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Say It Ain't So, John -- Why Progressives Need To Get Out In Front Of The John Edwards Affair Rumorsstumble digg reddit del.ico.us news trust Posted July 27, 2008 | 01:59 AM (EST) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-stranahan/say-it-aint-so-john-why-p_b_115165.html Before I dive in, let me get the 'objectivity' thing out of the way. As a citizen journalist whose main claim to fame is producing satirical comedy, I can be upfront about my political leanings. I'm a recovering libertarian and currently I'm a registered Democrat who is excited to be voting for Barack Obama in November. I like John Edwards and up until a few days ago, he would have been my first choice for Vice President on an Obama ticket. I'm far from Puritan -- anything two or more consenting adults want to do is fine by me. I also think it's obvious a person's sexual life doesn't keeps them from being an effective politician.I'm judging this situation using two standards; 1) what's the truth? 2) how's it going to play out in the media?The truth is that I believe anyone who looks into the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair story will see that Edwards has, at best, acted in a very suspicious manner for over a year now. When the Larry Craig story was breaking, I didn't buy his particular line of bullshit and I don't buy Edwards's either after I've spent the last couple of days Googling with my wife. (That's not as dirty as it sounds.) At first, I was skeptical of the National Enquirer story catching Edwards leaving the Beverly Hills Hotel at 2:45am because there were no pictures and the tabloids aren't reliable. Now it turns out that Edwards was at the hotel, so was Ms. Hunter, and that he when he saw reporters he hid in the bathroom until security guards came and got him.I got more suspicious after reading a story on The Huffington Post from last September by Sam Stein detailing the weird story of some short webisodes about John Edwards that mysteriously were pulled off the internet. Read it yourself here and fold it into the mix of the current allegations. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/26/edwards-mystery-innocuou_n_66070.html)Let's go with the assumption that Edwards is innocent for a moment; he didn't have the affair so the baby isn't his. If he didn't do anything wrong then it seems like he'd have good reasons to stop the rumors. A DNA test months ago would have ended all speculation about the paternity of the baby. Isn't that a better, less suspicious move than pulling down all the videos that Rielle Hunter helped produce about him for his campaign? And if there are rumors and you're innocent, WHY go visit the subject of those rumors at a hotel and leave at 2:45 in the morning? Why hide in the bathroom when reporters catch you leaving? These actions don't make any more sense to me than Craig's 'wide stance/dropped my toilet paper' defense did.How's it going to play out? It seems to me that this is going to be a tsunami-sized scandal for the Democratic Party and right now the coming typhoon of press coverage is close to breaking. We're at the point of calm before the big waves hit but there are signs of the impending deluge. Jay Leno is making jokes about it. Perez Hilton is on the story. The mainstream media is fairly quiet but the most ominous silence right now is from the progressive blogosphere.The progressive blogosphere is ignoring this story at its own peril because it's going to be big. At this moment, there's a weird state of denial about the entire thing. As of 4pm Saturday, nothing at all on TalkingPointMemo.com. DailyKos did a dismissive post making fun of the Enquirer. FireDogLake? Nothing. Americablog? Nada. These are some of my favorite blogs, by the way.The Huffington Post has at least hovered about the edges of the story as it's been unfolding. There have been a couple of half-hearted, nothing-to-see-here blogs but also news reports on the latest events. A blog by John McQuaid said that there's no "physical evidence a la Bill Clinton." Well, there's a baby. Not a stained dress left to hang in the closest for a few months but a real cooing, smiling little baby who I assume looks adorable on camera and probably has nice hair. That lil' tyke is stuffed full of DNA, too. Cute little DNA.Despite what some people are going to say, this is news. A former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate who was running for President less than six months ago and is now on the short list for Vice President has an long affair during the campaign and fathers a child, covers it up, and then is caught at a hotel with the mother of the child. News! Oh -- and his wife made regular appearances on the campaign trail and as been diagnosed with cancer. If it were Mitt Romney, you'd be hearing peels of laughter and the satisfying smacking sound of