Bias or Just Incompetence?

[billroper]

If you're anywhere near Illinois, you may have heard about the brouhaha around the recent release of sealed court documents from GOP Senate candidate Jack Ryan's divorce from Jeri Ryan, best known as "Seven of Nine". Basically, Ryan's toast and pretty much everyone knows it, except possibly for Ryan.

Now, I cheated and read the quotes from the documents in the Chicago Tribune. His ex-wife accuses him of taking her to sex clubs three times and asking her to have sex with him there, which she refused to do. This would definitely be on the kinky side and not too bright for someone who's interested in getting into politics, which he probably wasn't thinking about at the time.

Jack denies this, conceding that they once went to an "avant-garde night club" in Paris and claiming that they left by mutual agreement. I wasn't there, so I don't know what's true. This doesn't mean that he's not politically dead, in any case.

But I was listening to WBBM-AM (the local CBS radio affiliate) where the reporter said that Jack took Jeri "to sex clubs and forced her to have sex". (Italics mine.)

Ok, that's just wrong and not supported by the evidence. Asking is kinky. Forcing would be rape. And there's nothing in the released documents that indicates that they did have sex there -- in fact, they say just the opposite.

I don't particularly like either Ryan, but this just ticks me off.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

You don't have to be anywhere near Illinois; the story has been on the wire services (and so on news websites) and covered in some depth on NPR.

I was strongly opposed to Ryan from the get-go for his politics, and I definitely wanted to see him lose the election, but I want him to lose the election because people realize that his political views are bad for the country, not because of some stupid argument about his private life. Frankly, my opinion of him has gone up a bit over this situation. (Not that I'd vote for him, but I have some sympathy.)