Lyin' Cheatin' Hound Dogs

Okay, that's it. Just when I think male politician behavior couldn't POSSIBLY get any worse (yes, I know, silly Patricia), along comes John Edwards and confesses to an extramarital affair and to lying about it wholesale.

Not only that, but he confesses to being a self-absorbed narcissist, and that's why he both cheated and lied, and oh yeah, he only cheated on his wife when she was in remission from her now-incurable cancer.

How noble. So...does that mean since she's no longer in remission he can't ever cheat on her again, but has to wait for her to actually DIE before he can screw around some more?

There is so much that is so appalling about this story that I just don't know where to start.

I really liked John Edwards for his policies, and was sad he didn't do better in the primaries. Now I'm thinking we all dodged a bullet. The cheating itself, I tend to feel that's pretty much between him and his wife.

Politicians cheat all the time. JFK cheated. Eliot Spitzer cheated. Jim McGreevey cheated. John McCain cheated (on his first wife, whom he then dumped, and he called his second wife a cunt in public). The media covered up for Jack, though, and the McCain info was pretty public all along (though why is no one saying HIS career is over because of it, the way they are for Edwards?).

It's the lying that gets me. Edwards lied to his wife. He lied to his supporters and campaign workers. He lied to the American public. And now he gets out there on TV and seems to be actually PREENING himself on his belated honesty about himself and his cheap little affair.

Makes. Me. Sick. Of course, it's hardly BushCheney lying about weapons of mass destruction to get us into war, and lying about how it's going now that we're bogged down in it up to our chinny-chin-chins. But it's lying all the same.

And the ARROGANCE. Talking on one side of his mouth about family values and how he loves his wife, and using the other side of his mouth to, well, you get the unsavory picture. And then thinking no one would ever find out about it. Oh, you poor deluded jackass. And poor deluded us, to have drunk the Edwards Kool-Aid.

Whether his wife drank it too...well, who can say. But she's standin' by her man, all right, the poor cow. Hopefully to make him feel even worse than he does, or should. It's hard to tell if he does or not: that interview was breathtaking in its sheer audacity. He seems to think he should be given big props for being so humble and chastened about being unfaithful, yet I can't help but think he's not feeling chastened at all except for being found out.

And then to learn that the raddled-looking slattern "Rielle Hunter", aka Lisa Druck, was the model for a Jay McInerney character because of her spectacular sluttery...well now, that's just perfect. Can't these guys ever pick decent-looking women of substance to have affairs with? No, because no such woman would ever countenance something so tawdry.

The fact that she refuses a paternity test for her child (whose father is now alleged to be an Edwards aide), and is said to have received a bunch of money from the Edwards campaign chest to take the brat and leave North Carolina, is just adding to the sleaze factor.

Plus the fact that it's all been covered up for two years, though rumors abounded: so the media is at fault there too, big surprise.

We never hear about powerful WOMEN politicians or judges having affairs, do we? No, we don't. At least, if we have, I've forgotten. But certainly nothing on the scale of this. Women are both too busy and too smart, and are in no need of using little sex adventures to make them feel big and important. Though if they did, I'd like to think they'd go for a better class of partner in infidelity...

What a sorry, sordid little matter.



And then of course there's the Russia-Georgia thing. I'll get into that maybe tomorrow, I'm too tired now. Besides, by then it could be nukes...