For a movie that was made 16 years ago, took in less than seven million dollars at the box office, and is around the 20,000th most popular DVD for sale at Amazon, My Own Private Idaho is getting more than its fair share of press these days. That's due less to Gus Van Sant and River Phoenix's brilliance than to the irresistibility of cheap puns to writers and bloggers weighing in on a political scandal.

Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, was caught (and pleaded guilty to) soliciting sex at a Minneapolis airport in June; news of his arrest was made public only in the last few days. (He's now denying he's gay, and saying that the confusion about lewd behavior derives from his "wide stance.")

The Drudge Report was among the first to mention the "private Idaho" pun, as Wonkette points out. Since then, the phrase has appeared in the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Herald, and on blogs for MSNBC, Time, and the National Review.

Here's Philadelphia Daily News's Will Bunch's explanation for the phenomenon:

What's new about a politician in Washington who does one thing and says another, especially when it comes to sex and political morality? —what seemed unique was something about Idaho, gays, potatoes and Republicans that inspires political penmanship—if you don't believe that, just Google "Craig" and the phrase "his own private Idaho." Thank God Don Imus isn't here to work over the words "I," "da," and "ho"—or to riff on the phrase "Boise2Men."