Now that the media are finally talking about the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair — and boy oh boy, are they ever talking about it — here are five questions I’d like to see answered:

1. What happened to Rielle’s website? beingisfree.org was her nutty New Age site, which was created in 2004 and disappeared with no explanation at some point between April 2007, when it was last updated, and the discovery of the deletion that October. It was even blocked at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, whose stated goal is to preserve the Internet’s history. “Universal access to human knowledge” is their motto. Unless it’s knowledge about Rielle Hunter, apparently.
   (Update: Have they changed their minds about this noble knowledge-preserving goal in the last few days? Fortunate Son thinks so.)
   Then, about a week four days after the Enquirer’s first story, another cached copy of Being Is Free was discovered at the IAWM’s Egyptian counterpart, located at the International School of Information Science in Alexandria. But as soon as people started talking about it, that copy was blocked too. This can’t be a coincidence. Was it done by yet another one of John Edwards’ friends, completely without his knowledge? If so, why does this steady stream of rainwater in my ear smell like asparagus?
2. Why is John Edwards hanging out with psychics? He now claims he was at the Beverly Hilton, in the middle of the night, without a reservation, not for a hookup or a family reunion. He was really there to talk to Rielle’s psychic friend Bob McGovern about keeping her quiet. (Re: Edwards’ affair with her, that is, which supposedly ended in 2006.) Okay, let’s assume this is true, even though Edwards said it. Let’s assume it took 5 hours, from 9:45 at night until 2:40 in the morning, to hash things out. Then why did Edwards run when he saw the Enquirer reporters? Was he terrified they’d find out he’d been having his palm read or something?
3. What do Margaret Sweet and Mimi Hockman know about all this? They’re both friends of Rielle’s. Sweet (pictured) is an astrologer who’s apparently been covering for Bob McGovern, and Hockman worked with Rielle on those videos for the Edwards campaign. Has anybody tried to interview them? Why did Sweet remove McGovern’s resume and contact information from her site two days after the story broke? Perhaps more importantly: As an astrologer, why didn’t she do it before the story?
4. If Edwards told his family about the affair back in 2006, why was he still paying Rielle well into 2007? She was quoted in the Dec. 25, 2006 edition of Newsweek about those campaign videos. Her last payment from the Edwards campaign was in April 2007. Maybe Elizabeth said, “Okay, John, you can keep her around. But no more hanky-panky!” Perhaps while shaking a rolling pin at him for effect. Bathrobe, curlers in her hair, the whole bit.
5. Would the American press have been so reluctant to investigate John Edwards’ then-alleged infidelities if he suffered from male pattern baldness? Eliot Spitzer: balding. Larry Craig: Not a lot going on with the ol’ hairline. John McCain: pretty wispy up there. Maybe this isn’t so much a left/right thing as a yum/yuck thing? Just speculating.

Hey, four out of five ain’t bad!

P.S. Anybody know how Nightline did in the ratings last night? I recorded it, but I haven’t watched it. Seems beside the point. But the LA Times, finally free of their “Keep rockin’” edict, has an analysis of the interview. Hey, if you can’t send a reporter to a hotel 15 miles away from your offices, at least you can have her watch ABC a few weeks later…

P.P.S. Rielle’s family is now challenging Edwards to take the paternity test he claims to be eager to take. Wow, how quickly we go from “She and Andrew Young both say he’s the father, so just drop it!” to “If John ain’t the babydaddy, prove it!” And how about this quote from Edwards:

“I would welcome participating in a paternity test. I’m only one side of the test, but I’m happy to participate in one.”

“I’m only one side”? Well, yeah, the side with the sperm. What, is he trying to imply she might not be the mother? (Thanks again for the tip, FS.)

P.P.P.S. DBKP, as always, has much more on this story. And Overlawyered has a few very pointed questions. Also, Paul Mulshine takes the LAT out behind the woodshed. Plus, Sam Stein, whose investigation at the Huffington Post last year helped get this ball rolling, has a complete (if weeks late) overview of the whole thing. And now, if it’s okay with everybody, I’m going to step away from the computer for a few hours and bask in my wholly earned sense of vindication…

Holla back to: UPI and NYDN! Where ya been?

I gets no rest:
Continue reading ‘Five Questions About the Edwards Scandal, Now That It’s No Longer “Alleged”’

In the two weeks since the National Enquirer allegedly caught John Edwards red-handed, most of the press has treated the Rielle Hunter story like it’s coated with anthrax. The newspapers haven’t touched it, except in opinion columns about why the newspapers haven’t touched it. 24/7 cable news has spent maybe 10 minutes on it, tops. Network news? Shyeah, right.

But the Internet has been all over it. We’ve been filling the role the news used to. (Whether that’s good or not is up to the reader.) Not to get all triumphalist about it, but we’ve kept this legitimate news story in play and uncovered some very interesting facts. And now Edwards has to decide if he’s even going to set foot in the Democratic National Convention, let alone speak there. All because of a story that hasn’t even been alluded to by Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, or Katie Couric, but that everybody knows about anyway. Unless you’ve only got two sites bookmarked, Wikipedia and Daily Kos, you’re better informed about this story than you’d be if you only consumed “legitimate” news.

