You knew I had to go there. John Edwards, a.k.a. Angry Johnny, admitted today what everyone suspected but few prominent people were willing to give voice — he cheated on his lovely and awesome wife Elizabeth. He cheated on her with a woman, Rielle Hunter, he reportedly met in a bar in New York, hired to work for his campaign and with whom a professional relationship led to something else (if we're giving the charitable interpretation of events). According to Edwards, that "something else" did not include either love or the child that Ms. Hunter claimed in December was the child of Edwards’ Director of Ops/North Carolina Finance Director, Andrew Young (who quit in November 2007). Because that, like, makes it all better.

Edwards reportedly hired Hunter in 2006 to produce a series of films about his candidacy before he was actually a candidate — after meeting her in a bar. She didn't exactly have a lot of video production experience. By last September, the videos were scrubbed from the website, and more salacious rumors about him began making the rounds. In December, the National Enquirer came out with its first story that Rielle Hunter was pregnant and that she and Young were claiming to have had the affair. But in January, Page Six published a blind item that, in retrospect, indicates that she was claiming to still be having an affair with Edwards. Rielle's daughter was born February 27, 2008, placing the child's conception around April 2007.

The videos Hunter made for Edwards (and about which she was quoted) were released around New Year's 2006. Is it possible that the affair ended in 2006 while she was still giving press quotes? And that he'd, as he says now, already told Elizabeth? No one noticed the videos were scrubbed until last summer 2007, which is about the time Hunter would've been discovering she was pregnant (and telling people, and showing).

Elizabeth Edwards, by the way, announced that her cancer had come out of remission in March 2007 — about a month before Rielle would've gotten pregnant, supposedly by Andrew Young.

Frankly, I think Edwards is still lying. No one wants to believe he was having sex with a woman he'd hired to work for his campaign, or that he was doing so after his wife announced that she had cancer, so few people are going to question the timing. The story that he cracked Elizabeth's ribs "hugging" her (with the innuendo being while they were having sex) last winter and that's how they discovered the cancer seems a little more... unseemly now, doesn't it? Were they having make-up sex? Or was he still sleeping with his (soon-to-be immunocomprised) wife while having condomless sex with his mistress who he didn't even love?

John Edwards' political appeal relied on a couple of things: his ability to get $400 haircuts while relatively convincingly playing the son-of-a-mill-worker concerned with economic inequality in America; and his ability to be a very attractive politician with a lovely but considered by some to be less-attractive wife with whom he seemed to have a healthy and affectionate relationship. What does he have now? A hippie pregnant mistress from whom, if she openly claims it's his child, he'll demand a paternity test? A mistress that he was (knowingly or not) "sharing" with his staffers while his wife was developing cancer? There's no way to come out ahead of this story, and prevaricating on the timing doesn't help.

There's no way an Obama Administration can nominate him as AG, let alone appoint him to anything that requires Congressional approval. This is the end of the line for John Edwards and his political career, and it should be. Keeping your dick in your pants doesn't require training, just a brain.

Edwards Admits Sexual Affair; Lied as Presidential Candidate [ABC News]
Did John Edwards Sleep With This Lady? [Wonkette]
Enquirer Reports: Rielle with Someone’s Child [Updated] [Wonkette]
Edwards Mystery: Innocuous Videos Suddenly Shrouded In Secrecy [HuffPo]
Scrubbed: Edwards Filmmaker's Deleted Website Raises Questions [HuffPo]
Just Asking [Page Six]
Birth Certificate Of Child Linked To Edwards Lists No Father [McClatchy]
Politics 2008: John Edwards, Untucked [Newsweek]
Elizabeth Edwards's Cancer Returns – but Campaign Goes on [People]
Can We Talk Politics, Please? [NY Times]

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