Who is to be believed in the Ruby Dhalla case of alleged caregiver abuse?

The more the days pass, the less clarity is brought to this story, which is thus far only being played out in a fuzzy she-said/she-said arena that’s light on proven fact-based persuasion.

Dhalla’s lawyer pointed weeks ago to a conspiracy, a political frameup. But who on Earth would be so motivated to take Dhalla, the former Liberal critic for youth and multiculturalism — hardly a power-broker in the political sphere — down?

Now comes news that the gentleman who first employed nanny Magdalene Gordo and brought her to Canada in 2007 will speak at a media conference to say that he was victimized by the nanny’s supposedly bogus claims.

Can anyone tell me: How properly is this mess being investigated?

An astounding 9.8 million viewers tuned it to watch Monday night’s season premiere of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, presumably to bear witness to the disintegration of a marriage. It was dark, very dark, to see the fatigued husband and wife barely interacting at their sextuplets’ birthday, and Jon slurring his words alarmingly in some scenes, face flush, while visibly squirming as if he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole.

“Someday my kids will Google me,” he said. Absolutely right. Get them off TV before more damage is done.

I was riveted to Oprah’s interview yesterday with Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of the philandering former U.S. presidential candidate John Edwards.

First of all, the passages Oprah read from Edwards’s new book Resilience, apparently written without a ghostwriter, showed a flair for beautiful, engaging prose. That was unexpected.

What didn’t surprise me at all, though, was Mrs. Edwards the person. Living with terminal cancer, not knowing if she has a year or ten years to live, she held up her reputation as a woman to admire. She was so engaging a defender of her marriage that she convinced even an unforgiving gal like me: No matter how horrible her husband’s lies and deceptions, their life together, their 30-year bond, was worth saving.

Mrs. Edwards was physically ill when her husband confessed a dalliance to her, she revealed to Oprah. She was enraged with him, even more so 18 months later when he admitted he lied about the duration of his infidelity. But it was when she said she wanted to “protect him” that I understood. That’s what we do for the people we love.

There was only one condition for the interview: The name of Rielle Hunter, John Edwards’s mistress and allegedly the mother of his child, would not be spoken. Instead, Mrs. Edwards used the words “that person” or “this woman” so that Hunter, who has been described as a fame-seeker of shameless proportions, would not get any more notoriety from the affair. And rightly so.

Oprah asked excellent questions; Mrs. Edwards was calm but direct, peaking in intensity only once when she said “You can’t just knock on the door, say ‘You’re out, I’m in. How ’bout your husband, honey?’… There’s no excuse for women to do this.”

Meanwhile her husband squirmed away from the camera only to have Oprah grab him in his expansive home gymnasium to ask about the solidity of their marriage. Replying with some uncertainty, he looked like we women wanted him to look: entirely uncomfortable, wholly ashamed and very much aware that his own actions had brought him to that point no person wants to experience. Were it not for the devotion and compassion of his wife, the Edwards marriage and family would have crumbled alongside his once-shining career.

At 5 feet 11 and 108 pounds, 19-year-old Stephanie Naumoska, the painfully thin Australian beauty-pageant contestant, says that she lives a “healthy” life — that she has “never been anorexic or bulimic” and has “never been malnourished or underfed.” I highly doubt that is true.

But I have to agree (for once) with The View co-host Elisabeth Hasselback who said the other day on her show that we must stop attacking women like Naumoska with taunts and insults.

Too many people reacted to Naumoska’s appearance in the media by saying, in effect, that she should “eat a cookie!” As if it’s that easy.

The problem of body-image distortion, the sickness of eating disorders — these must be addressed without assaulting the victims.

I am loving the Girl Guides of Canada’s new Love Yourself Challenge badge, which the century-old (yet progressive!) organization will launch on May 11.

Developed with the help of the National Eating Disorder Information Centre, the badge features three figures of various sizes and shapes. Girls can earn one through a variety of tasks, for example by crafting a thing called an Awesome Alien.

“They create a funky alien that may have three eye balls or two right hands,” says a Guides spokesperson. “It’s about celebrating differences.”