Pry on rumor, sell out news

Our news media would never, ever report a story about sex and an American politician. They're far too... Uh.

• Bill Clinton
• Eliot Spitzer
• David Vitter
• Vito Fossella
• Larry Craig
• John McCain
• Newt Gingrich
• Bob Livingston
• Mark Foley
• Henry Cisneros
• Gary Condit
• Bob Packwood
• James Marzilli
• James McGreevey
• Gary Hart
• Wilbur Mills
• Wayne Hays

The American media will always report on sex and politics. It's the part of politics that they're most interested in.

Drudge got the blue dress right, and now the National Enquirer got Rielle Hunter right. In the 1990s, the political press corps "learned" to take every bit of Drudge's bullshit RNC propaganda as something to investigate. Will they now take every tabloid headline of the Enquirer as the paid-for scent of new salaciousness?

If the media would substitute one scandal source for another, this might actually make us better off. Whatever the Enquirer's cash-based sins against the remnant norms of American journalism, at least it's an equal opportunity scandal monger, much different in that from Drudge's clear bias.

That Pollyannish outcome is unlikely, to say the least. The media will instead add an additional source of prurient interest. Oh, there's just so much fact-based, in depth reporting, we can surely spare some of it for yet another time slot for political Jerry Springerism.

From now on, all rumors, all the time.

Update (8/11): Ruben Navarrette Jr. ascribes selective memory to the wingnuts.

Update (8/18): Roger Ailes pwns the wingnuts who think Edwards got a pass because he's a Democrat, first with tabloid assignments, then with this:

Or you could, you know, report on the Bush Adminstration's lies about WMD in Iraq, 9/11, illegal eavesdropping, torture, illegal political firings at the Justice Department and other topics that don't involve one-(right) handed typing.

Thanks again, Gary Hart

What I want to know: Did the tip to the National Enquirer come from a Republican source? Rielle Hunter herself? Someone on the campaign? A member of the public?

Of course, if I were a Republican operative (shudder!), I'd launder my tip through, say, the bellhop at the Beverly Hilton. I'd be a nameless guy in the bar telling the witness how the Enquirer pays cash for good tips. No fingerprints.

I have no evidence, but it's a dirty game. If Duhbya would lie about everything, but especially about war-making in Iraq, and McCain would give up all his principles (torture? o.k.) to achieve the nomination, it's hard to imagine that no one is surveilling their opposition looking for salacious stories just like this.

This is how the game is played now, as sad as that is and as doomed as perhaps our democracy is because of it. Somehow though, I doubt that the Democrats are smart enough and bloody-minded enough to know this and act upon it. They really need to have some deterrence to show the Republicans: "You out any affair that Obama has had, and we'll out any affair of McCain's. Do we have an understanding?"