exactly the kind of story we don't handle well

Incidentally, watching the Petraeus scandal develop, it occurs to me that it's exactly the kind of story that we do very poorly in the current era of constant Twitterfication and instant opinions. Yesterday the affair was a big scandal. Tonight the opinion is that this is all a sideshow and the real scandal is that the FBI was ever involved at all. Well hang on a second: your opinion was different twelve hours ago. Can you really say that it won't be different in another twelve? Guys: slow down.

If you want to talk about the nature of the surveillance state or our media or infidelity or the military or whatever, that's fine. Broad questions can certainly be discussed. But the actual events and repercussions... we don't know. We can't know, yet. You don't have to have both a brilliant and brilliantly counterintuitive opinion AND a bunch of lame quips already. Take a breath.