By Brian Greenspun

Sun, Mar 30, 2008 (2 a.m.)

We have finally gone too far.

Actually, we went too far a long time ago in this country. It started with Watergate and it has continued ever since. The “it” is the public’s belief that it is entitled to know anything and everything about a citizen in this country who puts himself or herself up for public service.

Whether these people are appointed, elected or drafted into public service, this growing belief that anyone in a position of public trust — together with family and friends — is fair game for the media, the bloggers, the curious and the maliciously intended in our society has taken us too far down a road toward the ruination of our democracy.

There, I said it.

I have been meaning to write this column for a long time. In fact, I have written around this subject, going all the way back to 1973 and a conversation I had with my dear friend and Nevada’s most outstanding governor, Mike O’Callaghan.

Mike, who had lost a leg fighting for our country in Korea, was swimming in a friend’s pool when I engaged him about the Watergate hearings that were then under way. I asked what he thought would be Watergate’s impact. Of course, I was focused on President Nixon’s immediate future. Mike skipped way past what he knew would be an ignominious end to the president’s career and spoke, instead, about his concern for democracy.

He believed that Watergate would give license to the media and anyone else to delve so deeply into a candidate’s background, as well as his family’s background, that most responsible people in our society would opt out of a career in public service. He said the price would be too high for people who had achieved success and wanted to give back through such service, because invariably there would be something along their way up the ladder that would not, could not or should not stand the rigors of public scrutiny when looked at through the lens of hindsight and second-guesses.

He said there was going to be a feeling of entitlement on the part of the people who for years couldn’t care less about a person’s private life — as long as it didn’t affect his public obligations — who would now insist on knowing everything. He feared this would last for at least a generation.

Mike was right. But now we are into this unhealthy-for-democracy environment for a second generation, with no letup in sight.

I recently thought about this with the Obama-Clinton flap about the releasing of income tax returns. While part of me — the curious part — would love to know what is in someone else’s tax returns, another part of me — the part that understands how personal a tax return is and how much it can expose one to unreasonable criticism, and how essential confidentiality is to the voluntary system of taxpaying that keeps this country going — understands that some things are nobody else’s business.

So why, I asked myself, if a person wants to give the public a glimpse into his financial soul, should he also have to give up his spouse’s confidential information? And, more important, why should he have to?

There are always some good reasons why people seeking public office should share some private information with voters. But I think we have gone too far when we expect the entirety of income tax returns to be made public for no other reason than we are curious. Next thing, we’ll want to know up front whether our governors and their wives are having affairs! Can you imagine?

This may sound nuts coming from someone in my business, but I believe there is a rule of reason that needs to be applied to all of our public utterances. The Constitution says we can say all the stupid things we want, but our humanity and our morality say that we must be responsible in the process.

I join the hundreds of thousands of Nevadans who are outraged by the lack of oversight and flagrant disregard for safety that are at the heart of the endoscopy clinic debacle. Assuming the facts are what we have read, there has been gross negligence and, perhaps, criminal activity in the way those clinics have been operated. Whoever is responsible for potentially jeopardizing thousands of lives must be held accountable.

There is no question that the media’s pursuit and the government’s actions toward that end are essential in a society that expects, demands and deserves its health and safety to be paramount societal objectives. And don’t we have a right to assume that whoever is supposed to protect the public, actually is?

But when the media pursue the wrong people, when the government — in this case our governor — tries to avoid direct responsibility for a gross lack of oversight, spurred on by an ideological, insane “no tax” mantra, by scapegoating innocent doctors who are ripe for the picking, we have gone too far. And as a society, we have an obligation to rein it in, dial it back and return to common sense. Otherwise, innocent people will get hurt.

One of the doctors who has been thrust into this story by the media and the governor is Dr. Ikram Khan. He is a man who has been here for most of his adult life, contributed mightily to the cause of good medicine and, as best I can tell, while trying to make a living, has conducted himself with distinction.

The past few weeks, though, he has found himself in the middle of a maelstrom created by others, one from which he has not been able to extricate himself. Doctors, by nature, are mild mannered, meek almost, and mostly afraid of any controversy that doesn’t deal with patient care. Even there, they have allowed themselves to be run over by HMOs, insurance companies and others that insist they know more than the doctors when it comes to treatment.

Dr. Khan has been working overtime to protect his reputation — which has been called into question by the governor’s actions or inaction — as well as that of the doctor’s partner, who properly refused to resign from the Medical Board. Gov. Jim Gibbons has the bully pulpit, no matter how absurdly wrong he is, and the media — in this case the Review-Journal — doesn’t seem to care about the truth when there is a good story at stake.

I mention all of this because the price of our desire, not need, to know everything — and the environment it has created in which a public deflection of governmental shortcomings is foisted upon the undeserving in society — has taken a toll that is too high.

Dr. Khan suffered a heart attack — he is doing fine — Wednesday. He has no history of heart disease in his family and does not live the kind of life that puts him at risk. I am not a doctor but I suspect it was brought on entirely by incredibly high stress caused by these events.

Although I don’t blame the governor, his minions or the media directly, they all play roles in creating that stress where none should have existed. Less concern for one’s public career and a few more hours to ferret out the truth could have gone a long way toward preventing the kind of stress overload that took its toll on the good doctor.

Are our curiosity, our insecurity and our lack of competence compelling enough reasons to send good people to the hospital? There are plenty of folks who should be punished severely for what has happened. Dr. Khan is not one of them.

Must we really continue the legacy of Watergate two generations later? When are we going to start acting like grown-ups? And when will good people who are willing to serve their country be freed from our nosy, prying and childish ways?

The answer will determine when we can, once again, pursue a “more perfect union.”

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.