Distractions
Posted on March 27, 2009 at 5:16 pmLean Left on how the people are kept from concentrating on the real issues:
But at the same time I have a sense that we are inundated, not so much with “whining” as just stupid distractions and idiotic disputes over things that don’t matter, or shouldn’t be controversial. In part this is politically strategic. The right wing is constantly and calculatedly ginning up “wedge issues” deliberately designed to prevent critical attention to their own failures and extremism: consciously empty scandals like Al Gore’s suits or John Edwards’ hair, and fraudulent or just insane controversies manipulated to divide the electorate, like gay marriage or the Terri Schiavo travesty. But to a large degree it’s just sheer stupidity run amok. The general public, liberals and conservatives, are just so thoughtless, so myopic, and so easily agitated, that the smallest, dumbest things can turn into social controversies.
More Edwards Reactions
Posted on August 10, 2008 at 6:38 pmThe Tennessee Guerilla Women provide video from the now infamous interview where John Edwards admits an affair with a woman not his wife:
To be sure there are more “important” things to be discussing but, this world, it is what is. More reactions from the Tennessee blogosphere are below.
And yet, it’s a big [expletive deleted] deal that Edwards had an affair and then ran for president, but not for John McLame, who had an affair and finally asked for a divorce from his first wife while she was recuperating from cancer surgery? Hey, dudes, get your [expletive deleted] priorities straight if you are going to fuss about sex scandals.
Baby Boomers in politics amaze me. I’m not one of them, but I have to say, they have changed the world.
I don’t necessarily mean that as a compliment.
People can do the nasty with whom ever they want to. I honestly don’t care.
But don’t act surprised and contrite when people find it distasteful. Adultery is like cancer. Most folks have been impacted by it in one way or another and when they find out about these things, they personalize it. And if they have been impacted by adultery and they hear of this sort of news, then folks who did what the guys up there did are immediately put on the putz list.
I like Elizabeth Edwards so much, and I couldn’t figure out why she’s defending her husband. And then the sad truth hit me.
She’s dying, and she’s going to leave a little girl and a little boy to grow up without a mother. So she needs to keep the family together, so when she’s gone, the young children won’t hate their father for what he did to their mother and they will have their father around.
Elizabeth put her husband ahead of her life so he could go for his dreams,(and the selfish bastard still…) and now as she’s living and dying, she’s putting what is best for her childrens future ahead of her pride and pain and anger.
She’s a remarkable woman, and deserves so much better.
SO NOW THAT WE KNOW THAT THE PRESS COVERED FOR EDWARDS — just as, pre-invasion, they covered for Saddam — that raises a question: What else are they not telling us for fear it will hurt the Democrats’ prospects?
One, I appreciate the fact that Edwards “man upped” and did all of this public confession without forcing his wife to stand by her man. You remember the infamous Hillary 60 minutes and now everybody else feels like they must subject their wives to the Hillary standard. Even when Jim McGreevey admits to sleeping with the same sex, he takes his wife out there. The Republican pervert from the men’s bathroom stalls takes his wife out there. Give me a break! Edwards gets high points from me for going this public confession alone. He committed the act alone without his wife, the confession should be his his alone.
I sometimes wonder if people pay attention to what comes out their mouths. Edwards now has plenty of time to try to make things right with his family, as political career is over.
John Edwards’ hypocrisy is even worse now. He’s the one who made his seemingly perfect family the centerpiece of his campaign, and made his own wife into a martyr in the process. Moralizing others, and accusing those who disagreed of elitism, was how he got his message across.
And how can we use that offensive and judgmental word “cheating” about a domestic situation we literally know nothing about? We don’t know what private agreements may have been reached between the Edwardses — up to and including the possibility that she may have been physically delbilitated to the point of accommodating, or even suggesting, alternate forms of companionship for her husband. I think we all know of relationships involving physically impaired partners — of either gender — in which there is a tacit understanding of that sort.
Perhaps if he had taken a look around once in a while, at all the good people who were helping him up, he might have realized that he didn’t get where he was all alone. Then perhaps he wouldn’t have felt so much like superman.
It’s a bad situation for his family regardless of what he says, but to know that he’d have meaningless and loveless sex wouldn’t really be very reassuring to his wife, in my opinion. And it would certainly make her question the character of the man she married that he would hold his marital vows in such low regard.
So his chief fundraisers have been paying his mistress off under the table. So Mr. Two-Americas sent his bastard child off with his single mother. So he made one of his married apparatchiks take the fall for it. So he hid it for a year. So the national press refused to cover it as a favor to him out of more respect for his wife than he ever had for her.
