ARIANNA HUFFINGTON ON THE CUNNINGHAM SCANDAL:

But we can’t let this collective carcass picking — as voyeuristically titillating as it may be — distract us from the two vital issues this story raises: the corrupting role that money continues to play in our politics, and the overly cozy relationship between those in power and those in the media whose job it is to cover them.

I mean, where was the Washington press corps on this story?

Here you have a Congressman making $158,000 a year, living (and partying with lobbyists) on a yacht docked at the Capital Yacht Club and driving a Rolls-Royce — and not a single Washington journalist thought this worth looking into? If one of them had followed the spoils, it would have quickly led to a defense contractor buying the yacht, christened the “Duke-Stir”, while at the same time receiving massive government contracts authorized by the defense appropriations subcommittee Cunningham sat on.

But, instead, the Beltway Gang turned a blind-eye — so jaded and accepting of how the game is played in Washington that the corruption didn’t even register.

Which isn’t uncommon. I suspect that bloggers could accomplish a lot in unmasking corruption by looking at politicians’ lifestyles and matching them against their declared incomes. So could journalists, but they don’t seem to do much of that.