John Edwards, cont.
Jack Shafer weighs in with charges of media hypocrisy:
The angle taken by most reporters and commentators wasn’t that Craig’s restroom conduct was particularly shameful. The press doesn’t object to same-sex sex at all, nor should it. Craig’s true offense, said the press and the clowns, was hypocrisy, which they consider an inexcusable crime. Craig had supported both federal and Idaho bans on same-sex marriage, had opposed hate crime legislation that would extend protections to gays, and had earned a perfect 0 rating (PDF) from the Human Rights Campaign, a gay lobby. And he had denied and denied any and all gayness while trying to recruit some action in a bathroom!
Although the Craig story and the John Edwards story, currently unfolding thanks to the National Enquirer, aren’t directly analogous, they have a bit in common. Edwards, too, may be a sex hypocrite. The tabloid called Edwards a cheater last October and the father of a love child in December, and last night the Enquirer posted a story about Edwards’ visit to his alleged mistress and child at the Beverly Hilton on Monday night.
Byron York adds his two cents in his column for The Hill:
The tabloid reports that Edwards visited Hunter in a Los Angeles hotel Monday night, leaving her at 2:40 Tuesday morning. When the Enquirer’s reporters confronted Edwards, the story goes, he tried to escape.
Critics might question the Enquirer’s involvement in all this. Perhaps, they might charge, money changed hands to make the story happen.
Maybe it did. But one reads an Enquirer story just like one reads a story in The New York Times. You look at the allegation and try to sort out how much evidence the paper is presenting.
For example, after carefully reading the Times’s front-page story alleging that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had had an affair with a lobbyist, one could only ask, Where’s the evidence?
That’s not the case with the Edwards story; there’s quite a bit of detail.
Yet the mainstream media continues to ignore the story. Is there any doubt at all that if this was a Republican (like, say, a senator trawling for sex in a bathroom, or, say, a senator caught up in a prostitution bust with a famous DC Madam) this would be kind of a big deal?