The XX Factor: What women really think.

Cover-Up Accounting

I agree with Rachael and think that unequal hush installments were not only sexist, the distributions were too small. Don't you think $15,000 and $20,000 a month seems measley for the sacrifice Hunter and Young's family were making in their personal lives? 

Were the payments to go on indefinitely, one wonders, or simply until Hunter would be eligible to become the second Mrs. de Winter?

How To Spot a Cheater With His Clothes On

Hillary's Spokesman Only Wishes Edwards Had Been Outed Sooner

This is rich: Now Hillary Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, who might as well have an "Is it 2012 yet?'' bumper sticker, is undermining Obama's candidacy by complaining to ABCNews.com that if only John Edwards' affair had come out sooner, Clinton woulda been the nominee. Only, is he really so sure that had that happened, nobody woulda then jumped out of Bill Clinton's post-presidential closet? Guess what this quote from Wolfson really means is that his boss has been told we're not going to get a text message from Obama announcing that it's Hillary for V.P.

Paging Henry Cisneros ...

John Edwards is reminding me more and more of poor Henry Cisneros, who was on his way to becoming the Latino Obama before he cheated on his saintly wife, Mary Alice, while she was pregnant with their third child, a son born with no spleen and a malformed heart and stomach. Bill Clinton asked Cisneros to serve as his housing secretary anyway, a few years later, and by then, the affair was such old news that it never even came up during his confirmation hearings. Yet in the course of his background check for the cabinet post, Cisneros lied to the FBI—not about whether he was supporting his former mistress, but about the amount he paid her—and as a result, was subjected to a four-year investigation by a special prosecutor, a probe that cost taxpayers $9 million. Heck of a public servant, Henry, so big-hearted and capable; watching him work a crowd in San Antonio back in the day, you'd have sworn you were looking at the future. But at some point after he stopped paying Linda Medlar, she started taping their phone calls, and triggered the investigation. When the judge who presided over his trial finally asked Cisneros why he'd lied in the first place, he explained that while he wasn't positive himself about the amount he'd paid Medlar, he was positive he didn't want his wife to know how high that figure was. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor, and when he left public life, we all lost out. So, what's the relevance?

First, it's that scary as we wives can be, federal investigators are scarier, and if any of the $15,000 a month that's being paid to Edwards' ex-girlfriend came from campaign funds, I cannot overemphasize how seldom fudging the facts with the Feds works out. Second, what do Monica Lewinsky, Linda Medlar, and Rielle Hunter have in common? All were employees, and world-class blabbermouths. (You never really hear about the guys who get involved with the quiet types, do you?) It's silly to say we don't care if politicians fool around as long as they don't lie about it; how is that supposed to work? (Though if we replaced those one-minute morning speeches they give in Congress with a daily adultery roll call, CSPAN would definitely do some box office.) And until we figure it out, we're stuck pretending these people are perfect and then, when we find out otherwise, pretending we're surprised.

As it is, we're so perplexed about how to treat this stuff I can't even tell what this first-person Newsweek piece is trying to say. In it, reporter Jonathan Darman tells about his own adventures with Rielle Hunter, a woman so fascinating that after meeting her on a trip to Iowa with Edwards in 2006, Darman spends weeks trying to track her down and months getting to know her. After concluding she's an unreliable source, he keeps in touch anyway: "I continued to see her. ... I liked Rielle'' and "let her do my astrological chart.''  From the way he describes their boozy first lunch, I can't tell if he suspected she and Edwards were carrying on or not: Is the tone confessional because he missed the story, because he had the story and sat on it, or because he fell for the "I can tell you're an old soul'' hoodoo himself? (The last guy I knew who talked like that wound up blowing town with the life savings of several women who each thought they were going to marry him and start an ashram.) Hunter told Darman that in this incarnation, she wanted to help Edwards become a transformational figure on a par with Gandhi or MLK; better luck next time? 

