"Public Editor", Private Interets: English Makes Herself Redundant

"Once again, Cosh's Law of Newspaper Ombudsmen holds true: we are supposed to believe they exist to defend the interests of the reader against those of the newspaper, but their actual job is precisely the opposite." I have a low opinion of this fellow, but there's no denying he anticipated the incoherent mush churned out today by English, whose argument seems to be: There was a time when the then mostly male press corps would have turned a blind eye to reporting salacious details of the private lives of public figures (EFL Trans.: We used to have standards). For better or worse...there seem to be no secrets and little is off limits.(We no longer have any standards and we are going to use passive tense to evade our responsibility). Some academic studies suggest that the increased number of women in the press corps has played a major role in changing these standards of coverage. (But it's good not to have standards, because men are bad and women are good, Star can employ condom-sniffers, I can hold this job pleading condom-sniffers' case, and Taber's title can change from social gossip to "political reporter").  As a result, the Star and all media no longer think that the judge was wrong to mention Lisa McLeod's family situation in weighing her evidence, or that Belinda Stronach's personal life was irrelevant, etc.. So as to avoid gender bias, we will now also highlight all the personal details of women's lives whose reporting would previously have been considered irrelevant and sexist, like their marital status, their sexual history, how pregnancy and children make them less reliable and productive workers, as do their biology (menstruation, PMS, etc.), etc..

English did not write that last part, of course, but she should have, since that is the implication of her logic. Those who employ gender-based arguments to justifiy the Star's conduct have unwittingly reopened the door to reporting on public figures' personal lives that can only work against women more than men, as men continue to be, as a gender, in a superior position in status, wealth, power, etc.. If it is fair to claim that there is a public interest in reporting sexual infidelity, as it goes to questions of trust, then the McLeod judge was right, and family situation is legitimate grounds to question reliability & competence. If a mother of two was running for office, or running the TTC, and it was known that she had to spend hours a day looking after her children, tiring her out, making her less effective, and generally reducing the time available to her to devote to her public responsibilities, then the press would be obliged to report all this in sombre, gruesome detail, as they did with Giambrone: "Mother Spends More Time Reading to Kids Than Reading TTC Memos!" That is not the world I want, nor they, I would have thought. I do not want any of this stuff, any misleading biological or family, sexual, personal information used in the public sphere. But it is truly astonishing to read the short-sighted incoherence of many female columnists (Timson: "perhaps"; Wente: "OK 'cause stupid"; English: "mumble mumble Women Good, Men Bad"). Most of them have identified with feminism at one time or another. But they seem incapable, when the fat hits the fire, of being coherent on these matters, and considering the implications of their position. They may think they have brought down one sleazy guy. They don't realise they have put us back into the Mad Men era, cited by English, in coverage of women in public life as well. Fair game? I don't think so. But they seem to. This revanchist view of gender relations has won them a pyrrhic victory. Fools.