We are reminded by Mr. Young that one of Mr. Edwards’s early boosters was the late Ted Kennedy, who “saw almost unlimited potential in this young, energetic, well-spoken, good-looking Southerner.” In a conversation with Mr. Young, Mr. Kennedy waxed sentimental about Washington in the early 1960s: “It used to be civilized. The media was on our side. We’d get our work done by one o’clock and by two we were at the White House chasing women. We got the job done, and the reporters focused on the issues. . . . It was civilized.” We now know that Mr. Edwards’s idea of civilization was much the same as Kennedy’s.

This is from Aram Bakshian’s review in today’s Wall Street Journal of Andrew Young’s The Politician, the just-released book about former Senator John Edwards. Besides the revelation in the above quote about Ted Kennedy’s sex life, the other striking thing is the line, “The media was [sic] on our side.” So many people nowadays have lamented the Fox News Channel’s lack of objectivity. Nothing wrong with that lamentation except that they tend to hark back to a faux past era when the network news was unbiased. For my take on Fox News Channel in 2005, see “Two Cheers for the Fox News Channel.”