WALTER SHAPIRO ON THE DEATH OF PRIVACY. Well, this is a product of journalism. It probably started when Earl Butz lost his job. In The Appearance of Impropriety, Peter Morgan and I noted that sociologists like Erving Goffman think that every functioning society needs a “backstage” where people can let their hair down and speak without observing social proprieties. But journalists have been destroying that backstage for decades, reporting casual remarks, emails, and betrayed confidences whenever it would advance their careers, or their agendas. Why should they be permitted to keep one, when no one else is?

And if these had been emails among conservative pundits and reporters (er, if you could find 400 of those), the leaker would be treated as a hero, not a person “whose motivations were mysterious and whose lack of integrity was obvious.”