The Republican primaries for the 2000 election in South Carolina were really, really dirty. It was John McCain and George Bush, and Bush's campaign decided to focus on the baby girl McCain had adopted nine years previously from Bangladesh. His team spread rumors that McCain had fathered a black baby and distributed pictures of McCain family photos with this little girl, Bridget, standing with her white siblings. McCain lost the South Carolinan primary, never made it to the general election, and you know the rest panned out.

McCain's biological daughter, Meghan, later wrote a book Dirty Sexy Politics detailing her life in the 2008 campaign, but she did touch on this moment in a really poignant way. Years later Bridget playfully googled herself, and inevitably every single article that popped up about her was the 2000 primaries, which her family hadn't told her about. She called up Meghan hysterical, thinking that it was her fault her father did not become president, and asked this question: "Does President Bush hate me?"

I think in the whirlwind of the news cycle we forget to be vicarious to the subject of our gossip. When I first heard about it years later, Bridget never occurred to me. It was just one more thing to hate Bush about. And I don't think anyone in the Bush camp thought about what all this would do to a poor nine-year-old girl. Nor anyone in the media who repeated the allegations day after day after day. And brought it up again in 2008 when McCain ran again.

For politicians, actors, and musicians I have no sympathy. You know it's a hazard of your job: constant media scrutiny, waiting for that one moment you make a mistake. But for an innocent bystander, they never fucking asked for this and suddenly their face is spread all over the TVs and the internet. The women whom Anthony Weiner sent his dick pics to had to quit their jobs and leave school because they were hounded by reporters hoping to get an interview or even just an opinion. Some of those women did encourage Weiner, and some of them literally were just talking to him about policy when he sent those. They weren't trying to stick their necks out. Imagine one day you try talking to a politician and the next morning you wake up to find four media vans outside your house and the TV has a reporter standing by your front steps saying, "We are outside of so-and-so's house" and you see the camera focusing into your windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of you in your bunny slippers. And anything you say will inevitably be distorted: "So-and-so slams politician." "So-and-so in angry rage." "So-and-so denounces the establishment."

I forget that sometimes when I watch it on the news. I forget how intrusive this can all be. And I viscerally feel we should be doing something to stop this, but I don't know how without impinging on freedom of the press. Even if viewers tell their news organizations to stop, I don't think they would listen because they actually do get an interview sometimes from their dogged work. And I don't want to pass laws preventing them from trying to get interviews. The media is one of the most powerful entities of our country, and there's no fucking oversight. Not that there has to be, but Jesus Christ it needs to calm the fuck down.