According to a published report, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal claims to know the subject matter of the Clinton forces' "scandalous information" about Barack Obama,
written about in Robert Novak's column on Saturday and
defended by the columnist today.
Marc Ambinder's blog, quoting from OpinionJournal.com, quotes Fund as saying:
"The murmured charge is that as an Illinois state senator, Mr. Obama engaged in a real estate deal that benefited him in exchange for legislative favors. In short, what might pass for standard operating procedure in the Illinois legislature could nonetheless prove embarrassing to someone campaigning as a paragon of political virtue for president. So far, however, no proof of the allegation has been presented."
Ambinder calls it "[p]retty thin stuff." But who knows? Right now, it's all a murmur of a rumor of a speculation. Unless and until the actual charge actually appears in print, backed up by reporting, no one can really tell what's going on.
This is all of a piece with the way reporting has changed, thanks to both the internet and cable televison. As a result of the 24-hour demand for news, there has been a considerable broadening of the standards of what gets reported. What used to be deemed "gossip reporting" is now known as "entertainment news." This story is yet another bit of gossip that has been able to slip into the mainstream news, courtesy of a similar process.
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