it’s not (yet!) treason here if you disagree with the public policy on an inflammatory issue.

i think that all this celebrity baby/politician affair/xxx divorce/ etc stuff still has a place but it doesn’t need to have the prominence it does. the front and centreness of the candy.

that said, i get incredibly angry when i am watching fluff television and they cut to really violent newsbites with no warning whatsoever.

i will say that i’d probably rather read the paper you’d edit as opposed to one filled with stories about politicians’ sex lives. although, i wouldn’t want to see a story like the edwards one completely ignored. it ought to be put ought there for people to make up their own mind; it just doesn’t need quite the amount of attention that comes with having a million 24 hour news programs.

There are, in theory, millions of potential stories all competing for our very limited attention. The judgment call, to my mind, is whether one story should be favored over another for space and attention. If the competition is between the cover-up of one man’s sex life and a cover-up related to the Iraq War, I’d go with the latter. But if I wanted to sell more copies or get more pageviews, I’d go straight to Edwards’ admitted indiscretions, which have all the makings of a Lifetime movie (virtuous wife, caddish husband, oddly named mistress, the term ‘baby daddy,’ and a finale of abject contrition).

So, yes, if I were an editor at the Times, I’d probably do a poor job. But I do take your point.

is there more coverage of things like the edwards affair than i would care to see? yes. i would much rather the media treated us like reasonable adults than sixth-graders gossiping in homeroom. but the question is: what’s an individual reporter to do? if you were an editor at the new york times would you just refuse to print this story? if you’re answer is yes, i would have to say that you’d be doing your job poorly.

My concern is with the press coverage, seeing how it tends to sharpen the blade. You wrote, “Would you rather live in a world where journalists made the decisions about what the public should and shouldn’t know?” My response is that we already do.

the other issue is press coverage. maybe it sems that “we” are obsessed with john edwards public life, but that’s just because if there’s a story then most media is going to cover it. it’s their job. the minute there is information that someone who once had a decent shot at getting the democratic presidential nominee had an affair with a staffer, and may have a child with that staffer, the press is going to cover it. would you rather live in a world where journalists made the decisions about what the public should and shouldn’t know? it may be unpleasant, but the alternative is much more so.

First, he resolved it with his wife. Does that mean his marriage was a sham? To my mind, the survival of his marriage is a clear indication that it was strong in other areas. Some relationships survive this sort of betrayal, others don’t. And whether it’s one or the other is up to the people involved.

Second, shouldn’t there be a distinction between a desire to shield a (complicated) private life from the press and, say, a politician’s lies about his voting record? I’d rather save the word ‘disdain’ for times when, say, a hurricane hits New Orleans and the president can’t be bothered to respond to the disaster. That, to me, is real disdain for the public. Not some politician’s clumsy attempts to conceal the fact he diddled the videographer.

And I do think that’s important, saving our anger for the things that are truly unforgivable.