Finally, a real news story

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1. Comment by Ivan Risidin on 14 August 2008:

   It is amazing and instructive what different cultures find important.In France, Sarkozy dumps a wife and marries a young model. The French celebrate his virility. In Russia, our sainted Vladimir [Putin} has numerous affairs, and like his predecessors Joseph and Lavrenty [Beria], who systematical molested girls as young as 7 years old, no one DARES to speak.

   The instructive part is that Edwards is an American politician with a publicly proclaimed wife suffering miserably from cancer. There is a massive nearly silent group in the US like the predominant dark matter in the universe that will not tolerate a continuing liar who has proclaimed piety and offered himself as an example. It is no different on your far right wing either. Look at the unctuous Joel Osteen and his combative wife. Edwards made his fortune reorienting the truth as a personal injury attorney.His presence is poisonous to all present politically. If he were in France–hats off—in the US–off with his head !!!

2. Comment by Deb Della Piana on 14 August 2008:

   Hello Ivan. I am not suggesting that what John Edwards did was right. It is not. And it would not be right even if his wife did not have a cancer diagnosis. My point was that the mainstream media in America, the people we rely on to be part of the checks and balances on our government, spend a disproportionate amount of time on people’s personal lives. The media should be concentrating on the many critical issues surrounding this election: The wars, the economy, and the erosion of our civil rights, to name just a few.

   My other point is that if we are going to spend so much print and television time on people’s infidelities, then it should be across the board. John McCain is running for president right now. If people do believe that his personal infidelities are relevant to his leadership abilities, then it should be part of the conversation. With McCain, it isn’t.

   Thanks for your thoughts!

   Deb Della Pianas last blog post..Finally, a real news story

3. Comment by Ivan Risidin on 14 August 2008:

   Excellent response. Frankly, I think that an informed public trained in good schools not in what to think, but in the process of assembling facts should be able to make informed decisions. Majority rule of a well read public represented by democratic election would be a joy.

   It is sad that such trivia as sexual affairs take such importance.

   Although you and I might disagree on some issues, a healthy discourse such as this forum should make us all stronger. I would appreciate your comments as well, even thought my international subject mater is “foreign” to most

   Ivan

4. Comment by julie hershey on 15 August 2008:

   our notions have certainly changed in the last 30+ years. if we were to remove from circulation all of our bills and coins bearing the images of presidents known to have had romantic “indiscretions,” oh my gosh, we’d have to reprint all of our currency!
   it’s an awfully long leap to say that anyone will behave the same with public responsibility as s(he) does in an intimate relationship - yet much of the voting public has gone way beyond an amused interest in private lives of high profile figures to a voracious appetite for scandal, and worse, have become convinced that such should determine how they will vote.
   if only “the media” would push evidence-based judgement as much as they tantalize the fools in us, it might just find that responsible, intelligent reporting also sells, and once and for all discard the major role it has played in the dummy-ing up of society.

5. Comment by Chief Hypocrite on 15 August 2008:

   Julie: It’s not reassuring to me that most elections are determined by something other than real consideration of “the important issues”.

   Today we have too much information, more than most of us can truly take in and seriously evaluate. We also have so much more slanted news while the distinction between news and opinion is increasingly blurred by the writer and the reader, let along the advocacy industry on all sides persuading us one way or the other.

   Besides the quantity of this stuff, what has also changed in the last 30 years is that past as well as current personal actions are now in the political game for public persons and it sells too well.

   I wish politicians would take the long view and when asked questions about their sex lives and such questions as when they stopped beating their wives and when they took their last drugs etc that they would take a cue from Chelsea Clinton about her Dad’s escapades during the never ending campaign.

   Consider the consequences if politicians would unionize and uniformly answer personal questions he way: “That is none of your business”.

   Pure fantasy of course, but as we repeatedly find, not much worse can happen than to unequivocally say “I did not do that”, an unnecessarily asserted lie, which when later proven as such, will always crowd into the news and commentary, especially if about sex.

   Come to think of it, after considering the images and ideas in our entertainment magazines, billboards, movies, any TV or cable show, advertising etc. maybe such real life sexual gotchas would be preferred to reams of Jerry Springer type salacious and insulting but popular material produced for and by the media which would other wise be shown on our screens.

   Go Chelsea! It IS none of my business, right? Except for what Jack Kennedy did with the mafia and you know who, right? Have you seen those pictures or those other ones with……?

