According to the Times' mostly anonymous sources, Schwarzenegger groped women usually on movie sets, much as Bill Clinton groped Kathleen Willey in the White House. When Willey went public with the story, I began calling her assailant the Groper, as in "Win One for the Groper." Needless to say, the joke did not catch on. Many journalists remained in doubt that the virginal president would commit such a rude act. Yet when the anonymous sources accused Schwarzenegger of groping, he was instantaneously referred to as the Groper, as in "Win One for the Groper."

There is an obvious double standard at work here, and so I can imagine the Times getting a pass from the ethicists. Clinton is a Democrat, and the press sympathizes with Democrats. Schwarzenegger ran as a Republican, and the press disdains Republicans.

This suggests to me the one dreadful mistake Schwarzenegger made in his campaign. He should have declared himself an independent. The press is almost as sympathetic to independents as it is to Democrats. Do you recall when a particularly coarse ex-wrestler ran for high office in Minnesota as an independent? No sooner did he win the governorship than Jesse Ventura was being boomed in the press as a presidential contender.

I shall be interested in the Times' response if the ethicists do raise questions about the newspaper's reliance on anonymous sources. How will its editors plead? My suggestion is that they rely on Clintonesque reasoning. Simply claim that groping is not sex. Groping is politics. Certainly the paper treated it as politics. And apparently under certain circumstance, even rape is politics.

When the Los Angeles Times got its groping story, the editors ran it on the front page. When they had a story involving rape charges against Bill Clinton, they buried the story in the back of the paper. Of course, the rape charge against Clinton was different from most of the groping charges against Schwarzenegger. It had a source willing to be identified. Her name is Juanita Broaddrick, and unlike Schwarzenegger, Clinton has neither apologized nor admitted.