Where Is Gloria Allred?

Forget Waldo. Where’s Gloria?

Gloria Allred–the lawyer who put the “rude” in jurisprudence–is mysteriously missing in action of late. Surfacing recently from beneath her rock in a cellophane effort to shore up Jerry-the-Clown Brown’s gubernatorial aspirations, Allred came riding to the raucous rescue of innocent Nikki Diaz, poor li’l counterfeit alien girl forced to accept the humiliating, inhumane salary of $23-an-hour from her employer-oppressor, Meg “She’s a whore” Whitman. Victim Diaz was even forced to–terribile dictu–drive the Whitman automobile to–and from!–the supermarket. Forget the Chicago stockyards, o ghost of Upton Sinclair, and get thee to California. It’s a real jungle out there.

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Of course, Allred is to be applauded for her unrelenting altruistic efforts to call reprobates like Whitman to account and to champion immigration cheats and forgers like victim Diaz, those loveable naughty miscreants who otherwise would not have a voice in our noble legal system. “What’s in a name?” asked Romeo. But indeed, in Allred’s case, is there an appellation other than Gloria so befitting this self-effacing vindicatrix of victimhood, this scourge of scandal, this Titania of tarnish?

And hence it’s mystifying that Allred has remained curiously quiet during the recent Brett Favre-Jenn Sterger contretemps. Allegations of a National Football League legend like Favre using his status–and a very unusual kind of headshot–to solicit a tete-a-tete with a lower-ranking female co-employee must surely cross the Allred pylon of victimization. Lovers of the oblong-sphered game know how dangerous Brett is in the red zone. But would Fortune still favor Favre in the Allred zone?

We’ll never know. Because this is one game Gloria didn’t suit up for. Where’s Gloria, we ask?

Of course, before Brett, there was Ben. “Big Ben” Roethlisberger, that is. The almost-as-formidable pilot of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense–himself no stranger to allegations of sexual assault– allegedly got confused about what constitutes proper etiquette after you’ve followed an inebriated 20-year-old young woman into the ladies’ room of a Georgia nightclub. The man so adept at eluding eleven large men furiously charging after him on Sunday afternoon suddenly found himself hamstrung by a tipsy coed in the wee hours of the morning. O ghost of Jimmy the Greek, what are the odds?

Ben’s case seemed tailor-made for the Mother Theresa of Mishandled Maidens. But no, Allred took no midnight train to Georgia. Nor any other form of transportation thither. Again we ask, where’s Gloria? Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, we seek her here, we seek her there. Hispanics seek here everywhere. At least unsuspecting-they’re-about-to-be-deported ones like Diaz apparently do.

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But let’s turn from gridiron damsels in distress to the equally rough-and-tumble arena of professional politics. Specifically to the Illinois governor’s race and Scott Lee Cohen, a colorful figure to say the least. Days after the Democratic primary, disgraced pawn-shop owner Cohen resigned from the Illinois lieutenant governor slot on the Democratic ticket when some less than savory details emerged about his personal life. Seems Cohen got a little too exuberant once while trying to make his blonde girlfriend, a “masseuse” at the north suburban Eden Spa, see his point. The problem was the point happened to be at the end of a knife, and the knife happened to be held a little too contiguously to the convincee’s neck. (By the way, three months later, Blondie was convicted on a prostitution charge after attempting to give an undercover cop a massage-with-benefits at the aforementioned appropriately named spa.) Chicago politics being what they are, a few months later, Cohen jumped back into the race–only now he’s running for a higher office–Governor–as an independent. Chutzpah, thy name is Cohen.

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If ever there was a case for our judicial Joan of Arc, is this not it? Can you not already hear Allred’s rhetorical questions thundering across the press-conference rafters? “How many more masseuses have to be threatened at the blade of a knife before…?” You can fill in the rest.

But alas, yet again Gloria was in absentia. And so we asked one last time, “Where’s Gloria?”

And in response to our weary query, the Truth Fairy suddenly appeared in a bubble of snow-white radiance and revealed the answer to us. “Cohen,” she said with a Glinda-like smile, “is a Democrat, albeit he wears an Independent’s clothing now. And there’s no political hay to be made from Brett and Ben, you silly! Tiger Woods was an exception–too tasty a tidbit for Gloria to turn down. But Meg Whitman is a Republican and that sort of behavior simply cannot be allowed to go unpunished.”

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And now we know where Gloria is.