As I noted, I was not just talking about LBO seizing on the article for discussion but the much broader media and Internet discussion that had already been going on long before we began chewing on it. You took the column I wrote as an assault on Doug or yourself when the explicit topic of the column was really the media and the "public opinion elite" which dwells on scandals rather than substantive politics.
You dismissed the "boring" politics of the piece and therefore missed who was really being criticized. Ignoring the sexual politics, my argument was that there is a tendency for the media and elite to discredit people only on personal failings, while urging respectability and political confirmation for those able to avoid scandal, no matter how extreme their political views since the latter makes such less interesting copy.
-- Nathan Newman