David Simon: Media's Petraeus Sex Obsession Is Dangerous!

I can remember the specific moment when I swore off the sex lives of the famous as journalistic currency. It was the case of a national sportscaster. I won't name him, but, alas, most of those old enough will remember the name, which is regrettable, whose sex life had suddenly become the media chow. This man had been involved in a consensual relationship with another adult, and for reasons both ridiculous and obscure, the other adult thought it just and meaningful to reveal herself and her complaints, making explicit all of the unique and varied ways in which she and this man had expressed their sexuality, and my, wasn't he a weird one. And wasn't it funny. When that story broke, I was standing in the newsroom of the Baltimore Sun, and I remember my growing distaste watching reporters and rewrite men as they were sucked, joking and snickering, into the breaking news. No one had any doubt that it was news. The man was a national sportscaster, for the love of god. A more public figure this nation cannot muster. I was no Candide on a first promenade through Paris. I'd held pen and notepad akimbo and reported hypocritically at points. Not a year earlier, I think, I'd been guilty of dragging to the front of the metro section some sad sack who happened to serve on a mayor's advisory committee, an unpaid position, mind you, and happened to get arrested in a car with a lit marijuana cigarette between his lips. At the price of that misdemeanor, I'd messed that guy up good. Wasn't my fault he caught that charge. Hey, I was just the cop shop reporter calling districts and reporting arrests. Don't shoot the messenger. And then, like the shit bird that reporters often are obliged to be, I probably left work that night and smoked a joint with the night editor, after which we went to Burke's for onion rings, which we did just about every other night. Hypocrisy will never go out of style in American journalism or American life, but sitting there and watching the rewrite and sports desk mobilize to surround the sexual wanderings of a sportscaster, I remember making a decision: Enough.