6. Comment by julie hershey on 16 August 2008:

   Deb,
   LOL. I agree, there is so much information available to us that sorting it out and drawing logical conclusions has become an art. Even in 1992 voters did not seem to be deterred by the Gennifer Flowers or Paula Jones stories. These received more airtime than they deserved, still, I don’t recall being constantly pelted with reminders and judgments as we are now. (I’m not gonna lie here – my mother and I used to joke about how Bill Clinton suddenly seemed more attractive since the cats were out of the bag, but, I swear, we did NOT consider that when we voted for him).
   I recently viewed a “news” story from a site aimed at a college and twenty-something audience declaring how Chelsea had insulted Obama not by what she said, but by what she didn’t say. The video showed Chelsea politely declining comment on a variety of improper questions posed by a relentless reporter, including one about Obama. Despite her careful dodging, the unscrupulous reporter found a way to scandalize her (lack of) comments.
   Good for Chelsea, though, she has managed to maintain her poise throughout this kind of invasive and unfair publicity. If she can continue to keep her dignity among the vultures, she’s going to go far…let’s keep our fingers crossed!

7. Comment by Deb Della Piana on 16 August 2008:

   Hey Folks, Chelsea Clinton got it right. It is nobody’s business, and Bill Clinton’s affair has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton’s campaign or the issues facing this country.

   Now, that being said, politicians who indulge in such extracurricular activities should be prepared to suffer some public humiliation simply because they are public figures. However, when it monopolizes the airwaves day after day, and it detracts from the public facing the real issues and the candidates’ position on those issues, there’s something wrong.

   If the mainstream media stayed on topic with the real issues the way they have latched onto the Edwards affair, the country would be better off for it.

   Deb Della Pianas last blog post..Finally, a real news story

8. Comment by Chief Hypocrite on 16 August 2008:

   This whole affair needs better marketing, processes and a trusted host. I recommend new web portals at mismatches.hypocrisy.com and mrmatches.hypocrisy.com.

9. Comment by Deb Della Piana on 16 August 2008:

   Okay, Chief, I’m in. When do we start?

   Deb Della Pianas last blog post..Finally, a real news story

10. Comment by Richard Cochrane on 16 August 2008:

    Let me see if I get this straight France’s and Edwards’ gutter morals and piggish ethics are now acceptable standards of behavior?

11. Comment by Chief Hypocrite on 16 August 2008:

    Dez said it best for a US politician, something like “keep it in your pants”. Good advice. I add, if you do take it out, do not lie about it. That makes it my business. Before that, it was personal business between partners, their church and their children. Except for the kennedy/mafia/MM thing of course.

    If all affairs were suddenly exposed, I am afraid we would have to import news channels.

    Consensual affairs, and worse, sexual aggression, has always been committed by the weak and the powerful. The moral leadership of churches has obvious failures. Marriage law long ago gave up on establishing the facts and the faults. Personally I say, do not write a check unless you can cash it, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time in the hot seat and importantly “Save The News”. Where does Jerry Springer and Montel Williams shows and the news begin and end?

    On a note I find disturbingly related, you may disagree of course. We already have too many laws on the books, simple ones requiring thousands of dollars to interpret because they can not be considered by themselves, many of which do not get enforced properly because there are too many and too many that conflict and they are enforced unevenly and not understood except by the new priesthood of legal experts, lobbysts etc and they do not really understand them they jsut know what this judge said or that judge said and still have no useful clarity, just an opinion of odds expressed mostly with shrugs and grimaces.

    So please support my Law Reduction and Review Act (LRRA) of 2009. It would require lawmakers to read every law they sign personally, remove or consolidate 3 laws for every 4 new ones approved, certify that new laws do not conflict with any old ones, and every year they would have to randomly review 5% of existing laws and certify that they do not conflict with any other laws and that the courts have been interpreting them in intended ways and there are no unintended consequences of the law, and fix anything they learn. And they should review and report to the public in simple graphic ways how much they earn, what there benefits are including their spectacular retirement programs this country can not afford.

    Further, any laws that are not working (look at the real world it is obvious)and are simply creating a few or a lot of prisoners but which most of the guilty avoid and stay out of jail, many of whom are in high positions, for the same crimes including significantly, using prostitution and drugs. What hypocrisy! How can we have an effective war on drugs or prostitution or anything while our government, business, pastors, married people, single people, men and women, literally participates in it at the personal level to the degree they do.

    Legalizing, taxing and regulating and educating about prostitution and drugs are specific actions we should take to stop the hypocrisy committed every day by many of our respected leaders in all walks of life. Kids learn that lawbreaking and it’s related hypocrisies are sometimes rewarded and sometimes punished, all in illogical and unfair ways.

    Families and churches only can define and provide moral leadership we need, governments can not define and legislate successfully against immorality, hate or political correctness. Only the human heart can do that and it is so hard to interpret all the laws, the news and all the mixed signals they contain. Morals belong to individuals and when we have lots of moral people we will have a moral society, not until and not when our hypocritical legislators might pass in hard to read voluminous laws. Where is the green movement in congress on an issue we need them so badly. Cut the crap and the wasted paper.

