The defense of John Edwards isn't a shame or a tragedy, it's a pathology. 

I'd provide an excerpt, but I don't really feel the need, as the title says it all. Time Magazine has a piece going right now titled Rehabilitating John Edwards: Difficult But Not Impossible. Incredibly, this piece was written by a woman and, as she's writing for Time, presumably a fairly liberal woman. Nah, not Liberal - a progressive, a leftist, no doubt an Obamaton all the way. And yet, after John Edwards latest round in the tabloids has come and gone with his finally accepting the paternity of the two-year-old child he gave bastard status ages ago, he hopped off to Haiti to talk in front of more cameras as the Carribean winds tossed his hair about to and fro. 

Before diving into the nitty-gritty, I'd offer you this piece, written by David Perel, the former editor of The National Enquirer writing for The Wall Street Journal. I'm not sure what How The National Enquirer Exposed the John Edwards Affair is intended to square, but it reads, intentionally or not, as a scolding of the national media and a re-boot of what its role is covering national politics. The overall point is that while various Medea types whinny and moan about its diminishing role, the fact is they ignore stories like the multi-year Edwards affair (and there are many, many more) to the benefit of amoral and giddily opportunistic outfits like TNE. We on the Right call it bias, but it's much worse than that - it is, flatly, negative-propaganda: just as spreading lies about one's political enemies is effective and wrong, so too is ignoring the truth and failing to report it regarding one's political allies. 

John Edwards is not the only case, but his is the best case. 

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A word about my view of well-known national Democrats, or as I call them, Donkeys. For as long as I've been writing, I've railed against most of them, and whichever one happens to have power gets the bulk of my attention. My current focus is on The Dear Leader, Pres. Barack "The Lightworker" Obama," but I've spilled lots of words on the Clintons, the Gores and various other Donkey second-teamers over the years. I find TDL to be icily statist, the masculine Clinton to be a rake, the feminine Clinton to be a man-hating opportunist, Albert Gore to be borderline nuts, and so forth. I hold little regard for any of these people, and the only reason I don't put Gore in the same category I'm about to put John Edwards is, as a human, Edwards's sins are far worse than Gore's even though Gore is clearly the more dangerous figure. 

John Edwards made a fortune as a tort lawyer, and in his most notorious act he channeled the ghost of a dead child during closing arguments in a lucrative-for-him malpractice case. Nationally, he came to prominence when he was selected by John Kerry to be his running mate in 2004 against Dub. Even in the backdrop of that gray election, Edwards came off as slimy, and his sit at the table debate with Dick Cheney illustrated he'd accidentally jumped into the deep end of the pool. I would guess in '05, Edwards thought he'd make a perfect POTUS, probably around the same time that Barack Obama came to the same conclusion. The only difference? TDL knows how to leave no tracks, where all Edwards could do was cover them. 

And poorly. 

So, Edwards ran for the Donkey nod for POTUS on the far left (hell, his views were halfbeat Conservative compared to what TDL appears to be attempting to pull), lost, then attempted to play kingmaker. He made much of moral values and integrity, of his wife's battle with cancer, and all that was cheesy bullshit (as most POTUS campaign stuff is on both sides) until The Enquirer nailed him in a California hotel meeting with his mistress and the child he fathered. Edwards, forever the man, hid in the lobby bathroom until security ran the paparazzi off. 

Well, at least someone was covering the story. 

Here's the thing - TNE was onto Edwards' scumminess since '07. To paraphrase the WSJ piece and slant it to my view, he's not a scumbag because he cheated on his cancer-stricken wife, took a lover and knocked her up, he's a scumbag of the highest order because he campaigned for the Donkey nod to the POTUS on the notion of integrity and morality (no, I did not believe this and never would have voted for him pre-tabloid, see all the horrible things I wrote about him at the time) while calling TNE's work "tabloid trash" while, during all that, knowing he was cheating on his wife and had a pregnant lover. 

Whew. 

As the WSJ piece reveals, Edwards revealed his affair in an ABC sitdown because TNE forced his hand; the paternity of his child - same thing, combined with a nasty memoir coming out next month about the whole ordeal. He doesn't come clean until proof is about to hit the pudding fan. All that is amoral and, if you think about it, survivalistic and pragmatic, and savvy people caught in the same circumstances may do the same things, even worse. 

With all those things said, here's my question: Why is Time Magazine, in the era of Hopenchange and a Different Kinda Politics and all, already trying to rehabilitate the reputation of a scumbag like John Edwards, the kind of self-serving nihilist who would use his staff, his wife, his mistress and his children as nothing more than pawns used to forward his political future? There are plenty of smooth Donkey operators out there, and Edwards has all the credibility and respect of a pedophile right now.  Would they do the same for Mark Sanford, the disgraced South Caronlina (oh, and Republican) governor? 

What if The Medea had focused 10 percent of its attention directed at Sarah Palin on John Edwards? 

Scarier yet - what if The Medea focused 10 percent of its critical lens on TDL in the manner it continues to focus on Gov. Palin, the boy who is the father of her daughter's child, her pledge to campaign for John McCain in Arizona and so forth. 

Is there any Donkey who could stand up and see the light of day under the obscene spotlight that any GOPer seen as a threat to Donkey hegemony faces? Barack Obama, for most of America, is a tabula rasa of the highest order. Most don't know where he came from, what his foundations are, what he believes, what he wants or what his designs are on the country he now leads. 

Although I don't for a second think you're dull enough not to put it together, I'll make it explicit: a Medea that is scurrilous enough to ignore the obvious, open scandals of a piece of trash like John Edwards cannot be trusted to fairly cover a man like Barack Obama, Our Dear Leader. A year into his Presidency, most people are starting to understand the consequences of such bias.