The ‘too much information’ campaign

September 23, 2007

The New York Times laments the fact today that today’s presidential candidates are sharing too much information about themselves.

Barack Obama gets morning breath. Elizabeth Edwards felt her rib pop during some good loving with her husband, John. And Rudolph W. Giuliani, by the testimony of no less than his third wife, is a really-high-testosterone guy.

Must we go there?

Too Much Information is a concept rarely honored in modern presidential politics. In a YouTube, cellphone photo, I’m-posting-it-on-the-Web world, no secret is safe, no taboo assumed, no limit observed. If a candidate, a grumpy spouse or a resentful second cousin once removed is foolish enough to talk about it — whatever “it” happens to be — that banality is pretty much guaranteed to be broadcast worldwide and discussed on a thousand blogs.

Or in 1,000-word pieces for the paper of record.

The Times piece seems to revel in its own irony. It details revelations about Obama’s dirty socks, Giuliani’s testosterone, and Elizabeth Edwards’ rib (apparently, it was injured during sex), and then complains that we shouldn’t know any of this.

“This sort of diary tell-all has gotten so out of control,” said Susan K. Abrams, owner of Political Icon, an image development company. “These details are not that fabulously interesting.”

I couldn’t agree more. Given that the NYT has run lengthy reports on Hillary Clinton’s cleavage and John Edwards’ hair, are we to assume that today’s piece is something of a mea culpa? That trivial revelations about candidates’ personal lives won’t get lengthy treatments from the paper anymore?

They forgot that Freddie D. Thompson smells like cheap cologne and cigars.

  • This is the kind of reporting that you get when the campaigns are covered in the manner discussed in this morning’s “Sunday Discussion Group.”

  • notice, folks, it’s all about the testosterone…a way to appeal to the white guys some dems want sooooo much to vote for them. I don’t see any embarassing titillations from Bill and Hillary

  • I think there’s something to be said for knowing the candidates are as human as the population they want to lead, but at what point do the personal revelations begin to eclipse matters of real substance? And when the content of what is getting reported is so trivial it begins to resemble Entertainment Tonight and People magazine, it means a large number of people will be basing their votes on the same kind of “who would you rather have a beer with?” decision-making process that may have brought us 2 terms of George W. Bush.

    I think the NYT is being fairly disingenous, managing to salt its piece questioning the value of TMI with exactly that kind of information – just in case you might have missed it elsewhere.

  • Over 10 years ago;
    1996 Knight Lecture: Ellen Goodman. Politics: Up Close and Too Personal

    My opinion:

    In 2008, I’d sell my vote on eBay to the highest bidder if I could…
    Of course, it is against the law…
    You can only buy votes in America…
    Not sell them.

    That’s why candidates are willing to share their facebook secrets.
    It’s a way of allowing customers to peek at their underwear…
    And kick their knickers.

    Yeah its kinky:

    Tits = titillation.
    Titillation = talent

    It’s all a hook.
    All a sham.
    All a promo.
    All a come on.
    It encourages Johnny and Jane to make an emotional purchase:

    “He’s comfy in his own skin… I’d could share a Bud with him, talk about huntin’ dogs, and denigrate negros and illegals and elites. I wonder who his favorite Nascar driver is?”

    Bah humbug.
    I’ve had enough of Bush fart jokes to last me until Florida sinks from global warming…
    Anybody want to buy my vote?

    [Insert famous Cheney quote here.]

  • Re: Edwards sex

    This is the first I’ve heard of that implication.
    According to this San Diego Tribune article

    “[Elizabeth] strained herself trying to move shelves… When her husband came to hug her a short time later, it was a “big hug that felt uncomfortable,” she said.
    “I wrenched in a way, and he immediately heard a pop,” she said

    That’s not sex. That’s tragic, actually.
    After a day on the campaign trail, John Edwards comes home and needs a hug from his wife. They embrace, and after their embrace, they learn of Elizabeth’s re-surfaced cancer. That’s not saucy. That’s just tragic.

    So how on earth can the NYT imply that the popped rib happened during sex?

    Sensationalizing Elizabeth’s cancer is not only bad journalism, it’s downright despicable.

