disqualified someone from high office?

Be careful what you wish for.

------------------------------------------------
“But hysteria is all the rage these days, I guess” - gqm

Sorry, but the right-before-the-convention thing is just too big a coincidence to accept for me. And it also confirms a lot of Edwards supporters in their choice [of Obama] after Edwards dropped out (and got curiously little for doing so, making me think this has been on the backburner for awhile). And I'm betting the "work something out with Elizabeth Edwards" thing on universal health care will die a quiet death, too. So, call my foily, but the whole thing has a triple-bankshot feel to me.

Meanwhile, some doofus over at Kos says we didn't give Gingrich a pass, so why Edwards? To which the obvious rejoinder is Edwards (a) didn't run on a family values platform or (b) impeach a President over a blowjob. Unlike Gingrich.

Krugman might be right: Stupid works. It's certainly working for Kos.

UPDATE Make that a quadruple bankshot: No AG for Edwards.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

That's funny. Not that this excuses it, but what if he said it didn't...?

Is Elizabeth knew this would come out, knew it would doom everything and even if she felt John could be a source for good if elected, knew that would never, ever happen in our hypo-moralizing society - and yet still backed his run for president.
I like EE just fine, although I've never understood why she's achieved near sainthood status. What, if anything, does her decision to allow John to make his run tell us about these two personalities.
It's not enough to say, "Well, she had forgiven him and knew he'd be a powerful president on the side of the working guy."
She's too smart not to know he'd never be elected with this.

...edited to add - I don't care about the affair. I'm much more interested in the dynamics at play. I'm not moralizing about anything, this angle just struck me as interesting.

Silly kossacks. We didn't call Newt out for having an affair, we called him out for serving his wife divorce papers whilst she was in the hospital for her cancer treatment. And what lambert said.
If Edwards had to blow off a little steam while his life partner was very ill and he was running for President, I don't blame him. If it weren't for press hounding, Elizabeth wouldn't even have to worry about it. It's over and done.
Can we just assume that politicians are having affairs so we can stop being crushed by it?

I would be furious right now had Edwards won. I mean, is it so much to ask for a candidate to keep his pants on?

On the other hand, I would love to rake certain CEO's over the coals, people like Jack Welch, Rupert Murdoch, and many others who are well known for their lack of fidelity. Maybe if embarrassing photos of them were floating around the internet all this secret police journalism would come to a halt.

1. we're human and the expectations we put on our icons to be superhuman will always end in pain.

2. edwards fucked up. let's not excuse it. in the social context we must live and operate within, this was some dumb shit.

3. it makes me feel no worse about john edwards because i know he still believes in the things he claimed to believe in.

___________________________
.delusions of un mundo mejor.

stop talking about edwards. you shouldn't care and i certainly don't, about what he does in his private time.* also: when will we ever fucking learn? this post, which i was going to come write but Mandos beat me to it, should've been titled "Where is Vicki Iselman?"

learn from your betters. when your guy fucked up, turn that into an opportunity to attack, attack, attack! the other guy. in this case, we're blowing (heh) a perfect opportunity. "At least JE didn't dump his wife while she was still on the sickbed once he found a willing partner." or "I'm so glad that the Republican nom had the sense to put his 40 years his junior mistress on ice well before the republican convention" or "So JE is a piker; McCain has had at least three extramarital affairs and proves he's still Virile!" or even, "well, at least he's a red-blooded, healthy, virile, grown up, normal heterosexual, unlike (long list of rethug closet cases and perverts), etc.

lemons into lemonade and all that. also: EE knew about it.

