Can You Say "Linda Tripp"?

Here's yet another illustration of Big Media bias.

Yesterday the New York Times ran a banner story yesterday on audio tapes of conversations of then-Governor George W. Bush recorded without Bush's knowledge or consent by one Douglas Wead, an ex-Pentacostal minister who is evidently looking to cash in on the fumes of last year's Bush-bashing craze. He's got a book based on these tapes and the rest of the proverbial nine-yards.

However, the tapes really don't disclose anything that we didn't already know about the President. He's not a "homophobe"; he's humble; he's learned from and atoned for the mistakes of his wayward youth; and he really did detest Al Gore.

Contrast this with the tapes Monica Lewinsky has in her pudgy possession:

Only last June, former White House paramour Monica Lewinsky revealed that she's sitting on a stash of never-before-heard tapes of her own - recordings of President Clinton whispering sweet nothings into her answering machine.

At the time, Lewinsky threatened to make the tapes public, telling London's Daily Mail:

"If I chose to, I could bring out ... the messages on the answering machine tapes that no one's heard. I could make it into something big to try to demonstrate that this wasn't just inappropriate intimate contact - that it really was something."

Really something?

Whatever Clinton said on those still-secret recordings, it doesn't sound as if Monica's tapes are going to be particularly helpful to Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign.

But if the Times or any of its American counterparts are interested, they have a strange way of showing it. The U.S. media have yet to print a single word about Monica's secret tapes.

Now I'm sure libs would be lining up to trash (again) Monica as, among other things, lacking credibility - along the lines of, "Surrrrre she has these tapes - if they really exist, why didn't she whip them out five years ago when it might have mattered?" But I would suggest that "Ms. Lewinsky" has at least as much credibility as Mr. Wead does, and yet of which nobody in search of fifteen minutes of fame did the New York Times grant the wish of unwarranted publicity?

Put another way, if some bimbo suddenly surfaced with tapes of of GDub "whispering sweet nothings into her answering machine," does anybody seriously believe it wouldn't be headline news from coast to coast?

For Mr. Bill, and the Times, it was just another day at the office.

UPDATE: Well, this was a quick el foldo:

"My thanks to those who have let me share my heart and regrets about recent events," Mr. Wead wrote in the statement, posted on his Web site Wednesday. "Contrary to a statement that I made to the New York Times, I know very well that personal relationships are more important than history."

Mr. Wead, an author who drew on the tapes obliquely for one page in his recently published book, The Raising of a President: The Mothers and Fathers of Our Nation's Leaders, said, "I am asking my attorney to direct any future proceeds from the book to charity and to find the best way to vet these tapes and get them back to the president to whom they belong."

So...what to think about Wead? Did he have it out for the President? Or was he just seeking publicity for his book and was so completely naive that he didn't realize surreptitous recordings of Mr. Bush from years ago would be a scandalmongering aphrodisiac to Big Media and the slavering Bushophobic Left?

I tend to think the latter, since if Wead was out to get Bush, last year's campaign would have been the obvious time to go with something like this. It's for the same reason that I doubt, despite the Times' wishful speculation, that there's anything damaging on his tapes.

But as Captain Ed points out, "However one wishes to spin Wead's actions..., one fact comes through very clearly: just the act of recording these conversations surreptitiously demonstrates a perverted sense of ethics and certainly shows that Wead, despite his protestations above, values his own pocketbook more than personal relationships."

One hopes that this chastened, tail-between-the-legs withdrawal is evidence of genuine contrition on Wead's part. And maybe it is.

The shame for his sake is that we simply cannot be sure.