John Edwards Admits Affair
Former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination and former running mate of John Kerry, Senator John Edwards has told ABC News that he lied during his presidential campaign earlier year when he denied accusations that he had a relationship with 44-year old Rielle Hunter.
Far from lies, the accusation that the two had a relationship was correct, he said.
Although he admits to having had a relationship with Ms. Hunter, Edwards denied he is the father of Hunter’s baby, Frances Quinn. He said he had not taken a paternity test but is sure that he is not the baby’s father because of the date of birth; February 27, 2008. According to the former senator the relationship had ended well before that date, seemingly in 2006 already.
In that year the extramarital relationship between the two started and, according to Edwards, ended. He admitted his infidelity to his wife, Elizabeth.
Cheating is always horrible for the other partner, but it’s even more horrible in this particular case; Elizabeth was recovering from cancer at that moment and was later diagnosed with an incurable form of the disease.
Back in October of last year Edwards vehemently denied having had a relationship with Ms. Hunter when the National Enquirer said he did cheat on his wife and lie to the public. “The story is false, it’s completely untrue, it’s ridiculous,” Edwards told reporters then. He repeated this lie two weeks ago. “The story is false, it’s completely untrue, it’s ridiculous,” Edwards told reporters then.
Furthermore, the NE claimed recently that Edwards visited Ms. Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton last month. The former senator admitted that this accusation too is correct.
The admissions obviously mean the end of Edwards’ political career. He was a promising Democratic politician, who could often count on the support of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. For weeks progressive bloggers supported his candidacy. It is now clear that if he had won the Democratic nomination he would stand no chance whatsoever of winning the general election in November of this year.
I thought McCain had been a bit cold, but this takes the cake. My head spins at the thought of cheating on a cancer-ridden loved one after years of love and the conception and rearing of a child. Love is wasted on people who lack discipline and commitment. You don’t have to love your spouse forever, but you can at least be there when they are ill, and slowly leave as they get better. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. I expect there will be about a blogillion articles churned out that will sort of segue this towards democrats in general, Obama in particular. Just counting the ones written by tomorrow, that is.I also expect some left bloggers who tried the same insipid tactic with republican politicians’ missteps to do some heavy slaloming.I also expect the media to go psychotic, covering this whole SEX-RELATED story with sensationalist drool, inanities and predictions about soccer moms and "regular folks" being frightened to death of democrats because of this. There will be about 49 GB of "humorous" material consisting of written jokes, image macros and gifs about the Edwards-Bill Clinton similarity on the internet alone.About 700′000 iterations of "A democrat who isn’t against drilling" jokes.I expect indescribable stupidity, with plenty of general abuse and dilution of the central matter at hand. For far too many people, this is still "juicy" and giggle-worthy, something that deserves to be brought into everything and blustered about endlessly from both sides of the aisle until the central issue is forgotten. This is SEXSEXSEX and SEX is NAUGHTY and RAUNCHY and SCANDALOUS and OHMY.Did I mention how much I hate what Safari does to my posts?
The real story here is the way the story was reported - or not. I can’t take credit for the idea - others have expressed this elsewhere. But the basic story isn’t Edwards being a low-life, its how the story was handled. Nor is the story "SEXSEXSEX." The story is how utterly, totally compromised the so-called mainstream media (MSM TM) are.
The New York Times couldn’t wait to do any in depth investigaive reporting when it thought it had a great gossipy story on McCain’s playing around with a lobbyist. It was NEWS, and had to be reported right now, and fact-checked later. Naturally, since it was in the NYT, the rest of the MSM ran with the story - the LA Times, and on and on. A few days later, the bloggers having proven that it really wasn’t too hard to do research on the story, and the fact it had no legs was evident. So big retractions and apologies to McCain all round? Surely you jest. The MSM just stopped reporting on the story, since it was old, and no longer news.
