The Enquirer Story Crumbles

So far, still no pictures from the National Enquirer reporters who claim that John Edwards was caught visiting his supposed mistress and her child. And, oh by the way, their story keeps crumbling.

The birth certificate of a child whom a tabloid newspaper claims was fathered by former Democratic senator John Edwards of North Carolina doesn't identify the child's father.

The document, obtained through a routine records request, shows that Frances Quinn Hunter was born last Feb. 27 to Rielle Hunter, a videographer who worked on Edwards' presidential campaign last year.

But the space for the name of the father is blank, although the child was born more than two months after Hunter identified Andrew Young, Edwards' campaign finance director, as the father of her then unborn child. Young claimed paternity in a statement from his lawyer that was posted on the political blog mydd.com.

It sure would have been a gotcha moment if Edwards' name had been on that document. And while it certainly doesn't exonerate him, it doesn't do anything to bolster the claims and the smears against him, either. Like we said early on when this non-story broke, show us the documents. Show us the proof. So far, nothing. No photos. No video. No documents. Just smears and bullshit, and obsessed wingnuts coming out of the woodwork to speculate about someone's sex life because their own problems dwarf anything they can deal with.

In this day and age, politicians are always going to let you down in one way or another. John Edwards has been smeared by a third rate tabloid that has been given way to much credibility and way too much exposure. Does that mean he's innocent? No, of course not. I don't care what he did or who he did it with because Edwards doesn't go around telling people how to live their lives, he goes around telling people why we need economic justice in this country. That message is still dangerous to people who prefer the status quo and would love to see him smeared, and his message diluted and withdrawn from the public discourse. Whatever happened here is between him and his wife, and it doesn't change the fact that he's right.

Hopefully, this will end the story, and we can go back to ignoring the tabloid trash.

--WS

In Other Words, I'm An Idiot...

This totally clears everything up.

Lynn Sweet:

An item I posted July 25 about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) canceling a visit to a U.S. military base in Germany has now become grist for the Republicans to attack Obama.

Some points:

*Contrary to what the Republican National Committee stated in one of their missives, Obama senior strategist David Axelrod never said that the Pentagon told the campaign Obama should not come to the base. The GOP, citing my blog post, wrote in one of their releases, "Obama Senior Strategist David Axelrod Said The Pentagon Told The Campaign That Barack Obama "Should Not Come."

*The headline on my original post were my words--not Axelrod's. That headline "Pentagon tells Obama not to visit U.S. troops at German base because it would be too political" was my take.

I revised the headline a few hours later because it was wrong. The Pentagon never told Obama not to come. The issue was whether Obama campaign military advisor Scott Gration, a retired Air Force General, could accompany Obama. I also rewrote a paragraph to eliminate an Axelrod quote that I misunderstood.

The new headline on my post read "Pentagon tells Obama aide a visit to U.S. base in Germany would be seen as political." I thought that new headline and revised paragraph solved the problem; usually there is just one URL for a blog post. But due to a server glitch at the Sun-Times, both the original and updated versions existed on the Internet. The Republicans have been linking to the original post and not the updated version.

Do you think we could get that "glitch" cleared up sometime soon? A whole lot of time and effort have been spent trying to debunk and defend and demystify--how about, next time, we say what really happened and not play around with headlines, okay?

Those mistakes touched off a firestorm that was utilized, via Drudge and a host of right-wing outlets, to launch a massive attack on the integrity of Senator Barack Obama. All because of a glitch, a quote that was misunderstood, and a headline that was wrong.

Thanks for clarifying all of this FOUR FUCKING DAYS LATER and for, you know, FEEDING THE RIGHT WING HATE MACHINE everything they needed.

--WS

Wikipedia Gets it Right This Time

Many have noticed that Wikipedia has locked the page about former Senator John Edwards to prevent people from adding items about his supposed "love child." This is a darned good thing:

Even though Wikipedia does not consider Wikipedia itself to be a reliable source, people will still believe what they read there. And can you blame Wikipedia for not wanting to be sued? Just because Edwards isn’t suing the Enquirer doesn’t mean Wikipedia should run with it. Not to mention, Wikipedia doesn’t “run” stories.

Here’s an example I think Edwards’ critics will respect: Last year, the Enquirer reported claims that George W. Bush had resumed drinking. This story was never corroborated, and unlike this current Edwards situation, that story passed quickly into obscurity. Consequently, you will not find this mentioned on the main article about Bush. Nor should it be. Until the situation is revolved, the two Enquirer stories are more alike than not. But if it does have an impact on his career, the controversy will be duly noted. Perhaps it will even warrant its own separate page.

Ultimately, the lack of corroboration and uncertain notability of the situation is is all that’s keeping it from inclusion on the Edwards article. Patience. And remember that Wikipedia is best understood as a starting point for research, not as the final arbiter of the truth.

I completely agree with this. The smear merchants have had ample time to prove Edwards has a love child--they haven't done so. They've had ample time to trot out more than just a "security guard" who claims after the fact to corroborate what the National Enquirer said--and nothing has come of it. The Enquirer is laughably unreliable as a source, of course. The story, in itself, is a big ho-hum because Edwards isn't, umm, running for anything or holding elected office. And, oh by the way, the evidence is so thin as to not even be there. It's titillation for people who have nothing to do, basically, and plenty of wingnuts spent hours and hours obsessing over something that, umm, hasn't been proven.

Til then, grow the fuck up, wingnuts. Sometimes, the beautiful people do have sex, but, more often than not, it's with their spouse and it's behind closed doors and it's done discreetly because they have, umm, healthy sex lives. You're not having sex. Why is that such a problem for you?

--WS

Dissecting a Thinly Sourced Smear

I don't know--and I don't care--if former Senator John Edwards has a love child with some woman. It's none of my business and it's none of anyone else's business but his and Elizabeth Edwards. Don't look now, but the evidence on this is so thin you can see through it in the dark. John Edwards is not running around telling people what to do in their marriage so he's NOT a hypocrite, despite everything you're reading from the right wing smear merchants in this country. It's sad that I have to say all of that--it really is. In a mature country that has a healthy attitude about marriage, sex and politics, this wouldn't be an issue. If fathering a child out of wedlock disqualified someone from being President, or an influential leader, or someone who spoke truth to power, there wouldn't be anyone left worth listening to. Give me someone flawed and complicated over someone repressed and self-hating any day. Give me a break--making a baby out of wedlock is a worse crime than sending over 4,000 Americans to their death? And we have no way of knowing whether this is even true! Grow the fuck up, wingnuts.

Fox News gets on board, and does one of the thinnest and most ridiculous pieces yet to be featured on this subject.

A hotel security guard told FOXNews.com he intervened this week between a man he identified as former Sen. John Edwards and tabloid reporters who chased down the former presidential hopeful after what they're calling a rendezvous with his mistress and love child.

I'd sure like to see pictures of this--not that that would be proof. How about a birth certificate with Edwards listed as the father? Or would that have to be checked for kerning as well? All we have are anecdotes and statements. The reporters from the National Enquirer claim they were threatened by hotel security guards and that their cameras were in danger of being seized. Every time I check the Enquirer website, I see the same stock photos and nothing from this supposed encounter. [Nah, not gonna link to it.]

The Beverly Hilton Hotel guard said he encountered a shaken and ashen-faced Edwards — whom he did not immediately recognize — in a hotel men's room early Tuesday morning in a literal tug-of-war with reporters on the other side of the door.

"What are they saying about me?" the guard said Edwards asked.

"His face just went totally white," the guard said, when Edwards was told the reporters were shouting out questions about Edwards and Rielle Hunter, a woman the National Enquirer says is the mother of his child.

The guard said he escorted Edwards, who was not a registered guest at the hotel, out of the building after 2 a.m. Edwards did not say anything while he was escorted out, said the guard, adding that at times the reporters on the scene were "rough on him," sticking a camera in his face and shouting questions.

Sounds pretty guilty to me! Except for the fact that we haven't seen those photos, nor can we believe anything this guard says. There were other guards present, by the way. What's their story? Are we supposed to believe tabloid trash writers to be credible about anything? Have any of those reporters paid a person for information? That's what I'd like to know.

Here's the best part of the whole Fox News story:

The guard did not recognize Edwards at the time of the incident, but said he concluded it was the 2008 presidential hopeful after hearing reports about the incident and finding an Enquirer reporter's notebook at the scene.

That's the SIXTH paragraph in the story--and I don't know about you, but that's why I think the story is complete and utter bullshit. An after-the-fact identification based on the tabloid media attention given to this story smacks of a payoff or an attempt to buy a corroborating witness. Tabloids pay for sources and stories all of the time--did someone offer this guard a wad of cash to say what he now says?

Even if the security guard didn't recognize Edwards, the fact that he "recognized" him after the fact and "concluded" it was him speaks volumes--does he have any training to identify people, does he have a reason why he didn't ask for Edwards ID at the time of the incident, does he have a criminal history, does he have a history of filing false reports, and so on. When you scrutinize how these people source their information, their house of cards comes tumbling down every time. It certainly would help if Fox News had any--any--trained, working journalists on staff. Apparently, they don't.

Sounds pretty suspect to me. Someone is trying to milk this for all it's worth, and while I hate to take the time to even blog about it, I do so because of the involvement of Fox News in perpetrating this smear.

