Okay, first of all, and I'm going to go a bit off-topic here - you're not being true to yourself here. You're willing to set aside your moral reservations to analyze Trump's lewd comments and defend them as not being as incriminating as many people thought, but you'll sit back and act like a tu quoque argument aimed at Hillary's husband somehow implicates Hillary herself? I know you too well for this. Admit it, you don't think it's fair to criticize Hillary for Bill's behavior. You pride yourself on your rationalism far too much to let your political preferences override it.
You're completely right, except it was never my intention to claim that Trump's retaliation there was sound or in any way justifiable. Rama's pretty much nailed it - all I meant to convey was that the retaliation
worked, not that it was
morally right. For the record, both "grab 'em by the pussy" and "lol Bill is a rapist y'all" incidents are pure sensationalism that should have no place in public debate.
Second of all, at least this gave Trump time to respond, to fight back, to recover from a scandal that many believed at the time to be fatal to his campaign. Releasing the tape just one or two days before the election, letting people vote while the tape was still sinking in and Trump was still reeling in response, would have been a far better strategy for manipulating the vote, something that the media absolutely would have known.
I honestly think that's a sign of incompetence rather than any moral superiority.
A second batch of DNC emails were released the day before the election, and the Podesta emails (which I had been thinking of mainly, but mixed them up with the DNC emails in my mind, sorry), were released in installments every day until the election
Fair enough, I can accept that that was likely a strategic move on WikiLeaks' part. I would still be interested in learning when the e-mails were
obtained and thus how long they actually "sat on" the data.
But even though I'm not as convinced as I initially was, I still think my original point stands: Both sides resorted to unethical reporting in an attempt at swaying the vote. That appears to just be normal in American politics. I'm genuinely uncertain why whether or not this sort of behaviour is okay varies depending on who's doing it. For example, CNN was trying to use the very same leaks to bolster their own agenda,
telling people that it's okay when reporters look at leaks, but not okay when the everyday Joe does.
Everyone wants to control the narrative. And now that the "bad guys" seemingly managed it, it's suddenly a bad thing. I don't get it. Either we hold people to ethical standards in reporting and journalism or we don't. We can't have it both ways.