Don't forget that some conservatives bring this hounding on themselves by moralizing and wrapping themselves in the Ten Commandments. When a public figure does this, they create a press temptation to dig into their personal lives if there's even a whiff that they are not paragons of virtue. Democrats, on the other hand, put little emphasis on personal morality, so that a story about an immoral Democrat is sort of ho-hum. They do emphasize their version of social morality, but it's difficult to catch someone being socially immoral on a level where we all would say: "What a hypocrite!" I guess the equivalent to finding out a Republican moralizer is involved in an adulterous affair or snorts cocaine would be to find out that Al Gore called someone a "fag" or refused to hire African-Americans to serve on his staff.
Dealing with the press is like raising a child. If you tell a child don't cuss, and then that child catches you swearing, they get indignant and lose faith in your guidance. They make a big deal out of it.. The adult is stuck with: "Do as I say, don't do as I do," which is always an awful position to be in.
That being said, the vast numbers of Republican elected officials show that the press cannot be leading the American people around like sheep. How, then, are people getting the information needed to decide to elect all these Republicans? |
