SEX APPEAL: Roger L. Simon looks at two scandals--one with world-changing implications, and one that's pretty minor in the scope of history, and compares and contrasts the coverage each is receiving:

Drudge (linking Media Life Magazine) is telling us the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times are locked in mortal combat to see who will own the suddenly important Graydon Carter Story. Vanity Fair editor Carter, whose magazine features movieland coverage, has evidently been profiteering off his cozy Hollywood ties, even to the tune of an alleged hundred grand 'consulting fee' from Universal. Creepy, I guess, and unethical... but these same papers don't seem too concerned that the Wall Street Journal and the 'lowly' tabloid New York Post own the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal. Why is that, one wonders, when surely the latter story is vastly more important to the current world situation and to how the international community could conceivably go forward? Yet they seem content to be Missing-in-Action on that. It would be interesting to know how many reporters the two papers have assigned to both stories and hear an explanation of why.

I suspect that Simon knows exactly why the Graydon Carter story is getting more ink: it's got more sex appeal. And it involves "killing their own". As Woody Allen once said, "intellectuals are just like the Mafia--they only kill their own". The media works much the same way: they love to see one of their peers take a fall.

Most importantly, Hollywood and journalistic corruption is nothing new. But if you're a liberal journalist, to believe that the UN is corrupt is to change a worldview you may have held since childhood that the UN is a benign organization full of wonderful humanitarians that helps keep the peace and keeps the "evil" United States in check. And if that's no longer true, then all of those bad things that conservatives have been saying about the UN...may be true! And that can't be possible.

Maybe Stefan Sharkansky is right--this is the week the media jumped the shark.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds reminds us that UNSCAM isn't the only scandal in town among global elites.