It's not new, it's just a faster way of getting the stuff out:
"Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?" was the chant about Grover Cleveland, who paid child support to Maria Halpin for an illegitimate child of whom he may or may not have been the father.
Andrew Jackson's marriage to Rachel Robards was a factor in the campaign of 1828, because her divorce wasn't finalized until two years after she married Andrew -- and Andrew fought 13 duels, killing one man, ostensibly over slurs to her honor.
And of course the Jefferson-Hemings possible affair.