Enemy Combatant
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Enough With The Partisan Pudenda Punditry!
Jamison Foser has an excellent (if unimaginatively-named) piece over at Media Matters, about (among other slanted coverage) the Beltway Bloviators' obsession with political panty-sniffing -- but more specifically (and exclusively), Democratic panty-sniffing. I advise you to go read the whole thing, but here's a pithy excerpt:We've previously denounced "sexual innuendo" about political figures and the "frivolity" of questions about politicians' personal lives. We've argued that the media focuses far too much on these matters, at the expense of serious issues. Put simply, we don't think personal lives are the business of anybody but the people involved.
But if the media are going to put candidates' personal lives on the table, it's time they do so for all candidates. If common decency and the shame that should accompany behaving like voyeuristic 10th-graders aren't enough to convince the David Broders and Chris Matthewses and Tim Russerts of the world that the Clintons marriage is none of their damn business -- or ours -- then basic fairness dictates that they treat Republican candidates the same way. Because the only thing worse than a bunch of reporters peering into bedroom windows of candidates is a bunch of reporters peering into the bedroom windows of only one party's candidates.
Take John McCain, for example. He divorced his first wife (after having a series of affairs) to marry (a month after his divorce) a wealthy and politically connected heiress ... just in time to launch his political career. And what of his relationship with the second (and current) wife? Let's apply the New York Times test to them, shall we? How many days a month do they spend together? How many days are they apart -- she in Arizona and he in Washington, or traveling the country raising money? How close can they really be, given that he reportedly had no idea his wife was addicted to painkillers she was stealing from a charity she founded -- had no clue of an addiction that caused her to check herself into a drug treatment center.
Is this the sort of thing that should be a front-page story in The New York Times? No. Is it the sort of thing that Tim Russert and Chris Matthews and David Broder should tout and hype as a "hot topic" of McCain's presidential campaign, and speculate about endlessly? No. But there is simply no justification for covering John McCain and Hillary Clinton in such disparate ways. If Hillary Clinton's marriage is relevant, so is John McCain's.
This is one area where the Right's relentless mau-mauing of the media has become so commonplace for so long, it's virtually invisible to everyone now. But if we're ever going to have another election turn on real issues (rather than on journalistic snark), then
It.
Must.
Stop.
Now.
