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Reality-based commentary on politics.

The NYT’s Shaggy Dog Story

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Compare how these two (utterly hypothetical) stories might play:

A. “McCain hawks legislation written by lobbyist.”

Or:

B. “McCain shags lobbyist; hawks her legislation.”

We all know which one gets the attention. That's what makes today's NY Times bimbo-bombshell so frustrating and disturbing as a piece of journalism.

The “romantic relationship” part of the story is from anonymous sources; there are no specifics of the relationship; and no actual evidence (phone calls, emails, dates and places of trysts, etc). All we get is that some unnamed sources felt “anxiety” over her presence, and were “convinced that the relationship had become romantic.” Well, so what? Did it happen or didn't it? That's a yes or no question. And if the answer is just “maybe”, how can you possibly run the story?

And then we are treated to an egregious example of my least favorite thing in journalism today: The reporters' gratuitous narrating of the political import and effect of their own story:

It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Is this “just-the-facts, ma'am”? Or is this is a pitch for a screenplay? While it is certainly proper to provide career context to a story about a presidential candidate, can't we do without the imposition of the colorful interpretive narrative — the contrived mythologizing? I suppose this kind of prose-mongering sells papers and wins promotions and Pulitzers, but it belongs on the op-ed page, or in a book — not front-page, above the fold.

The treatment of McCain's legislative history vis-a-vis his professional relationship with Vicki Iseman is completely above board. In fact, these kinds of favors and deals within our Congress are drastically under-reported by outlets as august as the Times. The fact that this kind of thing is just unreported business-as-usual is the real scandal.

How ironic, then, that the Times chose to upstage an otherwise important and well-documented account of McCain's actual work as a senator with juicy but ultimately unproveable allegations about a possibly romantic affair with a lobbyist. Look, unless they can produce a blue dress, you just can't prove anything. (And I certainly don't mean that as encouragement that they should go find one.)

Now we learn (from Adam Reilly) that the Globe nixed that part of the story. Good on them. And shame on the Times for slinging such unsubstantiated crap. You can laugh that it's McCain today, but they can do to anyone what they did to him. And they will.

(I look forward to a time when I don't have to think about the sex lives of our national leaders. As Atrios says — eeew.)

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Comments

  1. … the Times jumped in order not to get scooped.  From Digby:

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    FWIW, the rumor is that another outlet was running a big story on this tomorrow and that’s why the Times finally jumped in.

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    p>Don’t know what the abbreviation FWIW is for.  

  3.    l. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

       But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

    Is this “just-the-facts, ma’am”? Or is this is a pitch for a screenplay? While it is certainly proper to provide career context to a story about a presidential candidate, can’t we do without the imposition of the colorful interpretive narrative — the contrived mythologizing?

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    p>Indeed. How do the authors know that McCain has ‘confidence in his own integrity’… rather than say, is a rank hypocrite? Or even a downright liar?  Of the many possible explanations for McCains behaviour, excess ‘confidence in his own integrity’ seems pretty low on the ole probability curve…

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    p>It beggars the imagination that the NYTimes A) posted this breathless slice of high-school juvenalia and 2) stands behind it with a straight face.  

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    p>Beavis: Heh-heh-heh-  -heh

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    p>Butthead: He said ‘straight’… heh-heh…

  5. McCain voted to convict Bill Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors. The GOP practically defines itself as the defender of morality, and seeks to enshrine and enforce morality by law. Hypocrisy is the reason this is extremely relevant.

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    p>Furthermore, I think the facts will start to surface now. If the NYT has nothing more than what they printed, then yes, I’d agree they went to press with too little.

  6. I share your (SwiftBoat) indignation, Charley.  Democracy (SwiftBoat) is harmed irreparably (SwiftBoat) when the media fails to (SwiftBoat) act scrupulously.  Fortunately, (SwiftBoat) this is an (SwiftBoat) isolated incident, and (SwiftBoat) I’m sure our (SwiftBoat) mainstream media can be trusted to (SwiftBoat) keep its house in order (SwiftBoat) and stick exclusively to the (SwiftBoat) issues that (SwiftBoat) concern all of us as (SwiftBoat) we make an (SwiftBoat) informed collective (SwiftBoat) decision about (SwiftBoat) our national leadership.

