Privacy and presidential philandering, from the Netly News

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

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http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1714,00.html

The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/)
January 27, 1998

Private Parts
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)

       Already you can hear the plaintive sound of President Clinton's
   partisans whining about privacy. The allegations about Will's
   wandering willy are too intimate, too sensitive and (if the truth be
   told) too embarrassing to be discussed publicly, they claim.

       Yesterday the wire services were busy recycling Hillary Clinton's
   plea for a "zone of privacy"; a Clinton defender wrote in USA Today
   that nobody should be "inflicting the details of his sex life on the
   public"; a piece in the New York Times complained about a "fishing
   expedition into the President's sexual history." On NBC's Today show,
   Hillary groused about living in "a time where people are malicious and
   evil-minded."

       On many electronic mailing lists, the talk nowadays seems to be of
   little else. "The current pursuit of Clinton -- whatever the facts
   turn out to be -- strikes me, itself, as an obscenity," griped Edward
   Kent on a First Amendment list. "We need more protections of privacy
   in this country." Michael Troy replied, "I don't think there is a
   constitutional right to privacy for an employer (who is also a public
   figure) having sex with an employee in the workplace."

        He's right. The call for greater "privacy protections" is a call
   for censorship in disguise.

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