The good folks over at Power Line first mentioned today's Brian Lambert article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on the reaction to Garrison Keillor's bitter attacks on Norm Coleman including not so veiled inferences by Keillor that a little something something was going on with Coleman's marriage. I found this section of Lambert's piece revealing:
It is interesting, though, when you ask news organizations, theoretically, what they would do if they found rumors about a politician's personal life to be true. Some say it would be a story in and of itself and that they would run with it. Others say it would require another set of factors — something that would trigger the so-called "hypocrisy factor," such as pandering to the family values crowd.
Why does the media believe that it is fair play to investigate the personal life of a candidate as long as he's "pandering to the family values crowd," read Republican, but otherwise it is unseemly? Are the Democrats championing themselves as philandering cheaters, in favor of open marriages, and free love? Not that I am aware of. They haul their spouses and kids on stage with them and use the family angle just as much as Republicans--albeit not in relation to the same policies--and so should be held to the same standards of conduct.
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