'Who's Your Daddy?' In Hollywood and D.C.

The dichotomy becomes entangled in the sins of shame and guilt, freedom and cultural constraints. A country that holds on to its Puritan past as it worships the sexual celebrity. We kneel at the feet of the beautiful, whom we allow to break social constraints, while tsk-tsking those who would lead us.

"We want Hollywood to entertain us, not be our moral tutors," says Eric Dezenhall, author of "Damage Control: Why Everything You Know About Crisis Management is Wrong" and CEO of a public relations firm that represents corporations and celebrities in crisis.

"When Brad and Angelina have a love child, that's just Hollywood being Hollywood. If a political figure has a love child, that's Hollywood legislating, and that's out of bounds."

Dezenhall has coined this behavior the Springsteen Paradox. "I've heard 'Thunder Road' 10,000 times and could hear it 10,000 more, but the minute he starts with the Che Guevara talk, I push the mute button," Dezenhall says. "When Bruce sings ballads, I think of my summers at the Jersey Shore. When Bruce talks politics, I'm thinking, 'Why is this plutocrat telling me to stick it to the man -- he is the man?' "

The love child issue is all about context, he says. "Who exactly is having this love child? If it's Jessica Alba, it's on the grid. If it's Edwards, it's off the grid. Despite the cliche that Americans are puritanical about sex, flipping around the remote control will disabuse you of this in a second. But there's a difference between the familiar and the exotic. A marriage having problems that may have included adultery is forgivable provided the details aren't shoved in our faces. The Edwards situation is exotic because it includes a gravely ill woman, misrepresentation about who Edwards fundamentally was, a New Age manipulation, multiple lies and the possibility of a love child. Off the grid."

It wasn't always like this. It took Hollywood some time to grow accustomed to baby-mama drama. It, too, was once prudish about the Love Child. But its attitude evolved, softening as more children were born and grew.

Now "there is absolutely no stigma in Hollywood around having a love child," says Dina Sansing, entertainment director for Us Weekly. "Years ago, they would have been sent to a place to have their children. These days, celebrities are very honest about it."

Remember Ingrid Bergman and her love affair with Roberto Rossellini? In 1949, she went to Italy to work on a film, fell in love with the director. And, while she was still married to someone else, had Rossellini's child. Very publicly. She would later marry Rossellini and have two more children before he got a mistress pregnant and she divorced him.

Bergman's love affair erupted into moral outrage in the United States, and even brought public denunciation in Congress. One senator called Bergman a "horrible example of womanhood and a powerful influence of evil." Hollywood eventually forgave her. She won a second Academy Award and then a third. "I've gone from saint to whore and back to saint again," Bergman once said, "all in one lifetime."

Remember Jack Nicholson and the revelation he came upon, only of late, that the woman he grew up thinking was his sister, June, was in fact his mother, and that the mother he thought he knew, Ethel, was in fact his grandmother? He did not know his father. "Only Ethel and June knew," he told a reporter. "And they never told anybody."

Diana Ross sang of the "Love Child," and had her own love child with Berry Gordy: Love child. Never meant to be. Love Child.

Her daughter with Gordy, Rhonda Ross Kendrick, discovered when she was 13 that Gordy was her biological father. "It really wasn't that painful or tragic or traumatic," Kendrick told the New York Daily News. "I knew Berry all my life. I loved him. I spent time with him. And as far as I knew, he was a friend of the family. After I found out, I felt like everything made sense. . . . Finding out answered my questions. It soothed me. It was like, 'Oh, Berry's 5-7, that explains why I'm 5-2. I get it now!' "

Love Child, never meant to be. Or perhaps was. A child whispered about. Sometimes hidden. Disguised as a sister or brother or a cousin, rather than a daughter or son. Carried like a crown on the hips of Hollywood, while the political Love Baby is kept quiet.