Here’s Reason’s Michael Moynihan, making some distinctions for America’s favorite muckraker:

What reporters do, as Sullivan surely knows, is ask important questions and address rumors by reporting, and only bringing them to readers’ attention upon confirmation.

Indeed. Or as I put it:

… it is one thing for a reporter to investigate such matters quietly and carefully put together the pieces before taking the story to press, but quite another for a horde of rumor-chasing amateurs to shout it from the rooftops when unanswered questions are all that they have.

This is elementary stuff, of course, and is not the sort of thing that should have to be explained to a professional journalist whose blog is hosted by one of America’s most famous magazines. But there it is, and I’m sorry if you think that I’ve been making too much of it. Andrew Sullivan, a career journalist, Atlantic editor, and (perhaps now only once-) widely respected political thinker and analyst, spent thousands of words giving credence to a bunch of vile and baseless rumors about a Vice Presidential candidate’s family and her daughter’s sexual life, and even once those rumors were proven false, continued to insist that only once the press had had access to the minutest details of the goings-on in and around Sarah Palin’s vagina could our minds be put legitimately to rest. The rumors were finished; the story, dead; and yet the truth-seeker dug on.

And once he hit bottom, he kept on digging:

Did I just see Cindy holding Trig? I mean: can we have it one way or the other? Either the family is out of bounds or it is in the spotlight. Brandishing a Down Syndrome child as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him. And if you are going to hold the baby in front of the cameras, how can you say that the details of his birth cannot even be discussed?

Did I just see Andrew Sullivan - avert your eyes, easily offended ones - completely lose his fucking mind? I mean where in the world does he think the breast-feeding five-month-old is SUPPOSED to be - back at home watching the proceedings on the TV, I presume? And Barack Obama brought his daughters on stage as well, you know - does this mean that Ross Douthat gets to send an intern combing through RedState for nasty rumors about their parentage and demanding that the Obama campaign speak to them? And how about Michelle, and Barack himself - they’re both in the spotlight; can I speculate loudly about a few concerns that some nut jobs have about their own sexual doings? Either the family is out of bounds (!!!) or it is in the spotlight! Brandishing your family as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about it! And if you are going to stand yourselves up in front of the cameras, how can you say that the very most intimate details of your lives cannot even be discussed?!

This is not “discussion”, nor is it reporting or asking questions. It is smearing, plain and simple, and the tragedy of it all is that it is doing far more damage to the reputation of the Palin family than it is to that of Andrew Sullivan himself. But the latter’s star is fading, and doing so fast. Pretty much any other media-sponsored blogger who’d shown this sort of disdain for journalistic ethics, not to mention common - avert your eyes again, please - fucking sense, would have been long since fired, and rightly so. But the mighty Sully digs on, caring naught for taste or charity when there’s a story to be sniffed.

To see what is beneath one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

(Image via Flickrer alex-s.)

Filed under: family, media/culture, politics