Just a Couple More Questions for John Edwards

Just a couple of questions are clouding my understanding of all this, counselor, and stuff I'd still like to know includes:

Was all this going on when you renewed your wedding vows last summer at that intimate backyard ceremony where you wrote your own vows and there was not a dry eye in the house? (The one your wife of 30 years lost weight for, because she wanted to look pretty for you and fit into her wedding dress?)

Is this why you keep losing your wedding ring?

When Elizabeth waited to tell you that she had a lump in her breast the size of a golf ball because she swore to God after Wade died she'd never give you any bad news ever again ... your way of repaying her was with the news you'd betrayed her, Cate, Wade's memory, and the babies she gladly took dangerous hormones to conceive? Got it.

Oh, and just one more: Remember all those holier-than-Bill Clinton remarks? So do I. If you think anyone in the universe believes your beyond Clinton-esque "I was standing on one foot when we did it so it doesn't count'' nonsense, or cares whether you used the L-word, or trusts for a single segundo that you're not the baby daddy? I think you're about to find out how cold it can get in summer, senator.

And as for you, Miss Hunter? Even if all your dreams one day come true, life as the second Mrs. de Winter is going to look pleasant by comparison.

P.S. post interview: So sue me—anybody know a good lawyer?—but I can't help feeling just a little bit sorry for the whole human race when I see just one more ninny who threw it all away for five minutes with an 80s coke—nope, not gonna fall into that blame-the-woman trap. I don't know why Edwards kept repeating, "This is my fault and no one else's.' (Duh.) Nerves, I guess. 

The most unbelievable part of the interview was when he said his buddy Fred Baron, formerly of Baron & Budd, had been paying his former mistress $15,000 a month behind his back; dude, you can lie better than that! Baron is a big Dallas lawyer who made his $$ suing people for asbestos exposure, even when there were no damages. I was in his house once a million years ago, for a party he threw when a friend of mine married one of his law partners, and asbestos has been very good to him, even if I do recall my fellow working stiffs from the paper standing around the pool making fun of his ugly art; that's what happens when you invite a bunch of reporters into chi-chi Preston Hollow. A little while back, Baron even sued his own law firm, so the idea that this total shark would lay out 15 large a month just for grins and all on his own is the lamest load of hooey I've heard outside a campaign ad.  

But—yes, Mickey, this is the moment you've been waiting for—there is also no getting around the fact that Elizabeth was flat wrong, too, after she found out about the affair, not to tell him in no uncertain terms that he would not be running in '08 after all, for the good of the party if nothing else. I'm sure they convinced themselves that what he had to offer the country was worth the risk, but it wasn't, and that is some major enabling she was involved in; the Democrats are darn lucky they got No Drama Obama instead.  

 Melinda Henneberger will be chatting on Washingtonpost.com about the Edwards affair at 2 p.m. today. Send her a question!

(Political) Husbands and Wives: Not Like You and Me

OK, here's a question: Years before the sex-scandal press conference or the chunky pearls, do political wives see their husbands differently than the rest of us see the mere mortals we promised to love, honor and so on? Obviously, there's no one model for a marriage in the public eye, any more than there is for a marriage only the neighbors care about—and even then, not that much as long as you keep the noise down. But I do wonder whether some of these spouses don't end up extra disillusioned because they're required to put their mates on the kind of pedestal that Mr. Ellen Tien has never set foot on. (No, that most certainly does not mean that whatever happens is on them, especially since idealizing these politicians is such a big part of their job description.) And yes, I am thinking all this because of the current John Edwards scandal, and because to say that Elizabeth believes in John is like saying that Washington is on the warm side this time of year, or Middlemarch is not a bad book.

But most mates of the contenders seem to feel that way—or maybe it only looks like that because when they don't appear to believe their men were born in a manger, we totally freak out, like how dare Teresa Heinz mention her deceased husband, the father of her children, and how unheard of for Michelle Obama to remark upon even the most minute and mundane of her husband's flaws. I keep thinking about Cindy McCain, when her husband was running the first time, telling me that she found her husband "a real inspiration'' -- and then stopping herself, quite charmingly, and adding, "I guess anyone would say that about their husband.'' No, they wouldn't; in fact, outside the bubble, I've never heard any woman say, suggest, hint, or infer any such thing, no matter how nice her husband or contented her marriage. So, without letting any of these guys off the hook, I guess my question is, isn't the public's demand for a mythic narrative that no actual person can ever live up to part of the problem?

