One participant said:
"I vote for no coverage of politicians' sex lives. I don't care who is doing what—if it isn't illegal, don't report it. That's my new standard and I urge the mainstream media to adopt it. "
To which I heartily concur--but. The corrolary is that candidates must not, and I mean must, run on their wonderful family values (at least the part that is implicitly sexual fidelity)
If they run on something, the media must needs look into stories on that something--no exceptions. Since I dearly don't want to know about sexual history, past and present, of public figures, for consistancy I must not judge favorably those whose saintly mien lets me think them better than most.
On an unrelated topic, I'm surprised no one ventured into the "National Enquirer Immunization" angle. The NYTimes public editor pretty much said that a major factor in their coverage decision was that this story was brought up by a tabloid, so they could not discredit themselves by being seen to look into it. That, frankly, is nuts. In a Wag the Dog vein, one could imagine a daring figure arranging for their worst problem stories to break in tabloids, just to arrange that the portion of the media than any elitist will confess to crediting will ignore them.
