Andrew Sullivan points out a very reasonable attitude toward the Kerry/intern flap:

Cognitive dissonance! That's what the headshrinkers call it and Ellisblog has a bad case this morning. The loathing of sleazeballia colliding with the loathing of Kerry, made even more disorienting by an all-too-rare example of admirable media behavior. What to do?

Unpack it, as pretentious management consultants say.

Job one: Change the name (always change the name on a negative story to the name of someone you admire and see if you still think it's fair).

Job two: recount the known facts.

Job three, arrive at a preliminary conclusion based on the known facts. So let's do that:

Let's say this is a story about Colin Powell. Let's say that there is a woman who has approached numerous media organizations and every Republican political opponent of Mr. Powell's with a story. The story is that her "best friend" or her "close friend" (who used to be a reporter with the AP and at some point worked for Mr. Powell) had an affair with Mr. Powell and was shipped off to Africa when Mr. Powell decided to run for President. What is known about the source of this information is that she has a major axe to grind; she hates Powell. She really, really hates him. She is grinding the Mother of All Axes.

Publish her story or not?

The answer from "mainstream media" so far: "No."

Good decision: "yes."

The "reversal" idea is a very good one. If scraping the barrel is "investigative journalism" when it's about someone you don't like, and a "witch hunt" when it's someone you do like, then you fail this test. We could all stand to do this "role-switch test" more often, myself not excepted.

That being said, I wonder if the mainstream media would have spiked the story as thoroughly if it had been about Bush, or someone in his cabinet. I'd like to think so, in my less-cynical moments.

My own take on this is that the actual Kerry story is, at this point of almost zero evidence, pretty much a non-story.

However, the issue of who dribbled this thing to Drudge, or to the rest of the media, is a story. I don't think it was the Republicans, who would have saved this for after Kerry was nominated. Then who? Clark's organization? Clark just endorsed Kerry. Any ideas?