Long story short, I owe Jay Rosen some fish tacos.

Clark Hoyt's column takes New York Times editor Bill Keller to task -- as it should.

It says something about how far over the line this is when even Hoyt, who has demonstrated a tendency to lash out at critics, thinks Keller is out of line.

The article was notable for what it did not say: It did not say what convinced the advisers that there was a romance. It did not make clear what McCain was admitting when he acknowledged behaving inappropriately — an affair or just an association with a lobbyist that could look bad. And it did not say whether Weaver, the only on-the-record source, believed there was a romance. The Times did not offer independent proof, like the text messages between Detroit’s mayor and a female aide that The Detroit Free Press disclosed recently, or the photograph of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart’s lap.

It was not for want of trying. Four highly respected reporters in the Washington bureau worked for months on the story and were pressed repeatedly to get sources on the record and to find documentary evidence like e-mail. If McCain had been having an affair with a lobbyist seeking his help on public policy issues, and The Times had proved it, it would have been a story of unquestionable importance.

But in the absence of a smoking gun, I asked Keller why he decided to run what he had.

“If the point of the story was to allege that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, we’d have owed readers more compelling evidence than the conviction of senior staff members,” he replied. “But that was not the point of the story. The point of the story was that he behaved in such a way that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career.”

Bolshevik storytelling. If I started out a news article claiming that Keller had an "inappropriate relationship" with a goat and then talked about his journalistic lapses a la Greenhouse and when challenged insisted that readers pay attention only to the ethical claims -- well, you'd rightly laugh your butt off and question my ethics. As you should.

As if to demonstrate that his left-wing tendencies, Clark characterizes the story -- minus the sexual allegations thusly:

The pity of it is that, without the sex, The Times was on to a good story.

It might've been a story, if we hadn't already heard all about it -- eight years ago.

Responding to Criticism, McCain Releases Letters

Senator John McCain of Arizona released hundreds of letters today that he has sent to federal agencies under the jurisdiction of his powerful Senate committee, including more than a dozen involving the businesses of contributors to his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Mr. McCain said he was acting to defuse criticism of his interventions before the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of companies regulated by that agency, one of many supervised by the Commerce Committee, which he has headed since 1997.

And there's this:

THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE ARIZONA SENATOR; As Commerce Chairman, McCain Is Hard to Define

In their spirited primary battle, George W. Bush uses the sobriquet ''the Chairman'' to tar John McCain as a Washington insider.

But a close examination of Mr. McCain's record as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee shows that he defies easy labeling.

The Arizona senator has angered and perplexed many of the Washington agencies and special interests that he oversees as chairman. His leadership of the Commerce Committee and his style as chairman are also interesting indicators of how he might lead if he ever makes it to the White House.

Last November, for example, Mr. McCain denounced a measure adopted by Congress that made it easier for the satellite television industry to compete head to head with cable television and broadcasters, calling the legislation a sop to special interests.

What made the senator's remarks so striking was that he had sponsored an earlier version with great fanfare and had long promoted efforts to help satellite television, in part because vast stretches of his home state, Arizona, rely on satellite signals as the only way to get television reception.

Hoyt concludes with this:

I asked Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, if The Times could have done the story and left out the allegation about an affair. “That would not have reflected the essential truth of why the aides were alarmed,” she said.

But what the aides believed might not have been the real truth. And if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed.

So, the allegation of an extramarital affair wasn't the focus of the article (Keller), but it had to be included because the anonymous disillusioned aides were concerned about an affair (Abramson) while the Times wasn concerned about iimproper influence (non-sexual) by lobbyists. I think I've got that right and it's nuts.

I'm way too overqualified to be in this business.