For months and months the John Edwards affair was relegated to beyond Siberia at the New York Times. (Siberia is defined for you hicks here.)

Only six days ago, a bunch of Times guys explained to ombudsman Clark Hoyt why this was not a story for the NYT:

“I’m not going to recycle a supermarket tabloid’s anonymously sourced story,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor.

Then yesterday, a bruising Edwards story turned up on page one of the New York Times:

Lawyers’ Ties Hint at Extent of Hiding Edwards’s Affair

The Edwardses’ old-fashioned attempt to cover up the “mistake” of the golden boy by paying off both the mother of the child (usually a “bad girl” from the wrong side of the tracks) and the hapless guy who “volunteers” to take the hit for the golden boy reminds me of a whole lot of bad movies from the 1960s, or of Peyton Place.

This non-performance of their duties is beyond pathetic from the entire MSM.

Kaus has more, as always. He’s got ‘tude, too.

Meanwhile, MSM reporters–having deemed it unnecessary to report on whether a leading, active Democratic pol, third-place presidential candidate and likely cabinet official cheated on his ill wife while making a big show of his loyalty and then lied about it to the public –have found an angle sufficiently tedious to be worth discussing with their readers: a possible campaign finance violation!

I wish I didn’t have to look at the Georgia vs. Russia situation through the prism of domestic politics—or, even worse, culture war—but there has been a veritable stampede of apologists for Russia, which I find disturbing.

Jeff Weintraub agrees:

Thomas de Waal is probably right to offer the plague-on-both-their-houses judgment that “The immediate trigger of this conflict [was] both Moscow’s and Tbilisi’s cynical disregard for the well-being of these people” in South Ossetia. But given the way that the war has developed since then, the Presidents of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were also quite right to declare in a joint statement that Russia’s attack on Georgia was the latest manifestation of an “imperialist and revisionist” policy aimed at restoring Russian hegemony over what the Russians call their “near abroad.” That is the heart of the matter, and discussions about whether Saakashvili is really a good guy or a bad guy, a wise leader or a foolish one, sufficiently or insufficiently democratic (compared to which other leaders in the region?), are really just distractions or evasions.

By itself, none of this tells us what would be the best policies for the US and Europe to follow in response to this crisis and its fallout. The immediate response of many so-called “realists”–spread from left to right across the political spectrum–has been that we should simply let Russia go ahead and re-establish its hegemony over neighboring post-Soviet states, since doing anything else would be more costly and dangerous than it’s worth. I disagree, but that’s at least an arguable position.

What I find more objectionable are hypocritical efforts to obscure this cynical (but hypothetically realistic and unsentimental) conclusion in clouds of pseudo-sophisticated and pseudo-moralizing rhetoric and sloganeering. The fact that this has been the knee-jerk reaction of too many alleged “progressives” has been depressing, though unfortunately not entirely surprising. Many of the same people who (correctly) condemn great-power bullying and aggression against small countries when the US does it, and who fulminate against “disproportionate” military responses when Israel supposedly undertakes them, jump to make excuses for both when Russia is the one doing it.

So many people still showering Russia with love.

Andrew Sullivan hit on the aesthetics of the campaign’s last few weeks when he suggested that Obama is fading.

Michael Crowley also discusses the poor aesthetics of the Obama campaign:

‘Strong and Wrong’ Beats ‘On Vacation’?

Josh Marshall is understandably annoyed at today’s Times story on how the coincidence of Obama’s vacation and the Georgian crisis allowed McCain to seize the spotlight this week and show off his foreign policy “credentials.” It’s annoying because it’s largely about stagecraft and doesn’t get at who would make a better president. However I do think the piece captures what you might call the aesthetic of the campaign this past week. Liberal blog criticism aside, McCain has had a prominent and strong presence in the news while Obama has been fairly invisible.

Guess what? It’s not all about the aesthetics. The Messiah’s Democratic allies have much more at stake, of course, and so they’re much more direct in making demands of the presumptive nominee of their party:

These Democrats — 15 governors, members of Congress and state party leaders — say Mr. Obama has yet to convert his popularity among many Americans into solutions to crucial electoral challenges: showing ownership of an issue, like economic stewardship or national security; winning over supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; and minimizing his race and experience level as concerns for voters.

Mr. Obama has run for the last 18 months as the candidate of hope. Yet party leaders — while enthusiastic about Mr. Obama and his state-by-state campaign operations — say he must do more to convince the many undecided Democrats and independents that he would address their financial anxieties rather than run, by and large, as an agent of change — given that change, they note, is not an issue.

“I particularly hope he strengthens his economic message — even Senator Obama can speak more clearly and specifically about the kitchen-table, bread-and-butter issues like high energy costs,” said Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio. “It’s fine to tell people about hope and change, but you have to have plenty of concrete, pragmatic ideas that bring hope and change to life.”

Some of us have been saying this for a while. Indeed I remember another contender for the Democratic nomination saying it quite loud and clear.

The Washington Post clarifies matters in an editorial on the “state of play”*** in Georgia:

Mythmaking in Moscow
Georgia wasn’t committing ‘genocide,’ and the Russians aren’t keeping the peace.