    Let’s open our eyes, enter a new enlightenment dealing with reality, making room for a more honest age that would de-enshrine hypocrisy that should embarrass and frighten thinking people.

12. Comment by julie hershey on 16 August 2008:

    “I add, if you do take it out, do not lie about it. That makes it my business. Before that, it was personal business between partners, their church…”

    Does this mean that in order to verify suspicion about something that is no one’s business, all we need do is ask? Sorry, the burden of observing ethics here lies with the curious, and prying does not absolve them of that responsibility. I say if it’s none of your business and you know it and still ask, YOU have violated ethical boundaries, and it’s still none of your business, so prepare to be lied to. Then, when you make a huge wave and involve innocent individuals (what’s that you say about families?) by exposing my unwillingnes to be a victim of entrapment, YOU are again violating ethical principles. And then, it’s still none of your business.

13. Comment by Richard Cochrane on 16 August 2008:

    Civilization has only been able to advance because most people have usually subscribe to a set of moral and ethical codes. Before that or absent it there is chaos. Civilized progress has been allowed by a series of time tested and proven codes, commandments, contracts, and such.

    Most of those have been vested in religion because that has been where people found refuge and order and generally promised ascendency to the peak of Maslow’s Curve – arguably self actualization that which one does beyond oneself.

    Mr. Edwards broke one of the most enduring of those the fact that marriage is a sacrament between one man and one woman thus John committed sacrilege of the highest order. After all we insist on loyalty from our dog or cat whiles excusing gutter behavior. Alas we are often convenience ethicist, moralist., and hypocrites.

14. Comment by julie hershey on 16 August 2008:

    The advancement of civilization is a meaningless term if we cannot define “advancement” or allow for it. We must be prepared to discard those values which we deem no longer useful to our existence, and adopt more applicable rules, this being crucial to our survival as a species. If we decide to accept contributions only from those we are certain have not broken modern traditional rules, we will extinguish ourselves.
    Back to the Edwards issue, our moral premise for this argument should be “none of our business.” My point here is that any infringement upon one’s intimate goings on is immoral if we subscribe to this premise. If we choose a different premise, let’s say, that the intimate lives of public officials ARE our business, we should at least state our purpose and evidence for declaring so. What are we going to do with this information? Why is it essential to us? Is it worth the public humiliation we will inevitably cause to the families? Should we feel remorse for involving them? Suppose John Edwards and his wife had an “open marriage.” Should we still incriminate him? Where is the data to support our premise? Defining our purpose helps to make certain we are not truly only lusting for some kind of elemental pleasure in knowing all about it.
    John Edwards was not unfaithful to ME. I may not want to be married to him, but I do not have evidence to state that he will screw the nation because he did a mistress. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, (again, look at our currency) and if we don’t believe that then we must believe we have made no advances as a civilization in the last 200+ years. Extramarital sex is as old as humanity, and not only are we still here, we’re FREELY discussing this topic on a Sabbath using pretty hot new age tools. Likewise, same-gender relationships were sanctioned by many ancient and modern societies, and we’re getting along just fine.
    I say it’s time we define “advancement” and allow for it.

15. Comment by Richard Cochrane on 16 August 2008:

    Julie - then define your terms for “advancement.” As far as Edwards adultery goes it is between he and his family. His dishonesty matters because it illuminates and defines his character.

16. Comment by julie hershey on 17 August 2008:

    Well, I think most of us will agree on what scientific/technological advancement is without a lengthy dictionary definition, but there continue to be instances in which this kind of advancement is impeded by our “cling” to faith. I really don’t want to be a faith basher here because I definitely recognize how humanity has been enhanced (as well as diminished) by it over the centuries, but, as an example, legislation limiting stem cell research is probably one faith-based notion that we should be ready to discard for the sake of our own biological advancement.
    Then, there is social advancement, not as tangible. I define this, currently, as the ability to adapt our standards of behavior to changing migration patterns, habits, and beliefs of individuals and groups. Over the last two centuries we have become a nation of diversity. The white Christian heterosexual profile of the typical American no longer applies to the reality that groups once considered “minorities” are no longer in the minority. Our insistence upon making our Judeo-Christian tradition the law of the land will only meet with resistance from unrepresented citizens and may ultimately lead to our undoing as a nation. We must treat each other benevolently and with acceptance of differences if we are to survive. Ironically, tolerance is in fact a basic tenet of that tradition.
    In the process of re-assessing our rules for what constitutes moral behavior, we should ask whether our interest in the private shenanigans of others serves a greater moral purpose, that being the benefit of society, because the consequences of exposure to the innocents as well as to our ability to discern truth from trash have been stated here again and again. In my estimation, participating in this kind of destruction is immoral.
    John Edwards may not be an honest man with his wife, he may not have the character to be a good Christian, nor a good husband or family man, but I still do not have evidence that his dishonesty will spill over into his public affairs. It makes greater sense to focus on his voting record as senator and on his professional accomplishments.
    Many great leaders from generations past were known to have questionable characters in matters of the heart. Conversely, neither Richard Nixon nor George W. Bush have such a stain on their records, but does the absence of an affair in these cases attest to their fine character and ability to lead the nation honestly?
    Thank you, Hypocrisy.com, for the opportunity to invade you. I really did not mean to monopolize the space here, although it seems I have. Hope I offered something in return.

