The Gore massage/sex story, another in a lengthy string dredged up by The National Enquirer from the repository in the sewer it so faithfully maintains and nurtures. The last big name political sex story The Enquirer chased down was the one about the Edwards love child. You remember. That one the mainstream media --- print, broadcast, and on-line --- ignored forever because of where it oozed from. Proved to be a big mistake on their part, very big, because the story was true (and then some). So the major outlets had to play catch up, something they particularly resent.
But now many of the big-timers are jumping right in. Some of them falling over others to see who can get more out, or up on-line, first. And I mean from the NY Times and Washington Post and the AP to Politico to Talking Points Memo, they are all on it. No matter how unproven, flimsy, or uncertain the charges may be they want in --- and now. (To be fair, the network news joints have so far been laying low, but that may be more because of the stupor they are in most days than any fairness and sense of appropriateness.)
Aside from their embarrassment over having been routed by a supermarket tabloid, and their fear that it could happen again, there is also another reason, I believe, why we are seeing this story pop up in more heavily populated and prestigious media locations. And it's that these mainstreamers are also pissed off at the Gores, who gave them nothing when they quietly, and with dignity, announced the sad ending to their virtual lifetime marriage a month or so ago. No angry charges, no stained dress or hotel stairwell photos, no other person surfacing, no behind the scenes gossip, no tell-all from former employees. I mean, no story to tease out for days, weeks, months. Nothing. All they could do, what their reporters and personalities did, was to cluck sympathetically and sadly about the demise of Tipper and Al, as if they actually cared. When competitive fear and professional jealousy marry, you get a more complicated and insidious offspring. The so-caled respectable media been waiting, hovering, hoping for something juicy about Gore to grab hold of and dance with. And now they have it.
I confess, it is my nature's plague to spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy shapes faults that are not...Othello
