Byron Calame, the public editor of the New York Times, defends his paper's recent masturbatory article on the Clinton's private lives
as follows:
Senator Clinton's unique relationship with the former president is certain to be on many voters' minds if she pursues the presidency, and the article provided an update on where their complicated partnership stands.(...)
The 2,000-word article clearly focused on addressing the political impact of the marriage on Ms. Clinton's electoral efforts, although critics contended that it wallowed in personal gossip. I think it offered worthwhile political insights for readers like me who aren't rabid fans of politics.
Calame claims that he is not a rabid follower of politics, and that the article "[t]he focus, appropriately, was on the political calculations by the couple and their advisers." I have to admit I have a difficult time understand this. How do these two propositions square up?
- Calame claims the article was focusing on the political calculations of the couple rather than on details of their personal lives.
- Calame claims he isn't particularly interested in politics, but he did find this article interesting.
Two conclusions can be drawn here. Either Calame was lying when he said he did not follow politics closely, or he was not being entirely forthcoming on why he found the article interesting. I am going to go with the latter, mainly because of the first sentence I quoted, where Calame states "Senator Clinton's unique relationship with the former president is certain to be on many voters' minds." Could it be that the New York Times thought a story on the personal lives of the Clinton's was justified because they believe many voters who, like Calame, are not particularly close followers of politics would find political news more interesting if it was spiced up with a little sex gossip?
The established news media is fond of labeling the netroots as juvenile teenagers, but it strikes me in the case that they are both acting in a juvenile fashion and assuming that the nation as a whole is juvenile. We could bring you a story about the Clintons that had nothing to do with their private lives, but then neither we nor anyone else in this juvenile nation of ours would find that interesting! Politics needs sex in order to be interesting to people, even at the New York Times. If we don't write about people's personal lives, then the Heathers won't think we are worth their time.
Even this pitiful, juvenile defense doesn't hold water because,
as Peter Daou notes:
When it comes to mixing sex and politics, apparently the Clinton's are the only masturbation fantasy the established news media keeps in dirty magazines under their mattresses. If they really believed it was justified to write about sex stories in politics because that is what the country wants, then they should go ahead and give those stories to the public full-bore. However, like any hypocritical moralist on the right, they have decided that their pornography of choice is the only one the public should be allowed to consume.
