Because I never even intended to try to make a comprehensive argument that Hillary really is a bisexual. Someone else with some, uh, "inside" knowledge will have to do that.

What I tried hard to do at the outset, was just to make the observation that here was Tim Grieve, still flogging the Larry Craig story. And that, just a week or so after Hillary rumors had again been reignited with whispers, this time featuring the name of Huma Abedin.

My original point was simply to explore the ground rules under which the ostensibly tolerant, privacy-loving Salon crowd thought that Larry Craig was fair game for continued questioning. There is an argument to be made that Craig's misdemeanor has been flogged to death by now, and that he deserves his privacy as much as anyone else. Obviously, Tim Grieve doesn't subscribe to that line.

Tim Grieve likes the story enough to keep going with it. That is okay; but what are the ground rules for that? That Craig is still a legislator, who must answer for personal hypocrisy? Again, if that is the standard, how do we examine the position of Senator Clinton? She opposes gay marriage, but may be a deeply closeted gay/bisexual herself.

So the question that I have raised is essentially a journalistic question. No one so far, to my reading, has addressed that question other than to proclaim that she's 'nowhere near as bad on gay rights as Larry Craig,' which isn't much of an answer at all. Indeed, that is the one answer that lends credence to the idea that the outing of alleged gay politicians nowadays is okay as long as it is just Republicans(?) who are being outed. Because, that argument would run, the Democrats are at least 'better' on gay rights issues than are Republicans.

That's the crap line of thinking that I wanted to expose for what it was.

In the end, I don't see any problem with Tim Grieve continuing to work the Larry Craig story. Just as long as those ground rules don't suddenly change in 2008. Pawn takes queen.

The stories may therefore, in a manner of speaking, be "quantitatively" different. But are they "qualitatively" different? Is there some special reason that subjecting Hillary to Larry Craig-type scrutiny would cross a moral boundary? If so, where do the Salon editors draw that boundary line?

I just wanted assurance that if, perchance, Hillary got the nomination and then a paper like, say, the LA Times came out with a story that had people named for attribution about Hillary's bisexual adultery, that it would be as accepted as the current reporting on Larry Craig has been.

"...The reason people are taking Craig to task is that (1) he plead guilty to a public indecency charge, which in itself is news because he's a bigtime politician, (2) he subsequently denied the truth of the charge, (3) he publically claimed he is not homosexual and these new charges seem to contradict his statement, (4) in his official duties he has supported legislation that is contrary to the cause of homosexual rights.

...

-- Xrandadu Hutman

With the exception of the guilty plea to the public indecency charge (a misdemeanor), couldn't Hillary Clinton suffer the same categorization, if there were any more convincing evidence of her lesbian/bisexual activity? (Some apparently think there is; Gennifer Flowers quoted Bill Clinton rather categorically on that subject in her book.)

Some will say, "But that IS the big difference! Craig pled guilty and Hillary's never been charged, nor is she ever likely to be charged, with any crime." That might sound good, but it doesn't stand up to much close analysis.

Guilt of a midemeanor as with Craig, is scarcely something that calls into question his public trust. Rep. Patrick Kennedy's last misdemeanor didn't get him kicked out of the House. His Uncle Teddy's guilty plea to, uh, 'leaving the scene of an accident' didn't get him thrown out of the Senate. Rep. Gerry Studds never got kicked out of the House for sexual activities with minors. I don't recall Salon investigating Patrick Kennedy's rehab, or Ted Kennedy's story about Chappaquiddick, or Gerry Studds' sex life.

Craig's guilty plea might be startling evidence of his proclivity to anonymous sex with men, but it is just one bit of evidence. People on the left were after Craig long before Brokeback Airport. The evidence as to Hillary is not as clear as with Craig -- yet -- but it is also NOT nonexistent.

As for items 2,3 and 4, those are the ones that presumably most Salonistas fall in line with, and as to each of those criteria, what is there to distinguish Hillary from Craig, if one simply assumes the truth of a lot of uncorroboratable information about the two Senators' sex lives? She's closeted, and " in [her] official duties [s]he has supported legislation that is contrary to the cause of homosexual rights." (Should we say that in her "official duties" she approved DOMA, which her husband signed into law? Unless she distances herself rather forcibly from that law, which she has not done, I would say the effective answer is 'yes.' Isn't she on record having stated her support for DOMA? And doesn't she have a hard time now in claiming that nothing she did as First Lady was an 'official duty'? It's half her freakin' resume!)