But Seriously...

It is possible, of course, to examine seriously the topic of how one writes about the family of a politician. I've heard journalists defend the idea that any tidbit is news and all reporting is justified.

I actually disagree with that.

Let's take some high-level examples. The Clintons and Obamas have/had young children in the White House, under the most public scrutiny in the world, for a child. The request to allow them something like a normal life out of the spotlight is reasonable. It's a shame that some people like Rush Limbaugh found it necessary to criticize Chelsea for not being pretty enough (he called her the White House dog, in case you've forgotten), when she was just going through that teen-age stage where one is busy growing into one's adult features. Recent pictures of her reveal a lovely young woman, and none of it should have been news!

However, how either president treated his family is/was news, as it reveals something of the character of each, and the voters can chose how significant it is to each of them. The First Lady has many official duties, and any of them are justifiably news. I'm not sure that how or where she does her hair or who she calls on her phone are, unless national security issues are involved.

Several years back, our Governor, Jesse Ventura, railed against the "jackals" of the press for reporting on his children, citing that as the reason he was not running for a second term. The story that most got under his skin - and the only one I actually remember being reported - was when his son held a wild party in the Governor's mansion and destruction of property was involved. Now that is news. That house is public property, maintained with our tax dollars, and what happens to it is worth reporting. You might note that those same "jackals" didn't follow his special needs daughter around and report on her activities. Nobody's business.

However, the fact of her existence, that was news. Her name was news. The family ranch was news. Any basic facts, part of the public knowledge base, all were worthy of being reported.

So why did our mayor blow his stack when I mentioned basic facts about his family when I commented that I respected him a family man? After all, that doesn't happen in a vacuum. You can't be a family man without a family. And everybody in town knows a few basic facts about them, much more than I've mentioned. And while I've not agreed to not mention them in my blog, I do believe that certain things would not need to be shared.

Let's go back to the Ventura family. Whether or not the son partied hard, or drunkenly, or whether he had a substance abuse problem - which I don't know, just extrapolating as a way of illustrating an example - none of that is really news. Not in the day-to-day, not in the election cycle. Where it crosses over to becoming news is when public property and tax dollars are involved, or when somebody gets hurt. Any possible family member's pecadillos need a reason beyond just their existence to become news.

Especially children's errors. I keep in mind that parents love to take pride in the accomplishments of their kids, almost as if the parents were responsible, while the mistakes are the child's own. Neither is 100% true. We raise our kids the best way we can, making mistakes along the way, and hope the world understands that those kids are individuals when they screw up just as much as they are when they do something remarkable. So if a politician's kid messes up, there is a line it needs to cross to justifiably become news.

It can be confusing, and some times it's a case-by-case judgment. Some times that case can be influenced by the reporting medium. Newspapers and TV reporters draw their own lines. I draw mine, as a blogger. And mostly those come back to the function of my blog.

It is, when all is said and done, my blog. I don't write about what you may want. If that bothers you, go write your own. You can write what pleases you way better than I can. I write about what touches me, my life, my emotions. If it amuses me, it might very well show up in my blog. If it irritates or exasperates or puzzles me, it might end up here. If it touches my heart, you might read it here.

But not always. And you might not have any idea just whom it is that I'm writing about. Heck, often I don't either. Who is that crazy driver? Or who wrote that sign? Sometimes I know but only share a first name, or in some cases let you know a name will not be forthcoming. If it's about a work customer, I have signed confidentiality agreements. They don't keep me from telling the story, but they do cut out identifiers. My topics, my decisions, my reasons, my choice.

My blog.

I hope you like it. I'll keep writing it.