John Edwards Confirms that the National Enquirer is Credible
| Fri Aug. 8, 2008 1:05 PM PDT
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about today's revelation that John Edwards—in the midst of launching a presidential campaign—indeed had an affair, is that the National Enquirer was spot on, eight months ago. In his ABC confessional, to air tonight on Primetime, Edwards points out that the Enquirer got it right when it reported that he met with his lady friend at the Beverly Hilton two weeks ago. Edwards still denies the baby-daddy accusation, saying he is not the father of Rielle Hunter's child, though DNA may be called for given his truth track record here.
Makes one wonder, did the DNC finally have its act together on this one? Think about it, if his "friends and supporters" knew enough to perhaps pay her living expenses (which Edwards suggests in tonight's interview) then perhaps some organized party machinery pushed him out of the limelight just in time. I mean, the man with the Plan to Build One America, set out some lofty plans for this country. But Americans want their politicians faithful and straight (or at least as far as they know).
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I have been following this sad story, admittedly with some gossip shame. But also as a member of the non-tab media who's supposed to toss away gossip rags as sources of anything credible. But the Enquirer, and Jossip, one of my new favorite blogs, have been all over this story. ( One link I sent to a fellow editor at Mother Jones got returned with the note: "Jossip.com, huh?" To which I responded, "Gossip can pay the most unlikely dividends.")
There is more truthiness than we dare to admit in the supermarket aisles. Sure there is a ton of trash and nonsense, but it would behoove all of us journalistas to pick up on the trail they break sometimes. Though perhaps part of the reason we didn't in this case, we like to tell ourselves, is, what a worthy politician does in his personal life is his own business. But is it, ever? And when they pay their lady friend campaign money to make webisodes, what then of the divide?
Two Americas, media people, the gossip rags and the rest of us. This round goes to the rags.
Comments
Kathy, you should know by now that this is blood in the water to the media scandal sharks.
Another philandering, lying politician, having Sex with someone he isn't married to! On record previously denying the whole thing...
Too good to pass up.
Mother Jones is beating themselves over the head that they couldn't scoop the other media outlets with this.., but they were too busy looking for a scandal to expose among Republicans, or someone they associate with Republicans.
Lurid crap like This is MUCH more fun than writing about something real and important to America, like the collapsing dollar, or runaway government deficit spending, or the fact that the Democratic majority in Congress has done D!CK as far as getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, or gasoline still around $4.00/gal...
You know, if John Edwards and some woman of low virtue want to make Smuckers Jam ontop of a stained matress in some seedy, down-at -the- heel hotel room on the outskirts of town, that's his business, Why should we, as Ameicans, tiptoe through the empty beer can's and discarded shopping cart's and press our eye to the back window of their hotel room as they make grunting, sweating love? What right do we have to speculate about the secrets of his inner life as we watch their shadows play acoss the wall from the light of the graphic pornography playing on the in-room television set while to the animalistic soundtrack as they "make the beast with two back's"? Indeed, none of our business, let's slink away into the weeds and I'll sport you a Fourty of Malt liquor down at the 7-11.
"Rabbi" - with all due respect, anyone who feels the need to write the word "God" with a hyphen is neurotic at best, mentally ill at worst.
Second - apologies for invoking that metaphor which troubles you. My point is that it is a sickness of our media and culture that we are forced to consider the personal habits of a politician remotely relevant to anything. I truly invoke the wrath of the flying spaghetti monster on anyone who can't understand that. Those people create a terrifying lapse of priority - there's a war in Georgia starting today, and the Edwards crap is front page news? That's evil.
I was an Edwards supporter, and I certainly do care about this. While Edward's progressive platform was my main interest, I note also that he explicitly noted that he had his wife's support despite the complications of her illness. The fact that he was sneaking around doesn't speak well of his sincerety. Unfortunately, Edwards now joins a long line of politicians who cheat on their wives when they are ill. I guess John McCain and Newt Gingrich can welcome him to the club.
