John Edwards has now admitted that he had an affair, but denies paternity of his mistress's child.
Edwards has long been one of my least favorite people in American public life. I don't like the way he used bogus science and baseless lawsuits to drive obstetricians out of North Carolina. I don't like the political makeover he underwent between 2002 and 2006, when he switched from being a moderate hawk to a left populist. If this scandal takes him out of public life, I won't miss him.
But I'm not sure that reporters should be staking out hotel rooms in the middle of the night to check who's visiting whom. Michael Kinsley argues that the Edwards affair is a legitimate story because the press spent so much time last year reporting that Edwards had loyally stood by his sick wife. By that standard, is it a news story every time Edwards exchanges a harsh word with his wife or neglects her? We still don't know whether Edwards cheated on his wife after her cancer recurred. I don't think I want to know. Do you?