And that's about all the time and effort this story deserves.

The Sickening Mouth Breathers on the Right Will Always Attack Michelle Obama

Ramesh Ponnuru's gig as a thread-starting hate-monger for the TALK section of the washingtonpost.com's discussion area should be over after this entry.

Senator Obama says the criticism of his wife is “infuriating.” Over the weekend the Washington Post ran the 700th and 701st article deploring the existence of the critics without bothering to listen to them.

During the Democratic presidential primaries, Mrs. Obama said that her husband's so-far successful run for the presidency was the first time as an adult that she felt proud of her country. She said that America is "just downright mean." She said that her husband is "never" going to let us go back to our apathetic and ignorant lives. She complained about having to spend "$10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports supplements and so on and so forth" (she said this in a county where the median income, as of 2004, was $37,000). She said that the Obamas are asking young people not to go into corporate America.

Her defenders almost never mention those last two comments, since they don't play into the storyline they're selling: that Mrs. Obama is being criticized because she is an outspoken black woman.

Given the comments she has made, it would be remarkable if people weren't criticizing her. Her combination of bitterness, ingratitude, anti-Americanism, leftism, and, yes, elitism rubs a lot of people the wrong way. (Her hostility to men, as evidenced in this 2004 interview, is unpleasant, too.)

What's your take?

UPDATE: Following the suggestion of a colleague at the Post, I have edited the above to indicate when Mrs. Obama made these statements. This colleague also points out that the Post articles I mentioned above were directed more at The New Yorker's infamous cover than at Mrs. Obama's conservative critics. That's a fair point. But since that cover cartoon was intended as a commentary on the conservative critics, and the Post articles used it to talk about public perceptions of Mrs. Obama and black women generally, it would have been nice if actual conservatives' perspectives had been engaged.

If actual conservatives still existed, they certainly wouldn't be attacking Michelle Obama, now would they? The "actual conservatives" who were around twenty years ago had some fucking decency, at least, and some intellectual honesty.

Ponnuru's "update" was actually someone biting his head off for being a dishonest hack--he knew the smears he wanted to perpetrate through this medium and he launched them without context or shame. As parents, my wife and I have costs for daycare, dance lessons, field trips and other activities for our children. We base what we pay on what we make. If we were Senator and lawyer, we'd probably pay exactly what the Obamas pay because, umm, that's what you do. And I will guaran-fucking-tee you that neither the Obamas nor us, nor the vast majority of Americans, runs up $500,000 in a month on the American Express card.

This is how the right wing is going to mount their litany of smears and attacks on Michelle Obama--by staying just under the radar to use "forums" and "talk" and "The Corner" so that they can keep their hands clean. It's dishonest and nasty, and no one should just roll over and take it. Ponnuru is a dishonest smear merchant who will use whatever means he can grasp in order to smear Michelle Obama.

--WS

White House Circulates Unflattering Bio of Berlusconi

When you run a disgraceful operation such as the current White House--one built by ideologues on lies, smearing people, and ruining anyone who is critical of what they do--you'll get things like this.

An embarrassed White House apologized on Tuesday for an "unfortunate mistake" -- the distribution of less-than-flattering biography of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi at the Group of Eight summit. Still, the gaffe led to headlines in Italy.

The summary of Berlusconi was buried in a nearly inch-thick tome of background that the White House distributed at the summit of major economic powers. The press kit was handed out to the White House traveling press corps.

The biography described Berlusconi as one of the "most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice."

It was just last month that Berlusconi welcomed Bush to Rome, calling him "a personal friend of mine and also a great friend of Italy." And Bush responded then: "You're right. We're good friends."

The biography, written by Encyclopedia of World Biography, said Berlusconi burst onto the political scene with no experience and used his "vast network of media holdings" to finance his campaign on a promise to "purge the notoriously lackadaisical Italian government of corruption."

The biography went on to say that Berlusconi was appointed to the prime minister's office in 1994, "however, he and his fellow Forza Italia Party leaders soon found themselves accused of the very corruption he had vowed to eradicate."

How did this happen? Well, if you believe it happened by accident, fine. But if you believe it was done out of malice, or a half-assed form of unintended malice in that someone had the bio and unwittingly tipped their hand by accidentally releasing something they agreed with, you're on solid ground when it comes to this White House.

The adults are not in charge. They run everything based on smearing, slamming or denigrating their opponents. A basic biography of Silvio Berlusconi issued by the White House should be simple enough to produce. If your modus operandi is to keep the nasty, partisan material OUT of your day to day operation, then something like this should have stood out and revealed itself for what it was--something that could embarrass an ally.

