On CNN on 09 August, democrat strategist Paul Begala said, regarding the John Edwards affair, that Edwards didn't order anyone to be tortured, did not violate the Geneva Convention, and did not forge a document that "led us into war." He just cheated on his wife…happens every day. If a "love child" (actually, lust-child) should be his…well, 30% of all white births are "love children" and 70% of all African-American births are "love children," so what's the big deal?
This kind of tawdriness was a big deal when Newt Gingrich, a republican, was caught. It was a big deal when homosexual Senator Craig, another republican, was caught. It was even a big deal when "Slick" was caught, but, after all, he was a president dallying with a young woman snapping her thongs (gasp) during working hours. It's a big deal because Edwards was most likely negotiating a quid pro quo in May when he threw his gang to Obama – something like "my guys for the attorney general's chair, or maybe even another shot at the veep spot." He didn't back Obamessiah for nothing and certainly not until he knew which way the nomination was going.
Shack-ups (or hook-ups or whatever fornicators are doing nowadays) are counted in the millions these days, so why did the National Enquirer and, finally, the mainstream media get all bent out of shape over Edwards' indiscretion? After all, Slick Willie got elected to a second term, never mind Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and all the other rag-tag sleazy possibilities. He even earned an impeachment, but didn't come close to removal from office. Has the American citizenry lost its collective sophistication, to wit, that anything's okay if it feels good, the devil take the hindmost.
Of course, if l'affaire vis-à-vis Monica Lewinsky had been made public in 1996, when apparently it was actually going on, Clinton might have taken a fall that election year, but the lurid details didn't come to light until much later, when he was safely ensconced in the Oval Office for a second term. By 1996, people had had a chance to forget the peccadilloes brought to light much earlier. Edwards doesn't have it so good, so political hacks like Begala make haste to change the subject, but quick. When in doubt about anything – even the levees along the Mississippi – blame George Bush, but puh-leeze…change the subject.
But the subject won't go away. The mainstream media have been forced to confront it, never mind that their fair-haired boy with the $400-haircuts has given the telling of lies a new start and new significance. The fact that Edwards actually ran for veep in 2004 and the presidency in this election cycle blows the mind, not because he didn't have the right but because anybody dumb enough to believe a high-profile apparatchik jerk like himself could get away with adultery and a cover-up so transparent as his (just the usual political knee-jerk – the BIG LIE) could be smart enough to run the country. The mainstreamers chose to let him off because they form the democrat fifth column, but it didn't work.
It has gotten worse as further information keeps rolling out about the glamour candidate who engaged the services of a company starting in July 2006 that wasn't even licensed until a bit earlier that year and AFTER Edwards met his new girlfriend, who virtually was the company. His campaign was probably its only client for work for which Rielle Hunter had little experience and paid her some $114,000 for six months work. It seems obvious enough that the company and the payments were designed to keep Ms. Hunter around, and for little else. There were some YouTube segments on the Internet, as if they were worth that kind of money, and they could have been handled by a rank amateur, probably for free by a volunteer.
During his campaign, Edwards made speeches about morals, the family and family values, with all this lurid stuff marking him as the quintessential hypocrite, but which he mistakenly thought would never come to light. Throughout 2007, when the question concerning his peccadilloes came up, he told lie after lie, this man who probably had hopes of becoming attorney general. During all that time, the mainstream media gave him a pass, never made an issue of it. At the beginning of one of those YouTube fiascos, he said ,"I actually want this country to be who I am." As he indicated in his valedictory delivered AFTER he had been undeniably caught, he was so narcissistic and egocentric that he actually believed what he said. Imagine a country with his morals…disgusting!
Edwards didn't operate in a vacuum in 2007. He announced his campaign in December 2006, the year of l'affaire, in a backyard in New Orleans, eschewing his own state for that event. He campaigned hard and spent the money of a lot of trusting citizens, all the while apparently being brazen enough to think he could escape his own foot-shooting.
In the mix, it appears that his campaign finance-person was also being serviced by Ms. Hunter and has even said that he, a married man with a family, is her child's father, though Edwards visited with Ms. Hunter just a few days ago during more than five hours of a night in a Los Angeles hotel. Ms. Hunter lives in a three-million-dollar house in Santa Barbara and has received plenty of money from an Edwards backer. He denies any knowledge of this, but should know full well that nobody believes that.
More will come to light in the coming days, and one thing is for sure…indeed, has already started, namely, the dredging up again of John Cain's misconduct all those years ago, entirely similar to that of Edwards. It's enough to make any citizen scream "A PLAGUE ON ALL YOUR HOUSES!" and look for someone else. But, of course, Edwards is out of it now, and it isn't likely that he has any political future…and he shouldn't have.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment