It's an adage almost as old as Keith Richards.

In case you haven't heard it recently, it goes something like this: "Make a fool of me once, shame on you. Make a fool of me twice, shame on me."

The first time my dear arch-nemesis Lisa Mossie reduced me to a cultural stereotype it was in the form of a now infamous letter to the editor - a collector's item currently fetching thousands on eBay - entitled "The Day in the Life of a Managing Editor."

She had me opening bottles of wine (even though the real G2 doesn't drink), checking blogs of fellow left-wingers for talking points (even though I barely knew what a blog was back then and I NEVER read opinions on topics that fire me up until AFTER I write my own) and tooling around the burbs in a SUV (she had me there) that featured a Gore-Lieberman bumper sticker on the rear bumper (my cousin had a yarmulke - i.e. that "beanie thing" some Jews wear - but I don't believe in bumper stickers).

It was so well-crafted that I approached Lisa about doing a column for us every other week. She was so good at it that she now writes every week. She is also a regular on "Behind The Headlines" and, though we don't see eye to eye on anything except the fact that Saudi Arabia literally gets away with murder, I was working under the assumption that a mutual respect was built.

Even though Lisa has baked me a tray of holiday cookies, I can't let her off the hook for her last column debunking conspiracy theories on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Lisa clearly identified me - one whose ideal date would be front-row Springsteen tickets or cuddling on the couch for a Sopranos marathon - as one who thinks the killing of JFK was the handiwork of the CIA, Mafia and military-industrial complex.

She then resorts to form and makes this unsolved murder that was pinned on one schmuck named Lee Harvey Oswald a political wedge issue.

In one of her less creative efforts down the right column of our Thursday editorial page, she thinks she tows the party line - and unwittingly reduces herself to a cultural stereotype - by saying that only "boring conservatives" are level-headed enough to see that Oswald acted alone.

A lot of this stems from a recent episode of "Behind The Headlines" when I brought along avid Times Herald reader/assassination buff Thomas Lees to politely lay out the logic to Lisa.

I even lent her a coffee-table book, one with a lot of pictures and graphs, to serve as a starter's guide toward an enlightenment that would not mean tearing up her membership card to Pat Buchanan Fan Club.

It was clear that she needed the help, and admitted as much.

Lisa lent me a book (whisper: don't tell anyone, but her little cheat sheet on what to say, verbatim, was still inside even though she swore that she doesn't pre-rehearse for the show) that I have found somewhat interesting - but ultimately off-point - called "Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism" by a journeyman college professor bent on being a contrarian named James Piereson.

She was clearly basing her arguments on this book's flawed research but Tom, Editor Stan Huskey (who believes in a second shooter, despite leaning right politically) and I took it easy on Lisa.

She admitted she hadn't read enough about it, and we took that as a small victory.

Turns out that what she was really saying was that she really didn't care about this earth-stopping moment in relatively recent history.

Lisa never concedes defeat, even when she has lost. Perhaps that is admirable, I don't know.

Her dismissive follow-up column, perhaps written to ease her guilt about not really caring who gunned down a dreaded member of the Kennedy clan (of which I have no real affinity, either), made it sound as if the rest of us believe any conspiracy that the mainstream media she professes to loathe runs up the flagpole.

News flash, Lisa: I don't believe in UFOs. I don't believe that Jews secretly rule the world (although it would be fun). I don't believe our presidential administration, as devious as it is, was behind Sept. 11. I don't believe that Monica Lewinsky was a Russian spy.

I'm not so sure about the assassinations of Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King because, like you with the JFK turkey shoot, I haven't read enough about them.

But I do believe that JFK was murdered in a conspiracy in which Oswald was a probably bit player who was set up to take the fall and was never meant to survive long enough to be taken into custody. I base this on facts, not the fiction of the Warren Report.

You resorted to typical, albeit pedestrian, methodology to make me and mine look like silly lefties who can't get over an icon being killed by a lone nut.

You asked the inane question about why anyone hasn't come forward in all these years, when the truth is that several have come forward with intriguing tales to tell only to be marginalized by the mainstream media that has been after-the-fact accomplices to the assassination.

And yes, Lisa, face the facts. Too many who knew something have turned up curiously dead.

You wondered why subsequent presidents, Republican and Democrat, never led a charge to get to the truth.

Again, you are making this a political issue. It's not a question of right or left as much as it is one of right or wrong. Politicians, particularly the ones at the top, do the wrong thing - even if it is for the right reasons (like not wanting to shock the nation with a true version of events that they incorrectly think would blow our minds).

I know how that feels.

I did the wrong thing for the right reasons, too.

I was too nice about a subject I'm too passionate about the last time we discussed this in a public forum.

On the show, I asked Mr. Lees who he thought did it.

Honestly, I don't even remember his answer.

I didn't give a theory because I don't have one, other than it was clear Oswald didn't act alone.

But let's play along and say that your attempt to pigeonhole me into this CIA-Mafia-MIC thing - in between ideal dates of Springsteen concerts and Sopranos marathons - is an accurate portrayal of my thoughts.

First of all, no one with 3 1/2 brain cells would say it was the whole CIA and every made guy in the Mafia and every major player in the Military Industrial Complex.

In truth, it may have been just a few from each group who were desperate to cling to a way of life that the Kennedy administration was threatening.

Why, Lisa, would anyone of importance come forward from this mix?

We all share secrets within small circles of family or friends that are carried to the grave.

You should know the saying about "nothing to gain and everything to lose" by coming clean, much like a good Catholic in a confessional.

The current administration, the one you support, has sworn by this approach too many times to count.

Yes, you are a boring conservative who refuses to think outside the box - even as a academic drill.

Shame on you.