But if your modus operandi is to deal in sleaze and bullshit, then what's the difference between slamming Berlusconi--whose country pulled out of Iraq and whose judiciary is pursuing a legal case against some CIA operatives--and smearing him with the material that got swept into a package which should have been thoroughly vetted to avoid insulting a G-8 ally?

After seven and a half years, the White House should be a tight ship when it comes to preparing material for foreign travel. These are the final overseas trips--where is the . These mistakes happen in the fledgling days of an unsteady team. This was not a mistake--this was someone deciding on payback, Fox News style, and they might as well admit it.

You're Not Going to Believe This...

[Is it me or is he going for the same look that the keyboard player in Duran Duran has never been able to pull off?]

Republican smear artist Roger Stone jumps the shark and crosses the line:

Stone wants everyone to understand the mission of the organization, simply and elegantly captured in its artwork, which Stone shows us. It features a red inverted triangle at the bottom of which, is a blue triangle with a white star in the middle. At first glance, it kind of looks like the Puerto Rican flag, or Captain America's martini glass. Stone designed it himself, and on second glance, it's meant to whisper, not scream, "special flower."

The text underneath it reads "Citizens United Not Timid, a 527 Organization To Educate The American Public About What Hillary Clinton Really Is." The artwork and text are, it turns out, the entirety of the "education." Stone says the website will feature an attractive model in the organization's T-shirt, which can be yours for a "donation" of $25 or more. And it will also feature a rolling tally of people who agree with the statement that's not quite stated, something like "the population billboard in Times Square that's constantly increasing because some baby is born in Botswana."

In addition to this website being blast-emailed to hundreds of thousands of addresses that Stone and West have accumulated over the years (working off over 170 different email lists of everyone from opinion-makers to political activists to industry associations), Stone is counting on T-shirt sales to further serve as "billboard education." He figures the whole thing will end up taking on a viral nature, thanks to the yuks factor.

"The more people go to the site, the more people buy the T-shirts," Stone explains to the troops. "The more people buy the T-shirts, the more people wear the T-shirts. The more people wear the T-shirts, the more people are educated. Consequently, our mission has been achieved." Though neither the word itself nor even the acronym is ever mentioned, "it's one-word education. That's our mission. No issues. No policy groups. No position papers. This is a simple committee with an unfortunate acronym. Addendums, deletions? Everybody's down?"

And what are we talking about?



Any Republican that does not disown and condemn this horrible attempt at humor is fair game. Fair fucking game.

"The truth is, we sat around for hours trying to come up with words for B.I.T.C.H. and just couldn't do it," admits Stone. "Try it," West encourages, "Start with 'b'--it has to be a noun." I'm stumped. "Bureau, actually," says Stone. "That's as far as we got. Now take it away, Matt."

Now, if you happen to think this doesn't cross a line that I, personally, didn't think they would be stupid enough to cross, I don't know what else to say. Any Republican who employs or is seen with Roger Stone for the rest of this cycle is fair game. I mean, this is gloves on the ice, jersey over the back of the head, roundhouse punch to the nuts time. This is clearly one of the most outrageous and misogynistic things I've ever seen. This is not some fringe member of the right wing--Roger Stone went to work for Richard Nixon at the age of nineteen and he's travelled in big circles within the Right Wing establishment.

His most recent disgrace? Threatening the father of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer:

Roger Stone, a prominent GOP consultant, is accused of having left a ranting voice mail on the answering machine of Spitzer's father, Bernard. Drudging up an old issue over controversial loans the elder Spitzer made to his son, Stone is said to have raged, "You will be subpoenaed to testify before the Senate committee on investigations … and there's not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-shit son can do about it!"

And let's not forget the real reason Roger Stone is so well known:

In 1996, Roger and his wife Nydia purportedly placed an ad in Swing Fever magazine looking for single men and couples to join them in group sex. According to reporting in the National Enquirer and the Star, the copy proclaimed:

C-161,787-DC* INSATIABLE COUPLE
We are hot, athletic and very fit. We are seeking similar couples or exceptional muscular, well hung, single men. She's 40DD-24-36 and bi. She loves to fuck hard and deep. He's 195 lbs., trim, muscular and 8" +. She prefers jocks, miliary men, and body builders. No fat people or smokers need respond. Send photo and phone. No photo, no response! We are interested in DC, VA, MD, NYC, Miami, and LA.

VOICE MAIL 12209

Stone has a deranged idea of what's funny. A lot of very creative people just found their motivation to respond, I suspect.

UPDATE I - Open Secrets dot org:

My, my...

STONE, ROGER J MR
SURFSIDE,FL 33154
SELF-EMPLOYED/CONSULTANT
6/15/2007
$2,300
Giuliani, Rudolph W