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"I don't think it's appropriate for me to discuss my personal problems in the public and I'm not going to do so."

That was Gov. Jim Gibbons on Wednesday last week. The next day, he gave an interview to KRNV News in Reno about his personal problems.

I really don't much want to cover the Gibbons divorce suit, and I would have liked to see the whole matter resolved privately. But Gibbons won't keep quiet about it. He keeps saying he doesn't want to talk about his private life. But he keeps doing it. What he really does is try to control the circumstances in which he talks about it so that he can talk but others can't ask him questions, thus allowing him to try to control interpretations -- which, surprise, tend to favor him over his wife. He speaks through spokespeople, he writes letters to the editor.

In February, Gibbons (speaking through his chief of staff Dianne Cornwall) said he was having marital problems and would be having a family meeting about it. (Some sources say the meeting was never held.) This was originally interpreted as an inadvertent comment by Cornwall, an interpretation that seems weak in the light of the governor's later conduct.

In April, Gibbons (speaking through his campaign consultant Jim Denton), announced that he had abandoned the governors' mansion to live in the family home he owns with his wife.

On other occasions, Gibbons has made additional statements about the matter through his press aide Ben Kieckhefer and his attorney Gary Silverman.

All of these are statements by the governor. No one cares about his cronies' statements on this issue except as they speak for the governor. Spokespeople exist for the sole purpose of speaking for the governor. What comes out of their mouths originates in his mouth.

This month, in response to an editorial in the Elko Daily Free Press, Gibbons sent a letter to the editor denying he was having an affair, a step professional politicians considered insane, since it licensed journalists to repeat the charges he was responding to (until he sent the letter, the editorial stayed below the radar except in political circles), and because it increased public interest in his private life -- but protected him from being questioned.

All of these machinations are ways for him to keep talking about his marriage and divorce suit. What most of them have in common is that they allow Gibbons, in effect, to slip press statements under the newsroom door in the dead of night and then run like crazy so he won't have to respond to questions, protesting all the time that he doesn't want to talk about his private life.

Jim Gibbons' affected determination to remain silent about his divorce is a little like the determination of Lord Byron's chaste lady: "A little still she strove, and much repented.

And whispering, 'I will ne'er consent '-- consented." Every time Gibbons objects to invasions of his privacy, it is accompanied by more information from his organization.

Dawn Gibbons has been told by her attorney to avoid public comment, which, with one exception, she has.

Gibbons obtained a court seal on records of his divorce action. There have been hints that some of the issues under seal in the Gibbons divorce engage public issues and public concerns, ones that would not make him look very good.

No one is forcing Gibbons to keep bringing the subject up. If he wants to keep his divorce private, all he needs to do is put a cork in it and silence his spokespeople. Until then, journalists must decide whether to abide by the request for privacy of a public figure who keeps thrusting his private life into the limelight.

Jim Gibbons' constant talk about his divorce from behind the safety of protestations of privacy is an effort to try to spin the story his way and try to poison the atmosphere against his wife, which reduces the obligations that members of the public and of the press have to yield to his privacy. Under the best of circumstances, reporters should not abide by ground rules set by politicians. Gibbons has relentlessly kept injecting his private life into the public discourse, so journalists should start covering it like any other story and scrutinize the issues like they would any other matter of public interest.