Politics | 07/24/2008 1:15 pm

Why Is the Mainstream Media Keeping John Edwards's Alleged Love Affair a Secret?

By The Staff at wowOwow.com

Over the past 24 hours, Internet news sites have been reporting on this week’s explosive National Enquirer story exposing a supposed John Edwards tryst in a Hollywood hotel.

However, with the exception of the Los Angeles Times, a blog from The Washington Post online and cable TV’s Headline News’s Glenn Beck, few of the mainstream media outlets are touching this story.

One Internet outlet, Slate Magazine is also asking the question, poking fun at the media for not covering it and making a direct comparison to the mainstream media frenzy around Senator Larry Craig’s bathroom antics of a couple of months ago. Slate writes:

"So why hasn’t the press commented on the story yet? Is it because it broke too late yesterday afternoon, and news organizations want to investigate it for themselves before writing about it? Or are they observing a double standard that says homo-hypocrisy is indefensible but that hetero-hypocrisy deserves an automatic bye?"

The Huffington Post thinks that Edwards just isn’t prominent enough of a figure anymore for the public to care:

"It sure looks like Edwards is a hypocrite who misrepresented himself by showcasing his wife and kids so prominently in the campaign. But his campaign was unsuccessful. Voters didn’t buy his arguments or his life story as reasons to elect him. In short, nobody cares about this now, except as celebrity gossip. And that’s how it’s going to play when the media picks it up, as it probably will.

"The better question is, should the media have gone after this story more aggressively back during the campaign? Sounds like the answer is yes."

Tell us: Do you feel cheated by the mainstream media for keeping the alleged John Edwards affair a secret?

194 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

He died it outright when the story first broke last October. That the NE is still stalking him, now that he is no longer a candidate, maybe that is the news tidbit that should be reported. Good grief, have they no sense of decency?

By Elizabeth Bennett on 07/24/2008 7:44 pm

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Denied it outright. My typing is unfortunately slipping; I need to start proofreading.

By Elizabeth Bennett on 07/24/2008 11:40 pm

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I don’t see why the mainstream media would be interested in John Edwards’ alleged love affair, especially now. Elizabeth may have encouraged it, and that could get complicated to cover. Elizabeth isn’t well. She may have lost interest in sex, or may not have the energy, or who knows? She may have wanted John to pursue sex like she wanted him to pursue the Presidency, or she may have wanted him to stop pestering her about it. Even if it wasn’t her idea, she may have been relieved or pleased. It simply isn’t worth anyone making a fuss about. If it’s true and ongoing, I guess it’s what works for them.

By Meg Umans on 07/24/2008 7:45 pm

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People’s sex lives are their own business. You never really know what goes on in other people’s relationships, therefore, it is best not to judge.

By Didi Lorillard on 07/24/2008 7:48 pm

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“Why Is the Mainstream Media Keeping John Edwards’s Alleged Love Affair a Secret?” Maybe because the mainstream media doesn’t want to humiliate a brave and wonderful woman and her family based on the National Enquirer. Wish Wow had a more “mainstream media ” mindset about this piece of trash.

By sanders c on 07/24/2008 7:57 pm

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Something better for wOw to cover: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/724/1

By Elizabeth Bennett on 07/24/2008 8:29 pm

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Read about that study of Ms Hyde’s a while back—what’s really interesting to me is that some schools/school districts are separating girls and boys into separate classrooms if not separate schools not by learning ability but by how they learn—it’s in a sense a new way of looking at educating kids and from what I’ve read it’s working. Girls learning is way different than boys in the way the brain functions in the learning process at the grade school level. It involves re-training teachers to teach to the grouping by sex rather than teaching kids in a single homogeneous unit in the same class room—it’s a very interesting concept to me.

By Frank Peterson on 07/25/2008 12:13 am

The trouble is that we live in such a sexist society that when the sexes are separated for purposes of education, it often goes awry. I know because I attended a woman’s college. When in my honors calculus class, the professor informed us that he was not going to teach us all of calculus, because we would only be teaching elementary school, we objected and he put it to a vote: Did we want more work or less work? The class voted for less. When I transferred to another college, I did not know enough calculus to take additional classes in math that required the knowledge of calculus. Because I already had taken calculus, I could not take it again. Catch-22. Naturally his assumption that we would only be elementary school teachers was based on the fact that we were women, and the working women he knew taught elementary school. I am still not certain why he thought one would not need to know calculus to teach elementary school math. Anyway, sure there are some differences in learning, but the history of separation for teaching is not a good one. There are more differences among individuals of the same sex than there are differences between the typical female and the typical male. Stereotyping people by sex is still stereotyping. And that is ultimately not about learning. Learning a variety of teaching styles is useful, but why not tailor teaching to the student, not to the sex of the student.

