Wonkette intern Fred Becker returns with more thoughts on the Washington media scrum. Fred can be reached at .
While LA Times columnist Ron Brownstein is off gazing into his new wife’s navel on their Paris honeymoon, his colleagues back in Washington seem to be rooting around in their own bellies over a ponderous ethical dilemma: Can the star political reporter cover John McCain when his wife is the top flack for the Arizona Senator and likely 2008 hopeful?
"We're all agreed that Ron can't cover McCain per se," the Times Washington bureau chief, Doyle McManus, told Howard Kurtz, but he sees no problem with Brownstein writing a story "if McCain's name comes into it in a minor way.”
A minor way? A press-shy guy like McCain? Not likely to come up in many stories about the 2008 presidential campaign or stories about Congress, or lawmaking, or wars, or treatment of prisoners, or campaign finance, or the breathing of air in Washington DC. If McCain’s name only comes up in a minor way, it won’t be Brownstein but his wife who has problems. She’ll be out of a job. — FRED BECKER