Spy Cam: It's (Distinctive Striped) Curtains for Edwards

My Challenge to Emily and Mickey: Bag a Philanderer and Then Get Back to Me

Here's the thing: I just do not see you chasing anybody into the men's room in the middle of the night, Emily B. Or you either, Mickey. And believe me, I mean this as a compliment. So, if you wouldn't want all-night stakeout duty outside the hotel where the National Enquirer seems to have cornered John Edwards and his "love child''—sorry, but I can't hear that phrase without imagining Diana Ross breaking into song—why are you so enthusiastic about having someone else do the dirty work?

Isn't cheering and leering from the comfort of the cheap seats on something like this (yeah, you go out and get that sleazo story that I personally would consider beneath my dignity) the journo equivalent of being a Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld-style chickenhawk? And isn't there a journalistic equivalent of the fruit of the poison tree? I mean, this is how sex scandals become news: Either the stories burble up from the tabloids, like toxic sludge at a superfund site, or the former lover steps to the microphone, a la Gennifer Flowers. (I used to think the reason we had so many more Democratic than Republican sex scandals was that the conservatives were rather more liberal in taking care of their former close personal friends—a theory developed after some or other supposed mistress was busted for failing to pay duty on several fur coats she was bringing into the country. But this is an outdated assumption on several levels.)

Anyway, the relevant question isn't whether every time a fire breaks out in somebody's pants it's news; if people want to know about it—and oh, we do, and me as much as anybody—then of course it meets that low bar. To me, the question is whether this is how we in the news business want to spend our time, energy, and ever-shrinking resources. Mickey quite fairly accuses me of failing to get totally "inside the marriage'' of John and Elizabeth Edwards and I don't disagree; that is an awfully big claim. (That he saw my piece on them as a PR release in defense of their big ol' house, however, just shows that the reader brings at least as much to the story as the writer does; I'd be willing to bet good money—euros, in other words—that Elizabeth didn't see it that way.) In any case, there is a difference between "inside the marriage" and inside the pants! We can learn plenty that's legit and pertinent about a candidate by looking at his or her spouse and their relationship without necessarily providing a detailed sexual history.

And if you think stories like that are no problem to double rivet even if you wanted to, just look at the debacle of the NYT piece on John McCain and Vicki Iseman; four top reporters were on the case for months and netted only hearsay that struck readers across the political spectrum as cheap and beneath the paper's usual standards. Not that I'm looking down my nose at their efforts, because the exact point at which the public interest outweighs privacy concerns is not always so easy to pin down, either. On the contrary, it's because I've been sent out on so many stories like that—located out there somewhere in the vast expanse of moral gray area—that privacy issues are not theoretical for me.

Grieving relatives? I've knocked on their doors at daybreak and approached them coming out of church. Politicians and their personal lives? I've asked questions that made even me wince lots of times, and written a handful of stories that were true but broke my own heart to see in print. On one memorable occasion, I was ordered to "dress up like a delivery girl if you have to'' to get the scoop on Donald Trump's first divorce. (No, it didn't come to that, but I did come back with the story and made my editor's day.) So I'm not pure, pretending to be pure, or acting like these aren't ever hard calls. And if you've never toiled in these particular vineyards, then how much easier it must be to declare, as Emily did at this week's "Gabfest," that love affairs involving public figures are always news and that proof of philandering is automatically disqualifying. (Can I possibly have heard you right? You really couldn't bear having an AG who had fooled around? After all we've been through with this crew of perhaps perfect husbands who happened to be lousy public servants?)

So here's my invitation to Emily and Mickey: If you are so high on stories like this, if they seem to you such a cinch to nail down and such a no-brainer to run with, then what's stopping you? It's not like all the good ones are taken, just because the Edwards story is already in print and available at your local supermarket. No, there's a wide selection of rumored philanderers out there—gay and straight, old and young, R and D—just waiting to be bagged. And once you have done that, then you can get back to me on whether that experience has altered your opinion at all, about either the righteousness or the relative value of these stories.

