Fall from Grace

Why would anyone want to be a politician?

I watch the hell these people and their families are put through, and wonder what type of motivation drives certain people to continue to seek ever higher elected offices.

Take John McCain. Thanks to an article in the formerly great New York Times, McCain's reputation was tainted by speculation that he had an affair with a female lobbyist.

As a journalist with 40+ years experience, I was appalled when I read the article. I assumed that the Times would at least meet one of the minimum standards for this type of personally invasive journalism -- in other words, that the newspaper had secured the cooperation of at least one of the parties to this supposed liaison, but neither McCain nor the lobbyist were sources.

What made this "big story" all the more disgusting was that this same newspaper, which arrogantly considers itself the "gold standard" of American journalism, had joined the conventional wisdom in denouncing us at Salon.com in 1998 when we exposed an affair Rep. Henry Hyde had had some years earlier.

The context was that Hyde had been praised by the Times as a wise old man who would conduct the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the Lewinsky perjury trap matter; yet our investigative article included confirmations from both parties to the affair -- the woman and Mr. Hyde himself.

Now, I am no fan of this kind of article. But if you have to do it, please make sure you hit the highest journalistic standards before you publish.

We did, at Salon, in 1998, and were greeted with nothing but scorn from the media elite.

The Times has disgraced our profession. They should study the methodological and ethical standards our little startup media company employed in order to learn how to improve their performance after this embarrassing lapse.

p.s. Can anybody identify the fruit in the photo at the top of this post? If you have an idea, please submit it as a comment to this post. The answer will be revealed tomorrow.

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