Former Vice President Dan Quayle's son, Ben, is running for Congress in Arizona, where he lives with his imaginary children. Remember how Dan Quayle was famously airheaded? Well, as Ben's campaign progresses, it's becoming obvious that he inherited that gene.

Ben Quayle's been the subject of a bizarre mini-scandal for the past couple of days, after gossip/sex site TheDirty.com revealed that he'd been a "contributor" in the site's early days as DirtyScottsdale.com, about trashy Scottsdale nightlife. Site founder Nik Richie claimed that Quayle had written under the pseudonym "Brock Landers," which he used to "document his quest to find the 'hottest chick in Scottsdale.'" (Landers is the name of one of the characters from the movie Boogie Nights.)

Quayle, at first, denied all of this. Then he backtracked a little bit, admitting that he'd met Richie and introduced him to an intellectual property lawyer, but nothing else. Then — and this is all in one day — he admitted, okay, he'd been a regular "commenter" at the site.

But Quayle, a self-described conservative and one of 10 candidates seeking the Republican nomination for the 3rd Congressional District, admitted to contributing to the site, contradicting his earlier comments.

"I just posted comments to try to drive some traffic," he said.

"What kind of comments?" the reporter asked.

"This is four years ago," Quayle replied. "This is hilarious this is being brought up. … This is a smear. This is a smear on me from a smear website being pushed by a smear campaign."

By this afternoon, he'll probably admit that yes, he has written every word that's ever appeared on either DirtyScottsdale.com or TheDirty.com. But we'll see.

Meanwhile, perhaps to distract attention from these stories about his chick-hunting blogger days, Ben Quayle's campaign released one of the most awkward campaign ads ever today, in which, among other things, he icily calls Barack Obama "the worst president in history." Really, treat yourself and enjoy this one:

Why does he duck for cover in the middle of the ad? No one will ever know. But give credit to Dan Quayle, for teaching Ben his trademark "incredibly serious deer-in-the-headlights" look so well.