Aug 09 2008
Elizabeth Edwards Releases Statement; Claims Still Not Clear
Elizabeth Edwards released a statement to the Associated Press concerning her husband’s recently admitted affair.
Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some most recently caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.
John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private. The pain of the long journey since 2006 was about to be renewed.
John has spoken in a long on-camera interview. Admitting one’s mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do. I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. The toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet unknown. But now the truth is out, and the repair work that began in 2006 will continue. I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.
There are a couple issues I have with this statement. John Edwards is a formerly elected public official and a two time candidate for President of the United States. They both know full well that there is no expectation of privacy when you enter public service. The fact is she aided her husband in burying this incident during his recent presidential campaign and I don’t think that sheds any better light on her. Was it the lure of the White House?
The other problem I have is the claim that Rielle Hunter’s baby is not his. The Washington Post had an article on this today.
Edwards maintained in a statement that the affair ended too soon for him to have fathered her baby, Frances Quinn Hunter, who was born Feb. 27. Hunter and a former Edwards fundraiser, Andrew Young, have maintained that Young is the father.
“I would welcome participating in a paternity test,” Edwards told ABC’s Bob Woodruff on Friday. “Be happy to participate in one. I know that it’s not possible that this child could be mine because of the timing of events. . . . Happy to take a paternity test and would love to see it happen.”
According to their claim, the timing would be incorrect for Edwards to be the father. Here is why I am skeptical that they are being truthful about this, though. If the baby is not Edwards and he is not continuing this affair then why on Earth was he in Beverly Hills visiting Hunter?
Meanwhile, the editor of the National Enquirer, which broke the story of the affair and Hunter’s pregnancy, took issue with Edwards’s statement distancing himself from photos purporting to be him holding Hunter’s baby. Edwards admitted to ABC that he met secretly with Hunter last month at the Beverly Hilton to try and “keep this from becoming public.”
This week the Enquirer published a blurry photo of a man looking like Edwards holding a baby. The the tabloid said the photo was taken at the hotel.
“I don’t know if that picture is me,” Edwards said. “It could well be. It looks like me. I don’t know who that baby is. I have no idea what the picture is.
Yeah, ok………..
