<u+201c>he was like an octopus,<u+201d> 74-year-old jessica leeds tells the new york times . <u+201c>his hands were everywhere.<u+201d> leeds was describing an incident in the 1980s in which she says donald trump, her seatmate on a cross-country flight, sexually assaulted her. the times report includes another such account, from 2005; and more stories appeared late wednesday in, inter alia, people and the palm beach post . if there is still a trump election comeback scenario, it is beyond this columnist<u+2019>s imaginative capacity. even scott adams now believes <u+201c>[hillary clinton] will win easily.<u+201d> he observes: he<u+2019>s right about the power of leeds<u+2019>s simile but overimpressed with expertise. why couldn<u+2019>t a <u+201c>civilian<u+201d> come up with a vivid way of describing her own experience, especially when she<u+2019>s had more than 30 years to think about it? a lawyer for trump responded with a letter <u+2014>emailed to the campaign<u+2019>s press list, which includes this columnist<u+2014>to times executive editor dean baquet. the letter asserted that the article <u+201c>is reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se<u+201d> and demanded <u+201c>a full and immediate retraction and apology.<u+201d> follow james on twitter implicit in such a correspondence is the threat of a lawsuit, but how would that go? we have it on good authority that there exists a video recording in which trump acknowledges having engaged in behavior similar to that described by the times<u+2019>s sources. combine that with their eyewitness testimony, and it would be quite a challenge for the plaintiff to muster a preponderance of the evidence. anyway, surely trump does not want to go through discovery in such a case. if there is a lawsuit, it<u+2019>s a safe bet it<u+2019>ll be dropped after the election. the lawyer letter serves chiefly as a political document<u+2014>a claim that, to paraphrase, there<u+2019>s a lot of smoke and there<u+2019>s no fire . many republicans, including trump opponents, are raising questions about the timing of the story. this is adapted from a tweetstorm last night by a nevertrump conservative who goes by the handle <u+201c> polimath <u+201d>: he also notes that in may, just after trump clinched the nomination, the times published a lengthy investigation into his dealings with women, which the story itself described as <u+201c>a complex, at times contradictory portrait of a wealthy, well-known and provocative man and the women around him, one that defies simple categorization.<u+201d> meanwhile, stolen emails published by wikileaks provide a wealth of evidence that the clinton campaign has a cozy relationship with prominent media figures: <u+2022> <u+201c>donna brazile, the current head of the democratic national committee, appears to have tipped the clinton campaign off to a question about the death penalty that was going to be asked during a cnn town hall in march,<u+201d> the daily caller reports. brazile was a cnn contributor at the time. <u+2022> the washington times reports after abc<u+2019>s george stephanopoulos interviewed <u+201c>clinton cash<u+201d> author peter schweizer in april 2015, a campaign aide wrote: <u+201c>great work everyone. this interview is perfect. [schweizer] lands nothing and everything is refuted (mostly based on our work).<u+201d> stephanopoulos worked in bill clinton<u+2019>s 1992 campaign and white house. <u+2022> newsbusters (citing another report from the daily caller ) notes that <u+201c>cnbc correspondent and infamously biased [gop] debate moderator john harwood engaged in a variety of flattering conversations with [john] podesta and other clinton officials,<u+201d> including one <u+201c>lobbying for a fawning interview with clinton that he promised would be a <u+2018>deep .<u+00a0>.<u+00a0>. conversation about the economy that she wants.<u+2019><u+00a0><u+201d> <u+2022> the intercept , a left-wing (and not pro-clinton) site, reports that a <u+201c>strategy document<u+201d> from january 2015 <u+201c>singled out reporter maggie haberman, then of politico, now covering the election for the new york times, as a <u+2018>friendly journalist<u+2019> who has <u+2019>teed up<u+2019> stories for them in the past and <u+2018>never disappointed<u+2019> them.