John Edwards tarnished?

[slb2]

That's what it says....

Salon.com takes on the scandal

[gailkate]

Oh Lord, what a shame. It sounds true, though the meeting doesn't mean they've continued an affair. I'm glad of this:

//And, last, there's the Elizabeth Edwards factor. Reporters are especially careful in a case like this, because of Elizabeth Edwards' illness.//

[Gracie]

I don't believe it. Not just yet. There'd have to be a lot more said than what I've seen so far.

I know, I know, even marriages that seem rock-solid can crumble. Been there, done that. But I just don't have the gut feeling that he could, or would, do this...not after all they've been through together. And I don't know, I suppose I'm stupidly naive...but I like to think, NEED to believe, there are still public servants who follow moral codes, honor their commitments and vows, and really are what they seem to be. Seems like we can't wait to put someone up on a pedestal these days, and then see how fast we can knock 'em back down.

And oh, I hope I'm right. For all their sakes.

[gailkate]

I'm with you, Gracie, but people do fall to temptation. What matters is what they do about it. If he has fathered a child and provides financial and emotional support to the mother, that may be the honorable thing to do after a terrible mistake.

I've also wondered what it must be like to live with someone you know is dying. Not that that justifies cheating, but I can understand bouts of temporary insanity. Add the pace and pressures of running for office and he may have been very vulnerable. I thought of him as a fine presidential candidate, but it did seem as if both the Edwardses were in major denial about her illness.

I'd sure prefer that we learn this is untrue. As you say, for all their sakes.

[Gracie]

GK, yes, they do. And you know....when Griz and I were first married, I was so sick there was good reason to think I was dying. And while he remained very loving for a long time, eventually he began distancing himself a bit, as if he'd reached the saturation point and just had to think of something else for a while.

And while he didn't have an outright physical affair (I think he stopped himself ONLY because the young actress in our theatre group who really was throwing herself at him, everyone saw it, was 16....there's a difference between stupid/vulnerable and felony) there certainly was an affair of the heart.

And no one understood it, I swear, better than I did. And no, that wasn't stupid or masochistic, just realistic....when it's been several YEARS since you could be intimate in any physical way, when everything is about meds that don't work and treatments that fail and more pain than I could ever have imagined....I could understand where someone who was vital and healthy and happy could turn his head.

Luckily for me, he turned it back.

I think if this really is true, he's going to do the honorable thing--I cannot imagine him not doing right by a child.

It's just sad every way you look at it. Understandable, forgivable, but sad nonetheless.

[booklady]

Gracie, you are such a beautiful person. I exalted you twice for your posts here. Yes I did, once earlier and just came back and did it again. I wish I could muster your capacity for dignfied and humble transparency.

[Gracie]

Oh, my...

It's just that there's only two ways I know of to deal with unimaginable pain and loss--one is to make every single person, ever after, pay for it....or to try, with everything you've got, to see the other's pain and loss, to love the sinner if not the sin, and to remember that every single one of us stumbles and falls and tries and fails.

And then we get up again.

And....it's always been true for me, especially during the years when my life was such a nightmare and I was keeping the blood and violence so completely hidden....that if I can help you with your hurt, I cannot be thinking of mine.

Just remember that so many of you here have shown equal dignity and grace and compassion. I am surrounded by beautiful people, and I love you all very much.

[gailkate]

For you.

[gailkate]

Our paper carried this story today:

www.startribune.com/politics/national/president/26159849.html?location_refer=$urlTrackSectionName
//Hunter has repeatedly denied the allegations. In October, she posted an online statement denying it. After a December story in the Enquirer claimed she was pregnant and living in a gated community in Chapel Hill, she again denied a connection. That story quoted her as saying, "The fact that I am expecting a child is my personal and private business. This has no relationship to nor does it involve John Edwards in any way. Andrew Young is the father of my unborn child."
Young also claimed he was the father in December in a statement from his lawyer on the blog mydd.com.

