LAT Blogs John Edwards Now That It's 'Safe'

By P.J. Gladnick | November 12, 2008 | 09:09

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John Edwards. Remember him? He was the guy whom the Los Angeles Times for an excruciatingly painful period of time found it impossible to write about in the midst of his breaking scandal last summer. In fact, Times bloggers were forbidden to write about the scandal by Times editor Tony Pierce who came up with this excuse for the moratorium:

Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

Another excuse not to cover the Edwards scandal was given by Top of the Ticket blog author, Don Frederick:

For the most part, mainstream media outlets have not pursued the matter, in part because Edwards no longer is a presidential candidate nor does he hold a public office. The Times National Editor Scott Kraft explained the newspaper's stance in a note today, published on the Reader's Representative blog.

Of course, the real reason that the Times avoided the topic of the Edwards scandal was that they were worried that publicity about this would embarrass the Democrats since it still seemed that John Edwards would make an appearance at the Democrat convention in Denver. Once the publicity about the scandal made such an Edwards convention appearance impossible, the Times finally began to report on the already widely known scandal. However, please note Frederick's excuse because now the Times blog seems to relish reporting on Edwards and his scandal despite the fact he "no longer is a presidential candidate nor does he hold a public office." The Times pretty much tossed this silly reason aside as you can see in this Top of the Ticket blog posted by Andrew Malcolm yesterday:

John Edwards -- remember him? -- tiptoes back into the public spotlight tonight.

Well, not actually a spotlight. His appearance and remarks at Indiana University are closed to all cameras and media. We'll see how long it takes someone to Twitter from inside.

This could be the first move in the attempted public relations rehab of the man who was once a senator, was once his Democratic Party's candidate for vice president and, this election season, was given a shot at the top nomination -- until Democrats actually started voting.
After months of dismissing as trash the tabloid reports of an extramarital affair with a campaign videographer named Rielle Hunter while his wife was fighting cancer, Edwards admitted in an ABC interview on an early August Friday night that, well, yes, he did have that fling.

But it was short. He confessed to his wife awhile back. And he wasn't the father of the woman's child.

Edwards went into seclusion. He and his wife, Elizabeth, skipped the Democratic National Convention in Denver as potential distractions. She emerged only in September to continue her work against breast cancer.

Now, according to CNN, Edwards has another speech scheduled in San Francisco tomorrow and an on-stage debate at an upcoming bankers convention with Karl Rove, the Svengali-like political mastermind blamed for many heinous things, including the John Kerry-Edwards ticket's defeat in 2004.

Although sex scandals have doomed the political careers of many politicians such as Gary Hart and Bob Livingston, Americans may be becoming somewhat immune to such personal betrayals.

Although a certain ex-president has not had to run for reelection, Bill Clinton's humanitarian work S.M. (Since Monica) seems to have caused many to move on when thinking of him. A multimillionaire, he now commands a small fortune for every speech and didn't hurt the crowd count while campaigning for his wife, Hillary, in last winter's Democratic primary season, although she did lose the nomination.

What do you think? Can this John pull it off?

How "brave" of the Los Angeles Times to be blogging about the latest John Edwards gossip now that it's safe to do so. And your humble correspondent believes that John Edwards has about as much chance of being rehabilitated as the Los Angeles Times does of ever restoring the credibility that few believed it had in the first place.