<u+201d> <u+2022> the washington free beacon reports that the campaign <u+201c>bragged [that] <u+2018>every single interviewer was for her<u+2019> during a visit to michigan during the democratic primary season.<u+201d> it<u+2019>s reminiscent of the 2010 <u+201c>journolist<u+201d> leak, which revealed that liberal and ostensibly nonideological journalists had conspired to suppress news inconvenient to democrats during the 2008 campaign. only this time it<u+2019>s hardly a revelation. with trump as the republican nominee, journalists have been increasingly open about their partisanship. a canonical example is jim rutenberg <u+2019>s front-page new york times column urging his colleagues to <u+201c>throw out the textbook american journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer<u+201d><u+2014>that is, to give up fairness and objectivity and become <u+201c>oppositional.<u+201d> as we suspected , that wasn<u+2019>t just one columnist<u+2019>s opinion. <u+201c>i thought jim rutenberg<u+2019>s column nailed it,<u+201d> baquet, the times<u+2019>s executive editor, said last week in an interview with harvard<u+2019>s niemanlab . of trump, baquet observed: <u+201c>he will have changed journalism, he really will have.<u+201d> that<u+2019>s true, but only in the sense that he has liberated journalists to become openly partisan. which is ironic, because what has brought trump low is not hysterical hitler comparisons or tendentious <u+201c>fact checking<u+201d> (a genre this column identified as a corruption of journalism way back in 2008 ). it is old-fashioned reporting. what<u+2019>s galling about this is that the all-but-certain result will be a third white house term for the clintons, whose record regarding the treatment of women (among other things) is as sordid as trump<u+2019>s<u+2014>but who have been the beneficiaries of the partisan media double standard. that is in no way a defense of trump, whose alleged behavior it would be equally outrageous to describe as <u+201c>his sex life,<u+201d> <u+201c>affairs,<u+201d> <u+201c>peccadilloes<u+201d> or any of the other clinton euphemisms. trump, the clintons and the media<u+2019>s imbalance are all gross. if journalistic balance was just a pretense, maybe it<u+2019>s just as well that they give it up. but there was a time when it was an aspiration, not a pretense. we blame george w. bush <u+201c>roseanne barr blames hillary clinton for gruesome knee injury<u+201d><u+2014>headline, sfgate.com, oct.<u+00a0>12 problem and solution hypothesis and disproof<u+2014>i hypothesis and disproof<u+2014>ii generalissimo francisco franco is still dead <u+201c>in the era of advanced stats, soccer still lags behind<u+201d><u+2014>headline, fivethirtyeight, oct.<u+00a0>12 question and answer<u+2014>i question and answer<u+2014>ii look out below! <u+201c>poll: trump falls into tie with clinton among utah voters<u+201d><u+2014>headline, deseret news (salt lake city), oct.<u+00a0>12 it<u+2019>s always in the last place you look <u+201c>boy who was <u+2018>lost on a mountain in maine<u+2019> dies at 90<u+201d><u+2014>headline, associated press, oct.<u+00a0>12 bottom story of the day <u+201c>el paso called 8th best city for trick-or-treating<u+201d><u+2014>headline, el paso times, oct.<u+00a0>12 third prize is eight years of hillary <u+201c>scanmyphotos.com, the country<u+2019>s leading digital photo scanning company, has pledged to digitize the photos of anyone, including immigrants, living in the u.s. for free if donald trump wins the upcoming presidential election,<u+201d> the company announces in a press release: if they want her to win, they<u+2019>ve got the incentives all wrong, no? follow @jamestaranto on twitter. join fans of best of the web today on facebook. subscribe to the best of the web email with one click. (carol muller helps compile best of the web. thanks to michael smith, irene deblasio, tony lima, michele schiesser, norman blanton, wes van fleet, richard lobb, dennis paine, john gaylord, macrena sailor, mike lavender, ed lasky, evan slatis, steve thompson, debbie wells, jackie harty, david hallstrom, michael segal, mordecai bobrowsky, mark zoeller, ari jacobson and john vriezen. if you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com , and please include the url.)
boiled octopus - wsj
james taranto