By Elizabeth Bennett on 07/25/2008 11:06 am

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Ingrained biases from teachers about women in math and science, Elizabeth. Stereotyping is still out there and a lot of it has to do with teacher training and expected results because of bias: girls are good at the arts, boys are good at science—which is total garbage.

By Frank Peterson on 07/25/2008 11:44 am

When my guidance councelor in high school discovered that I scored very high in all math categories and not in the fields she considered proper for girls, she could only come up with me becoming a math teacher. While teaching is a wonderful profession it was not something I ever had a desire to attempt. I explained to her that I actually wanted to use the math. She could not think of a single appropriate job category - This was in the sixties!! Went into accounting and then became a Customs Broker but often wonder what other things I might have tried. I see my nieces and my Granddaughter and I am not sure that things have advanced as far as they should.

By Sandbee (FB) 54 on 07/25/2008 1:14 pm

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For a time I had a job in a think tank where we used game theory principles to try to determine if an all volunteer army and an end to the draft was feasible. It was fairly interesting. There are so many things to be done with math. Do you ever watch the show Numbers? The main character is a professor of math, but also helps the FBI solve crimes with math. It is a shame that the dumb guidance counselor could not think of a thing. In the sixties math possibilities were exploding as the research that developed the internet and the computer revolution was underway. Things have NOT advanced as far as they should. Children should be taught to play musical instruments in grade school, partly because it helps develop the brain in a way that makes math easier to master, and problems easier to solve. Encourage your nieces and granddaughter to explore all their talents. Teaching is a wonderful profession, but as long as it is a ghetto for those with no other opportunities, it will remain underpaid. Why should women accept lower wages AND fewer opportunties? Especially smart women?

By Elizabeth Bennett on 07/25/2008 1:51 pm

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Love the show Numbers,it has always seemed to me that there is a numerical base to most things. But thats probably because that’s the way my mind leans. Teaching would not have been the the field for me because while I love my own children, I have never had the patience to handle others, it takes a special person to do this, they deserve much, much more pay.

By Sandbee (FB) 54 on 07/25/2008 2:32 pm

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Low pay in teaching, Elizabeth is the direct result iMO of sexist thinking in legislatures, i.e. well boys, they’re only women so they don’t need to make as much as men. And they probably have men supporting them anyway. It’s that type of BS thinking that kept teacher salaries way down—plus the fact that administrators in school districts in my state are paid double the salaries of in the trenches teachers. Get a masters degrees and you get maybe a few thou more in pay per year. Women and men in teaching have fought this along with a strong teacher union in my state and salries have gone up a bit- Christine Gregoire is our governor has spent a lot of money on education since she became governor, a damn sight more than our past old boy network ever did and got flack for doing it. If teachers were paisd on a par with bus drivers in Seattle, 70k a year, you’d see really qualified people going into education. Not that the vast majority aren’t now. Thaat gheto mentality of legislatures would disappear. I believe. BTW I agree with teaching music in grade school and the arts are essential but too many districts cut way back on these programs and pay for football coaches and equipment instead—which is sheer bull****.

By Frank Peterson on 07/26/2008 11:24 am

The meter maids here make more than the teachers. Bus drivers and meter maids are more valuable to a community than teachers? I boggle at the reasoning. I agree that teachers should get paid much more. I do not understand why there is no political will to do this. And I agree on the football making priorities upside down. Phys ed and music and art first. Then football. If we collapse our education system we are giving up on democracy as well.

By Elizabeth Bennett on 07/27/2008 5:19 pm

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Well, the world isn’t separated. Teach the kids and quit fooling around with education. The brain is the brain and if you get into this “different” ways of learning it is marching us right down the road to we don’t have to teach them anything because they are girls crap.

By Jaye Ramsey Sutter on 07/27/2008 12:11 am