“They got this guy, in Germany…He’s got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically…you gotta look at it. But sometimes you look at it, your looking changes it. Ya can’t know the reality of what happened, or what would’ve happened if you hadn’t-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz.” The Man Who Wasn’t There, Joel and Ethan Coen

So this morning, the New York Times ran a front page story about John McCain’s “relationship” with a 40-year-old blond lobbyist. Hours later, The New Republic published an article on their website about… the NYT story! Why did it break now? Should the Times have ran it at all?

I wanted to write a story about the New Republic story. If TNR knew that the NYT had the story long before it was published, why did TNR wait until after the NYT published?

Alas, I’m too late. Timothy Noah beat me too it. He hilariously compares the papers to two gunfighters in a stand off, and John McCain to a hooker (I’m not making this up!) Noah argues that any real story has now been discredited, and declares the hooker — I mean, McCain — the winner.

But what if there really isn’t a story? The facts, as I understand them, are that John McCain made his staffers uneasy by spending time with an attractive blonde lobbyist. The NYT waffled on what kind of a story to write and whether to focus on the words lobbyist or blonde. TNR found out about it. The NYT published their mediocre story, focusing on the word lobbyist but sprinkling a little romantic here, a little relationship there. TNRpublished an interesting story about how journalism works. McCain cried foul and got conservative sympathy. The end.

But what if there was a romantic relationship? That’s still news — big news, Hindenburg-size headline news. I don’t see how an affair can be discredited by some self-reflexive journalist drama. — Hillel Aron

Photo: Eric Draper, White House