*i can't recall how much JE made of the Blue Dress, but if he did make a great deal of it for his own gain at that time, well, fuck him. but: I still don't care and it doesn't change why i thought he would've been the best of the dem noms this year. for fuck's sake, they all cheat. even the women. it's what politics is all about, at its heart.

ops is easy. you need a cellphone cam/video recorder, and someone willing to follow people around as they go in and out of whorehouses/gaybars/centers of perversion. boilerplate: there's nothing wrong with going to any of those places.

but i wonder how members of the SCLM, the "sex policy" and theocrats and Oh So Puritanical types, would like it if suddenly some of their shenannigans turned up in grainy pic/video on some blog, followed by "statements" by their lovers, clients, hookers, and gay friends?

rethugs get to use the resources of DHS, CIA, FBI and goddess know what other taxpayer-funded snooping agencies to ruin their political opponents. when will our side learn to do the same? it's not hard, and more importantly, the other side is arrogant and sloppy. who else bets with me that Cal Thomas, or the Moustache of Understanding, or any long list of public morality police are out there every other night in DC funning it up with hookers, blow, boys and box turtles? i know many of them are. i'm sorry i don't live there anymore to follow some of them around. we're just little people, it's not like they would notice until they came up to you and offered to buy you your first drink at the bar, pathetic sexual hypocrites that the vast majority of them are.

foley et all taught us a lesson: the ones making the most political hay about supposed crime/perversion/deviation...are the ones doing it, thinking about doing it, have done it, or want to do it. it's easy to back that up on film, if only we weren't so "above that sort of thing."

burn him at the stake.

blogosphere, heal thyself. and recognize that it's really childish to obsess about what other people do with their peepees unless they want to become more powerful talking about that (or yours). seriously, i don't think i've seen action/traffic like this on a friday night in the blogosphere ever before. clearly a lot of folk need to, um, get laid.

foley et all taught us a lesson: the ones making the most political hay about supposed crime/perversion/deviation…are the ones doing it, thinking about doing it, have done it, or want to do it. it’s easy to back that up on film, if only we weren’t so “above that sort of thing.”

Voyeurism.

Classic high school stuff.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I don't have the quote at my fingertips but read it earlier today. "Clinton disgraced the office and his wife and daughter..." something like that.
And sorry, if a guy is running for president and boinking someone on the side - catastrophic arrogance. I felt ok about him until the Michigan crap and gang bang on Hillary. And oh, the lie about not supporting a candidate until the convention.

Hillary Clinton, The Man of My Dreams

And just last year, when Katie Couric was conducting those insipid candidate "questions" interviews, Edwards, unlike either Obama or Richardson, took the bait on a question about the importance of marital fidelity in judging a candidate and proclaimed fidelity a very important factor. Hillary also got the question, which I believe was asked only as an attempt to humiliate her.

Additionally, while none of the candidates will just come right out and support same-sex marriage, Edwards was only leading Democratic to insist that his religion just wouldn't let him go there. Apparently, his religion doesn't cover infidelity.

So, CD, you are right. This crap shouldn't matter. And I am all for seeing it disappear from our political discourse. But John Edwards is a huge fucking hypocrite, and right now I just do not feel very sorry for him.

letting go of the idealizing/disillusioned cycle. I think it's around age 16 for most people.

that presidential contenders keep their pants on

this is all i can find, from 99, and it's not at all as strong as many many others said at the time--he doesn't even mention impeachment, etc. --

http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_t...

(every other link/blog post i've found all link back to that one speech alone)

It is the legacy of living in a nation founded by clergymen and originally populated by European trailer trash.

...for the rest of us

As if that somehow makes it better?! Are you serious?

"I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen."

Yeah, I'm not going to go the self-righteous Pharisee route, but let's call this what it is, and stop the apologizing and sugar-coating.

I also kind of sickened by his response that was more a defense than an admission, with the whole "99% truthful" and insisting that "I didn't love her," as if that has anything to do with anything. By sloshing around all of that crap he only made this non-issue an issue.

The only thing more silly than our hyper-moral confines are those that willfully choose to live in them, champion them, and then want out when they don't work out for them.

You want to gladly accept playing the game in the confines of hyper-morality? Ok, but you should probably be willing to finish it, no?

Again - can anyone say why JE is an online fav?

It's the message-- not the man.

I, for one, did not support "John Edwards." I chose him over all the others when it became clear that he was the only one talking about issues that mattered to me-- poverty, class, corporate corruption and health care.

Which, incidentally, is why Obama is problematic for me-- I don't care much for his message (or lack of a message).

