Leelila_Strogov's Blog

One of the alternately wonderful and terrible things about the world of the Internet is that there are no rugs under which to sweep things, no awnings under which to duck for cover, and no arbiter calling the shots on what’s fair or legit. Rumors and scandal take on a life of their own, with people in the Blogosphere weighing in, often in that vicious, snarky tone that anonymity seems to invite. So once a story’s out there, it's fair game, starting at the bottom of the credibility food chain with scattered internet chatter, sometimes garnering the attention of gossip columnists and the tabloids, and then occasionally exciting the more established media enough to get us poking around. With John Edwards, we seem to be in the middle of just such a cycle, as scrutiny into his relationship with a 43 year-old woman named Rielle Hunter is mounting online, with recent speculation reaching pretty outrageous proportions.

It all seems to have unfolded like this: 

In 2006 John Edwards meets relatively unknown filmmaker Rielle Hunter at a bar. She pitches an idea to do a series of web videos about him meant to paint him in a relaxed, informal way. Through Edwards’s One America campaign, she’s hired, traveling around the country with him while filming. The first video debuts in January of 2007. Her company gets a check for $114,000.

In August 2007, after Hunter’s work with Edwards is long complete, an oblique insinuation appears in the NY Post’s “Page Six” that says the following: “Which political candidate enjoys visiting New York because he has a girlfriend who lives downtown? The pol tells her he’ll marry her when his current wife is out of the picture.” Bloggers are incited, creating a firestorm of speculation online about Edwards and Hunter. Soon enough, they're complaining that the web videos Hunter created for the Edwards campaign have suddenly disappeared, no longer available online either through Hunter's production company or through Edwards's One America campaign.

In September 2007 Huffington Post Blogger Sam Stein writes about his extraordinary efforts trying to track down the Hunter-Edwards web videos. He claims he tried to get some information from assistants on the project, to no avail. He claims that neither Hunter nor her business partner would talk to him. He says that Edwards’s people finally offered to let him see the videos in private, while accompanied by a campaign staffer, but did not give any plausible explanation as to why the videos had vanished online. (They’ve since allegedly resurfaced: http://www.webcastr.com/politics/politics.
html)

In October 2007 the National Enquirer reports that Edwards is allegedly having an affair with a “mystery woman” who traveled with the campaign and whom he allegedly initially met at a bar. An Edwards spokesperson denies the allegations. Hunter denies the allegations too, even though the Enquirer hasn’t yet mentioned her by name at this point. Bloggers pounce. The LA Times mentions the scandal and the denials on their website, but not in print, to a flurry of online comments, many berating the Times for covering the “news” at all in light of the source, that “paragon of journalistic virtue" known as the Enquirer.

On December 19th, 2007 (yes, just over a week ago), the Enquirer trumps their old juicy story with a new juicy story that offers up the following allegations:

-Edwards and Hunter had allegedly been having an affair for over 18 months.

-Hunter is allegedly 6 months pregnant. 

-Hunter allegedly told a source that Edwards is the father of her yet unborn child.

-Hunter is allegedly in hiding, recently having moved to North Carolina from the east coast, and is being financially cared for, housed and protected by close former Edwards campaign staffer Andrew Young.

-Once Hunter is allegedly pressed by the Enquirer to reveal who the father of her child is, she and Andrew Young allegedly issue a statement 24 hours later saying that he, Young, is in fact, the father, not Edwards.

-The Enquirer can allegedly find no evidence that Hunter and Young (a 41 year-old married man with children) have had any prior romantic involvement.

-Sources close to Young allegedly think his paternity claim may be one elaborate cover-up to protect his friend’s presidential aspirations.

The piece is full of those sadly nuance-free details that tabloid news stories (and regular news stories and sordid rumors) are often simmered down to -- steamy emails, hotel rendezvous, sheriff's deputies being called in on the press, etc., so it’s hard to know what to believe. The details are mind-bending, though. If you haven't read the whole thing, and want to, it can be found here:

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/john_edwards_love_chil
d/celebrity/64426

There are several theories going around the Blogosphere about this one:

1)    That Edwards did have an affair with Hunter, but that she may be crazy enough to have gotten pregnant by some other guy, telling her friends and Edwards that he is the father even though he isn’t. (One blogger even added, “I mean, how do you get pregnant at 43 by accident?”)

2)    That Young is indeed the father, but that the two kept their tryst properly under wraps till now.

3)    That the whole story linking Edwards to Hunter romantically is nonsense altogether, just as the two claim, and that even worse, it's possibly even a Clinton-orchestrated rumor being peddled by the Enquirer under the influence of one of the paper’s owners (Roger Altman) who happens to be a big Clinton supporter.

The mainstream media hasn't given any significant attention to this one yet, something I do find a bit curious given its inherently high sensational value, especially as Edwards pulls ahead of his two more high-profile rivals in Iowa. But what do you think? Is this evidence of restraint by journalists? A sensitivity to Edwards' cancer-stricken wife? An overall discomfort with the sordidness of the topic? A sense that the evidence is too thin? Irrelevant?

On another note, I’m curious to know if you suspect there could be some kernel of truth here. Yes, the Enquirer is the home of alien-birthing women, Bigfoot sightings and three-legged ice skaters, right? But then they’re also the venue in which the first pictures linking OJ to a pair of Bruno Magli’s were published, and where the first details about Monica’s stained blue polka-dot dress were revealed. Are we supposed to feel at all reassured by the notion that if they are making this up, it’s pretty elaborate stuff, and that they’ve picked quite a target -- a former trial attorney who could have the lawsuit of the century on his hands when the dust settles? I have to admit, I’m perplexed.

Finally…

It’s an old question, I know, but it keeps resurfacing: Do we care? In general, how do you feel about the ethical obligations of presidential hopefuls? Should we expect presidential wannabe’s to be morally superior to our next-door neighbors; to have better-calibrated moral compasses than the rest of us? To be unconditionally loyal to their spouses? Or is it high time we finally cave and admit that they too are human, and that the behavior of humans, however well-meaning, is often paradoxical, complicated, ambiguous, and well... sometimes just plain strange.

Or maybe it’s just that we don’t want our presidents and would-be presidents lying to us. Period. Even if it is about their private life. Maybe we want someone with the courage and foresight, and yes, even the brains, to either keep the things in their life they’d feel compelled to lie about to a minimum, or else opt for a simple, “It’s none of your business.”

What do you think? Inquiring minds want to know… I’d like to know too.