    • that you’re still sore about SBVT. đŸ™‚

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      p>So, what was the problem in that situation?

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      p>a. That the media did not properly truth-squad SBVT’s outrageously false claims, shamefully allowing their message to get purchase with the electorate;

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      p>or …

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      p>b. That we didn’t return the favor to BushCo, making up our own crock of devastating false charges and sticking them in the a$$ with it?

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      p>For me, that’s easy — A. As for b, we had enough undeniably true stuff to destroy BushCo in 2004 — we just didn’t use it.

      • c.  john kerry didn’t defend himself, allowing room for doubt that he would defend the nation.

          • … heh heh.  I doubt it.  Reminds me of something I read in The Nation today.

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            I’m tempted to call the publication of Liberal Fascism an intellectual scandal, but I remember that I live in a country where White House press secretary Dana Perino can admit to having no idea what the Cuban missile crisis was. (“Wasn’t that like the Bay of Pigs thing?”) And it thrives in a culture where Ann Coulter not only rules bestseller lists but has found herself, according to the nonprofit Media Matters, interviewed nearly 200 times on at least thirteen programs on MSNBC, CNBC and NBC, not including the period she worked there. True, Goldberg does not call people “faggots” in public or speculate merrily on the joys of mass murder, but his scholarly method is most definitely Coulterian. Like Coulter, he’s got a bunch of footnotes. And for all I know, they check out. But they are put in the service of an argument that no one with any knowledge of the topic would take seriously.

      • Maybe the MSM has been adding 2 + 2 and getting 0 so long and so often, adding 2 + 2 and getting 4 seems like crossing the line.

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        p>I can’t see characterizing this as smear journalism when it’s likely the opposite is taking place.  The Times editors actually held back (after sitting on the story since December) — whether intimidated by the McCain campaign or not (he sure did hire a high-powered lawyer just to squash a news story) — and delivered a watered-down version of the story their investigative team handed them.  Where there’s smoke, there may or may not be fire, but don’t criticize them for reporting the smoke.

        Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

        Pretty well-hedged, it seems to me.  

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        p>But let’s say they f%#ed up; after all the egregious behavior they’ve enabled by sitting on stories until after elections, and looking the other way from the Iraq war runup on, that makes the score about 147-1, the bad guys.

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        p>Let the wingnuts have all the indignation; I’m willing to wait for the rest of the story to come out before shedding a tear   because the New York Times implies a scumbag might actually be a scumbag.  

  7. Publius at ObWi thinks the Times would be unlikely to run something like this unless they’ve got a follow-up in the works, with more meat on it.

    It’s hard to imagine the NYT (after institutional deliberation) going forward with such an explosive article with such a thin foundation. In this respect, the sheer recklessness is, in a weird way, perhaps the most frightening thing for the McCain campaign. Maybe the paper has the goods and is trying to tie down one loose end or something. Who knows. They’ve either got the goods or it’s one of the stupidest things in the history of journalism.

    Of course, I think that’s an exaggeration: much of the list of “stupidest things in the history of journalism” is already taken up by the Times’s shamefully credulous “reporting” in the 2001-2003 timeframe.  Compared to that, even bottom-of-the-barrel tabloid rumormongering, which is just what this is unless publius’s suspicion is correct, doesn’t register on the stupid scale.

  8. reading Josh Marshall’s take, and following some of the links around.  There’s clearly more to this story than was in the NYT piece, and I’m not sure I agree with Charley that, absent a confession or a stained dress, you can’t run a story about a Senator’s romantic entanglements.  Also well worth reading is the New Republic’s piece on the behind-the-scenes machinations at the NYT.

    • says that he’s not sure the Times should get the benefit of the doubt. If they’ve got the goods on the romance, they have to show them. And there’s got to be something more than just that some anonymous people were concerned. Otherwise can the whole piece. That’s the only ethical choice.

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      p>David, what’s your positive standard on this? Does the Times piece measure up?

      • … is the standard.  Without it you can throw all your verbal sources out the window, however independently verified they are?

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        p>Just asking.

        • Well, that’s just it. Independently verified by whom? Other anonymous sources? Is that good enough?

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          p>Yes, physical evidence would be the best standard. I hope and believe that none is going to be produced … unless, as Josh Marshall guesses, the Times really does have more up its sleeve.

