Trollop Revisited

So yesterday I blogged this story about John McCain having called his wife a "cunt" and a "trollop." The story was the kind of thing that's known in the journalism business as "too good to check," which is to say I just kind of linked to it thoughtlessly without considering the sourcing. The sourcing, however, is not very good -- "Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident" which wasn't reported on at the time and of which there's no evidence over the past 16 years outside of Cliff Schecter's book.

Cliff's a good guy, and no doubt reporters from Arizona really did tell him this anecdote. But still, if I'm honest with myself about what I would think of this story if it were being told about a politician I admire, I'd say it was mighty thin and the reality is that it's thin as an anti-McCain story too. There is, clearly, ample evidence that McCain has a short fuse and an occasional penchant for inappropriate name-calling, but there's no evidence that this particular incident happened that meets a reasonable journalistic standard.