Howard Kurtz today:

Yet while the Letterman saga has unleashed a tsunami of coverage, serious allegations involving Sen. John Ensign have barely produced a trickle.

...

Was Ensign, whose parents just happened to give $96,000 to Cynthia Hampton and her family, trying to buy the couple's silence? Despite such troubling questions, the Ensign controversy barely exists on television -- although CNN's Dana Bash did manage to stake him out for a quick interview in which the senator said he'd violated no ethical rules and has no plans to resign.

The Ensign story is complicated and not very visual. Letterman is far more famous. So the comic is turned into media fodder and the officeholder largely stays under the radar.

Left unmentioned in Howard Kurtz's half-hearted attempt to explain why David Lettermen has gotten so much more media attention than John Ensign: Howard Kurtz's own obsession with the Letterman story. Marcy Wheeler documented that obsession last Tuesday, and it has continued to this day.

So, Kurtz himself has been obsessed with Letterman -- and has fanned the flames of the Letterman story as much as anyone. And now he purports to analyze why the media -- as if he isn't part of it -- has paid so much attention to Letterman, without ever once mentioning his own role or motivations.

Instead, he offers up the absolutely inane explanation that the Ensign story hasn't gotten more attention because it's too complicated. Really? We're supposed to believe the media can't figure out how to report that a Senator had an affair with one of his staffers -- who happened to be married to another of his staffers -- then tried to buy the couples' silence by giving them $96,000 from his parents and getting the husband a new job?

Seems like something they could figure out how to cover if they put their minds to it.