Paterson: 'Can't respond to the rumors about the rumors'

So Gov. David A. Paterson finally took to the airwaves last week to smash and denounce the salacious rumors about him, all unsourced and unsubstantiated. Before that, the calls were coming in spasms out of the fun house that is your state capital.

"The Times is preparing a blockbuster story on Paterson and by next week we're going to have Governor Ravitch," somebody warned us on Feb. 3.

"Uuuhhh, how do you know this?"

"Something about what he's doing at the Mansion. It's all around the Legislature, and the lobbyists are all talking about it. It's coming out Sunday."

One Albany staffer told an elected official by Feb. 5 that Paterson cleared his schedule for the following 48 hours and was in lockdown mode, preparing to figuratively come out with his hands up.

"What did he allegedly do?"

"It's coming out."

"Mmmm. Thanks a ton."

On it went - the amorphous anatomy of a news bubble. The buzz about his personal conduct seemed to get wilder by the hour, building in blogs and broadcast gossip into a form of news-derivative, an ersatz news "product" based on speculation of future news that, like any shaky investment gimmick, ended up deflating.

By week's end the Times published no such bombshell and nobody else had a story with a new fact either. The GOP candidate for governor, Rick Lazio - who'd obviously rather run against Paterson than Attorney General Andrew Cuomo - was oddly and to no practical effect demanding that the newspaper make a statement about something it hadn't printed. And, as far as we could tell, there was an equivalent lack of evidence that anyone in Cuomo country was helping drive this craze.

Paterson returned to doing what a man blessed - or afflicted - with an excess of irony always does. He riffed.

"I'm black, I'm blind and I'm still alive. How much better do they want me to be?" he told Don Imus on Wednesday during the "Imus in the Morning" show.

Paterson, rightly so, protested this "dismal, almost Kafka-esque situation where you can't even respond because you can't respond to the rumors about the rumors."

Then he did some more of what he often does: Made you wonder if he just got carried away by overplaying the circumstance.

"For a person that has such weak poll numbers and hasn't raised enough money and has diminishing political support, someone is going very far out of their way to see that I'm not a candidate this year," he said.

Imus asked if Paterson meant Cuomo. "I don't know who it is," Paterson said, "and for me to speculate on it would be for me to commit the same act I'm complaining about. I just know that it's a well-orchestrated attempt to do this."

Take your pick of factors that fed the frenzy. In no particular order:

Yakkety Democrats who fear Paterson dragging down their ticket in the fall will believe and spread the wildest things about him.

Journalists cover the last story as surely as generals fight the last war. So when the Times staff began asking around on a tip, it sounded like a replay of the out-of-the-blue prostitute news that sent Gov. Eliot Spitzer packing nearly two years ago.

The Web can move misinformation faster and with a wider audience than ever before.

Funny, though. Last year, Caroline Kennedy had the problem. Personal rumors spread about her after she was rejected for a U.S. Senate appointment.

This shows Paterson hasn't been the only victim of a frenzy of this kind inside the fun house.