Thursday, September 17, 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- American Politics Journal has maintained, and continues to maintain, the editorial position that efforts to "out" the private conduct of politicians is wrong.

We were highly critical of rumormongering on the part of the Jerusalem Post in the wake of the suicide of Fox News Channel correspondant Sandy Hume.

Likewise, it may surprise some of our readers that we feel that Salon magazine was wrong to publish their expose of a two-decade-plus-old, long-ended affair involving House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde.

It the editorial accompanying the article, the editors of Salon wrote:

"Aren't we fighting fire with fire, descending to the gutter tactics of those we deplore? Frankly, yes. But ugly times call for ugly tactics."

In fact, Salon's own self-admitted ugly tactics yielded the same in return.

In a hastily-called press conference this afternoon, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) announced that the GOP is seeking help from the FBI to look into claims that the White House is behind a "scorched earth" campaign to "intimidate" Republicans.

"We have reason to believe that top aides that have access to the Oval Office have been orchestrating a conspiracy to intimidate members of Congress by using their past lives as an embarrassment to intimidate. That is what we are saying, and we hope FBI Director Louis Freeh looks into this... this could be added to the impeachment inquiry," said the near-apoplectic DeLay.

He then added, "I have no doubt who it is, I just don't have the evidence to prove it and that's why we want the FBI."

Yes, we know -- it sort of reminds us of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland -- sentence first, investigation later.

But this is exactly what Salon should have seen coming by "outing" another high-profile GOP player in the wake of what has happened to Dan Burton and then Helen Chenoweth

This is not to say that we don't also decry the hypocritical sanctimony of Chenoweth, who ran as a hard-right "family values" bandwagoneer -- only to be exposed for her affair as a single woman with an older, more powerful, married Idaho politician, making her a sort of militia-friendly Monica Lewinsky.

And indeed, we are seeing new attacks from hard-righters in the GOP -- aimed at Clinton and his staff, especially Clinton advisor Sid Blumenthal -- which we feel are completely unfounded, designed to pander to hard-right loyalists, and only serve to polarize the situation further.

Blumenthal is, after all, an easy target himself -- there is no love lost between Blumenthal and the GOP or the press -- and that's not to mention the fact that he's rubbed a number of Clinton's own senior staffers the wrong way. He is reputed to treat highly partisan, harsh critics of the White House with little verbal mercy -- a reputation that has earned him the moniker "Sid Vicious" in certain circles.

But Blumenthal himself has also been the target of a "scorched earth" smear campaign: earlier this year, internet bottom-feeder Matt Drudge ran a malicious and false story that Blumenthal had beaten on his wife on the Drudge web site and emailing list -- a story which he was forced to retract and for which Blumenthal is suing him.

Drudge could probably settle the suit quickly and quietly by revealing his source, but adamantly refuses to -- could it be a source a little "too" close to the Office of Independent Counsel? Or is it in line with the buzz in New York media circles -- that a Wall Street Journal staffer passed it on to him?

From our point of view, one of the few differences between Drudge and Salon is that the latter thoroughly sourced and painstakingly corroborated their story -- to the point of including an embarrassing photo of Hyde with the "other woman" on their home page.

Almost immediately after the story was posted last evening, a number of House republicans and professional right-wing spinmeisters attacked the article as a "White House smear," essentially claiming that Salon was acting in concert with -- if not as a mouthpiece for -- the Clinton White House.

Within less than an hour, Salon editor David Talbot had spoken to CNN -- pointing out not only that Salon has been frequently critical of the White House, but that the source of the story was a 72-year-old Floridian who had approached Salon after over fifty other press outlets, including major newspapers and magazines, had rejected running the admittedly "ugly" story.

Yet the story backfired -- not on Salon, but on the White House.

It succeeded in prompting this latest panic attack by DeLay, a GOP member seeking to deflect attention from the story while pointing a finger of blame once again, and unfairly, at the White House.

Yes, of course DeLay looks foolish -- and has in fact gone too far for his own good in his calls for yet another investigations.

There are already those who have called the refusal by other press to publish the story an orchestrated effort by the mainstream press to quash the tale.

That may be true -- but releasing this, or any other "scorched earth" story, makes those responsible for publication look, rightly or wrongly, like partisans who would stoop as low as, say, an out-of-control prosecutor out to politically assassinate the president.

And such stories do nothing to kill the misguided notion cultural conservatives are trying to foist on the nation -- that private and public conduct are inseparable.

They are separate issues. They should remain that way.

About the only thing we can say in defense of Talbot is that he was a little too easy in his comments to the press last night and today on those parties maliciously accusing Salon of being a Clinton mouthpiece (MSNBC actually said at one point that Salon "has been closely tied to the White House" in their half-hourly news updates). He should have demanded an apology and retraction from them.

The White House has taken the high road in the "scorched earth" issue; a spokesman said today that they "will fire any employee who fires an attack on the personal, private life" of Republican politicians.

Good for them, we say.

And DeLay's angry call for yet ANOTHER investigation amounts to a form of "scorched earth" rumormongering that may well backfire on two counts: first, the public does not exactly seem to have gotten out the pitchforks and torches to march on the White House and demand Clinton throw in the towel (in fact, it's looking like Ken "Porn" Starr's report has had the reverse effect, turning Clinton into a victim of blackmailed "perjury" and political attack); the second, and more unfortunate, result is that this sort of uncorroborated claim amounts to an invitation to the press and political enemies to dig the dirt on DeLay himself.

We think that any private misconduct on DeLay's part will only serve to divert attention from public misdeeds by the Majority Whip, including receiving support from Chinese factory owners who set up facilities on American islands in the Pacific, steal jobs from American citizens by importing practically slave labor from China, and have schmoozed DeLay to help keep the minimum wage well below that of the 50 states.

And the many Republican voices who have made specious claims of "scorched earth" by the White House, especially DeLay, are misdirecting their rage.

They should direct it at the owners and editors of the papers that publish salacious tales of private misconduct, including The Indianapolis Star, who aired Burton's dirty laundry. Isn't The Star tied to the Quayle family?

Some of it should be directed at Newt Gingrich and the GOP leadership -- for allowing scandal-mania to get so out of control within his party that it has backfired on two House committee chairmen.

But the one person who should take the biggest drubbing is the one who poisoned the waters of political responsibility by dumping a caustic, pornographic smear of Bill Clinton's personal life onto Congress, the media and the Internet -- the man who made infidelity and adultery disguised as an investigation into high crimes of state the real issue -- Kenneth Starr.

If DeLay's really as distressed as Henry Hyde, Helen Chenoweth and Dan Burton must be, the four of them should corner the doughboy and pummel him to within an inch of his life.

They'd walk away feeling a whole lot better -- plus, their job approval numbers would be higher than Clinton's!

-- The Editors