I urge you to read the article in full, it's short and worth reading.
Primarily, the big hub-bub over Mark Sanford's indiscretions (or betrayal of his sacred marriage vows, if you choose) was a well placed kick to an opponent that was down, hoist by his own petard as a "family values" guy. Other than that, it is just sport, in which I, too, have participated. Generally speaking, I don't care much for these Whiskey Tango, holier than thou, family values types.
But as usual, again, this time, it kind of reminds me of a song which is excerpted below:
Laugh everyone at the fool with his heart in his hand
Still, he can't quite understand that he's less than a man
Lost somewhere deep in his shell, there's an ember of pride
Watch how he tries hard to hide that he's dyin' inside
Laugh at his comical tears, as he thinks of the years…
Living just a little
Laughing just a little
Ain't easy
Lyrics by Linda Creed
Our Pryin' Eyes
By JENNIFER GRAHAMBack when we all thought Mark Sanford was channeling Thoreau on the Appalachian Trail, The State newspaper reported that a 23-year-old South Carolinian had been arrested for peering in a woman's apartment on three consecutive nights. He was charged, police said, with "peeping and trespassing."
Later that day, in a glorious stroke of irony, the newspaper engaged in a little peeping and trespassing of its own, splaying the South Carolina governor's personal emails across the Internet, and, in the process, making perpetrators out of us all.
We spied on Mr. Sanford (a public figure) and his paramour (not), just as we peered in the ambulance as Michael Jackson died, just as we thumbed through his autopsy records, just as we look up our neighbors' home prices on Zillow.
Forget swine flu; we have a Peeping Tom pandemic.
The moniker is centuries old. It comes from the story of Lady Godiva, the English noblewoman who, according to legend, agreed to ride naked through the streets of Coventry in the interest of tax relief. While most citizens shut their windows and averted their eyes, a fellow named Tom succumbed to prurience and bored holes in his shutters so he could watch.
The original Peeping Tom at least had enough dignity to gape covertly. Modern-day voyeurs, many of whom appear on cable TV, just throw wide the shutters and leer. And they've had plenty to leer at of late.
Consider The State's beautifully choreographed document dump; the newspaper dribbled out a few tantalizing excerpts June 24, so we'd return the next day for the rest. According to Editor & Publisher, which covers the industry, the newspaper's Web site had the most traffic ever: 1.7 million views the day the emails hit.
Great marketing. Cheesy journalism. And I say this as a former reporter for The State.
Executive Editor Mark Lett defended the mass voyeurism as an exercise in democracy. "Some of the e-mail content is messy and unpleasant, to be sure. But in the end, we chose to publish the e-mails rather than deny citizens information about a man they twice chose to guide the state," Mr. Lett wrote, thus invoking journalism's sacredest of cows, the reader's "right to know."
Surveying recent coverage, we may assume that a rental-car agent in Pamplico, S.C., has the right -- yea, the need -- to know about an Argentine woman's tan lines, the contents of a dead singer's stomach, or the minutiae of anyone's divorce. Clever wordsmiths can justify any revelation, no matter how embarrassing or trite. But newspapers ignore the human cost at their own risk.
When I was a religion reporter for The State, I wrote a lengthy profile of a new pastor at a prominent church. I was nearly finished when I happened to scan the week's property transactions and spotted the price of the pastor's new home. It was far beyond what most journalists could afford.
I idly mentioned this to an editor, and he insisted I include the price in my article. I balked. I thought it too personal and invasive; this was long before Zillow.
No matter: I was overruled by many layers of editors who explained the importance of a pastor's home value and how an exceedingly personal detail was the business of the masses. I was young and needed my job; there was nothing I could do, save resign. So I added the information to my story and called the pastor to warn him. He was, not surprisingly, angry and avoided me for years. And for what? Who was helped by that detail, save the local gossip mill? And will The State's paid circulation rise because of the love letters it published last week?
Newspapers are in decline because of the Internet, but there are few mourners outside of their newsrooms. Too many smart and decent people have had their "Absence of Malice" moments: mornings when they opened their newspapers and saw something written about them that made them want to run through the neighborhood, picking up every newspaper they saw.
Jay Severin is a radio talk-show host in Boston who was recently suspended for incendiary remarks. He once mooed at a female caller who made the mistake of telling him her weight, and he said Mexico's leading exports were women with mustaches and venereal disease. But Mr. Severin said that not only would he not read Mr. Sanford's emails on the air -- as many of his colleagues have done -- but he would not read them himself.
Hear, hear. Offered a look out the peephole, at least one man deliberately averted his eyes.
And the original Peeping Tom? He was, according to legend, struck dead for his crime. Purveyors of peeping, take note.
Ms. Graham is a writer in the suburbs of Boston.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W11
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