Meanwhile, the bottom line for me looking at the Slate site back when we started this conversation was wow, here we have this great, well-reported story on how a bunch of top Bush officials may have committed war crimes they will in all likelihood never be prosecuted for—but a luv child, now that's a clear career-ender? Sometimes, I just think that when it comes to sex, our whole country needs some kind of therapeutic intervention.

John Edwards' Third Act

Melinda, I don't mean to sound calloused and insensitive on top of my stated willingness to invade personal privacy, but, notwithstanding how plucky and determined she is, Elizabeth Edwards has inoperable metastasized cancer. Cancer grows, that's its job (though, to be sure, effective treatment can slow it way down and seems to be doing so for Edwards). Of course, one hopes for a miraculous survivor story, but a practical conversation about the other woman who might someday be raising her children is, though unimaginably difficult, not inappropriate.

I had breast cancer in 1995 and share Melinda's post-surgical hopefulness. If I'd had a less positive outlook, however, I would certainly have wanted my husband to remarry someone who could be a mother to my then-minor child. (I would, however, expect him to sequence the two events more traditionally than John Edwards has.) Now that Edwards must, as Emily Y. points out, inevitably exit political life, the next order of business should be the welfare of all his young children.

Exit Edwards

I'm with Emily B that you can feel terrible for Elizabeth Edwards and still recognize the John Edwards' love child story is news. It's especially news since Edwards has always made biography his strongest selling point. I see Edwards as a sanctimonious phony with no public policy accomplishments, and no record of the kind of executive skill it takes to head a Cabinet department. So if the National Enquirer story has killed his chances of having a high post in an Obama administration, then thank you, National Enquirer.

Don't Count Her Out

Bad Juju? Tough—It's News

Privacy Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Bad juju? The National Enquirer lived down to its tabloid expectations and gave the press a sweetheart of a bone to chew in the weeks before the political conventions. Mickey’s MSM should send them a thank-you note. Rachael is right. The Edwards’ personal privacy is a non-starter. I am always amazed at the different places various journalists draw lines over where or how they will pursue a story that invades someone’s privacy.  The truth is, we all have our own comfort zones and it varies from story to story.

As a private investigator in the '80s, my clients, leading lawyers of the day, would ask my partner and me if we would be conducting surveillance on, say, a CEO principal in a corporate takeover. “Of course not (how sleazy!),” we’d say (and think). We were professionals who did interviews, looked at public archives and wrote detailed, footnoted reports with tabbed attachments. By the mid-'90s, however, I had become an investigative producer for ABC News and soon found myself sitting in a rented windowless van with a camera crew waiting to catch a small-time Miami clinic owner involved in Medicare fraud. Another producer inside wore a hidden camera in her cap. It got worse. A couple years later, I persuaded the mother of an 11-year-old boy who had recently ambushed and killed several fourth-grade classmates to (exclusively!) share her raw feelings about the tragedy with the viewers of 20/20. She had another son in the school system and needed to remain in their small Arkansas town. I told her it was a way to tell her neighbors how sorry her family was for their loss. Melinda, I shamelessly enjoyed the byline but I still hope that mother was right to trust me.

John Edwards' humiliating dénouement and yes, Elizabeth Edwards' penchant for oversharing will make us all voyeurs to the couple's very bad summer, and I do sympathize. Their situation recalled for me the 1998 tearjerker Stepmom with Susan Sarandon, as a "terminally ill mother who has to settle on the new woman," (played by Julia Roberts) in her ex-husband's life. Ed Harris plays the movie triangle husband. After some bad blood in the beginning, the three come to an understanding about the future of Sarandon’s children.  I am able to picture a falsely cheery Sarandon portraying Elizabeth Edwards in my conflated version and can see Ed Harris as the southern senator. I can even imagine a Brockoviched  Reille Hunter but I cannot envision a frank meeting among the three (as a private eye, I never worked domestic cases). Maybe the adults in this mess will remember there are three small children affected and be able to convene such a civilized gathering. Should they pull it off, unfortunately, we can count on the National Enquirer to provide pictures. 

