IN WHICH I AGREE WITH GLENN GREENWALD: Skip past the pro-forma GOP-bashing and you can’t really argue with this point about the Cindy McCain/New York Times story, and a whole lot of other stories this year and in recent years: “But it seems rather obvious that there are now basically no journalistic standards left for determining when a political figure’s private life (or even that of their spouse) is ‘relevant’ — apparently, it’s all relevant now, down to the last tawdry detail. In partiuclar, adultery (without regard to whether the spouse consents) is, without any further consideration, a legitimate topic to report. That inevitably has to lead to an even further erosion (if that’s possible) of our political class, a further narrowing of the people willing to enter politics. And the vast disparity between the media resources and attention devoted to sleazy gossip like this versus actual investigation of true government corruption and crime seems to be growing by the day, such that behavior like this will further decay our already quite decadent journalistic class as well.”

Greenwald and I disagree about many things, but there’s not much room to argue where the poor state of the political and journalistic classes (and the increasing lack of differentiation between them) is concerned.

UPDATE: Various readers think Greenwald is just trying to set the tone advantageously ahead of a looming Democratic sex scandal. Well, that’s uncharitable, but we’ll see.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rob Port comments.