Even so, I could care even less who Obama is having sex with-- before, during or after the campaign. Marital fidelity is not high on my radar, so forgive me for not caring how couples deal with their personal lives.

But for the Obama fans/worshipers/followers-- call them what you want; there is a scary subset out there-- let's hope there are no scandalous revelations about their hero. Like it or not, there is a cult of personality; and that's the risk we're taking with an Obama nomination.

Oh- and I am really ready to turn the tables on the television pundits. Expose them all-- every sordid detail of their lives until they shut up (or leave the airwaves).

He's up there with Joe Lieberman, in my book.

If Edwards had to blow off a little steam while his life partner was very ill and he was running for President, I don’t blame him.

I fucking DO blame him. What an arrogant asshole. Think about it. If he were, somehow, at this present moment, our nominee....up shit creek no paddle in sight. Fucked over. The Democratic Party that is. And, consequently, the Republic.

The guy has some nerve. First, sanctimonious, pious drivel on marriage re: Monica, followed by this. Yeah, all politicians are on ego trips, but this one pretty much takes the cake. To put the future of your country at stake like that, which is precisely what he was doing. And no, I don't believe Elizabeth Edwards was okay with it, as you suggest.

Those of you blathering on about how this is a private matter and people's marriages are their own business, blah blah, well, that's a nice idea and true perhaps for private citizens, but not so much for politicians who (like Gingrich, like Bob Livingstone, like Henry Hyde, like Edwards) run on family values or the image of such. Their sexual peccadillos are very relevant to their public lives.

Let me start by saying that I don't think this is really much of an issue. It's good for the church ladies of the land, and those that consume tacky tabloid fodder with an appetite.

But, I'm not going to accept on the particular issue of the impeachment the "2% Less Sucky" cop-out. Nor, do I subscribe to the belief that we are robots, and thus we can seperate our public and private lives from one another, completely. Those two things do not exist within seperate vacuums, and it's a bit naive and dismissive to try and have it that way. I'm of the general belief that we are largely a hyper-moral nation, and that a person's problem in his or her personal life doesn't usually equate to quite as high an effect on his or her public life as so many believe.

That said, I'm also not so naive to dismiss these kinds of things entirely as speaking to nothing other than private failings. And, moreso, I have absolutely no pitty for those that willfully, and sometimes joyfully, play the game within the confines of our social constraints, even going so far as to lord over others, and then wanting out of the game or complain about how unfair it was when you can't play by the rules you chose to play by.

I ultimately agree with most, here. This personal foible doesn't give me any reason to believe that he believes less in universal healthcare or poverty. But, to start splitting hairs about what he said about Bill Clinton is simply ridiculous, as is the idea that infidelity (or any other personal foible) is somehow mutually exclusive from one's public life.

Yes, there is a group of people that exist between the self-righteous, judgemental American Pharisee, and the perpetual denial apologists.

These kind of things in no way disqualify someone from being president, but neither does it mean that they don't mean anything, at all.

...the point for me is that regardless of what you think about Edwards and his infidelity, it can't be that important at this point.

Why doesn't anyone ever talk about George Bush Senior's decades-long relationship with his Washington mistress? (Poor Barbara.)

Or the sham of a marriage that is "The Doles."

Or all the Republican good old boys who share townhouses (and Dupont Circle boys) in Georgetown-- while their very photogenic families live back in Podunk USA- alone.

And I've always been more than a little suspicious about the Bush/Gannon connection in the current White House. What's little Georgie into, you think? Imagine the dark sexual mind of that guy.

Sex is only a scandal that really matters when it's a Democrat.

The Repubs don't seem overly concerned that their guy (McCain) and his multiple fidelity issues will "put the country at stake."

Cheese and rice, people, do you all have any idea how much YOU SOUND LIKE THE GOP HEADHUNTERS IMPEACHING CLINTON?????

Get the hell over yourselves already.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

is that I realized months ago that the fainting couch industry was booming and yet did nothing about it. Here's another great marketing opportunity down the tubes, as it were.

Sounds like an Olympic sport, of sorts.

How about...

* instant-release corsets
* vapor-chasing fans
* ever-increasing-sized fonts