You Don’t Say

Thanks, Amy, please post more often. Does this mean the Edwards story will finally be put to bed, so to speak? Or do you think the tabloids stay on top of the likely upcoming divorce and ride it to the end? No doubt everyone must be flat on their backs and exhausted from this. That aside, don’t YOU really wish Edwards had fathered a son named Luke? This would mean one day he would tell his son, “Luke, I am your father.” No doubt he’d be disguised in a black outfit, but I digress.

But can we make a pact to let this go away?
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Not if you keep writing about it here, complete with a link to a new article about it in Time.com, Amy.
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Journalist, heal thyself.

grape beat me to it. Arrrrgggghhh.

Of course since it is one of five stories on NPR top of hour hews I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Just emphasizing the shocking state of what is supposed to be journalism.

Amy Sullivan:
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Have you ever heard of the term “Gossiping Magpie?”

I haven’t. What is a gossiping magpie?

I guess if you hadn’t beat me to it, IvyB would have.

The NPR drone who ‘reported’ on this did it in a cutesy, smug little sing-song about how “it all started with the National Enquirer” (maybe Amy could send them an email, private one), then they got back to important news, President McCain explaining why 41>59.

deconstructiva:

magpie
n.
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1.
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Gossip
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chatterer, windbag, idle talker; see gossip 2.
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2.
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Black and white bird
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jackdaw, jay, crow, raven; see bird 1.

Also:

For Stuart, I would add a #6.
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6. It’s the media, stupid. The national political press, obsessed with chasing stories about conflict, its own self importance and tangential issues like Sarah Palin’s Facebook notes, Obama, a great communicator by any measure, was not able to communicate his reasoning for his actions to the American people.
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Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/01/20/five-ways-obama-went-wrong/#comments#ixzz0dGElmPHO

What’s particularly revolting is Amy Sullivan’s disingenuous

“Oh, can’t we please stop talking about this salacious goodie here? Please no more commentary on this juicy story I’ve just linked to again! Come on, let’s be decent, and not mention John Edwards’ love child again in polite company!”

Or maybe she’s just a congenital magpie, who can’t even see this sort of hypocritical gossip/denial of gossip for what it is –for what she is. It’s disgusting in either case.
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We deserve better than Versailles’ old chatter. It’s pretty clear that some of these journalists have little to no respect for the capacities of their readers. Being treated like mouthbreathing marks traipsing around a trashy carnival by the Beltway press corps barkers is offensive.

…thanks stuart. I knew about the bird but thought you were talking about a story, painting, or something else. There is The Thieving Magpie, the Rossini opera, and its brilliant overture. (Remember its use in A Clockwork Orange in the critical fight scene along the waterfront between Alex and his droogs?) I hadn’t linked Amy to Rossini before.

Let’s not put this story or any others like it to bed. Most politicians are scum and nothing makes me feel better than to see my suspicions in print. Dig up the dirt and post it. Edwards straying, Sanford going over the edge, Craig getting caught in a men’s room with egg on his face (so to speak) and all the others are fair game. They bring it on themselves. We owe it to ourselves to make fun of them. Post pictures too please.

John Edwards is a douche. Moving along now, nothing more to see here.

Funny, considering I’m usually late to the party…
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The continued interest in Edwards suprises me; he’s not in politics, doesn’t make rounds on the talking head shows like other former politician/adulterers and isn’t currently under Federal review or Congressional inquiry over actions taken after an affair…

And here I had thought that he was using vinegar as an aftershave.

…he must be doing undercover work.

This is excellent news for Mark Halperin.

Jim:
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Re that NPR bit:
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That’s just f*cking gross.

I’d rather we reserved media coverage of public officials’ “immorality” for those hypocrites who try to base their careers on the appearance of moral superiority, or on the propriety of government telling others how to live their personal lives.
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It always matters if a pol lies about a public issue, but it really matters if he/she thinks the rules he/she advocates shouldn’t apply to him/her. That goes beyond personal behavior and into the realm of fitness to serve.

Maybe when Edwards was privately discussing pulling out, he wasn’t talking about the presidential race.

Text reading ‘isn’t currently under Federal review or Congressional inquiry over actions taken after an affair’ is a linky, if anyone is interested.