On Thursday, the Charlotte Observer obtained the birth certificate of the child, showing that Frances Quinn Hunter was born Feb. 27 at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif., to Rielle Jaya James Druck, also known as Rielle Hunter.//

You can see a long video of the Enquirer writer who first wrote the story here. I got to it by accident, wondering if there had been any further information. The guy seems decent and sorry about the added burden on Elizabeth, whatever the truth is.

zennie2005.blogspot.com/2008/01/john-edwards-alledged-lover-rielle.html

[slb2]

I missed that article, gk. What a rotten insinuation on Edwards. But it's hard to know what to believe. Even sadder, in a way, is that we could even believe the story in the first place. :/

[Gracie]

It's true. The affair, anyway. Dammit.

Edwards admits to extramarital affair
But the former presidential candidate says he didn't father her child
BREAKING NEWS
The Associated Press
updated 4:39 p.m. ET, Fri., Aug. 8, 2008

WASHINGTON - Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday admitted to an extramarital affair while his wife was battling cancer. He denied fathering the woman's daughter.

Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter but said that he didn't love her. He said he has not taken a paternity test but knows he isn't the father because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

A former Edwards campaign staffer claims he is the father, not Edwards.

Hunter's daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, was born on Feb. 27, 2008, and no father's name is given on the birth certificate filed in California.

The National Enquirer first reported on the affair in October 2007, and Edwards denied it.

"The story is false," he told reporters. "It's completely untrue, ridiculous."

Enquirer reported story in July
The Enquirer carried another story last month, stating that its reporters had accosted Edwards in a Los Angeles hotel where he had met with Hunter after her child's birth. Edwards called it "tabloid trash," but he generally avoided reporters' inquiries, as did his former top aides.

In the interview, scheduled to air on ABC News' "Nightline," Edwards said the tabloid was correct when it reported on his meeting with Hunter at a Beverly Hills hotel last month.

Most mainstream news organizations refrained from reporting the story, but newspapers in Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., recounted the Enquirer's allegations in prominent articles on Thursday.

Edwards acknowledged the affair on Friday afternoon, traditionally a slow-news period even when the Olympic Games' opening ceremonies are not preoccupying millions of Americans.

Edwards was a top contender for the Democratic nomination for president, pursuing his party's nod even after announcing that his wife, Elizabeth, had a deadly form of cancer.

He placed second in the Iowa caucuses last January but dropped out of the race a few weeks later. He has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice for Barack Obama. The former North Carolina senator was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004.

David Bonior, Edwards' campaign manager for his 2008 presidential bid, said Friday he was disappointed and angry after hearing about Edwards' confession.

"Thousands of friends of the senator and his supporters have put their faith and confidence in him and he's let them down," said Bonior, a former congressman from Michigan. "They've been betrayed by his action."

'You can't lie in politics'
Asked whether the affair would damage Edwards' future aspirations in public service, Bonior replied: "You can't lie in politics and expect to have people's confidence."

In 2006, Edwards' political action committee paid $100,000 in a four-month span to a newly formed firm run by Hunter, who directed the production of just four Web videos, one a mere 2 1/2 minutes long.

The payments from Edwards' One America Committee to Midline Groove Productions LLC started on July 5, 2006, five days after Hunter incorporated the firm in Delaware.

Midline provided "Website/Internet services," according to reports that Edwards' PAC filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Midline's work product consists of four YouTube videos showing Edwards in informal settings as he prepares to make speeches in Storm Lake, Iowa, and Pittsburgh, as he prepares for an appearance on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and travels in Uganda in 2006.

Edwards' PAC followed the six-figure payment with two smaller payments totaling $14,461, the last on April 1, 2007.

At the time Hunter was compiling the videos in 2006, Edwards was preparing a run for president.

Episode One of the four videos captures a conversation between Edwards and an unseen woman as the two chat aboard a plane about an upcoming speech in Storm Lake, Iowa.

Cutting between clips of the speech and the conversation with the woman, Edwards touches on his standard political themes, declaring that government must do a better job of addressing the great issues of the day, from poverty and education to jobs and the war in Iraq.

