When I was 6 years old, my mean teen cousin Jack had a prank pack of Wrigley's gum that was loaded with a mousetrap. I should have known something was hinky when he offered me a stick. But I pulled the enticing slice of gum out, and it slammed on my fingers like a screen door.

Ha-Ha. Very funny. And very educational.

To this day, I wouldn't accept a stick of gum from the Pope. And I won't take other sticky offers from jerks like Jack. Or Jerry Springer.

But it looks like the rest of the press is smarting from purple, pinched fingers. They reached for a slice of headline candy and discovered the story was a Springer-loaded prank. All those headlines about his run for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, analyzing the contents of his smelly baggage - it was a punch line, and the press is the joke.

Whaddyaknow, he's not running. Whaddyaknow, he was negotiating a new TV contract while he talked and talked about running for the Senate.

He played the media like a kazoo, and a whole studio audience of reporters from all over the country followed him like the Pied Piper of Politics.

The preview of the campaign coverage showed no fairness to incumbent Republican Sen. George Voinovich or the other Democrat who was running, Eric Fingerhut. Springer was front-page, network news - and the "also rans" were only mentioned like anonymous nobodies in the car wreck with Princess Di.

Springer spent only about a million off his dresser top to feed his voracious ego, and that got him free publicity that Bill Gates couldn't buy. Now he can go back to slopping the hogs in the daytime TV barnyard - just that much closer to being taken more seriously next time.

So what can we learn from bruised fingers?

We should learn that journalists are too easily seduced by the trashy goddess "Celebrity.'' And there's a hiving effect that happens when the media gather in a critical mass. Pretty soon, so many important reporters are swarming, you can't even tell the story is just a rotten stump.

And there's another element: Democrats are honey to the press. If Springer had run as a Republican, he would have been burned at the media stake as a traitor to "family values" - and rightly so.

But as a Democrat, the Tycoon of Tacky got a free pass: Only one eyebrow was raised while the other eye winked at the way the rascal gave chest pains to the Heartland.

What this tells me is that Democrats apparently have no moral disqualification clause anymore.

It tells me that candidates such as Springer and Larry Flynt, the porn king running for governor in California, are the Exxon Valdez oil slick that is washing up on the beach from the wrecked Supertanker Clinton.

JER-RY had to know all along he would be a LO-SER on Election Day in Ohio. And the former Cincinnati mayor also had to know his ego trip would steal the hubcaps from the last flat tires on the Ohio Democratic Party.

When I was 12, I paid to see a carnival "Gator Lady'' that turned out to be a guy sticking his head through a board with a stuffed alligator attached to it.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

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E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.