I never much liked John Edwards as a politician...and I guess we now know that he's a heel as a human being, too. But that doesn't mean his tawdry personal life is any of my concern. Consensual sex among adults isn't something that we in the media should bother about, except in extraordinary circumstances (say, the President is sharing a girlfriend with a Mafia Don). I thought the media suffered a sleazy nervous breakdown during the Lewinsky affair--although earlier in Clinton's presidency I wondered if his promiscuity reflected a basic indiscipline that had infected his Administration (Add: Clinton eventually proved me wrong). I didn't care whether Clarence Thomas watched porn films, if Newt Gingrich messed around...and I'm profoundly uninterested in what Larry Craig does in the loo.
So I think the mainstream media handled Edwards affair appropriately, for a change. There are two larger points at stake here:
--Just about anyone under the age of 60 who has lived in this permissive society during the past 40 years, has done something that might be unfit for a Hallmark Greeting Card. In fact, I have profound qualms about any would-be politician who hasn't allowed him- or herself a moment of untrammeled human or chemical exploration. I fear that the media have driven an awful lot of interesting people away from public service for reasons that would have seemed extreme to the second generation of New England Puritans.
--These sort of crapulous stories are next-door neighbors to the sleazy negative advertising that, well, John McCain has been accosting us with. They feed the notion that politicians are just a bunch of soulless, egomaniacal dolts without a high-minded--whoa, almost said bone in their bodies--pick your allusion. One of the worst results of the past 30 years of the Reagan pendulum swing is that the politicians-as-perverts meme fits quite neatly into the government-as-problem-not-solution meme. Given the problems we're facing now, this is not where we want our national discourse to be.
I'm not in favor of censorship. I am in favor of discretion and proportion. If the National Enquirer wants to go there, that's their business. I don't think Time Magazine should be in that business, and I'm proud we weren't. When the Lewinsky story broke, I wrote in the New Yorker: "This is an era that will be remembered more for the ferocity of its prosecutions than for the severity of its crimes." That still holds.
Commenter Ralph wants to know:
Why is Edwards's adultery a problem for Obama, while McCain's adultery is not a problem for McCain?
The answer is: Edwards' adultery is not a problem for Obama any more than Larry Craig's importunings should be a problem for McCain. As for McCain's alleged adultery--it's been denied by both parties and I really don't care about the Senator's sex life. I do care about the fact that he is running a campaign filled with lies about his opponent's positions, a campaign that is conducted in a snarky, subversive tone that is entirely inappropriate to American politics. I wish my colleagues would spend more time talking about what a disservice McCain is doing the country and less time "analyzing" why McCain has to tear down Obama in order to win. (If tearing down Obama is the only way he can win--and this should be obvious, but apparently it isn't--McCain doesn't deserve to win.)
12 comments:
If Edwards had owned it upright, it would have been refreshing but to call it 'lies' when he's accused and then come clean- makes him not only an adulter, but a liar as well.
I think you'd find that the source of major concern with Clinton as well.
PS- Of COURSE the media handled it appropreatly, it's the Dem's Year! With the golden child up to accept the nomination the main stream isn't going to do anything to jeapordize it. Dump a story like that on a Friday afternoon of the opening of the Olympics
Kory-the story has been around for a week.
I personally agree with what Klein says-"Consensual sex among adults isn't something that we in the media should bother about, except in extraordinary circumstances (say, the President is sharing a girlfriend with a Mafia Don)."
wow, am i impressed...that is a long blog, one with a fiery conclusion...wow, you know you have some pretty good ideas, let us hope you get some readership...i just wish we had some candidates with ideas as good as yours, regardleesss of their sociability with girls or guys outside of the working arena.....reallly on a serious note, i think america has had some pretty good people who yes were weak, but promoted and saw some substancial legislation passed to benefit us all in the long run, but i do like social agenda of the..............................
This is actually Joe Klein's words-he gets paid the big bucks, but I completely agree with him on this, and love reading what he says.
The focus in politics often is on what really doesn't matter, and not what does. Policy, the issues take a back seat to silly scandals like this.
I have always liked Edwards and believed him, thus I am really disappointed. However, I am glad the media isn't trying to destroy his life (too much!) over this. This is basically a non-story for several reasons, 1) Edwards isn't running for any office and appears to be pretty much out of politics for a few years, 2) McCain's record is just as bad, and 3) I think we are starting to adopt the European standard for politicians, ie everyone does it, thus it's not news anymore when powerful men do stupid women!
I agree with Klein on this...the Edwards story is irrelevant both to the election and to pretty much anything else. However, there is a complete double standard going on with the media with this story.
The Republican equivalent of John Edwards this election season is probably Mitt Romney. If Mitt Romney, a potential McCain VP (like Edwards supposedly was for Obama) and a good-looking but annoying surrogate (again, like Edwards was for Obama), was to admit having an affair, I seriously doubt we'd be hearing from indignant media types talking about how irrelevant it is. Instead, we'd be on 24-hour Romney Watch, just like we were with Larry Craig (who, by the way, had a much, much lower profile than John Edwards).
For most in the media, sex scandals are only irrelevant when they involve Democrats.
Bryan- how can you base a double standard on a scenario that hasn't happened?
Well...let's see...there was Larry Craig, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ted Haggard, all of which were lesser figures on the national stage than John Edwards, and they all of had sex scandals that the media reported with more vigor and glee than the Edwards story. No one outside of Ted Haggard's congregation knew who he was, until it was reported that he had a gay affair.
The mainstream media sat on the Edwards story for weeks...they don't do that sort of thing with Republicans. My Romney analogy was a hypothetical...but, there are plenty of actual examples to go around.
Bryan-Edwards isn't an elected official, and then there's the cancer, and the timeliness of the affair. That's the difference between Edwards and the others.
Besides, debating a "media double-standard" because is so subjective, its really silly to me to debate it. To me, "Media double standard" cry in politics is like yo mama jokes. Both are junior high. There's so many other issues or points about this piece or others than the "media double-standard, that can actually be debated." I could sit and argue with you all day about it, but the end result is that everyone sees biases and double standards differently, that its useless to argue the point when its that subjective, or at least try to use objective mechanisms on something so subjective.
Useless? Probably. Fun? Most definitely.
I was sure you were going to throw in a yo mama joke in there somewhere. Way to prove me wrong. I like fun, but the mainstream media sucked it out of me.
Arnold's story was pursued more aggressively than this one? Seriously?
Haggard was known outside of his congregation among evangelicals and a few others following the shifts in the Christian political movement. I kind of liked the guy and think the whole scandal really was a shame.
I don't think Haggard and Craig were reported so much because they were Republicans as that they were people who spoke adamantly against homosexuality while they themselves were engaged in homosexual acts- and criminal ones at that. The irony/hypocrisy/humor in it made them big stories. Man bites dog and all that jazz.
We're certainly hearing plenty about Kwame Kilpatrick's scandals. I thought that was only here in Michigan- but when out of town and hearing the stories on NPR I realized Detroit's mayor has made a bit of a name for himself nationwide. Then when he popped up on the Daily Show with Stewart making fun of him- that's when I knew he must have hit the big time.
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