Merlot and Starbucks fueled high fives coming from the nearest blue state. Would it have made the progressive blogs? C'mon, of course it would...with funny pictures and as many self-satisfied comments as you can shake a Macbook Air at.It's a juicy story that has so many elements that are easy hooks for those short segments on cable news where two people argue while the news anchor asks softball questions. Here's a quick list of all the story angles I can think of just off the top of my head.John Edwards Matters This isn't a Mike Gravel affair. (Sorry to put that image in your head.) John Edwards been the conscience of the Democratic Party this primary season and a compelling presence speaking out on the growing gap between rich and poor. If he wasn't going to be Vice President, most Democrats wanted him somewhere in an Obama cabinet.Video Clips Galore! Cable news loves showing video clips, usually in looping montages. Those webisodes that Hunter made that were taken down? They look flirty and suspicious in light of the alleged affair.It's Fresh The Edwards affair happened during the primary campaign. This isn't ancient history. What if he's WON the primary? Would he really have taken the nomination and handed the race to McCain?Primary Revisionism Will the affair change the way we look back on the primary? Why did Edwards drop out of the race so quickly? Why did Edwards not endorse anyone until his endorsement was a moot point? Endless debates will ensue.DNA! The press loves any story with DNA. Drama! DNA test refusals. Acceptance. Test goes out. What will happen? It's like Montel Williams but it takes weeks!Democratic Convention in Denver happening soon. Will Edwards speak? Will he appear at all? What about Elizabeth? Oh, the drama. You'll see."How could he do that to his sick wife?" This whole thing doesn't play well with women voters. Or women non-voters. Or men."Should we care about politician's sex lives?" Whatever your answer, that's a hook for the press. As soon as the story reaches a big tipping point, the mainstream press will question the story."Liberal media bias" - here's the big one. Republicans have had a lot of embarrassing, juicy sex scandals of their own lately and boy, do they want some payback. It doesn't look good that the Los Angeles Times banned bloggers from discussing the story. Where's the Times investigation -- seems like the story is in their backyard. And that silence you hear from the mainstream press right now? The GOP is going to "play the refs" and jump all over the media for not reporting or investigating this story. The media will eventually break down and do what they do - saturate us with the story they missed just to prove how unbiased they really are.Lauren and I are organizing the information we've found just by doing some internet research ourselves and for what it's worth, we'll posting it on my blog at Stranahan.com. If you're part of the progressive blogosphere, don't put your head in the sand and hope this goes away because I don't think it will. Don't leave the reporting to Fox and the tabloids. Investigate it yourself. Talk about it, write about it. Disagree or agree but don't just dismiss it because there's too much to just dismiss. If Edwards made a series of personal errors here, at least it should be his friends and allies who help him transition into the next phase of his life. Please make me wrong on this...there's too much at stake.Update: Seems like I've touched a third rail here. I cross-posted this piece at Daily Kos and it got over 400 comments. Unfortunately, a large number of the comments were nothing but insults. One person suggested seriously that all the videos I've made lampooning Republicans (including my Mike Huckabee video that Kos himself called the 'best political parody of 2007) were just a ruse so I could weasel my way into the progressive blogosphere, apparently in anticipation of John Edwards being caught at hotel.
In the summer of 2006, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards commissioned a series of web-based documentary shorts for his pre-announcement leadership PAC, the One America Committee. Within political circles, the videos were regarded as innovative, having successfully painted Edwards in a sympathetic, down-to-earth light.Now, however, nearly all traces of the webisodes - as they became known - are gone. Links to them on the Internet no longer work. The Edwards campaign won't release the videos, and the production company behind the films is citing confidentiality agreements in refusing to talk.This closed-off approach naturally aroused my interest. In the world of politics, rare is the candidate who passes on a chance for publicity. The campaign's explanation for stonewalling, moreover, struck me as dubious and at times evasive.I had come to the Edwards' videos in a haphazard way: the byproduct of a story I was writing on new