The days of amusement prompted by the CIA sex scandal across the US and Europe are also prompting ripples of laughter 7,000 miles from Washington - with the Taliban apparently giggling themselves silly over former CIA head David Petraeus' affair.
In a seemingly unlikely break with protocol, AFP recorded an extraordinary interview with a "stony-faced" Taliban official in north-west Pakistan, who apparently "burst into laughter at the mention of the Petraeus affair".
AFP reported the unnamed official as giving details about the repercussions Petraeus might have faced had he been a Taliban security chief, laying down somewhat harsher punishments than a week being mocked by the tabloids.
"What a bastard!" the official allegedly told AFP. "But all Americans are the same, it's nothing new.
General David Petraeus with Paula Broadwell
"From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress's family. From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death.
"It's quite normal for Americans and Western people to behave like this -- they live in free sex societies where nobody cares about this sort of thing, so what do you expect?"
Married general Petraeus stepped down as head of the CIA over a fling with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, while the two were in Afghanistan.