Comparison:
The story of Hart and the blonde [Donna Rice] didn’t just prove to be Hart’s undoing; it was the story that changed all the rules, a sudden detonation whose smoke and soot would shadow American politics for decades to come.
Washington Post reviewer Jonathan Yardley using Matt Bai's book traces our current media free-for-all back to 1988 and the media's response to rumors of Gary Hart's infidelity. Smoke and soot indeed. Monkey Business and beyond.
Context:
The story of Hart and the blonde [Donna Rice] didn’t just prove to be Hart’s undoing; it was the story that changed all the rules, a sudden detonation whose smoke and soot would shadow American politics for decades to come. Somehow, political and personal lives had collided overnight to create what was, in hindsight, the first modern political scandal, with all the attendant satellite trucks and saturation coverage and hourly turns in the narrative that Kafka himself could not have dreamed up. The unrelenting assault that Hart and family and their closest advisors had encountered . . . would become an almost predictable rhythm of political life at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and it would spawn an entire industry of experts who knew — or claimed to know — how to navigate it. But it was Hart, the standout prodigy of a new generation, who opened the door.
Citation:
Yardley, Jonathan. “Book Review: ‘All the Truth Is Out.‘“ Washington Post, 10 October 2018. Web.
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