At the very least this you are being disingenuous here. If Edwards had an affair and a child out of wedlock, Elizabeth would almost certainly already know about it and would not need The New York Times to bring her up to speed on her family's private life. Were this unsupported and irrelevant scrap of gossip paraded through a well-regarded medium like the NYT, though, she and her family would be put in the position of having to defend themselves -- press conferences with Elizabeth and the children by his side and so forth. I think even a journalist might understand the human feeling that would make one reticent to put a sick woman though a pointless and emotionally draining dog and pony show just for the sake of your "awesome, amazing" story.

similar scandals of the recent past (Larry Craig is cited)

Sorry, Ryan, like the rest of humanity I haven't been following this story with the amazement and awe it so richly deserves. Can you please remind me which airport men's room John Edwards was arrested in after soliciting sex from an undercover officer?

(La Cieca will contribute La Cieca's real-time commentary when La Cieca watches the show next week in La Cieca's living room, which fucking ROCKS!)

You keep retailoring your standard of coverage to Edwards's resume. Should every "public figure with instant name/face recognition" be required to release his medical records to the press? Should everyone who "is playing a major part" in an election be required to place his assets in a blind trust?

Edwards is not currently running for anything, so he and his family should enjoy something closer to the level of privacy that other private citizens do. The exception would be if he were to commit an act that read as directly hypocritical, i.e., in contradiction to a talking-point belief. That's why it's generally news when a Republican is caught in act of adulterous buggery: because the Republican party has so unilaterally positioned itself as the defender of traditional/Christian/heterosexual morality.

Another reason this kind of stuff is news is because it's crudely ironic and so makes a good story in the "hoist with his own petar" vein. There's nothing particularly ironic about a middle-aged millionaire lawyer cheating on his wife, unless that middle-aged lawyer has made a career of championing the sanctity of marriage.

"Versatiles" far outnumber "tops." QED?

Oh, and speaking of whatever it is we're speaking of...

+ Watch video

"When your son comes out,
There'll be bluebirds round your door
Singin' a Jerry Herman score..."

But this is purest OOG:

And Edwards is (or was) under some possible consideration as a VP candidate, which is a different position from actively running for an office. I would agree that this story would be news if it were to break after Edwards were formally to join the Obama ticket. (The hypothetical future is so very tenuous here that I can't even find a decent tense for it. But I hope you gather my meaning.)

"And let me tell you something, Ernie: Monty Clift goes into Rip Taylor a helluva lot more than Rip Taylor goes into Monty Clift!"

Now, there is certainly a market for reporting on a public figure's peccadillos, but that's not news. It's gossip, and it is not part of the mission of mainstream media to report gossip.

Again, this is not to say that the Edwards story should be suppressed (though I still say it's nobody's business) but rather that it's disingenuous to carp at mainstream media for not treating this gossip as news.

John Edwards is not running for President. So why, then, is this story (or the story about the story) "news?"

You know, a guy just can't win when he's choosing a mistress. If he decides (a la Donald Trump) to bang a gorgeous supermodel, everybody calls him a dirty old man and her a golddigger or worse. But if the dude sleeps with someone with only average looks, he gets slammed because he didn't upgrade to the supermodel.

The solution obviously is for married men to stop sleeping around, but since that's not going to happen, can we at least take as a given that a woman might have more to offer than is immediately apparent from an unflattering snapshot?

Blayne's sketches just aren't very good, are they?