That’s the spirit. Nobody makes these people go all trailer trash at gunpoint. They do it to themselves. They’re in the public eye and if they want to make it a bullseye, I’m willing to fire off a few verbal shots at them. If they’re going to make a spectacle of themselves, they can’t blame us for looking.

Speaking of “You Don’t Say,” there was a Supreme Court decision today 5-4 striking down any limitations on corporations’ abilities to influence elections through money.
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It was nominally about that film “Hillary” made by “Citizens United”, but the court went way, way further than a ruling on that single case. They overturned a prior case that put limits on corporate “electioneering” ads during elections.
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The majority explicitly rejected what they called “a new governmental interest in preventing ‘the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of [corporate] wealth…that have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporations’ political ideas.”
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Did you hear that?
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The Supreme Court of the United States refuses to recognize that “immense aggregations of corporate wealth” have a “distorting effect” on democracy!
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It would have been one thing to let this movie company that made “Hillary” off the hook, because it truly would be in violation of First Amendment rights to suppress a movie made by a non-profit about how awful a candidate is. That’s not the only thing that happened, and is the least important result of this case, almost irrelevant, even.
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They also affirmed the desirability of industry influencing the government, just as if industry were actual citizens, and struck down prior decisions that acknowledged the undesirability of corporate subversion in a democracy.
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This Court’s apparent conceptions of democratic rule are dangerously flawed, and are rife with the interests of oligarchy. It should be quite disturbing to those who see the government’s role as objective and apart from industry it is meant to oversee, and solely expressive of the interests of people whom it is meant to represent. It is a dark day for representative democracy in America.
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“You Don’t Say”…

You’re right, sacred. There are so many affairs down there (in DC) – Sanford, Ensign, etc. Especially Ensign and doing his aide’s wife. re: his re-election, opponents may ask if he’s going down in ’12 but he already has …several times. What is it about Congress, money, and affairs? Still, money can’t buy love, although Vitter may disagree, but I digress.

Stuart, thanks for the comment. I find this decision so depressing. For those who don’t think elections have consequences, replace Roberts and Alito and the decision would likely have been very different.
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As unhappy as I may be with a Democratic administration or how flawed their candidate may be, I always vote that way because of possible nominations to the Court.

I was going to mention this decision in this thread, too, Stuart. Amy Sullivan is all over the Edwards story; I wonder if she even knows about Citizens United. Reader Amy’s columns actually makes news consumers less well informed. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether or not that complies with her job description.
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As to the decision itself, Justice Stevens wrote that it “ele­vates the majority’s agenda over the litigants’ submis­sions, facial attacks over as-applied claims, broad constitu­tional theories over narrow statutory grounds, individual dissenting opinions over precedential holdings, assertion over tradition, absolutism over empiricism, rhetoric over reality.”
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So, excellent news for Republicans.
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(OK, OK, Stuart, also for “centrists”).

Chris Lehmann wrote a blog post on this ruling.

Evidently alarmed that our national politics had become insufficiently corrupt, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that most federal restraints on campaign spending are unlawful.
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The ruling also effectively rolls back many curbs on “soft-money” campaign financing–the coy corporate practice of doling out dosh on candidates’ behalf via dummy interest-group expenditures–during the homestretch of elections that were instituted in the already weak McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

http://mediaelites.com/?p=12468

Can’t wait to hear what President McCain has to say.

re SCOTUS: These are the people who abhor judicial activism and always respect precedent, yes?

Art Pepper:
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They’re so perverse it’s almost funny. They literally said that stare decisis didn’t apply because the prior ruling was so wrong.

…how does this relate to Amy’s post?

Elvis:

(OK, OK, Stuart, also for “centrists”).

Yes, the New Democrats are also jumping for joy at this gigantic win for their constituents, and the Court’s affirmation of their ideological basis for existence.

It’s a comment on its irrelevance, I thought.

“But can we make a pact to let this go away? The Edwardses say nothing more publicly, *we comment on it no more*,”

Why does that make me think of this?

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/why_do_all_these_homosexuals

PNNTO:
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LOL
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You win the thread.

OK, since this is bible-girl’s irrelevant thread:
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link to “Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian”

OK, since this is bible-girl’s irrelevant thread:
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link to “Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian”

Isn’t it a mortal sin or something to post those links on Amy’s thread?