The Farce is Over for Edwards

John Edwards, the former democratic presidential candidate and defender of the family, has admitted to cheating on his cancer-stricken wife.

In the United States, sex scandals are resolved in front of the camera. John Edwards, 55, who was a democratic presidential candidate up until January, behind Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, made his confession to ABC News on Friday evening. Nicknamed “Ken” for his good looks, he admitted to cheating on his wife Elizabeth, 59, who is suffering from an incurable cancer, with Rielle Hunter, 44, whom he employed to film videos of his electoral campaign in 2006. Last October, he denied this relationship and denounced the “lies” of the sensationalistic press. Edwards, vice-presidential candidate in 2004, changed his position after having been caught in the act. A reporter from the National Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid, surprised the senator last month at two in the morning in the corridors of a Beverly Hills hotel, where he was apparently meeting Rielle Hunter and the little girl she gave birth to in the end of February. Edwards refuses to recognize paternity of the child, affirming that his relationship with Rielle Hunter—described as “sexually voracious” by novelist ex-boyfriend Jay McInerey—“was over too long ago for that to be possible.” Last week, the Enquirer published a blurry photo said to have been taken at the hotel. It shows a man resembling Edwards with a baby in his arms. The ex-senator, who is a lawyer, defended himself by saying that he has held lots of babies during his electoral campaign. He also promised to take a paternity test to prove he is telling the truth. Since the tabloids began chattering about this last October, close friend and confidant to the ex democratic candidate Andrew Young, a married 44-year-old, has spontaneously presented himself as the child’s father, before leaving with his family. It then came out that both Young and Rielle Hunter had received significant amounts of money from one of the Edwards campaign’s principal financers, Fred Baron, to help them move and escape from the press. Given this information, it is not too much of a stretch to believe that they were paid to keep quiet, and the tabloid press has happily taken that leap. For his part, Baron assured that he acted out of friendship…without informing Edwards. The tabloids “sometimes tell the truth” noted the American press yesterday, not having said a word about the affair until last week. Edwards, who during his speeches never failed to insist on the importance of “family values” and “sincerity,” said that politics made him lose his head. He attributes his “error” to the “narcissism” that made him think he was “invincible.” He dared to highlight that he committed his adultery when his wife Elizabeth’s cancer was in remission.