Wanted: Nu Role Model

There Is Hypocrisy and There Is Hypocrisy!

No, I don't mean cancer should be kept under wraps. I just meant that for a prospective first lady, Elizabeth Edwards behaved more like a 24-year-old blogger. (Here's the link, which someone just sent me). I meant this admiringly; I deeply respect people who repeatedly, compulsively overshare, especially in public. And the voters loved it as well. And I have to say, I don't think your son's question is such a hard one. I mean, I'm not sure how much you divulge to a preteen, because I don't have one of those yet. But we are all complicated people. Edwards' concern for poverty seems to me to have nothing to do with his affair. Whereas how priests behave with children entrusted to their care has everything to do with their pastoral fitness. Ditto with Larry Craig, and his anti-gay votes. We can make distinctions here. Having an affair says something about a person—maybe a lot about a person. But it does not devalue their entire public career.   

Whose Oversharing Are We Talking About?

Leave Them Be

While we are quoting ourselves today: In December I wrote a profile of Elizabeth Edwards for the New Republic (which for some reason is not showing up online). My main point was that Elizabeth has an overshare problem. In her book, on the campaign trail, to her friends, she spills everything—everything—freely: about her son who died, her cancer, her marriage, her other kids. Now the tell-all strategy which has served her so well in the past has come back to bite her. So she—the real victim of this story—would be hard pressed to unleash her fury at the press.   

But I will do it for her. There is no reason on earth I can think of to have run this story, much less stalked the guy at a hotel. Public figure? Who isn't a public figure? Unless the guy is having Nazi orgies in a brothel, this seems a pretty weak excuse. Vice -presidential candidate? Also weak. That was hardly likely, and you can kill that with rumors. Jack Shafer's hypocrisy argument I find totally unconvincing. The kind of hypocrisy that counts is when someone's public position is at odds with their private behavior. If Larry Craig votes against all gay rights legislation but solicits gay sex, then the gay community is allowed to out him. Ditto Pastor Ted Haggard, who preached weekly on the evils of gayness. But when a man says he's not having an affair when he is—that's just lying, same as most men would do in that circumstance. There are honorable reasons to lie in such a situation—namely, protecting your wife and children. We are still in the private realm here. This is just one of those cases where the press gets into a froth merely because the guy lied about something they thought they had him on, and then late one night they all made a bet to screw him. No honor there, no larger purpose served.

But Would You Want the Byline?

Don't Shoot the Messenger!

Sorry, Melinda, I have to disagree, though I do share your sympathy for the Edwards family. I was just reading Elizabeth's touching farewell to Tony Snow yesterday. She told the tale of a gentleman who approached her at a parade and gave her good wishes for her health and added "although we don't agree on much of anything." That's how I feel about Elizabeth, too. It's hard not to admire a woman who overcame the loss of a child, who had a second round of children in her 40s, and who bravely and selflessly told her husband to soldier on with his campaign after her cancer reappeared. So I think the National Enquirer story—if true—is devastating for her and her children. But the tabloid—however scuzzy—can't take the rap here. This isn't chasing an ambulance carrying a mentally ill Britney Spears to the hospital. John Edwards is still a prominent public figure, of sound mind and body, and at least until recently he was being touted as a possible vice presidential candidate. (And on that note, isn't it better for Obama that this comes out now?) He's fair game, and if his family gets hurt, the "bad juju" belongs all to him.

Mickey's Dream Has Been Rielle-ized

And guess what? I still don't want to know. If this story about John Edwards is true—and yes, I still say if—I might have to snatch him bald-headed myself. But you know what would be worse? Chasing a man who is out of politics up and down the back stairs of a hotel in the middle of the night for the purpose of ... what? Making his family suffer more than they already have? Bad juju, people.

Click here to read more from XX Factor on the John Edwards scandal.