Hypocrisy

Virginia congressman quits campaign amid rumors

Judging by the prominence of the placement of this story on the major media sites, no one really wants to tackle it; they're happy to bury the AP report somewhere on their site, but nothing more. Why not? A Republican who supported the Federal Marriage Amendment drops his reelection bid in the face of a tape of him calling a gay sex line trying to meet another man for a casual encounter and that's not news, but when a group of veterans puts together a smear campaign to bring down a fellow vet they can dominate the news cycle for more than a week? There are a variety of rules for deciding when something is newsworthy, I know, but whether something is true or not undoubtedly ranks near the top. You'd think that in the wake of the McGreevey affair this would be considered a pretty big deal--yet another politician forced to leave office because he might be gay. Rather than dealing with the allegations, as McGreevey did, Rep. Ed Shrock is simply dropping his Congressional career. Isn't that kind of response to the mere suggestion that you're gay worthy of at least a link on CNN's home page?

Something tells me Shrock won't be the last "outing" of this campaign. These things come in threes...