Reporting scandals involving public officials is a leading growth industry in the country.
It took 14 months for news of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's form of stress reduction from the rigors of office to reach us. It took one day for his replacement to tell us not only about his extramarital affairs but his wife's.
And as if that weren't enough to make one dizzy, there was the chauffeur of James McGreevey, the gay former governor of New Jersey, who had resigned over another sex scandal. As the driver tells it, he, McGreevey and the governor's wife had a three-way affair while McGreevey was still in office, often getting together after visits to TGI Friday's.
What fun.
The next few days there was more food for thought, if not indigestion. Spitzer's replacement, David Paterson, was telling a TV interviewer that he also was a drug user in his youth, having had a since-ended passion for pot.
What's next in the way of news? Will we be hearing that he's really a woman and that Spitzer had been dating him?
And who's next, I found myself wondering? Who will be the next hero brought to ground? Dick Cheney? A Cabinet secretary, a senator, a congressman?
The fact of the matter is that if you threw a rock into either chamber of the U.S. Capitol, or the legislature of any state, you would be sure to hit someone who similarly had something to hide, or confess, about some aspect of his or her private life. There's always somebody whose dirty linen is ready to be hung out on the clothesline for us to enjoy.
It's very educational for students of civics and governance. But the existing system of informing the public is appallingly wasteful.
Right now, some of the best and brightest of our investigative journalists are fearlessly looking for tasty morsels to put on our plates without favor to party or ideology. They don't care who gets nailed, as long as it's not Joe Schmo.
The market for scandal is hot. With cable TV networks needing something to ruminate about 24/7; with bloggers reporting anything, no matter how unverifiable, and newspapers hungry for headlines that sell papers, this is the golden age of showing that the governor, the senator, the city councilman have no clothes.
But the duplication of effort, the expenditure of time, energy and money -- especially with newspaper circulations in free fall, necessitating cutbacks in reporting staffs -- is sinful.
