Super-source for scandal

Reporting scandals involving public officials is a leading growth industry in the country.

It took 14 months for news of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s form of stress reduction from the rigors of office to reach us. It took one day for his replacement to tell us not only about his extramarital affairs but his wife’s.

And as if that weren’t enough to make one dizzy, there was the chauffeur of James McGreevey, the gay former governor of New Jersey, who had resigned over another sex scandal. As the driver tells it, he, McGreevey and the governor’s wife had a three-way affair while McGreevey was still in office, often getting together after visits to TGI Friday’s.

What fun.

The next few days there was more food for thought, if not indigestion. Spitzer’s replacement, David Paterson, was telling a TV interviewer that he also was a drug user in his youth, having had a since-ended passion for pot.

What’s next in the way of news? Will we be hearing that he’s really a woman and that Spitzer had been dating him?

And who’s next, I found myself wondering? Who will be the next hero brought to ground? Dick Cheney? A Cabinet secretary, a senator, a congressman?

The fact of the matter is that if you threw a rock into either chamber of the U.S. Capitol, or the legislature of any state, you would be sure to hit someone who similarly had something to hide, or confess, about some aspect of his or her private life. There’s always somebody whose dirty linen is ready to be hung out on the clothesline for us to enjoy.

It’s very educational for students of civics and governance. But the existing system of informing the public is appallingly wasteful.

Right now, some of the best and brightest of our investigative journalists are fearlessly looking for tasty morsels to put on our plates without favor to party or ideology. They don’t care who gets nailed, as long as it’s not Joe Schmo.

The market for scandal is hot. With cable TV networks needing something to ruminate about 24/7; with bloggers reporting anything, no matter how unverifiable, and newspapers hungry for headlines that sell papers, this is the golden age of showing that the governor, the senator, the city councilman have no clothes.

But the duplication of effort, the expenditure of time, energy and money -- especially with newspaper circulations in free fall, necessitating cutbacks in reporting staffs -- is sinful.

Wouldn’t it be a better idea if there were a central depository where all the scandal news could be found by the Lincoln Steffenses of our day?

The raw material in such a central archive would be what has been gathered by all the government agencies involved in the administration’s “No Fact Left Behind” agenda. Today, invasion of privacy is as American as apple pie and HDTVs made in China

The archive would include vital statistics about presidential candidates gleaned from passport applications opened by bored State Department employees; FBI files filled with facts, some of them accurate; surveillance reports by government snoopers; phone taps, warranted and unwarranted -- the telecommunication industry’s contribution to democracy; electronic files of e-mails, sent and in wastebaskets; medical records; bank account records; credit card statements; office phone logs; diaries; expense accounts; grocery lists.

In short, everything once considered private would be gathered by the Constitution-impaired government bodies involved in the war on terrorism and would be deposited in the new national archive. Its goal would be to make the world safe for the rule of law, as well as catch a Spitzer before he went bankrupt because of lawyers’ fees.

I would call such a depository of valuable educational materials the “Sin Bin.” Having sucked up all the dirt as if by a giant vacuum cleaner, the material would then be available to anyone who wanted to pry.

To make it legal for the public to access this material, I would have Congress pass a “Freedom of Salacious Information Act.”

Members of the scandal-hungry public would be free to use the archive like the Library of Congress, reading up on any potentially smutty subject and reaching their own independent judgments.

But the Sin Bin would primarily be a resource for journalists. Why should there have been gangs of reporters covering Paterson’s confessional news conference when he told all, or some of it? With the Sin Bin, all the facts would have been available at journalists’ fingertips, saving the shoe leather or whatever today’s reporters wear out digging for stories. A pool reporter could be assigned to sift out the dirt, while all the others did something else.

The treasure trove on private matters would be enhanced by public-spirited politicians like Paterson who voluntarily would make public what was once considered nobody’s damned business. All public officials from the White House on down would be encouraged to step forward without subpoena to deposit their once-privileged information.

The advantage to the media of the Sin Bin is that it would be a reliable source, a place where the Woodwards and Bernsteins of today could go to get information about transgressions directly from the targets of their inquiries.

Forget second- and third-hand informants. Forget usually reliable sources, or reliably uninformed sources or even unreliably uninformed sources. Forget the innuendo. This would be the real scoop from the horse’s mouth, or whichever part of the anatomy your transgressing legislator reminds you of.

It also would be a place where the confessee could amend the record. Paterson, for example, in his groundbreaking tell-all news conference, seemed vague about the number of affairs he had had, where they took place, which credit card he used to bill the hotel, which expense account got charged for the resulting activity and other details the public might want to know. Like the Congressional Record or Wikipedia, additions and corrections would be allowable in the name of accuracy.

Also on the upside, it would be the place where the confessee would be able to list his excuses for his actions: “I didn’t know what I was doing.” “My marriage counselor told me to do it,” and so forth.

To make this work even better, I would declare the equivalent of a moral bank holiday. No moral judgments about those who step forward to get it off their chests. No electoral, legal or other punishment could be rendered in exchange for the candor.

I’m not only talking about carnal sins, but venal as well. The Sin Bin would be the place where our representatives could confess to having been involved in shady real estate deals or being in the pocket of lobbyists.

The Sin Bin would provide an orderly conveyor belt of salacious materials down the maw of fans of political scandal. More important, the central depository would free up the press corps so it could get on with covering even bigger stories. Is there any truth to the rumor that it’s really the economy, stupid?