This week’s (October 31) issue of Parade offers the same garden of earthly delights—“Who Are You Calling a Cougar? Betty White Goes Wild,” “Peanuts at 60: Why We Still Love the Great Pumpkin,” Marilyn vos Savant, the world’s smartest woman—that have made it America’s most beloved Sunday supplement magazine.

But of all the weekly features, none satisfies quite like Walter Scott’s Personality Parade. So far as I am aware, there may once have been a flesh-and-blood Walter Scott—I am not here speaking of the author of Ivanhoe—but for years the celebrity question-and-answer column was actually written by Lloyd Shearer, of the famous Shearer clan of left-wing activists and literary wannabes, and then by ex-New York Times Magazine editor Edward Klein—who may yet be “Walter Scott,” for all I know. And the truth is that I don’t really care because the timeless quality of Personality Parade transcends whatever knowledge I may or may not possess about the story behind this venerable (and copyrighted) American institution.