It is sad and troubling, only because, naively enough, I had viewed Edwards as a little above the others. Now there is this seediness.
Speaking of seedy - anyone check out Franklin Grimes comments above? This guy is saying we shouldn't care about it but writing so much graphic detail in his protest it must have been hard for him to type with just one hand. I smell a creative writing course at the community college in Franklin's recent past. For the record, that smells like industrial floor cleaner, cigarette smoke, the overheating lamp of a slide show projector, and a multi-generational melange of perfume, from CKB to Old Spice. Yes, I'm speaking from personal experience.
I offer for your consideration a universal truth that "Boys will be Boys"
Hey Boys, you are the newest trinity,
That will live forever in eternity.
You have proved you have the basic essence,
To be driven by your tumescence.
Controlled by your organ, showing your skill,
Our undisciplined leaders,John,Eliot and Bill.
You rose to power, elevated by election,
But to be remembered by your erection.
Naughty, Naughty, why didn't you think of us?
Rather than be led by Mister
Priapus.
You were the guys to show us something better,
Along with your friends, Senators Craig and Vetter.
You were to soar and carry us aloft,
But when the putz got hard, the mind went soft.
(Maury Povich) May I have the paternity results..........thank you ........Johnathan Edwards.........You ARE the babydaddy!!!!
(Johnathan Edwards( (Running off stage) noooooooo noooooooooo noooooooooooo its wrong noooo
(Mistress Hunter) I told you! I told you! I told you! I told you! Pay up sucka! Pay up sucka! Pay up sucka! You wanna play? You gotta pay!!!!!
So he lied about an affair. Now he's in political purgatory. Bush and Cheney lied and thousands died and they're still untouched. Where's the balance in focus for "newsworthy" events? Why aren't the news and the tabloids as relentless with finding the truth on Bush and Cheney as they are with Edwards infidelity?
Unfortunately, Edwards now joins a long line of politicians who cheat on their wives when they are ill. I guess John McCain and Newt Gingrich can welcome him to the club.
Too young to remember Gary Hart?
There's another Democrat who Probably would have been president, but for getting caught by the media scandal-sharks with his pants down..., so to speak.
Here's a bit of old info that will keep McCain from attacking Obama or Edwards...on morals:
John Edwards has admitted having an affair with Rielle Hunter in 2006 but vehemently denies being the father of Hunter's child and is willing to take the necessary tests to prove it. Edwards' chances of being Obama's Veep kind of dropped a bit with this announcement. No doubt it will get a lot of play in the traditional media. It will be interesting to see if any enterprising reporter asks John McCain point blank: "Have you ever committed adultery?" It is a germane question because (1) Edwards adultery is big news and (2) McCain has made "moral character" the main issue of his campaign.
McCain may not be too keen to answer yes or no because the truth won't please the family values crowd. While he was a P.O.W. in Vietnam, his first wife, model Carol Shepp, was seriously injured in a horrific traffic accident in which she was thrown through the windshield. She didn't mention this in her letters to him in Vietnam to keep his morale up. When he got back and saw her 4 inches shorter, seriously overweight, and on crutches, he began having affairs. One piece of indisputable evidence is the fact that he obtained a license to marry wealthy beer heiress Cindy Hensley on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to Carol. Here is the L.A. Times story but if you type: McCain adultery to Google, you'll get 500,000 hits. Journalistic standards ought to require that if Edwards cheating on his sick wife is an indication of a deep moral flaw, then McCain cheating on his sick wife ought to be the same thing. And McCain is a candidate for President; Edwards is not.
drbarney2 tells us: McCain has made "moral character" the main issue of his campaign.
Has he, indeed?
I find that a somewhat curious contention, given that if you go to McCain's campaign website (www.johnmccain.com/), and click on the "Issues" tab, "Moral Character" isn't even on the list.
Unless Obama were to name Edwards as his running mate (which would be a pretty moronic move at this point in time, and I don't for a second consider Barack to be a moron) why would McCain waste one single word attacking Edwards?
