What happened to House Speaker Glenn Richardson a couple of weeks ago is nothing new. This kind of thing has been going on for years. I remember a legislator who served in the House of Representatives in the 1940’s telling me that a small group of leaders would gather at the old Henry Grady Hotel on the Sunday night before the legislative session began and decided on the eight or ten pieces of legislation that they would pass and then spend the next 40 days raising hell.

There was an unwritten law between politicians and the media that drinking and womanizing was not news, as long as it wasn’t too obvious. I wasn’t there at the time, but it would not surprise me if some members of the press corps were willing participants in the hell-raising.

Those days are long-gone. Nothing is off-limits anymore. Politicians had best remember that. Richardson was nailed by the I-Team at WAGA in Atlanta, thanks to a scorned wife. No doubt many legislators and members of the capitol press corps knew about the Speaker’s dalliances. (Remember now-retired political columnist Bill Shipp referring to Richardson as “Romeo” on an almost weekly basis?) The refusal to deal with his alleged behavior by the media and Richardson’s colleagues has resulted in a sea change. You can bet the farm that an embarrassed media won’t let themselves get scooped again. And they can’t afford to.

If the press doesn’t do its job, there are cell phone cameras, blogs (like this one), Twitter, You Tube and technologies yet to be discovered that will do it for them.

I don’t think my late friend who served in the Legislature in the “good ol’ days” would like what is going on these days at the Capitol, but our current politicians had better get used to it. It is a new day at the Gold Dome.