Posted on 10/12/2007 3:29:38 AM PDT by IrishMike
The political world has been holding its nose for the last twenty-four hours while peering at the weekly tabloid National Enquirer, which published a story yesterday alleging that presidential candidate John Edwards had an extra-marital affair.
"The story is false," Edwards told reporters in South Carolina today, according to a reporter who was there.
What the tabloid's readers, in politics and out, may not know is that a key owner of the Enquirer is a prominent New York investment banker and one of Hillary Clinton's key backers, Roger Altman. Altman was an official in the first Clinton administration, and his name is often mentioned as a possible Clinton Treasury Secretary.
The investment boutique which Altman founded and chairs, Evercore Partners, bought a controlling stake in American Media, which publishes the Enquirer, in 1999, which it still holds with a partner. Evercore's president, Austin Beutner, sits on American Media's Board of Directors, according to Evercore's website.
A spokesman for American Media, Richard Valvo, said in an email that Altman has "no involvement in editorial, ever." He said that Evercore owns 20% of the company through an investment fund. Altman didn't respond to an email seeking comment or to a message left with his secretary.
American Media has also published lurid and negative stories about the Clintons since its acquisition.
Yesterday's National Enquirer story was mirrored by a pair of stories in the Huffington Post -- whose public face, Arianna Huffington, is a harsh critic of Clinton. The Huffington Post stories implied that the Edwards campaign was concerned about its relationship with a film-maker, Reille Hunter, who had shot web videos for Edwards. The stories stopped short of directly suggesting the candidate had a relationship with her, something Mickey Kaus made explicit on Slate yesterday.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Hee Hee Hee! This is going to be good!
Yep !
My only question is, “How are they going to blame this on the Rebuplican Dirty Tricks/ Vast Right Wing Conspiacy/ J. Edgar Hoover/ Richard Nixon/ ... Team.”?
Probably why the story has no legs ..... yet.
MSM looking for a GOP villain.
And is anybody still wondering why Obama has been such a pussy when going after Hillary? Not only won’t he get a shot at being VP, but he could also end up being Linda Tripped or manage to end up in a single engine plane crash like all those people back in the 80s or Ron Brown in nowheresistan.
This is why it is worth keeping track of every sleezy Clintanoid. They almost always up to no good.
Blumenthal, Ickies, Lindsay, Grunwald, Altman, Rahm Emauel,
Burger, Podesta, Joe Bug-eyes, Stephi, Magaziner, etc.
Why would a Deputy TREASURY SECY buy sleazy rag sheets?? YUK....LOW CLASS.
Obama has been engineering his own descent in the polls with his outrageous comments. I guess Hillary is betting that if you give Obama enough rope, he will hang himself.
The Machine is now warmed up and going into drive.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/10/john_edwards_docudrama_the_ana.html#more
John Edwards’s Docudrama: The Anatomy of Innuendo
John Edwards documentarian Rielle Hunter
Photo: Patrick McMullan
One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that rumors and scandal take on a life of their own. No one even needs to report anything! Once a story is out there, it’s fair game for everyone else to repeat it, often under the guise of media analysis. The story starts at the bottom of the food chain of credibility. Bloggers and tabloid outlets egg each other incrementally on, until eventually more serious outlets pick it up.
We may be about to leave the early stages of such a cycle with the growing scrutiny into the professional relationship between John Edwards and a woman named Rielle Hunter, a.k.a. Lisa Druck, who produced films for his One America prepresidential campaign. Ann Coulter is even involved! The following timeline details the anatomy of an innuendo, including a few steps into the perhaps inevitable future.
• January 2007. John Edwards’s One America campaign debuts a series of Web videos about him, made by relatively unknown documentarian Rielle Hunter. The pair met at a bar, where she sold the future candidate on the idea. Hunter subsequently followed Edwards around the country, filming. Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman, upon watching the final cuts, notes that “in the midst of a short theme sequence that begins each Webisode, the camera lingers over the former senator’s behind as he tucks a starched white shirt into his pants.”
• August 27, 2007. The Post’s “Page Six” runs the following blind item: “WHICH political candidate enjoys visiting New York because he has a girlfriend who lives downtown? The pol tells her he’ll marry her when his current wife is out of the picture.” This is later reprinted by commenters on the Huffington Post blog.
