Health

2009-11-24T05:43:00.000-08:00

HEART'S PROBLEM & OURS

THERE ARE several questions that silt upin the wake of Tailgate, as they are now calling it. The first is the question of the Miami Herald: Did it, or did it not, exceed the bounds of legitimate investigative curiosity when it set up its cameras outside Senator Hart's townhouse? Here is one view of the Herald's deportment: "When I read about the Miami Herald story on Gary Hart, I felt degraded in my profession'--the view of Anthony Lewis, of the New York Times. Now, everyone of course knows that Mr. Hart specifically challenged the press to bird-dog his activity ("They would be very bored'). But this defense of the Herald's activity is not even adduced by someone pleading a different view of the affair: "The Herald acted on the basis of information from a confidential source that turned out to be substantially accurate. It did so in a larger context . . . that, not philandering, is the issue . . . This issue [Hart's character], reflecting centrally on the candidate's judgment and integrity, is one that many, perhaps most, journalists would have pursued. Sordid fishing expeditions for scandal are one thing; this story concerns the public interest.' That is the view of the New York Times, from which we infer that Mr. Lewis is degraded by his association with the Times.
The second question is factual. Did Mr.Hart and Miss Rice, as the British so demurely put it, have at it? "If I'm on a jury I vote guilty on circumstantial evidence,' writes columnist Sandy Grady of the New York Daily News. And we remind ourselves that it is by circumstantial evidence that most felons are convicted. On the other hand, Mr. Hart says flatly: I did not do it.
Question: Why doesn't someone proposea truth test? We could use a lie detector, and perhaps truth serum. Gary Hart, lying down in one amphitheater (His), Donna Rice in an adjacent amphitheater (Hers), surrounded by our Free Press, interpreting the zigs and zags on the polygraph chart, and the verbal emanations from the truth drug. For some reason, the candidate has not suggested a truth test, nor has the Miami Herald. But that would be one way to go.

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