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          p>I mean, seriously: Haven’t we been on this merry-go-round before? We don’t even have to imagine a hypothetical case where this kind of thing has been done to one of ours — it already happened. So doesn’t it behoove us to have some kind of independent standard of fairness in evaluating an article like this?

          <

          p>(I will add that it’s really hard to write about “physical evidence” without stumbling into any number of untoward double-entendres. I’m trying, honest.)

  10. …but it’s posts like this one by Charley that reinforce my opinion that there is far more integrity in the left wing blogosphere then in its right wing counterpart (which includes talk radio). I’d also include Bob’s comments and David’s previous post as examples, btw.

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    p>Politico’s Ben Smith notes “Many widely read liberal bloggers, breaking with partisan patterns, are expressing discomfort with the Times’ reporting and offering conditional defenses of McCain…” with TPM’s Greg Sergent adding:

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    A fun postscript: I emailed that last graf — the one saying that the failure of lib bloggers to toe the partisan line on this story would worry Dem strategists counting on them to be a “partisan strike force” — to a Democratic operative I know. His response:

    “Goddamn right.”

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    p>While many of us here would never feign non-partisanship, it’s clear that in a match-up between the left and right wing chattering classes that BMG and other lefty sites lead the way in intellectual honesty, integrity, and reason. It’s a shame I doubt many of the right wingers – e.g. Malkin/Limbaugh attacking a 7-year-old kid over S-CHIP, et. al. – will see this example and follow suit.

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    p>Thanks Charley, David and Bob for your smart and rational commentary on the events so far. This is why I enjoy BMG and am proud to come here. The Reality-based community is prime real estate now adays.

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    p>

  11. is real and will resonate with a certain portion of the electorate.  He has held himself out as some sort of standard bearer when it comes to ethical political behavior only, it turns out, he’s simply more of the same:  Republican control-freak geezer with a roving eye for bottled blonds.  

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    p>This will hurt him.  The damning circumstances are so very familiar and believable to every sentient adult that it will be difficult for anyone to invest in the storied McCain narrative and feel comfortable.    

    • … does the story illustrate or distract from that premise?

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      p>From Altercation:

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      p>

      What’s more, the sex gets in the way of what is really important about McCain’s behavior and why, in so many ways, the man is a complete fraud, however much the MSM may love every last wrinkle on his impressively active seven-decade-old body. …

      …If you read Robert Bennett and Charlie Black’s comments, as well as Drudge, it’s clear that the unproved sex allegations will allow McCain to avoid the conflicts-of-interest stories that really ought to be at the heart of this issue.

  12. Clinton + sex scandal=shift to right
    McCain +  sex scandal=shift to left

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    p>Now before I make my next equation recall the “hope” and “promise” of 2006.

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    p>Right Nazi = Left Nazi

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    p>

  13. I bet there are a lot of professional women, particularly those working in male dominated professions, who have, on at least one occasion, been accused of having an affair with a male colleague or co-worker based on the amount of time they spend with the male colleague or co-worker.  Never mind that the woman is spending the time with the male colleague because she has to in order to do her job.

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    p>The NYT has no evidence of an affair, nor did their source for that matter, other than the fact that the woman in question was around alot.  Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t that what a lobbyist is supposed to do, gain access to the public official? It sounds like she was doing her job and was pretty good at it too.  

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    p>The affair inunendo in the article is particularly  disturbing because it sends a subtle message to other public officials that if they allow more access to a particular lobbyist or colleague who happens to be a woman than they do to a lobbyist who happens to be a man, the public official will be accused or suspected of having an affair with that woman. So guess what any public official when presented with this problem is likely to do? They will allow the lobbyist less access, or maybe even no access, simply because she is a woman just to avoid the whole issue.  Good going NYT.
     

    • is heterosexism at its worst.  after all, we just assume that a male lobbyist won’t be having any affair with the male politician, don’t we?  but i won’t go there. đŸ˜‰

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      p>the thing is, his own aides, who were assumedly with him a lot and knew him very well, thought he was showing poor judgment around Ms. Isemann.  Let me repeat that: McCain aides thought he was showing poor judgment.  So poor that they confronted him, and he capitulated to their advice.  That is an important aspect of the story that I think gets overlooked between questions of adultery and caving to lobbyists.  McCain’s (lack of good) judgment

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