Thursday, March 20, 2008

Tom Fiedler, Gary Hart and political sex

Our guest speaker today will be Tom Fiedler, retired executive editor of the Miami Herald, who led the Herald's coverage of Gary Hart and Donna Rice in 1987. I could not have imagined how appropriate the timing would be when I asked Fiedler to speak: We are now being deluged with political sex scandals, from former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, to current New York governor David Paterson, to new revelations about former New Jersey governor James McGreevey.

There are three relevant pieces of reading for today's discussion:
  • Joan Vennochi's op-ed column in today's Boston Globe, in which she interviews Fiedler about the Paterson matter and under what circumstances the media ought to pry into the sex lives of politicians.
  • The American Heritage summary of the Gary Hart drama that I shared with you on Monday.
  • A longer piece published by the Miami Herald on May 10, 1987, that details the stake-out that led to Hart's being confronted. (Actually, this seems to be the top of a still longer article.)
I'll give you a chance to read Vennochi's column in class. Please be prepared to have a dialogue with Fiedler. The public rightly has high expectations when it comes to the personal behavior of our political leaders. On the other hand, there's a serious case to be made that it's nobody's business as long as public money isn't being spent.

Then again, the question of whether public money was involved is an issue with all three of the current gubernatorial sex scandals.

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