Dear AP: Please stop. You're not helping.

I've spent some time today trying to figure out why the AP article comparing Hillary's schedule to the Bill/Monica sexual encounter schedule made me feel so ... well... icky. Salacious details aside, I think it's because I don't see the point. Bottom line, AP - and other media outlets that choose to hash and rehash the details because they just can't resist the urge to follow the leader - you're not helping.

How does knowing where Hillary was when her husband was being a cad tell me how she is going to get us out of Iraq? It doesn't. Are the specifics of her healthcare plan and her blueprint for fixing the economy somehow affected by her husband's infidelity more than a decade ago? Not one bit.

We can expect this kind of dirt digging from Republicans because it's become par for the course in recent presidential campaigns, but why are we getting it from the media? How does this benefit the voters in any way, shape, or form?

Barack Obama's speech - while in part given to disavow his pastor's vitriolic sermon - was also meant to send the message of no more. Not this time, he offered. Let's bring discourse back up to a respectable level. Let's stop with the token character assassinations and bring the contest back to the issues that matter. Let's just - finally - aim to be better.

Yes, character matters. And if there is something in Obama's past or Clinton's past that we should know about and take into consideration when selecting the person best suited to steer this country back in the right direction, bring it up. Dissect it to pieces. Fine. But stop with the judgment based on tangential non-factors. Don't we have enough real stuff to worry about?

You can argue over who started it or what's fair game and play tit-for-tat in the ever-growing conga line of people who know or are affiliated with the candidates that make questionable statements. But all we're doing is snaking ourselves into a giant knot and getting nowhere. Please, just stop.

Back in January, I posted on my personal blog an incident where Bill Clinton laid into Jessica Yellin - CNN's Congressional correspondent - for perpetuating crap that no one cares about (3:20 in). The exchange - important in its own right, posted by CNN without a hint of irony, and ultimately making absolutely no impact whatsoever - gave me an excuse to repost Jon Stewart's famous Crossfire appearance where he tells Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson (but mostly Tucker) to stop hurting America.

It's been more than 2 years, and yet, sadly, it's more relevant than ever.