Jack Shafer at Slate.com thinks there's a double standard at work in the press' refusal to run the story of John Edwards' recent late night visit to a Los Angeles hotel. Shafer thinks that, though the Edwards story is not exactly analogous to Senator Larry Craig's airport restroom solicitations, still there's a huge disparity between the way the press played Craig's homosexual peccadillo and the almost total news blackout on Edwards' possible tryst and illegitimate child.
Shafer thinks that the explanation is, in part, that:
[The press is] observing a double standard that says homo-hypocrisy is indefensible but that hetero-hypocrisy deserves an automatic bye.
That may be part of it, but there's another big difference between Craig and Edwards. Craig is a Republican and Edwards is a Democrat. Republicans are held to a much higher moral standard by the media than are Democrats, and when they fall the media is much more enthusiastic as they close for the kill than they are when a Democrat is caught en flagrante delicto.
At any rate, it looks like Edwards' hopes of being named Obama's veep have pretty much evaporated.
RLC