Doug MacEachern, an editorial writer for the Arizona Republic writes:

The Clintons (Bill, especially) got a free media pass for too long. But there is something unhealthy in the current media backlash against them, notably in Todd Purdum’s profile of Bill in the current Vanity Fair. It is an epic guessing game about his post-presidential sleeping habits, based on unnamed sources. It is punishment journalism, intended not to enlighten, but to harm. And, as conservatives know, it can be turned against anyone, any time.

Note that MacEachern summarizes Purdum’s piece as “an epic guessing game about his post-presidential sleeping habits,” distracted, like the rest of us, from those other important issues like money and campaign missteps that Purdum also pursued, if less energetically, in his article. MacEachern—aptly, I think—dubs Purdum’s piece “vengeful journalism.” And actually, I remember one moment in the piece that came off as petty personal grudge-holding journalism (minus the journalism). The part where Purdum reported that as president “Clinton often could not show grace in the smallest ways” and provided, as proof, the complaint that Clinton “dithered about where and when to go on vacation, so that aides and Secret Service agents”—and White House reporters, presumably—“could not plan their own.” Similarly, Clinton “declined to release aides and reporters who had waited around all through a pointless Saturday of duty while he made up his mind whether to play golf (a game at which he has been known to cheat).” Is it possible to read those sentences and not also hear I’m still pissed that Clinton—that selfish, cheater-at-golf—spoiled my summer of 1996 Martha’s Vineyard weekend getaway?

Talk about “unhealthy.” Not to mention “distracting from worthy questions.”

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