Cheat Seeking Missiles

It is no coincidence that the perpetually slimy John Edwards chose today, the opening day of the Olympics when most people won’t be engaging in the news, to admit - at least partially - that everything the MSM hasn’t been saying about him is true:

John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.

In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.

Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.

Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby’s birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father.

(More here)

Of course! It was the conveniently handy campaign aide, banging the same broad has his boss, that fathered the child of Rielle Hunter, who Edwards broke up with way back when, even though the National Enquirer busted him coming out of Hunter’s room in the wee, wee hours of the morning last month.

And we should trust him to be telling us the truth because he’s a politician and a class action lawyer. As a testament to his truth-telling, here’s what he said about the affair last year:

“It’s completely untrue, ridiculous. I’ve been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years and, as anybody who’s been around us knows, she’s an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known. So the story’s just false.”

It’s a very fine day when the political ambitions of such a transparently worthless jerk are dashed by his own actions. Next step: I think a criminal investigation is in order, since Edwards apparently used campaign contributions as hush money for Hunter:

According to friends of Hunter, Edwards met her at a New York city bar in 2006. His political action committee later paid her $114,000 to produce campaign website documentaries despite her lack of experience.

The SacBee reports that the net output for that $114,000 was “just four Web videos, one a mere 2 1/ 2 minutes long.” That’s not an unheard of amount of money to pay for the services - if you were paying someone who had a good portfolio of similar work. It’s pretty obvious Edwards was paying for something different.

And one more criminal investigation is in order: journalistic misconduct by the New York Times, the Washington Post, AP, the networks and just about every other major news outlet for refusing to cover this credible story. They refused to cover it when the Enquirer broke the story, and also when Fox News verified it by talking to a security guard who escorted Edwards from the LA Hilton after he was confronted by the Enquirer - a level of reporting that apparently is beyond the capabilities of the major news rags and nets.

ABC was among those who were running from the story, until McClatchy’s story opened the door for them - though not for any of the others, who remained mum. Now ABC has the dubious distinction of “breaking” the story while it’s actually now just the slightly less egregious of the whole egregious bunch.

Of course with ABC in, the others are in, too. Embarrassing late (although they of course admit no embarrassment) NYT has a pretty thorough blog post up; and WaPo’s got a story on its afternoon Web page with this remarkable paragraph:

Most major news organizations, including The Washington Post, did not report the allegations against Edwards because of a lack of corroboration. But a debate has swirled on Internet sites and on Fox News over whether media outlets were protecting the former senator, either out of bias toward a Democrat or sympathy for his wife.

How can they say “a lack of corroboration” when they admit that Fox News had a story that corroborated it? I can’t think of anything that screams “liberal bias” more than this sort of knee-jerk rejection of all things Fox. And when has sympathy for a wife ever stopped the hounds of the media when they’re in pursuit of the story? Cross out that ridiculous excuse, and you’re left with “bias towards a Democrat.”

Exactly right.

Photo: Coed Magazine

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