I suppose it had to come to this eventually. John Edwards is the one who had the affair, but now people are angry with Elizabeth.
It seems an odd way to treat a woman with incurable cancer wronged by a cheating husband, the latest in a series of deep hardships in life that includes the death of a teenage son.
But some former followers have questioned the recklessness of keeping the affair under wraps even though her husband — a former U.S. senator, two-time presidential candidate and the 2004 vice presidential nominee — said he confessed the affair in 2006, before the campaign began in earnest the next year.
“I think she’s complicit,” said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant. “Obviously, she knew. While she’s the victim, she clearly didn’t stand in the way of the cover-up.”
She didn’t stand in the way of the cover-up? Exactly what would people have her do? Denounce her husband on national television, and then have the cameras follow her to the courthouse to file divorce papers?
John Edwards has admitted to having an affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, according to ABC News.
In an interview with Bob Woodruff that will air tonight on “Nightline,” Edwards reportedly says that he did not love Hunter and also claims that he did not father her infant daughter Frances, although he has not taken a paternity test.
Edwards reportedly tells Woodruff that he can’t be the baby’s father due to the timing of her birth last February.
ABC reports that Hunter was hired by Edwards’ presidential campaign to produce documentaries for his web site, and that Hunter traveled with Edwards to locations in the U.S. and Africa. According to ABC, his political action committee paid her $114,000 for her services.
Edwards reportedly tells Woodruff in the interview that his wife of 31 years, Elizabeth, who gave birth to four children with the former Senator, found out about the affair in 2006. Elizabeth is currently suffering from incurable cancer, but Edwards reportedly told Woodruff that her cancer was in remission when the affair began.
It burns me up that now we’ll waste at least a couple of news cycles talking about it while people dying in Iraq and losing their homes back in the U.S., but there’s something that burns me upmore
This has already been covered in numerous other places, so you probably haven’t seen it here first. Nonetheless it reminded me of something a wise lesbian activist said to me when I was newly arrived in D.C.
The gist of it was that it’s incredibly important that when policy decisions are being made people from those groups affected at at the table and engaged in making those decisions. It was a statement, at the time, about the importance of getting gays & lesbians elected to public office. It’s not that someone who doesn’t belong to a particular group can’t advocate effectively for that group. But advocacy (and policy) based in the direct experiences of the people who are impacted by can often address more specific needs.
In other words, if you want a voice when it comes to making policy, you gotta get people elected. Because if you got something that looks like this:
You’re a lot more likely to end up with something like this:
In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman’s access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40 percent of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services. The “Definitions” section of the HHS proposal states,
Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49 percent of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term “abortion.” Those who believe pregnancy begins at implantation believe the term “abortion” only includes the destruction of a human being after it has implanted in the lining of the uterus.
And you’re liable to have policy made by people who say stuff like this.
Back in 1990, the Republican candidate for Governor of Texas, Clayton Williams, likened rape to bad weather, saying, “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
When that joke came to light in June, John McCain was forced to “postpone” a fundraiser in Midland hosted by Williams. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers called the joke “incredibly offensive.”
But what Williams said in 1990 is not all that different than a joke McCain made about rape in 1986. According to the Tucson Citizen, here’s what McCain, then a two-term Congressman from Mesa, said during his run for the Senate:
Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’
And people who know who don’t even know stuff like this.
The bus had been rolling for a half-hour and McCain was holding court on everything from Iraq to college basketball. (”Who woulda thought? VCU,” he exclaimed upon boarding.) And then someone asked about public funding for contraception in Africa to prevent the spread of AIDS. “I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it in the past,” he stammered as he looked to his communications director. “I’m sure I’m opposed to government funding.”
Sensing a vulnerable moment, reporters kept the questions coming. What about sex education in the schools? Should it mention contraceptives? Or only abstinence, like President Bush wants?
“I think I support the president’s present policy,” he said, tentatively.
More questions: Do condoms stop sexually transmitted disease?
A long pause.
A stern look.
“I’ve never gotten into these issues or thought much about them,” he said, almost crying uncle.
And who can’t answer questions like this.