Now contrast this to l-affair Edwards. Hints of something outre arise months ago, but no one in the MSM sees anything newsworthy, even though Edwards is campaigning hard for the Democratic Party nomination, and is coping with a serious illness in the family (his wife), claiming that he’s a solid family man, supporting her always. When the National Enquirer breaks the Edwards infidelity story, the MSM ignore it, because, after all, this is from a mere tabloid. Nothing to see or report here, since the misbehaving politician wasn’t a Republican like Larry Craig.
What this episode reveals, in stark relief, is the corrupt, partisan nature of the MSM. They are not in the information business, but in the political public relations business, as the official unpaid flacks for the Democratic Party. Nothing they say or report has any credibility, since it is reasonable to expect that it has been carefully edited or spun to be useful to the Democratic Party. The demise of the MSM cannot occur too soon. The media long ago ceased to be a public servant, and is a shill.
whatever happened to Democrats cheating on their wives with good looking women?
I agree the MSM should have looked more into it as the story picked up (which may or may not show bias), but even I dismissed the story at first because of its appearance in the Enquirer. Even you’ve got to admit, aside from a few big scoops, their track record isn’t that great. Anybody would be skeptical, and rightfully so.
Michael, I agree with you the Enquirer has a very mixed track record. My personal inclination is to be very skeptical of anything they report. However, let’s consider - making an allegation of an affair by a very successful trial lawyer would seem to be incredibly risky unless the paper really had something to back it up. I am a firm believer in skepticism, which is quite different from outright dismissal. A skeptic might ask to see more evidence - and that’s reasonable. I don’t expect every news organization in the USA to drop everything to investigate the Edwards matter, but when the Times of London picked up the story and ran with it, even though they cited the Enquirer, I would think that would be grounds enough for the MSM to at least consider the possibility that there was some substance to the Enquirer’s story. A that point, investigation seems reasonable. Instead it seems that the MSM ignored it. Which would be fine, if they were similarly disinterested in sleaze from all parties. But it seems that they can’t get enough slime if the sleaze-ball is a Republican. And in addition, let’s not overlook the way Wikipedia tried to kill the story.
All right, perhaps none of this bothers you. Fair enough. But I find it rather odd that the trend to report or not seems to have a rather strong correlation to the political identity of the participants. The MSM is having serious credibility problems. And when something like this happens, they don’t do anything to dispel the notion that there is a double standard for how things are handled by the press. That sets an especially dangerous situation up. People decide that they cannot trust the media to be honest and impartial. While metaphysical objectivity is not humanly possible, it certainly should be possible to come closer to objectivity than the standards offered by the New York Times. Come to think of it, I’d have to say that I wouldn’t waste my time reading the NYT, because I view it as having credibility on a par with the National Enquirer. I’m not sure who that speaks worst of, but it certainly does not bode well for the fourth estate when people tend to dismiss them as corrupt shills for petty politicians.
One more follow up to my follow up to Michael. The Times of London picked up the story in their Sunday, July 27th edition, and their on-line edition. The headline read: "Sleaze scuppers Democrat golden boy" and they laid it out there, but none of the US MSM seemed to find it newsworthy. The linky thingie, if I can make it work:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4406814.ece
In case it doesn’t work, try googling Times London sleaze scuppers Democrat and you should get there quickly.
Why the MSM shuldbe concerned is nicely covered in a piece on the ‘Recovering Journalist’ site, linky thingey:
http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2008/08/the-john-edwards-affair.htm
Good luck and good reading. I think the point is this - AP and the others in the ‘old media’ who think they can drop all pretense of objectivity and replace solid reporting with editorials miss the point of investigative journalism: you have to follow the story wherever it goes, fully, and fairly. Covering up for your friends destroys credibility. And credibility is the only thing a journalist has. Once it’s gone, it doesn’t come back.
In politics (at least American politics), when you can fake sincerity, you are all set. And Edwards, it must be admitted, does a great job of that.
Perhaps it is the training to be a lawyer, and lie to judges and juries about his clients. Or maybe it’s just natural talent. But whatever the source, he does it really well. As shown by both his original denials and by his most recent statement. But at least we will be rid of him now, so there is some silver lining to the cloud.