“It’s true that the Right — which built a cottage industry of low-life dirt-peddlers that persists to this day out of sleazily digging into every facet of the Clintons’ private lives, and then became voracious amplifiers of National Enquirer during the Edwards scandal — has very little standing to complain here, since they helped spawn these invasions. And none of this has anything to do specifically with Cindy McCain, since the treatment to which she’s subjected here is, by now, anything but unique (though remarkably little interest was displayed when it came to digging into what was, by all accounts, the rich and ample hedonism of George W. Bush’s pre-“born-again” life).

But it seems rather obvious that there are now basically no journalistic standards left for determining when a political figure’s private life (or even that of their spouse) is “relevant” — apparently, it’s all relevant now, down to the last tawdry detail. In partiuclar, adultery (without regard to whether the spouse consents) is, without any further consideration, a legitimate topic to report. That inevitably has to lead to an even further erosion (if that’s possible) of our political class, a further narrowing of the people willing to enter politics. And the vast disparity between the media resources and attention devoted to sleazy gossip like this versus actual investigation of true government corruption and crime seems to be growing by the day, such that behavior like this will further decay our already quite decadent journalistic class as well.”