Response to "Scandal in the Media."

I know that the point Louis Avallone was trying to make in his March 19 Forum article, "Scandal and the Media,"LINK was that the media establishment gives a "pass" to sexual deviants who are Democrats and rides Republican ones out of town on a rail. That this is his point is made clear by his statement of this very proposition, but not in any way by the evidence he offered to support it, much of which is based on casual conclusions and, in at least one notable case, a falsehood. A close look at this article’s false claim, I think, reflects also the irrational divisions that have come to define much of our current political environment.

Mr. Avellone is upset that several news programs covered the Eliot Stitzer scandal without making clear that he was a Democrat. He points out that several congress people who were touched by scandal were clearly labeled Republican. This, incidentally, is an much-discussed and, to my mind, meaningless issue that is currently being warmed over in the "conservative" blog world. I suppose I would be more likely to look to my past experiences as a television watcher and remind myself that, in my experience, the news usually does not attribute party affiliation to Governors, yet almost always does to Congress people. At any rate, he gives a list of Democrats that have been involved in scandals, and it is here that he leaves the world of opinion and enters the land of libel.

Mr. Avellone brings up the case of Congressman Barney Frank, and says that Frank had ". . . permitted the operation of a homosexual prostitution ring in his home in 1989." This is an admittedly excellent example that might serve to shows a relative difference in treatment between Democrats and Republicans involved in sexual scandal (Frank is, after all, still in Congress). This is such a compelling example in fact that one is almost tempted to overlook the fact that it is untrue.

Though there were allegations that he had done so, Frank, who fully cooperated with them, was cleared by the Congressional Ethics Committee in 1990 of any such knowledge that his premises were used for any improper activity. He was however reprimanded for fixing a friend’s parking tickets and for trying to influence the parole status of the same friend, the only pieces of incriminating evidence to come out of the investigation.

This particular libel is an old one, but it has recently been revived in the service of partisan political attacks, another rusty weapon that must be used because it is there. Media Matters has documented the following two cases that relate to this issue: In August of 2007, Pat Buchanan, a conservative journalist and former Presidential candidate, made the statement that Frank, "had a fellow running a—basically a full-service whorehouse in his basement." It is interesting, and not altogether un- instructive, to note that this statement was in reaction to more contemporary Congressional sex scandals, of which the case of Congressman Larry Craig was then the latest example. Craig had just recently (strangely) pled guilty to soliciting a policeman for sex in a public bathroom. He later said that in spite of this he was innocent of the charge. (Congressman Craig had incidentally been one of three members of the House Ethics Committee who had pushed for the harshest of punishments for Barney Frank in 1990.)

The second example of this calumny is to be found in a recent edition of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. On March 12, 2008, in reaction to the Eliot Spitzer scandal, virtually the same comment was made as crude satire by a Bill Clinton impersonator who, while jokingly extolling the tolerance of the Democratic Party, said, "You can be a prostitute . . . or like Barney Frank, let a prostitution ring be run out of your home." So, the point is, by the time Mr. Avellone’s article was published in the Forum, this particular bit of nonsense had made its way into the blogosphere, or semiosphere, or whatever sphere it is where people who don’t won’t to be bothered with things like facts and details go to find out what to talk about.

As is often the case, it is perhaps more important to examine why people are saying something rather than what they are saying. I’m just guessing here but I think this is yet another example of the general culture of opposition. I honestly don’t think any of Mr. Avellone’s details show much of a double standard; I think his argument and the article itself merely show how reactive our political environment has become.

At the heart of this reactive environment is a binary and Manichean view of the world. The idea that there are two equal and opposite worldviews, one Democrat and one Republican, is now so firmly wedged into our cultural narrative that it has become a conditioned reflex for people to just attack each other, and no one seems to care whether or not what he or she says is even true. It is a perspective that is reinforced by such trite phrases as "both sides of the isle." Moreover, it has the effect of encouraging people to see the world through a distorted lens where everything is an endless cycle of reaction, and where any criticism of my side must necessarily be "balanced" with an equal or greater criticism of your side.

This is the situation we find ourselves in, in 2008. Although many of us who think this is a counterproductive and obscure way of looking at the world, it appears, at least, to be the dominant view in the media, if Mr. Avellone’s article is any example.