Getting Rielle - The Enquirer Files a Criminal Complaint in Edwards Love Child Case

I wasn’t keen on blogging more on the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter Affair (her real name is Lisa Druck, by the way… then Lisa Hunter… her father-in-law was attorney Alex Hunter of Boulder fame) – gossip isn’t my thing (though I enjoy it like the rest of the world). But since the Los Angeles Times is now forbidding its bloggers from talking, I now thought I’d say a bit more…. especially since the National Enquirer is filing a criminal complaint against the Beverly Hilton and its security force for manhandling the paper’s reporters. If the Enquirer weren’t a hundred percent confident that Edwards was at the hotel with Rielle, I doubt they’d be going to the law.

Is this news? The mainstream media seems to think not. They hide behind professionalism, whatever that means, when the extent of their bias has been documented everywhere. It’s beyond comic. It makes you yearn for the days when reporters were grunts with a high school education. They were more honest.

Edwards was a candidate for vice president of the United States and, until very recently, a candidate for president. He was also being bandied about, quite recently in Newsweek, among other places, as a candidate for vice president once again, a heart beat away, as they say. Normally that would be more than enough. So enough said.

Meanwhile, some more about Rielle Hunter: when she was Lisa Druck she was the heroine of Jay McInerney’s Story of My Life, not, as someone wrote in the comments here, a Bret Easton Ellis novel. After her life as a player, she hooked up with Kip Hunter, said by friends of mine who know him to be a “very nice guy.” Lisa ditched Kip and sought “spiritual enlightenment” — hence the Rielle moniker, whatever that means. In other words, she was just more of the flotsam and jetsam that spills regularly out of Hollywood. It doesn’t say too much for the taste of John Edwards, but then, as we know, he’s building a 28000 square foot house.[Who’s going to live there?-ed.]

What of poor Elizabeth Edwards in all this? I remember meeting her at the Personal Democracy Forum a few years back and listening to her speak. She was the highlight of the Forum at that time and, with Elliot Spitzer (ironically!) its keynote speaker. Although I thought her politics naive and conventional in the extreme, I thought Elizabeth was an honest, impassioned woman with an incredible, almost worshipful devotion to her husband. (We knew she had cancer at that point and it made her all the more sympathetic). She was also a huge fan and devotee of blogs and new media, which she surfed, although I doubt she was much of a reader of, say, Powerline. In all, an estimable person. Is she the victim in all this? In the obvious sense, of course. But if she separates himself from her mega-narcisstic husband, perhaps she has done herself a favor.

UPDATE: Some cheap psychoanalysis. I would guess that Edwards, like many cheaters, wanted to be caught. After all, it is hard to conceive he would be that dumb as to conduct a tryst in this modern/post-Bill Clinton era in, of all places, the Beverly Hilton. The Hilton — where such events as the Pre-Oscar luncheon and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent victory celebration are held — would be among the last places you would choose. It’s often a virtual den of paparazzi with staff and others always standing by to tip the gossip press on the latest celeb sighting. There are thousands of places in Southern California more low key for such a meeting. If Edwards is indeed that dumb, we are certainly lucky he never became President. Among those who should be scratching their heads at this moment are his supporters.

(Lighter side here.)