Pulitzer Outrage!

The National Enquirer has another piece of scandalous news for its clamouring public – it hopes to win a Pulitzer Prize for its revelations about the private life of John Edwards. “In August 2008, during a brief summer lull between Barack Obama’s clinching of the Democratic presidential nomination and the first time most people heard the name ‘Sarah Palin’, John Edwards made a confession. The former senator, his own bid for the White House long dead, smiled ingratiatingly at an ABC News interviewer and admitted that he had cheated on his wife with a film-maker and campaign hanger-on named Rielle Hunter. ‘I told Elizabeth about the mistake, asked her for her forgiveness, asked God for his forgiveness,’ Edwards said. And what of the claim – made repeatedly in the National Enquirer magazine over the previous year (which had now obtained a blurred photo), but reported almost nowhere in the traditional news media – that he had fathered a daughter with Hunter? Leaning forward earnestly, as if to emphasise his point, Edwards was firm: ‘Not true,’ he said. ‘Published in a supermarket tabloid.’ He was lying, of course. But most Americans would have agreed with Edwards’s implicit logic: you can’t trust what you read in the National Enquirer.”