Fake Plastic News

Kleiman has more info on the rumor that a certain former-alcoholic-turned-world leader has returned to the bottle:

But what's striking is that this is the first time any mention of the President's reported return to the bottle has surfaced in the Big Media, eighteen months after it became common Washington gossip. Even a fairly circumstantial, though unsourced, National Enquirer story -- picked up by Randi Rhodes -- wasn't enough to surmount whatever invisible barrier lies between gossip and what passes for mainstream journalism these days.

As the bogus "Kerry intern affair" story illusrated, the right wing can use Drudge and the Murdoch press to shoehorn even very weak stories into memehood; reporters who wouldn't have touched the original story can report on the reporting. There's no comparable mechanism on the other side of the aisle.

Moreover, with rare exceptions (e.g., the John Tower affair) the press seems very reluctant to mention heavy drinking by officials, even when it's widely known. Ted Kennedy's drinking gets an occasional mention, but I'd bet that most of Pat Moynihan's constiuents never knew their brilliant senator faced a permanent battle with the bottle. If Gary Hart's drinking problem has ever made the newspapers, I've missed it, though his behavior in the Donna Rice affair made it pretty obvious. Those in the know understood that the frequent media references to Bill Weld's "laziness" as Governor of Massachusetts referred to his persistent difficulty in keeping himself vertical after lunch, but again the voters didn't. Even foreign leaders get the same delicate treatment: Boris Yeltsin's "erratic" behavior was in fact quite regular and predictable, once vodka was entered into the equation.

I'm not sure why this should be so. Under either of the two prevalent beliefs about alcoholism -- that it's a moral failing on the one hand or a disease on the other -- it's hard to think of a reason to be so secretive about it when it afflicts public officials. It isn't mere self-protection on the part of the press: half a century ago, political reporters were as hard-drinking as the politicians they covered -- the alcoholic reporter became cliche of fiction and the stage -- but today's press corps tends to be quite abstemious.

Still, the convention is what it is: reporting on heavy drinking by politicians is not done. Any reporter who asked Scott McClellan "Is it true that the President is drinking again?" would no doubt be ostracized.

Yet it's a question worth asking; when someone with a history of severe alcohol abuse goes back to drinking under stress, that's bad news for him and his family. When that someone wields the power of the Presidency, that's potentially bad news for billions of people.

I don't know that the correct answer to that question is "Yes;" I was told so eighteen months ago by two people who had no reason to deceive me, but neither was speaking from first-hand knowledge, and the National Inquirer is the National Inquirer.

But I'd like to know, one way or the other. Wouldn't you?