Are you kidding, how many ministers did the current government go through in the first couple of weeks in power because of scandals? I know I lost count.

Then there's the whole case with the tsunami tapes going missing.

The case with bodströms possibly advocating direct control of the police to raid TPBs hosting company.

I remember a whole array of ministers getting kicked out head first because of various visits to strip clubs in the 90's.

Then you've got Mona Sahlin cheating on her taxes as well as a wide array of scandals with Gudrun Schyman and alcohol.

That's just the things I can remember on the top of my head and I have just about barely payed attention to local news for the last couple of years until recently.

I think that we might be less sensationalist and have a shorter memory but we do have plenty of scandals. You have to realize though that we are only made up of 9 million people, their scandals should be both greater size and of greater numbers.

As for the two opinions thing, Americans are much more extrovert than Sweeds are. They like to yell at things, it's their thing. We like to sit and whine about things, that's our thing. I do think however that our politicians don't blatantly lie as much, our minister of finance isn't standing there telling us everything is great when it's obvious we hurting and going down deeper.

Now I happened to find Swedish media pretty boring, but that's another thing entirely.

You have a point about individual ministers' personal lives. :-)

The press do seem to have different standards for different politicians.

(I didn't follow the dance around foreign minister Bildt, but remember a journalist complaining that it was a democracy problem that Bildt had his own blog so he could get his own version out...)

That is hardly the same as leaking embarrassing internal papers (which have showed up quite often in Washington Post/NY Times).

Leaking of papers did happen with the Muslim Brotherhood guys that were sent back (and tortured) in Egypt. But how many more times?

The press has for decades gotten direct subsidies from the state here -- and I've seen notes that acknowledge influences, but note exactly how much...

You have numerous political parties due to your proportionally representative parliamentary government, but you only get two opinions in the press?

Even in the internet age, when the cost of publishing is approaching zero?

That's odd.

It's not like you've got six democratic or republican parties in government in a giant pit fighting each other it's more like you've got two blocks with an internal cease fire that yell at the other group and occasionally slip and complain about a block partys politics.