So, yeah. Getting the right (or not right, in this case) people elected matters.
I wasn’t expecting the traffic. In fact, it was the last thing from my mind when, late last week, I read the news that Deborah Jeane-Palfrey — a/k/a “The D.C. Madam” — committed suicide. I shouted the news to my husband, over the din of Dylan’s babbling and Parker “watching” a Tivo’d television show while playing with his race cars, and then I just thought what damn shame it was.
And how I wish she hadn’t done it. I realized that some part of me was rooting for her; wanting her to come out on top, even if only after serving a few years in prison. I remember thinking, not that anyone else in particular should have been one of the two (at least) casualties in this story, but about the significance of who was on that casualty list, and whose career’s weren’t.
If a woman consents to having sex with a man but then during intercourse says no, and the man continues, is it rape?
n Maryland–as well as in North Carolina–when a woman says yes, she can’t take it back once sex has begun–or, at least, she can’t call the act rape.
That was the recent ruling by Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals in a case that may soon make its way to the state’s highest court and that has captured the attention of feminists and legal experts across the country. Advocates for victims’ rights insist it’s not just a matter of allowing a woman to have a change of heart. If the law doesn’t recognize a woman’s right to say no during sex, they say, there is no recourse for a woman who begins to feel pain or who learns her partner isn’t wearing a condom or has HIV. Those who are wary of these measures say they’re not arguing against having a man stop immediately when a woman no longer wants to have sex, but with how to define immediately.
It’s interesting how a story takes on a life of it’s own. It’s been a couple of years since I started blogging about Zach, the kid in Tennessee who came out to his parents only to get sent to a “reparative therapy camp.” The story went from a handful of bloggers covering it to The New York Times covering it.
Investigations were launched. The camp was shut down for a while. Then there was as lawwsuit. Then a settlement. Then the camp closed. Sort of. I stopped following the story closely once Zach left the camp and returned home. But now and again I read about developments like the lates one, which I learned of via Box Turtle Bulletin.
John Smid, the guy who was running the place when Zach was there, has resigned.
I know I said I would not comment on the Eliot Spitzer affair. And I’m not, per se. But it does appear to have made prostitution — and whether or not it should be legalized — the subject of public debate again.
I wrote about the subject last year, focusing on three different cases that raised questions on both sides of of the debate, and I tended to come down on the side of legalization, but lately I’ve heard some arguments that make a convincing case, if not in favor of legalization, then not in favor of full decriminalization.
I don’t know if this counts as a trend or not, but I didn’t expect to see something like this so soon after the previous post. This time is the Lutheran Church, which still opposes marriage equality but expresses regret that "church teachings have been used to hurt gays and lesbians."
A task force drafting a statement on sexuality for the nation’s largest Lutheran group said Thursday that the church should continue defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
However, the panel did not condemn same-gender relationships. The committee expressed regret that historic Lutheran teachings have been used to hurt gays and lesbians, and acknowledged that some congregations already accept same-sex couples.
First of all, this post is not what you think it’s about. (Though I could write style-crampin’ aspects of having an infant who doesn’t sleep through the night yet. Suffice it to say that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.) No, it’s about the French.
Or rather, it’s about what they French have done now. It’s something that would never be done here. At least not without a whole lot of whooping and hollering. Forget Maplethorpe for a minute. Can you imagine the public reaction if an American museum featured a new exhibit that’s basically a children’s guide to sex? Read the rest of this entry »
The most astounding assumption is that everyone should have children. This despite the abundant evidence that there an untold numbers of people who’ve already had children probably shouldn’t be parents, if the results of their parenting thus far is any indication. There are undoubtedly more who realize they may not be parent material and thus avoid becoming parents. Would the author have them become parents too, and subject children yet unborn to living with parents who may not want the, or who may even be neglectful or abusive?
That’s the unspoken but fundamental point in his argument, as well as many on the same side. The assumption is that people who marry and have children should do so within the context of the faith that he practices. Because, if they do so and do it right, there won’t be any abuse or neglect. Just like if all women surrendered to their husbands, there wouldn’t be any domestic abuse so long as they’ve married “godly men.”
