Online Ugliness

"Also, under the thumbs-up scenario, voters will presumably embrace Edwards politically because they are rooting for him personally. In an Oprah world, few sagas are more compelling than the triumph over adversity; not to be glib, but the Edwards personal saga might well demonstrate that politicians are people, too. As southern Democratic strategist Dane Strother argued, the news about Elizabeth 'makes him real. It makes her real.'

"But consider the thumbs-down scenario: For John Edwards, the illness injects an element of uncertainty into his campaign. And that's not a plus, because the last thing he needs right now -- during this crucial phase, when activists are trying to decide who to work for, when donors are trying to decide where to send money -- is the perception that he might not go the distance."

HuffPoster Sheila Weller is more concerned with Judith Nathan Giuliani telling the New York tabloids that she had a previously undisclosed third husband:

"I said to my husband: 'This will be trouble for Rudy.' Not because Rudy's been married three times' -- people who've already approvingly slotted him as the results-producing pol and the antiterrorism candidate will excuse his 'messy' personal life (they might even find it touchingly 'human') -- but because she has been.

"And because, all along, she's been kinda, sorta, maybe revealing herself as . . . well, dangerously close to a certain kind of spine-tinglingly icky archetype that sets off alarm bells in even the most commitedly feminist heart. And that archetype is: The Bosomy, Decolletage-Trotting, Husband-Shnoogling, Gold-digging, Getting-The-Man-Comes-First, Everything-Else-Comes-Second, Three-Times-Marrying Babe."

The resignation of LAT editorial page editor Andres Martinez, who tapped Hollywood producer Brian Grazer as a guest editor while dating his publicist, only to see the paper's publisher kill the special section, is drawing some online chatter. Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum sees this as much ado about not much:

"Avoiding the appearance of impropriety is obviously a wise goal, but it's impropriety itself that we should be concerned about. The job of the media should be to figure out whether or not something actually happened, not to cluck mindlessly over appearances . . .

"In the case at hand, my guess is that no one -- literally no one -- think[s] Andres Martinez actually did anything wrong. I think everyone believes his explanation about how he chose Brian Glazer to guest-edit this Sunday's op-ed section -- an explanation that was simple, clear, quickly offered up, and consistent with the evidence. But for some reason the ethics brigade still feels like they have to go through the 'appearance of impropriety' kabuki dance because otherwise Romanesko and the blogs will come after them. Feh.

"And what does the LA Times get out of all this? A reputation for panicking at the tiniest sign of trouble. A reputation for not backing up its own people when unfair accusations are leveled against them. A reputation as a pseudo-moralistic prig. And will anyone ever agree to guest-edit an op-ed section for them again? I doubt it. You'd be crazy to waste your time, knowing that the Times will hang you out to dry at the first sign of trouble."

But L.A. blogger Paterrico, a fierce critic of the paper, says:

"It would behoove the skeptical Times reader to look past the surface, and probe what's really going on here.

"By treating it as a major scandal, the paper is setting up an impossible standard for its staffers. For example, as this blog post shows, Times Editor Jim O'Shea 'was married to a manager of media relations for Chicago's Field Museum' during his tenure as managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. And the paper covered the museum quite extensively: