sozobe wrote:John Edwards wrote:STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN EDWARDS
August 8, 2008
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public. When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99% honest is no longer enough.
I was and am ashamed of my conduct and choices, and I had hoped that it would never become public. With my family, I took responsibility for my actions in 2006 and today I take full responsibility publicly. But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then. I am and have been willing to take any test necessary to establish the fact that I am not the father of any baby, and I am truly hopeful that a test will be done so this fact can be definitively established. I only know that the apparent father has said publicly that he is the father of the baby. I also have not been engaged in any activity of any description that requested, agreed to or supported payments of any kind to the woman or to the apparent father of the baby.
It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry. In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up -- feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help.
I have given a complete interview on this matter and having done so, will have nothing more to say.
Kind of arrogant, don't you think? Probably plays well with those who worship him, but not so much everyone else, and certainly not with the press that can still hurt him. (Remember Gary Hart?)
He lied about having the affair but we're to belive that he's not lying about being the kid's father? Oh what a tangled web we weave...
Apparently the beating he gave himself didn't prevent him from running for president (or from seeing the woman and her baby again). The beating he will take from the press is going to have a more disabling effect in terms of his political career.
At least he admits to having been egocentric and narcissistic. The thing is he was so well before the affair and still is --- although this public beating might take him down a peg.
Since he and the mother can control whether or not there is a legitimate paternity test, we'll probably never see one, but it remains to be seen if he has been paying her support or has arranged for it. Woe unto him if he's lying here and the press can find him out.
I'm not sure why it's in anyway a lesser trangression if he's not the father. I take that back, it can understand why his wife and family might find it more horrible if there was a love child to stand as living testimony of his infidelity, but for anyone else? He had an affair with the woman, and if he didn't father the baby it's only due to luck and the willful insistance (by one of the two) on a contraceptive device.
Of course he's just a flawed human being like all the rest of us and he's hardly the only man to cheat on his wife, but he is one of the incredibly small number of human beings who runs for the office of POTUS, and he clearly affected a personna of righteousness during his bid. He was so worried about the poor that he insisted Obama and Clinton keep them in mind while they duked it out after his withdrawal from the race. And yet he wasn't so worried about his wife and children that he could insist on his Johnson remaining inside his $200 silk shorts.
His entire career as a lawyer and politician has been one of making hay (and money and power) on a facade of caring for the poor.
It's his self-righteous hypocricy, not his submission to the temptations of the flesh, that make him the scum-bag he is.