technology and politics. The webisodes were not, in any regard, a secret. Edwards' "behind the scenes" portrait had earned rave reviews in the blogosphere and even a small feature in Newsweek. But nothing had been written about the films since Edwards announced his presidential aspirations, and I wanted to know how the footage would play on the campaign trail.What followed was a lesson in the profound irritations of political reporting. A call to Edwards' press shop led to an email to his One America Committee representative, which led, in turn, to a mind-bending exchange about campaign finance law, which culminated in a separate conversation with Edwards' deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince. Each time I was told that the One America Committee could not use "material that could be considered promoting the presidential campaign," and that Edwards' camp "no longer had access to most of the content."Thwarted, I tried my hand with the movie's producers. A search for the filmmaker, Rielle Hunter, proved that Google does, in fact, have its limitations. No hits. The same held true with Facebook and Myspace - a bizarre level of anonymity for someone in the movie business.The production company responsible for the webisodes, Midline Groove Productions, had a minimalist website. Through it, however, I was able to email Mimi Hockman, Rielle Hunter's partner, to ask if I could screen the tapes. She directed me to a Business Week website where the last remaining webisode link still functioned. But beyond that, I was rebuffed. Once again, the reasons seemed strangely artificial."Our contract expired last year," Hockman emailed, "and the Edwards camp owns all of the webisodes and footage."(Hmmm.... The campaign had said it couldn't access the footage.) Could we at least talk off the record about the filming process?"Nope," she wrote. "Not a chance."My reportorial curiosity thoroughly piqued, I decided to dig further.Who is Rielle Hunter? The Newsweek item said Edwards met the aspiring actress and filmmaker in a New York City bar. A call to the Screen Actors Guild elicited the following exchange:Screen Actors Guild: "This performer chooses not to list her contact information in the membership database."HuffPost: "So if I wanted to contact her about her work with web video?"SAG: "Well, I don't know what to tell you. It's up to the performer to choose whether they are listed or not."A check of the movie database IMDB.com listed her as a director and actor in the short Billy Bob and Them. And an Internet write up of a 2005 interview she apparently gave to Breathe Magazine described her as a "formerly hard-partying girl who claims that she found enlightenment."How much did the videos cost? According to campaign finance reports, the One America Committee made four payments of $12,500 and two of $25,000, for a total of $100,000 to Midline Groove Productions in the second half of 2006.Who else was involved? Credits from the webisode still on the Business Week site listed three additional production assistants. One of them, Sam Cullman, said he could not talk to me but lauded Edwards for his openness. Another assistant, Nick Chatfield, said on the first call to my editor that he wished the movies were available because he could use the publicity. On the second call (having evidently checked back with Hunter or the Edwards campaign), Chatfield said, "Don't call me again."Most important of all: Was there, in fact, a legal reason that prohibited Edwards from showing the webisodes? One campaign finance expert told me that, "if used by the presidential campaign, the videos are considered an in-kind contribution, which is limited at $5,000 in value... Still," he added, "this is an abundance of caution." Others didn't tread as lightly. "Bullshit", "baloney", and "malarkey" were the words used by three eminent experts in the field to describe Edwards' stance.Presented with this record, the Edwards campaign finally relented. But even then they proved surprisingly guarded.Jonathan Prince offered to let me and my editor, Tom Edsall, watch the videos - apparently unaware that at one point his campaign claimed not to have access to them. But there was a proviso: we could only view the videos in Prince's presence.We accepted the offer. But oh, how the story and my interests have changed. No longer am I working on a piece about new media and politics - boring! Now, I just want to know why these webisodes are shrouded in such mystery.Not lost in the matter is the irony of Edwards' stance. After all, the videos were made with the apparent goal of bringing transparency to the political process. "I've come to the conclusion I just want the country to see who I really am," Edwards declared in the one webisode still public, "not based on some plastic Ken doll you put up in front of audiences."I'm still waiting to see.Comments for this post are now closed