17. Comment by Jill Herendeen on 19 August 2008:

    THE POINT is that John Edwards’ infidelity is relatively a whole lot less important to the nation than, say, the ongoing preemptive war against an innocent nation of Iraqis; the entire New Orleans area STILL devastated by a hurricane which the relevant government agency had decided not to lift a finger to stop and has done next to nothing to fix; many cases of government law-breaking and gross corruption; the current economic situation; and so forth. Obviously.

18. Comment by Deb Della Piana on 20 August 2008:

    Hi Jill! It’s great to see you here! I agree with you. There are so many issues surrounding this election that John Edwards, a non-candidate, is totally irrelevant. I honestly believe that this is an issue between he and his wife and that’s where it should stay. It’s not a governmental or political issue unless he has illegally used funds to pay his little honey. And if he has, then it’s about the exchange of the money, not the exchange of sex. The government should stay the hell out of people’s private lives.

    Here’s where we should start: The Congress should get their butts back to D.C. and the alleged forged letter tying Saddam Hussein to 9-11 and WMD should be thoroughly investigated. They need to deal with impeachment. Then, they can deal with Harriet Miers, Josh Bolton and Karl Rove who are all in contempt and should be in prison. If it were you or I, we would be. And if Michael Mukasey, George Bush’s personal puppet, will not allow these investigations to proceed, then we need to talk about a Special Prosecutor. Why? Because regardless of how much time our elected felon has left in office, the behavior of this administration needs to be laid bare so that people can understand the gravity of what George Bush has wrought. And whomever follows him to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue should not be allowed to run amok the way he did.

    George Bush and Dick Cheney have both broken the law a number of times, in spite of what dim-witted Nancy Pelosi says on her book tour. No president(or vice president)is above the law. We now know that the approval to leak Valerie Plame’s name to the media came from the vice president’s office. Should that be allowed to stand? We mock the countries we call oppressors, but we have created an untouchable presidency in this country, a leadership that freely interprets the Constitution whatever way it needs to in order to meet it’s goals, and a president and vice president that answer to absolutely nobody. That’s a dictatorship, isn’t it?

    We have tough-talking George Bush and in-way-over-her-head Condoleeza Rice brokering the clash between Russia and Georgia. And we’re lecturing Vladimir Putin about illegally invading another country! It’s not that I think Vladimir Putin is a great guy, but I just believe that George Bush has no business carrying that mantra. He’s delusional if he thinks we’re the moral authority on that one. What did he think happened with Iraq? Now that we know he lied (by his own admission, people), it was virtually the same situation. We did it for oil.

    We have a GOP candidate running for the highest office in the land but, to listen to him speak, he barely knows what he’s talking about. He still refers to Czechoslovakia, a country that hasn’t existed since 1993. He claims to be miles ahead of Barack Obama on all things Iraq, but he attributes the Anbar Awakening to the surge, which is absurd since the surge happened months later. He can’t tell the difference between Shia and Sunni, and the media thinks it’s funny. I think it’s scary. By the way, McCain himself is an admitted womanizer whose private life barely gets a whisper. He claims to stand against lobbyists, yet his campaign staff is loaded with them. If this is the best the GOP can do after Bush, we’re all in trouble.

    Then, we’ve got gas prices, food prices, the housing disaster, lost jobs (the first president, by the way, to fail to add jobs since Herbert Hoover). As for Hurricane Katrina, this nation has failed to care for its own and it’s a positive disgrace.

    So, someone tell me where John Edwards’ affair fits in on the priority scale? We have one Senator (Larry Craig) who was caught trolling for sex in a men’s room and another Senator (David Vitter) who likes prostitutes. They’re still in office. Why should I be outraged about John Edwards? What we need to do is clean up our own government, and fast, before the next chucklehead takes this even further.

    Deb Della Pianas last blog post..Someone’s missing the issue here…

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