'Great moral issues'
"I want to see our party lead on the great moral issues — yes, me a Democrat using that word — the great moral issues that face our country," Edwards tells the crowd. "If we want to live in a moral, honest just America and if we want to live in a moral and just world, we can't wait for somebody else to do it. We have to do it."

The sound track for the six-minute video is the song "True Reflections" which begins with these words: "When you look into a mirror, do you like what's looking at you? Now that you've seen your true reflections, what on earth are you gonna do?"

The video entitled "Plane Truths," opens with Edwards relaxing in his seat on the plane, telling the unseen woman that "I actually walked the country to see who I am, who I really am, but I don't know what the result of that will be.

Edwards adds: "But for me personally, I'd rather be successful or unsuccessful based on who I really am, not based on some plastic Ken doll that you put up in front of audiences, that's not me, you know?"

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





I just feel so bad for these two--they've been through so much already, and you can just about hear the vultures descending.

[Jane]

Tarnished? Yes, I'd say so. Pretty damned low, if you ask me. I just don't understand it how they always seem to think they can get away from it.

[Gracie]

I don't know. I don't think tarnished. I think, human. I think sad. I think....too many things to say here that I haven't said already.

[joew]

Human, all too human.

We want our leaders to lead exemplary lives, but we may be spotty in how strictly we hold them to it.

[gailkate]

The NPR report quoted him as seeing very clearly how he'd gotten carried away with ego. Apparently the affair was before Elizabeth's recurrance of cancer.

Yes, it's all too human, and I guess he's going to punish himself enough that he doesn't need me passing judgment. What a horrible shame. I prefer the old days when news media covered up these personal sins.

[gailkate]

His statement:

In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99% honest is no longer enough.

I was and am ashamed of my conduct and choices, and I had hoped that it would never become public. With my family, I took responsibility for my actions in 2006 and today I take full responsibility publicly. But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then. I am and have been willing to take any test necessary to establish the fact that I am not the father of any baby, and I am truly hopeful that a test will be done so this fact can be definitively established. I only know that the apparent father has said publicly that he is the father of the baby. I also have not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, agreed to or supported payments of any kind to the woman or to the apparent father of the baby.

It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry. In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up - feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help.

I have given a complete interview on this matter and having done so, will have nothing more to say.

[Jane]

He made a choice. And his choice was to betray his wife. I think it was reprehensible. And equally reprehensible is the young woman in question. I believe in "sisterhood", and this ain't it.

[doctork]

Did anyone else think like I did reading the news today? The story said he told every little detail to Elizabeth back in 2006 and then they worked on healing. Why does he have to tell her every little detail? Doesn't that just cause her lots of pain while giving him some kind of false sense of relief or redemption? Isn't that helping him while hurting her? How about just keeping his mouth shut, quit fooling around, and work on having a better marriage?

Another contrarian (perhaps) position. I think infidelity is a rather common occurrence among Beltway bigwigs with inflated egos, and most of the time it makes a few headlines if it is published at all, then quickly fades from view. It's not usually the end of a career (unless, as Huey Long said, it involves a dead girl or a live boy). Look at the ever popular Bill Clinton - the fuss was over obstruction of justice because he lied about Monica, not because of the endless bimbo eruptions and infidelity itself as immoral. Ted Kennedy had that Chappaquiddick episode with Mary Jo Kopechne, and now he has long since moved on and is lionized by all in the Senate.

John Edwards is a private citizen now, so I'd rather leave him and Elizabeth alone in privacy to deal with this personal issue. It's none of my business and they have enough trouble with her illness, without the voyeuristic media butting in.

[slb2]

Commenting on docK's comment: Why does he have to tell her every little detail? Doesn't that just cause her lots of pain

I think this is a matter for the couple to decide. Maybe she *wanted* every little detail because what she imagined would have been worse than the reality of it and she suspected, with regards to her imagination, that that would be the case so she said, "fess up, buster, and spill it."

And for me, docK, telling every little detail of a transgression is agonizing, I'd rather chew on rocks with aluminum foil. But sometimes I've had to recount every sorry sin I've committed.