News Under Our Noses

No one better than Maureen Dowd on Edwards's televised confession:

"Auto-psychoanalysis by the perp. That's really rich. When Bill Clinton acknowledged an affair, after equally adamant denials, he simply went into an old-fashioned spiral of penitence, his allegedly long, dark night of his alleged soul.

"Even in confessing to preening, Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic? Given his diagnosis, I'm sure his H.M.O. would pay.

"The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct."

What else do we know about Rielle? The HuffPost has a couple of e-mails she sent in 2006: "Hunter wrote about a trip she had taken to North Carolina to see the man whom she affectionately referred to as 'my love lips.' A week later she wrote another email in which she described the mental anguish of 'being in love with a (still somewhat dysfunctional) married man.' "

This woman had some fleeting encounters with Rielle Hunter in L.A., describing her as a "wack job," and quoted her as saying: "I am going to be famous. Rich and famous. I am going to meet a rich, powerful man."

That she did.

Former San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein has some thoughts on the media's performance:

"Most MSM in general had stayed away, picking at it with their noses held, as if looking for something valuable in a moldy dumpster. Of course the New York (City) Times said they were 'looking into it' but certainly not printing a story. Oh, no. On journalism sites, the finger-pointing, self-loathing, self-righteousness and tut-tutting was massive. Don't touch that dirty tale! Don't trust but verify! Why are we ignoring this?

"It's the same old problem when the most scandalous of the tabs breaks an actual story. It happened a lot with Bill Clinton, and Edwards now seems a little Bill lite-like ('I had sex with that woman but she meant nothing to me.' I'm sure Rielle Hunter feels as good as Monica Lewinsky did about that.) The perp is a little ashamed but leave it to the Mrs. to take the real humiliation hit.

"As always, the most interesting thing (OK, to me) about this are the cultural currents and implications. Is it worse when a darling of progressives betrays you than if it's Newt Gingrich? Better? The same? Was there a conspiracy to out Edwards hatched in a political brain? Will the MSM ever figure out the journalistic etiquette following a big tabloid scoop? Does anyone really think that a story splashed in the tabs and debated on blogs like a powerful fire back draft is somehow not part of the public discourse?"

On Slate's XX Factor blog, E.J. Graff says: "I am incredibly annoyed that we have to waste any air, print, or pixel time on this. Why do I care about some dude's marriage and marital problems--unless he did something that in any way abuses public power? . . .