial, "under possible penalty of dismissal, abide by 12 pages of policies on ethics and business conduct."

Now Chicago journalists are wondering how the Tribune -- which in the past five years has lost such marquee names as Mike Royko, Ann Landers and, now, Bob Greene -- will be affected, and if the Bob Greene story has legs. Midweek of the first week, interest in Bob's Big Blunder seems to have not yet crested. CNN and MSNBC are preparing programs. Newsweek is investigating. And even his detractors are shaking their heads in amazement and feeling, perhaps, a twinge of regret over the loss of Bob's warped world. Who will we make fun of now?

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