Bikini Journalism

"Mindboggling stupidity . . .

"It is not the fact that Flynt is a pornographer that makes him such lowlife pond scum. It is his own sanctimony, his own shtick as Champion of the First Amendment. He deliberately abuses that freedom not in order to express himself but to bully and browbeat his ideological foes while lowering the bar of acceptable political combat to unheard of and unimagined levels."

At CBS's Public Eye, Matthew Felling questions whether spouting moral values is a sufficient justification for being outed over your sexual conduct:

"Is it the sex, or is it the hypocrisy? And this time I have an answer: Yes. First of all, the sex. Politicians have to speak to their bases. And in the case of most Republicans, that means that we are dealing with a more pious constituency. (Yes, there are millions of religious Democrats, but they tend not to speak of illicit sex as critically or judgmentally as those on the right.) So, for Republicans, the sex means more to the people they represent.

"It's as if a Democrat from a well-known liberal district was found to be racially insensitive. Different political environments have their own requirements and checklists for their politicians. (I mean, look at the very definition of liberal.) It's exactly this dynamic that drove the Al Gore 'carbon footprint' story as well as that overblown (pun intended) story about a certain champion of the poor and his expensive haircut. Second is what I call the 'Identity Check' -- a concept related to the angle above. There are signature traits that a politician puts on the menu for potential voters to judge him on. His or her family, straight-arrow lifestyle, tolerance, etc. I think that when a candidate makes a values issue or a personal virtue a selling point, then his or her transgressions become more newsworthy.

"That's what takes the sex stories from damaging to scandalous. Regardless of anybody's political bent, if you see a political leader saying one thing and doing the near opposite, it's going to make you livid."

Weird item of the week comes from a Times of London interview with Qattab al-Maqdesy, one of those who abducted BBC's Alan Johnston in Gaza and held him for nearly four months:

"The kidnappers expressed bizarre resentment that Johnston, 45, had done nothing to thank them for their hospitality while they held him at gunpoint in a tiny cell.

" 'We used to give him everything he wanted,' Abu Zobayer, an aide to Dagmoush, said. 'We spent £70 on his food every week. The Matouk restaurant [one of the best eateries in Gaza] got rich because we had to feed him.'

"Johnston has said that he fell ill from the food he was served. Zobayer commented: 'It's not our problem that we gave him everything and he only ate a little.'

"Although they did not torture him physically, the kidnappers seemed to have no concept of the psychological torture they were inflicting on the BBC correspondent. 'We had people with him all the time to try to help him to relax,' said Zobayer.

" 'We gave him a radio so that he could listen to his own channel. I myself sat with him to try to make him feel comfortable and feel that he will be released.' "

Waaahh! Who ever heard of a whining kidnapper?