The Paterson let-down: summing up today's news

Last week, a New York Observer reporter speculated on his Twitter account about a major upcoming expose in the New York Times regarding New York Governor David Paterson. The soon-to-be-published report, the errant tweeter insinuated, would be damning enough to blow Paterson out of office--likely a major sex scandal. The tweet circulated through the blogosphere, the build-up, well, building and building until the story ran last night and the blogosphere let out a collective "huh?". The big story, it turns out, was not about Paterson at all, but about his closest aid, a former intern from Harlem named David Johnson.

Johnson has a checkered past. As a young man he faced drug charges for selling crack cocaine to an undercover officer. And, more recently, he was involved in several "domestic disputes," as the Times called them. One woman whom he had been seeing alleged that he punched her. In another incident he allegedly menaced a woman in the Bronx on Halloween, tearing off her costume. This behavior is especially questionable, the Times noted, given Paterson's dedication to fighting domestic violence in New York. "Last October, two weeks before the episode involving Mr. Johnson and the Bronx woman, Mr. Paterson opened a campaign to raise awareness about domestic violence, gathering with advocates for a lighting ceremony at the Empire State Building."

Though the dirt on Johnson was salacious enough to merit an article in the Times, the blogosphere aired its disappointment. This, many wrote, was one big let-down of a scandal. "If one really squints, we guess this story could be viewed as somewhat sexy and scandalous. But barely," wrote Business Insider. "Johnson’s a misogynistic tyrant who once tried to sell cocaine to a cop and still, somehow, this information is relatively boring compared with the wife-swapping and drug-sharing that was rumored to be the stuff of the investigation," wrote Vanity Fair, which added that the article weakly painted Paterson as a "hypocrite for simultaneously employing the reportedly abusive Johnson and for maintaing his controversial position of frowning upon domestic abuse." (Allow me one quick aside--how is "frowning upon domestic abuse" possibly controversial?)

The Village Voice was the only publication that didn't put on petulant airs in the wake of the story, noting that the Johnson revelations may not be the makings of a major political scandal, but violence against women is a scandal in and of itself. "If not for the massive foreplay that preceded it, the Times story would be deeply disturbing."

Paterson, for his part, has denied the allegations against his aid, saying that the story could not "substantiate any claims of violence by David Johnson against a woman, a fact underscored by the absence of a single judicial finding that any such incident ever took place." He added, "I would caution others from making a similar rush to judgment." His word, of course, goes against that of Johnson's anonymous ex, who told the Times that the governor's aid had "gotten violent" with her and that she had filed a domestic violence report against him. -TLF