The media scandal-sharks are going to do a perfectly adequate job of taking Edwards apart for the next 2 weeks (it's easier and more fun that examining real hardball issues, that call for real, hardball choices, after all..), and McCain needn't say a word.
I'm pullin' out a big "I told ya so" here.
And to those of you who ask why should we care? Well, if this scum merchant is going to let his little head do the talkin' on one end while he goes on about how he loves his wife and how brave she is with his other head, that is a problem. No other candidate (cept Hillary) paraded their spouse like Edwards did.
Face it, you Edwards folks have been had!
Submitted by William Taylor (not verified) on Sun Aug. 10, 2008 12:31 PM PDT.
How sad MoJo ran this story. I'd have more respect for you if you'd ran the latest Britney Spears tabloid tale. Or in her case tail.
I don't care what corporate owned political stooges do. I do care about the ravages of corporatism and imperialistic Americana on the world and our own people. And where a failed political hand-puppet sticks his wennie...gee mojo, aren't you gonna tell us who gets kicked off the island next? And by the way, is Bill Kaulitz getting a sex change?
Get back to progressive news. I can always read the corporate news for this B.S.
Tunn Kotaro, I'm not Jewish but even I know that Jews routinely write "God" as "G-d." As I recall (the rabbi can confirm this), the reason is that the name of God is too holy to be spoken or written. So if you're Jewish, writing "G-d" is SOP, not an affectation.
Edwards lied about some extracurricular pig hunting;so what?
That doesn't mean his platform was wrong.It only means his wife may kick his a** out to the condo in Florida.
I would rather have a lie about doing the nasty with some campaign worker,or,some fat broad than a lie about national security that gets a whole lot of boys and girls killed in sime God forsaken desert.
John will be back when Fox can't milk this for more Murdoch mileage.
Seems to me the quandary of the media is represented by this post: more people have responded to it than anything else on the current front page of the blog index. We condemn the media for giving us tripe, but we consume it with more gusto than anything else. I count myself in this--it's an act of will to click on the depressing story of a new conflict in the former Soviet Union instead of a juicy story about infidelity and illegitimate children.
So, put me in the loathsome but irrelevant camp, and in the guilty of what I preach against camp. Total misanthropy is always just a day away...
Is this to be the measure of a person's political ability? Of course it is. We live in a culture where what seems is infinitely more important than what is.
I find it sadly ironic that in a society (like ours) that's been hammered into indifference through exposure to one shocking greed-fueled act of vulgarity after another, it's the titillating innuendo that delivers the coup de grace.
As the flames crept higher, Nero played on.
I sent $25 to the Gary Hart campaing. It's deja vu all over again.
Progressives and liberals are going to have to nominate women and lesbians because the guys have their brains hooked up to their gonads. The Republican attack machine is more than ready to pounce.
It is not a fair field. Strom Thurman had a black love child for most of his 100 years and not a word in the, so called, free press. Daddy Bush had his girl friend on the govt payroll when he was working for the USA in China, and again not a word. It is not fair and the only hope for the left is to nominate lesbians.
Hey People,
I think this would'nt ahve been such a big deal if edwards had not been such a hypocrite. He needed to be taken down a notch, the only sad part is that he was NOT the nominee when this story broke.
Now THAT would ahve been funny...!!!
Bill
the internet blogs are getting as low as the media and talk radio. What possible impact can John Edwards escapade have to do with the important issues facing us today?
Elizabeth Edwards not only must deal with her incurable cancer, she must have to deal with the incurable garage seeping into the airwaves and corrupting our way of life. Shame on all who continue to perpetuate this tragedy.
Do Americans really believe
that leaders can't be breeders?
If you wish to eliminate the liars from contention.
You'll have to run a different convention.
Name me those, past or present
who never lied.
To gain a favour, took a gift,or even worse.
When you point the finger.
Three point straight back.
Time to raise your politics.
Higher than the coital couch.