• September 26, 2007. Young Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein writes about his efforts to track down the Web videos, which have disappeared from Edwards’s Website. Stein writes an oddly detailed account of his chase of the videos and points out that both the Edwards campaign and Hunter’s production company blame one another for their vanishing act. Stein even checks with the Screen Actor’s Guild to get more information and tracks down production assistants on the project, none of whom will say much. Finally, Edwards’s people let him see the videos — while accompanied by a campaign minder — and Stein sees nothing sinister in them.
• September 27, 2007. Daily Kos contributor Ben Bang links to Stein’s post and viciously berates the reporter. “Are we supposed to infer something from this non-ending, douchebag?” Ben Bang asks, going on to call him a him a “no-article-finishing, character-assassinating hack fuck.”
• October 10, 2007. The National Enquirer reports that Edwards is having an affair with a mystery woman who had traveled with the campaign and met the candidate at a bar. An Edwards rep calls the allegations “false, absolute nonsense.”
• October 10, 2007. That same day, Stein posts a follow-up to his original Huffington Post piece. He questions why the filmmaker, Rielle Hunter, was paid upwards of $100,000 for her work and points out that she used to be a party girl who dated writer Jay McInerney in the eighties and inspired the main character in his book Story of My Life.
• October 10, 2007. Ann Coulter, late in the day, mentions the Enquirer story on Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC talk show. Daily Kos once again picks up on it and lists the reasons why Stein and the Huffington Post are irresponsible journalists for digging into it.
• October 11, 2007. Mickey Kaus on Slate writes a post headlined “Emerging Edwards Scandal?” in which he notes the previous coverage, mulls what would happen to Edwards’s campaign if the story were true, especially since he’s been “tacitly and effectively used Elizabeth and her struggle” with cancer (the struggle with cancer no doubt being a large part of why the “mainstream media seems to be strenuously trying to not report it”), and wonders who might benefit. Obama?
• October 11, 2007. Jezebel.com doesn’t mince words, with a headline that screams, “Is John Edwards Cheating on His Cancer-Stricken Wife?” “Who the fuck sleeps with a married man whose wife has terminal cancer and THE ENTIRE WORLD FUCKING KNOWS ABOUT IT?”
• October 11, 2007. Washington, D.C., gossip blog Wonkette.com picks up on the Enquirer story, too. After Ann Coulter (who once called John Edwards a gay slur) mentions it, they query: “But, um, Ann? Why would Edwards have a lady-affair when he’s a ‘faggot’?”
• October 11, 2007. New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer dutifully compiles all of the coverage of the rumor, without adding any information or making conclusions of any kind.
Oh, look, we’ve reached the present. So what’s next?
• October 12–13, 2007. Tabloid news sources will probably begin to hint at the story. “Page Six” and other gossip columns routinely use the National Enquirer as a reliable source, and they will use the growing Internet buzz to legitimize their reprinting of the story, regardless of outraged demands from Edwards’s campaign.
• October 13–14, 2007. A more respected news organization like Newsweek or the Times might feel secure enough to tackle the story, using it as an opportunity to examine the “ever-increasing Venn-diagram overlap between blogging and journalism.”
• October 14–16, 2007. If it gets that far, John Edwards will have to go on television to address the issue. As when he and Elizabeth announced her most recent cancer news, both will smile too much for everyone’s comfort. And if nothing else, his hair will still be flawless.
A woman called the Jay Severin show with an interesting theory. She thinks that Hillary’s camp no doubt planted the story but will make sure Obama’s campaign gets the blame. Whoosh......she takes out both of them.
I suspect their “affair” consists of nothing more than mutual narcissism.
They sit in the same room, each intently looking at their true love — in the mirror.
That’s a man, baby.
Just what I expected from the Breck Girl.
I guess he didn’t want any competition.
a shot at VP or being shot at
Karl Rove must have started up the weather machine again.
Well now poor John will know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of false accusations, outright lies and innuendo--with the result of damage to one's reputation, the loss of credibility and even of livelihood. How many people did he ruin during the course of his illustrious career?
What goes around...
Ever wonder why the tabloids (all of which have the same owner) have been harping their fake stories regarding the President’s drinking and infidelity for about two years?
John Edwards Denies Tabloid Report of Affair
The Associated Press | 10/11/07
Posted on 10/11/2007 10:49:49 PM EDT by LdSentinal
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1910091/posts
Edwards Denies Tabloid Report of Affair
WRAL-Raleigh | 10-12-07 | WRAL
Posted on 10/12/2007 12:17:40 PM EDT by tcrlaf
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1910343/posts
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