It’s an ideal that has nothing to do with reality, because there will never be a time when everyone practices the author’s idealized brand of Christianity. But it seems so obvious to him how wonderful it would be if everyone would, that he can remain oblivious to the unhappiness that is bound to result from attempting to force everyone into a one-size-fits-all family unit.
After all happiness, the human variety at least, isn’t the point.
One after the other conservatives from Huckabee right down to the Maryland Court of Appeals will apply the procreative imperative as a supremely logical (in their eyes) reason to deny marriage equality to same-sex couples: if gays are accepted and not discriminated against, and same-sex couples allowed to marry and be treated like any other family, human beings will stop having babies altogether, and civilization will crumble.
Rachel and Jill were appalled by this. I found myself somewhat bemused, and experiencing vague feeling of deja vu.
Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.
Allie and Bethan — who both declined to give their full names — said they planned to spend a whole month touring Kenya’s palm-fringed beaches. They would do well to avoid the country’s tourism officials.
“It’s not evil,” said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, when asked about the practice of older rich women traveling for sex with young Kenyan men.
You see, I had a feeling I’d heard this story before; about the lengths some (white) folks will go to and the distances some (white) folks will travel to satisfy a racial fetish, and the (non-white) folks who are more than happy to help them scratch that itch for a price. I not only heard the story a while back, I blogged about it. But then it was merely the domestic version of the above: the phenomenon of the Mangindo Party.
Too bad we don’t live in New Zealand. Because we’d get commercials like this, which crams in more sexual innuendoes than I knew existed (no, really, I had to look some of them up) but does it that’s TV-safe.
I really shouldn’t pick on Sen. Larry Craig. But there’s so much to address in this case, especially in the light of the recent news of another Republican — in this case, Florida state Representative Bob Allen — getting busted for soliciting sex in a public bathroom.
To be frank, these guys did pretty lousy at coming up with explanations or alibis for the actions leading to their arrests. I mean, Craig blames his arrest on his problems with haveing a “wide stance” when going to the bathroom. Now, I don’t know whether Craig is just a tall guy who requires more legroom than most bathroom stalls allow, but you’d have have ‘em spread pretty damn wide if your foot is brushing up against the foot of the guy in the next stall, while your sitting on the potty. And I won’t even begin to analyze Allen’s excuse that he was intimidated by a black police officer or scared of lightening.
There’s another reason why upstanding conservative guys like these two might be spending time in public bathrooms. I call it “Saving Souls at Glory Holes.”
If you haven't yet, take the time to stop by Box Turtle Bulletin, where they have been doing a great series of day-by-day posts on the Matthew Shepard murder. Today's post is a particularly heartbreaking one, about the moment ten years ago when Dennis and Judy Shepard walked into their son's intensive care room and saw him for the first time since the attack. It also links to the earlier posts in the series.
Its sounds like a joke, but it's true. You know the economy has gone South when folks around in Macon (or anywhere else in the south) are going to restaurants and not ordering sweet tea.
Big news. Clay Aiken is gay. Bigger news. So is Lindsey Lohan. Or, at least, she's been dating a woman "for a really long time." I don't know what counts as "a really long time" for Lohan. But kudos to Aiken, at least, for finally coming out. The closet is no place to raise a kid.
See, stuff like this is the reason I don't use Google Ads already. I tried it for a while, but I kept getting advertisements for James Dobsons' books on my posts, and I never found an easy way to block them other than entering the URL into the Google Ads filter every time I discovered one. No thanks.
If you want just one reason to vote for Obama instead of John McCain — and you're someone who cares about reproductive freedom or the right to privacy — the words "Supreme Court" should be enough. If not, consider that George W. Bush appointed more than 300 federal judges during his term, and ask yourself how many more like these you want to see on the bench.
Watching: "Constantine's Sword (2007)", about the evangelical takeover of the United States Air Force Academy, and wondering... ( http:/ ... 1 week ago
If a woman consents to having sex with a man but then during intercourse says no, and the man continues, is it rape?
I know I said I 
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