All of which makes Adam Nagourney’s August 1, 2007 story for the International Herald Tribune, “Edwards Campaign Becomes Internet-Savvy,” incredibly ironic:

After running a decidedly traditional race for the White House in 2004 and in the early stages of this contest, Edwards has quietly overhauled his campaign with one central goal: to harness the Internet and the political energy that liberal Democrats are sending coursing through it.

In a slow but striking power shift, advisers who champion the political power of the Web have eclipsed the coterie of advisers who long dominated Edwards’s inner circle, both reflecting and intensifying his transformation into a more populist, aggressive candidate…

The populist message that Edwards offered with a sunny face to living rooms of Iowans in 2004 is this time offered with indignation and anger, replete with us-against-them attacks on President George W. Bush, establishment Washington, the wealthy and the media. And his campaign is methodically pitching it directly at the Web audience.

“The Internet is the principal way we are communicating with voters right now,” Elizabeth Edwards said in an interview.

But now, one short year later, the Internet is the principal way they’re trying to impede communication. That is, assuming they have anything to do with the obvious efforts to scrub any trace of Rielle-ity from the Web. (I’ve been talking about this to anybody who’ll listen, here, here, here, and here.)

And consider this quote from Edwards’ senior campaign advisor Joe Trippi:

“The one thing is, in a strange way, Edwards and Elizabeth — Elizabeth in particular, but Edwards, too — get it that the old way doesn’t work, that you need to use the Internet, blogs, technology, YouTube, to reach out to people.”

But apparently they don’t get that once you reach those people, there are no takebacks. No matter how deep the memory hole is, there’s always going to be somebody with a reeeeeally long fishing line.

(Hat tip, once again, to “Fortunate Son”)

In Other Edwards Non-News: Byron York at National Review talks to Enquirer managing editor David Perel, and Aaron Barnhart at the Kansas City Star looks at this “teachable moment” in history. They also give shout-outs to Deceiver’s coverage, which is primarily why I’m linking to them nice. And the National Journal’s Blogometer read yesterday’s 1,200-word Edwards post, or at least the first sentence.

Update: Well, the National Enquirer got me to do something I’ve never done before: purchase a copy of the National Enquirer. It’s the Aug. 11 edition, which doesn’t have THE PHOTOS EVERYONE’S BEEN WAITING FOR!, but it does have a picture of the mysterious Bob McGovern. If you’ve ever wondered what a professional “intuitive” looks like, here he is on p. 27:

The John Edwards/Rielle Hunter story continues to, as they say, develop. You might even say it’s gestating. Whether the “legitimate” news likes it or not:

• Lee Stranahan, who posted the first (only?) serious, thoughtful analysis of the whole mess at the Huffington Post, has been banned from the Daily Kos for daring to talk about it there. (Lee has more at his personal blog.)
• Some Wikipedians keep trying to add the forbidden name “Rielle Hunter” to thoroughly relevant entries, and other Wikipedians keep taking it out. In the Wiki entry for the 1988 Jay McInerney novel Story of My Life, one brave soul has added some information that seems pretty well-sourced, considering Hunter herself put it up on her site, Being Is Free: the fact that Hunter directly inspired Alison Poole, the novel’s main character. For some reason, certain people don’t consider this fact relevant to understanding the novel, or to be of any interest to anyone whatsoever. The two sides are now battling it out. (I haven’t been keeping track of Edwards’ Wiki entry, after the same thing happened there last week, but I think they’re finally starting to acknowledge Hunter’s existence.)
• Incidentally, if Google Blog Search is any indication, Deceiver was the first blog to post anything substantial about Being Is Free. Sam Stein at the Huffington Post noted last year that the site had been deleted, but it looks like we were the first ones to note that there’s a mirror site, let alone to look at it in any detail. (And I’m still not done with it.) But of course, Wikipedia can’t cite us because we’re just a silly blog with a hot pink logo.

  (Update: Deceiver reader Kris, who originally tipped me off to Being Is Free, has the provenance of that information. The Stranahans are on the case!)

• If I had to sum up my past week of posts (and at this point you probably wish I would), one thread runs through this story: People taking down stuff they had put up on the Internet voluntarily. The Edwards campaign videos that Hunter made: deleted. Hunter’s whole site: deleted. The resume and contact info for Bob McGovern, Hunter’s psychic friend and alleged hotel hookup-enabler: deleted. And that’s just what we know about so far. It sure does look like somebody’s trying to cover their tracks.

  To put it into perspective: Last month, word got out that a blogger named Xeni Jardin had gone through the archives of the group blog Boing Boing and deleted — or as she insists, “unpublished” — every single post that so much as mentioned a particular person she didn’t like anymore. Within a week this made national news, all the way up to the hallowed New York Times.

  Now we have a past and potentially future candidate for Vice President of the United States apparently scrubbing lots of possibly damaging information from the Internet, and two weeks into the story, only a handful of people are talking about it. Even if you don’t care about the more lurid aspects of this whole debacle, you have to admit that the Edwards camp has a very poor grasp of Netiquette.

• Just to end things on an up note, I’ve got “John & Rielle” running through my head to the tune of “Johnny Ryall” by the Beastie Boys. What, me obsessed?

Fairly Major Update: As of 1:45 PM EST today, that mirror site of Being Is Free is gone. Noticing a pattern here? Luckily, I already saved every single page to my hard drive…