The Review-Journal's Jim Gibbons Problem

Reading Sunday's LVRJ piece on Jim Gibbons and the "very intoxicated woman," people were scratching their heads and wondering: what's this all about. I, for one, had to make sure it was the conservative, Republican loving Las Vegas Review-Journal publishing this on the frontpage of their Sunday edition and not some lefty paper. In the meantime the Reno Gazette-Journal's Anjeanette Damon has come out of her sabbatical woodworks to criticize the LVRJ.

So, what the hell is going on here?

You might remember that Erin Neff had a very funny (well, a lot of Democrats and probably a few Republicans surely enjoyed themselves) column in the LVRJ in July which was headlined "Editorial board stumbles leave no debate about Gibbons' weaknesses." It starts with the line: "It's a good thing for Jim Gibbons that he's been AWOL this election year" and just gets juicier from there.

I wrote an entry on Turn Tahoe Blue about this column and wondered:

BTW, somehow I can't help but feel that if Gibbons wins the Republican nomination and Gibson the Democratic nomination that the Review-Journal might just endorse the latter. It will be really fun though if it'll be Gibbons vs Titus...

And, hey, it's Gibbons vs Titus! Who would've thought. And, now it's really, really fun to see the LVRJ trying to find a way out of this predicament. Now, I'm speculating here. But how does a conservative newspaper get around endorsing the Republican candidate for Governor before a close election? A scandal involving alcohol, woman and the police might do the trick. Too bad the other papers don't feel the same way, though.

Poor LVRJ. We petty you. We really do.