That’s just in case you weren’t paying attention. Here are the details, with “assertions of fact” that are false in the WaPo’s original italics:

Georgia committed genocide against the people of South Ossetia. This charge was initially leveled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and has been taken up by others, including President Dmitry Medvedev, who on Thursday came up with the interesting formulation that South Ossetians “had lived through a genocide.” Mr. Medvedev has referred to “thousands” killed, and Russian officials frequently have cited 2,000 South Ossetians killed (out of a population of 70,000). They have said Georgia razed the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. These purported depredations are given as the main motivation for Russian military intervention. … Independent journalists back up the account provided by Human Rights Watch. The Wall Street Journal, for example, yesterday reported finding Tskhinvali, where most of the fighting took place, mostly intact and with “little evidence of a high death toll.”

Russians in Georgia are “peacekeepers” on a humanitarian mission to protect civilians. This formulation has alternated with repeated Russian statements, repeatedly disproved, that Russian forces were not in Georgia at all, or were leaving, or were about to leave. In fact, journalists, human rights observers and others have documented that Russian troops have ranged far into Georgia, including the city of Gori and the port of Poti. They have razed, mined and looted Georgian army bases and destroyed civilian houses and apartment buildings.

———

*** It only looks like theater. The stakes are real enough.

Observed from a certain perspective—as geopolitical theater, that is—the situation in Georgia looks pretty much the way Abe Greenwald describes it [e.a.]:

If [Georgia deliberately staged a provocation of Russia during the Olympics in order to call attention to itself] it is certainly the most cynical bit of statecraft employed by any present-day democracy. (In any event, there is no doubt that Saakashvili is looking for our sympathy now.) But did it work?

Georgia has our attention (or is sharing it with John Edwards). [Since that's true, it means the stagecraft worked. *** ed.] McCain, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush have issued assorted statements on the matter, French president Nicolas Sarkozy has dashed through the motions of European diplomacy, and President Bush has sent Condoleezza Rice dashing after him. Additionally, American Navy vessels are heading toward the Black Sea–to deliver aid. But a week after Russian tanks and jets set Georgia ablaze–and three days since the announcement of a ceasefire–Russian troops patrol Georgian cities with virtual impunity. No nation has defended Georgia and no Georgian ally has even given her the means to defend herself. Moreover, no agreements have been drafted explicitly securing Georgia’s territorial integrity. In this way, Saakashvili got the West dead wrong. [Oops! Like I said: the stagecraft worked. But from this description of reality, it looks like Georgia lost. Maybe stagecraft isn't all it's cracked up to be! --ed.]

Greenwald also draws an interesting conclusion from these still-ongoing events (and pseudo-events—i.e., the photo ops and meme-planting opportunities that constitute a propaganda war) [e.a.]:

Victim status doesn’t get you what it used to. There was a time when an American friend or a strategically critical state under attack got more than color commentary from the White House and a boat full of Ace bandages. When Russia rolled into Afghanistan in 1979 we didn’t give Afghans our sympathy; we gave them guns–big ones. When Saddam tried to annex Kuwait, we went in and sent him back home. Today a real invasion will get a symbolic vote, a high profile condemnation, and a Facebook group.

Hmmm. Can this possibly be true? Do world events impinge on us Americans only as the cartoon representations that both the blogosphere and the MSM traffic in? Does the violence in Georgia and South Ossetia touch us, or do we view this merely (if we view it at all) as a media event—fodder for blogospheric and watercooler chat: “news,” information, entertainment, amusement, gossip, conspiracy theories?

One commenter presents an alternate view:

This article is based on a huge, unproven assumption, that Georgia was trying to get victim status. Russia wants control of that pipeline going into Western Europe. Why? So Putin can control Europe. I think this analysis is amazingly simple minded (leftist).

Who started what will come out as the facts become known. The why is clear. Russia wants control of Western Europe’s oil and gas supplies and invaded Georgia to secure that control.

I certainly agree that most of the “analysis” on offer—whether from the MSM or from the blogosphere—is ignorant, no matter how well intended. Because of the propaganda- and cyber-war aspects of this conflict (not to mention the fact that it’s not yet over), we simply don’t know much of anything.

Instead, we are left to speculate about our own reactions, and to consider the reactions of others around the world. Greenwald also writes:

But it’s the old America that friends and states with democratic aspirations remember, and they continue in vain to appeal to us. I am currently in Azerbaijan and if I’ve been asked once I’ve been asked a hundred times: “What does America think about the Armenian occupation of our country?” Whether it’s a reporter or a graduate student doing the asking, their desperation is a little heartbreaking and I answer honestly: “You’re [sic] conflict isn’t even a blip on our radar.”

Yep, that’s pretty much true. That conflict isn’t on our radar … except as it relates to our domestic politics.

update: so sophisticated and nuanced is David Remnick in his views that I can’t quite figure out which side he comes down on, but he does make an important point:

Putin is not Hitler or Stalin; he is not even Leonid Brezhnev. He is what he is, and that is bad enough.

What Putin is, of course, is a cold-blooded killer, albeit a smoother one than what we’re used to from Russian autocrats:

[H]e is the autocrat who calls on the widow of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

So what? He is still a cold-blooded killer. And his ascendant Russia is a scary kinda place, worth keeping an eye on.

———-

*** The stagecraft worked in that it caught and grabbed our attention. But stagecraft is a tactic.

If you’re using a tactic, you are—admit it or not—at war. It’s best to admit it, and then to study it so that you get good at it (as, for example, Barack Obama did by studying Saul Alinsky and putting the methods he learned into practice.)