"People are more interested in sex than they are in telecommunications lobbying"

A snapshot of the total lunar eclipse of the Full Snow Moon high in the eastern sky taken from the front porch at Chelsea-by-the-Sea just after 10 o'clock this evening (flanked by Saturn, left). According to MrEclipse.com, "while the moon remains completely within Earth's umbral shadow, indirect sunlight still manages to reach and illuminate it. However, this sunlight must first pass deep through the Earth's atmosphere, which filters out most of the blue colored light. The remaining light is a deep red or orange."

"It doesn't back up the insinuations," newsman Bill Sammon is telling Hannity & Colmes re the National Inquirer New York Times story that's eclipsed Michelle Obama's does-she-or-doesn't-she-love-this-country scandalette. "NOW THAT HE'S SECURED NOMINATION: NYT DOWNLOADS ON MCCAIN," screams the Drudge Report in red all caps. The London Times explains:

John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was last night [Feb 21 NYT front page] romantically linked to a 40-year-old female political lobbyist and accused of granting her clients political favours.

Mr McCain, 71, fiercely denied a report in the New York Times which stated that eight years ago, during his first run for the White House, his aides were so concerned about his relationship with Vicki Iseman that they blocked her access to him to "protect the candidate from himself".

Mr McCain and Ms Iseman both denied to the newspaper -- which has been sitting on the story for several weeks -- that they had ever had a romantic relationship. The story was first alluded to on the Drudge Report website just before the Iowa and New Hampshire nomination contests, but after frantic lobbying by Mr McCain and his aides at the time, the New York Times did not publish it then.

The Gray Lady's sources are identified only as "a former campaign adviser" and "a Senate aide" who spoke "on the condition of anonymity":

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

Convincing, huh? But when did the newspaper of record ever try to confuse us with the facts? An exasperated Robert Bennett -- the DC power lawyer hired by McCain to mount what Drudge describes as "a bold defense against charges of giving special treatment to a lobbyist!" -- was on Hannity & Colmes earlier this evening quoting Mark Twain's "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," but columnist and senior editor of Newsweek Jonathan Alter on MSNBCs Countdown with Keith Olbermann [We never watch Olbermann at home!] says the story won't have legs:

Let's face it. People are more interested in sex than they are in telecommunications lobbying. You have to either have some kind of incriminating physical evidence or one of the parties coming forward and saying there was some kind of sexual contact. On the other hand the [being-in-bed-with lobbyists angle] may be helpful for Obama, who is working on a theme of John McCain as hypocritical.

So much heat, so little light.

Update: Megan McArdle subbing at Instapundit:

[Anderson Cooper] of CNN notes "This may end up being a story about the New York Times as much as about John McCain." One does kind of wonder why they're breaking an eight year-old story now.

Indeed.

Comments

[goomp]

A great photo of the eclipse of the moon. Here's hoping the readership of the NYT continues to fall as more and more people become tired of its managed news. "All the news that is not fit to print"?