  • yan

    That’s very sad news. What kind of choice must Edwards make now?

    I hope the Times prints a retraction.

  • It’s just a feature of our culture in general that I feel was the outgrowth of ’80s talk shows. Somewhere along the line, TV interviewers completely lost their manners and more or less decided there was nothing rude to ask people. People on TV followed suit and offered a lot of info about themselves. The original root of it is probably modern psychoanalysis, in which the analyst asks the patient to provide pretty frank information about him or herself in order to diagnose the problem. It probably leaked to the cocktail party set through novels (written by the upperclass- could afford psychoanalysis and education / social connections that would give them access to psychological ideas) and pop psychology, and people at large proliferated it when the TV programs socialized them to have no boundaries, and they repeated the behavior on their websites and YouTube videos and such. I think it’s ok to be frank about some stuff and it’s damaging to have too much manners that completely closes off discussion of some things, but I think it should be a flexible door that people just know should stay closed a lot of the time, but is appropriate to ask to open at others. I agree that this particular stuff in the political campaign context is a little too much. It’s tiresome and it makes one lament that people don’t take boundaries for granted anymore, and instead they take disclosure for granted. You can expect people you don’t really know to expect you to volunteer any kind of compromising info about yourself, like they were your 6th grade best-friend, and you can expect people to think it’s ok for people to ask you stuff like that.

  • yan

    I just noticed that article is dated in March of this year, so the latest Edwards flap isn’t related to this article.

  • It was a backlash against the heavy censoring of George Bush’s background during his first campaign in ’00.

  • And these are the lengths the media goes to to avoid looking at all the reprehensible acts of Bush, Cheney, et al? Sounds really f-ing desperate if you asked me.

  • Hi anney,

    I realize the article I quoted was from March, but I believe the rib-popping incident cited in the San Diego article is the same as the incident cited in NYT

    From the NYT:
    Elizabeth Edwards felt her rib pop during some good loving with her husband,

    From San Diego (the author actually writes for WaPo):
    “I wrenched in a way, and he immediately heard a pop,” she said…X-ray scans indicated that she had a fracture on her left side and “something suspicious” on the right side of her rib cage [cancer]

    NYT does not further explain the bone-breaking incident that they cheekily cite.

    Unless Elizabeth Edwards has broken even more ribs since that day (and I don’t think she has), I’m quite certain that NYT is talking about the same broken rib and her diagnosis of cancer.

    Does that sound reasonable?

  • Sometime ago they published an article “wondering what the sex life of Bill and Hillary was like”. And they put it on the front page.. On the NYT and not the National Enquirer. They are “just coasting” on their past reputation and it is a down hill coast. Sometime ago they a hired perfume editor according to the previous Public Editor. You won’t find much news in the NYT these days. Standards? Not there anymore. Have you seen any true investigative journalism, something you want to read, save and quote? Not since Judy Miller left, oh yes……We need to realize that the newspapers are killing themselves. The NYT doesn’t have standards. They have a few good people but this paper is going downhill fast. Sorry.

  • To be fair… The article appeared in the Sunday magazine in the style/fashion section, not in the front (news section). Frou-frou and shallow treatment is what I’d expect from that source, which is why I don’t waste my time reading it. The magazine’s article on Supreme Justice Stevens was, likewise, more oriented towards the “human interest” angle than “issues” angle.

    The NYT article of interest, IMO, should have been Hoyt’s (the Public Editor) letter. In it, he says that a) MoveOn should have paid full price for its ad: $142K+, not the $65K it paid (clerical mistake on the part of the Times, apparently) and b) the ad should not have been accepted in the first place, because it’s offensive. MoveOn’s response is interesting also: it said it’ll be wiring the extra money pronto, remained neutral on the issue of “offensive” and is curious whether Giuliani is gonna pony up the extra 77K as well. Since Giuliani didn’t rake in .5mil on the strength of the hoo-hah, he’s remaining neutral on the matter of extra payment (ie he’s holding onto *his* “sweetheart deal” of which he had accused MoveOn), and standing firm on the isue of offensiveness.

    Now *that* is a riveting story… 🙂

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