In short you seem to make more fuss about who is being screwed than who is screwing the country, the economy, the world, your lost and near forgotten (fabled) freedoms and constitution.
Condemn John only if you are holier. Then only if it is relevant and I'm damned if I can see how it is.
tomedgar@halenet.com.au
Right on! Why should anyone care? I care about as much as I did when McCain deserted his wife for his current rich honey or Giuliani divorced his wife with cancer for his honey or the guy signalling under the bathroom stall to the other guy or the guy who confessed his homosexuality or the pedophile using pages, etc., etc., etc. The reason I don't care isn't that I don't think all these things are wrong but that I haven't seen it make much difference in the outcome of things - except for Clinton. Haven't heard a breath about McCain and his trysts in all this.....
brad has hit the nail on the head. Bush, cheney, rice & company told countless lies to go to war to destroy our economy. Half a trillion not accounted for. At least
edwards had an affair with a women and not a senate male page or in an airport bathroom.
They just couldn't find anything on Obama yet. Could they? D----bags! What about the "girlies" visited by a certain war veteran? How many of them gave birth (or didn't)? This country's just full of right-wing, sanctimonious billionaires who have "escorts" by the yachtloads. Don't listen to this s--t! I agree with Kathy Giannini's comment. I think Edwards could be a valuable asset to an Obama administration, but, unfortunately, now he has to be kept out of the election because of hypocritical gasbags.
Allen, if what you're arguing is that men can't politic successfully because of their raw animal urges [which is bulls***] than there is no need to differentiate between straight and homosexual women in saying that females are better equipped for office genetically.
Your point = dumb.
Simple algebra.
Conservatives, who are the ones who seem to really care about this silly stuff, don't seem to care that McCain dumped his loyal wife because she had a serious car accident and was left disabled and "unattractive". He dropped her for a much younger, and much richer, "Barbie" look-alike. Talk about lack of character. But, I forgot, character, experience, & military service only matter if you're NOT a Republican. They certainly didn't care that Dubya was an alcoholic-cocaine snorting AWOL drunk from the Texas Air Guard (because his politically powerful daddy got him out of Vietnam, but Dubya couldn't even show up for the Guard and got away with it), had never worked a real job in his whole life (he lived off his daddy's ill-gotten Walker/Nazi money- laundered riches till he was 42y/o), a part-time governor who adopted the Democratic majority platform in the legislature and claimed success in getting it all "passed" and a man who no one who knew him would ever say had character.
My guess is that if one digs deep enough, this is not the first time that John Edwards has "strayed"; No doubt someone is digging through one of John's many luxurious closets right now, looking for the inevitable skeletons.
After hearing him hold forth with the standard socialist trash in Iowa a couple years ago, I mentioned to my Democratic wife that "Anyone that pretty, and so obviously in love with himself, has to have somethin' on the side". I just didn't think it would take two years for his "side interest" to come to light.
John Edwards' sex life is no one's business except his and his wife's. The main reason Edwards is not going to be president, vice-president (although he evidently has the "vice" part down) or hold any elected office again is he and his message are out of sync with most of the American public. The class warfare speech that sets lefties hearts aflame simply doesn't sell outside of union halls and faculty lounges; a fact comrade Osama is smart enough to recognize as he steams full speed ahead to the center/right where most of the public is, and always has been.
Paul, you used the word "[deleted]". The word is a combination of [deleted] and retarded. Your use of this word is a put down on "retarded" people. The word "retard" is not politically correct because it deals with a handicap that one is born with. Please refrain from such boorish behavior. It is not how educated people write.
PC - Retarded simply means 'slow'. It does not have to connote a person with a mental disability. [Handicap is not politically correct unless you live perpetually in 1965] However, [deleted] is really a contraction of [[deleted] retarded', which I think precisely expressed my opinion of the comment made by Ivanhoe and many of the comments you have made, as well. For your consideration, I'll use it in a sentence: 'Your tiresome trolling, PC Police, suggests that you are [deletetd].'
