Much of the stuff flowing out of wikileaks was already known but still got everyone all riled up, Matthew Ygesias explains why:
…thanks to WikiLeaks it crossed the line from being something “everyone says” to something people in the media can straight-up report. And Washington, as a company town, is filled to the brim with these kind of things that “everyone knows” but few people really know for sure and nobody wants to publish.
Hollywood is also like that. For all the celebrity gossip that’s published, there’s a remarkable quantity of stuff that “everyone knows” and is nonetheless held back because it’s not really verified or verifiable.
I always wondered why the right went after Joe Wilson so hard and in such a strange way, I think this might be at least part of the answer.