Ethics-free media rips off the fig leaves
Andrew Sullivan
05jul04
PERHAPS the most enduring legacy of the Clinton years in American public life is the disappearance of any privacy. There is nothing in a politician's private life that isn't now fodder for mainstream journalism.
Legal, consensual, private activity, fantasies or feelings, even within a faithful marriage – it's all fair game. <font size=4>Forget the old strictures about reporting only on adultery or hypocrisy or on public legal proceedings. And during this election cycle, things have just become sleazier; Democrat candidate John Kerry might become the victim. <font size=3>
The big fat precedent for another assault on the private life of a politician occurred in that bastion of ethical propriety, Chicago. A charismatic, handsome, even sexy Republican won the primary for the vacant Illinois Senate seat. Trouble is, this Republican, one Jack Ryan, once had a high-profile marriage to a stunning television star, Jeri Ryan – a marriage that ended in a not-so-blissful divorce.
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The divorce proceedings and record had been sealed – ostensibly to protect the couple's nine-year-old son and because both parties agreed it should be. The Chicago Tribune didn't like the sound of this, and had heard all sorts of rumours about the marriage, and so sued to open the records.
The paper acknowledged that it had absolutely no reason to
believe there was anything incriminating in the files, but
it wanted to go on a fishing expedition.
Eventually, a California judge granted the Tribune access to the records.<font size=3> His argument? "The openness of court files must be maintained so that the public can . . . be assured that there is no favouritism shown to the rich and the powerful," Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider said. "Protection from embarrassment cannot be a basis for keeping from the public what is put in public courts."
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It didn't matter that there were no accusations of illegal conduct.<font size=3> There was just one racy story of how Ryan had allegedly asked his wife to go to sex clubs on three occasions to have public sex. She refused. She felt pressured and made that part of her case for ending the marriage. And that's it. But under a blizzard of embarrassment, Ryan had to quit the race last week.
The Tribune was ecstatic. In their triumphant editorial the editors pronounced: "Reporters seek all manner of records, from government contracts to the minutes of village board meetings to the transcripts of the Watergate tapes. They do so for one reason: so readers are informed."
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Notice that, in the Tribune's view, there is no real distinction between the records of a village board meeting and the most intimate details of a person's sex life. It's all information. The old fig leaf – that Clinton had lied under oath – was no longer needed for the disclosure. All that mattered was that other people were interested.
But all this raises an obvious question. Who else in public life has sealed divorce papers? Step forward John Kerry. He had a very difficult and bitter divorce from his first wife many years ago. Her sadness was intensified by Kerry's attempt to have the marriage annulled in the Catholic church – something she felt belittled and erased a marriage that had begotten two daughters.
By the Ryan standard, this is not even a hard case. Kerry is a much more prominent man than Ryan. He has already been subject to character assassinations from the far Right. And the media now have absolutely no way they can ignore his divorce records without appearing to engage in blatant double standards.
I hope Kerry will survive. If the cost of public life is that you can have no privacy of any kind, then not only do you deter good and talented people from running for office, you also ensure that only completely asexual or saintly freaks get to positions of power.
Occasionally a politician can evade the beast. The Los Angeles Times sprang a late-breaking sex scandal on Arnold Schwarzenegger days before the election in California. It was designed entirely to destroy his candidacy. Schwarzenegger survived by a masterfully poised response and because his celebrity and charm overwhelmed the charges of sexual harassment.
But it's worth remembering that two of the most recent political traumas in America were also caused by exposes of private misconduct. Clinton's impeachment paralysed the executive branch while terrorists were planning attacks and the economic bubble was out of control; and days before the last election, the revelation of George W. Bush's drunk-driving conviction almost certainly depressed his vote and put the country through the Florida recount nightmare.
The American press has now paved the way to do the same to Kerry's candidacy. Maybe they will wait until they can do real harm. Last Thursday, Kerry said he would not unseal his divorce records. He called the story "ancient history".
Will a court, prompted by an ethics-free media, force the details of his first marriage into the open? Or is the only question now: when? <font size=3>
Andrew Sullivan is a columnist for the UK's The Sunday Times. |