God. Who hasn’t done the exact same thing?
Am I disappointed? Yes, a little–as with Bill Clinton and Gary Hart, I just want to ask: What the hell were you thinking? When you’re in the media spotlight, it might be a good idea to at least try to make your personal life above reproach.
What I am ticked about is that Edwards ran for president after all this happened. Not only did that greatly increase the odds that his family would get dragged through this mess, but had he won the nomination we would likely have lost an election that should have been a gimme in this political climate. Hubris among powerful men who cheat on their spouses is hardly new or remarkable though. With luck the short-attention-spanned public will soon get distracted by the Olympics and these two can get on with their own issues without us sticking our noses in it.
Edwards continued to repeat “supermarket tabloid” every single time he was asked about the baby being his, his meeting in the hotel with is mistress, hush money being paid, etc.
In other words, while he claims he’s taking responsibility for what he did, he’s trying to discredit every single word of the Enquirer at the same time.
Well, John, it was the National Enquirer who broke the story in 2007 about your affair, and people then dismissed it as just a supermarket tabloid.
Those days are over for you, Mr. Edwards. And you’re such a narcissist, you really think people are automatically going to believe you again and dismiss the Enquirer?
Not a chance!
Most grownups doubt that Young is the father. Assuming he is not, the Young family’s prestige and reputation have been tarnished in order to protect Edwards’ infidelity and the lies that John and Elizabeth have been telling. That would mean the Edwardses pulled another family into their scandal, which makes it increasingly difficult to consider this a private family matter.
Meanwhile, Edwards treatment of Rielle Hunter is horrific. Depending on which story you believe, Edwards either passed his mistress on to his friend Andrew Young after he was through enjoying her, or the Young story is a lie and Edwards just doesn’t want to claim the daughter he fathered with Hunter.
In his confession yesterday Edwards said he didn’t love Hunter, which means he just announced to the world that he used her for sex and now he’s done with her. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and now Hunter’s family is now challenging Edwards to take a paternity test. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of Rielle Hunter. I also don’t think we’ve heard the last of John Edwards’s confessions.
SEE ALSO:
Allan Butterfield, National Enquirer, tells about his John Edwards investigation.
“Extra” Interview with Edwards mistress Rielle Hunter
Edwards’s Ex-Lover Rejects Idea Of DNA Test
Is James Lech Fixing To Pull A John Edwards?
Posted on July 20, 2008 at 8:56 pmThe Tennessean is reporting that 9th District school board candidate James Lech may announce he is dropping out of the race at a press conference Monday. The earnest young Lech has been overshadowed by the two leading candidates in the race Lee Limbird and Alan Coverstone, primarily due to their successful and substantial fundraising efforts.
The question I would pose is why drop out now? Early voting has started and the ballots are all printed up. Even if he is out, he is in. Is his aim to try and help one of the other candidates with a last minute endorsement or is he pulling a John Edwards, assembling everyone to a press conference only to announce he is soldiering on?
Office Space
Posted on May 26, 2008 at 10:29 amAl Giordano reports that John Edwards has requested the use of his former North Carolina campaign space back from the small business he donated to and discusses whether that could mean that Edwards is Barack Obama’s choice for Vice President.
permalink | Comment on this post
Waiting For That Final Nail
Posted on May 15, 2008 at 7:25 amWith John Edwards endorsement of Barack Obama, some Democrats are looking to Al Gore to finally step in and end this madness:
“The Al Gore watch starts now,” said Ken Goldstein, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Gore, who is one of the party’s superdelegates, has indicated he won’t give his endorsement until the primary contest is finished. His spokeswoman, Kalee Kreider, said yesterday that Gore had no further comment.
Obama said he has spoken to Gore “periodically” over the past several months about policies and ideas.
“I’m not really pushing for an endorsement,” Obama told reporters on his plane last night as he flew to Chicago. “I’d love to have it, but when you’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize, making an endorsement politically is maybe a step down.”
RELATED: Gone, but not forgotten.
permalink | Comment on this post
Edwards To Endorse?
Posted on May 14, 2008 at 1:30 pmMark Halperin is teasing a possible John Edwards endorsement.
UPDATE: CNN has confirmed that former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards will endorse Barack Obama at a Michigan campaign event about an hour from now.
Recent Comments
And one more thing, just because...
Say what you want about Senator...
Demo staffers are still in place...
Common sense, I can use bible...
Kent is the most conservative...
What’s really unaffordale is to keep...
Just doing what any lap dog would do for it’s...
Congressman Cooper has apparently decided to take the...
I’d say it’s more because we’ve waited...
Hmmm… wonder if...