Mickey Kaus has been making a big deal of the National Enquirer’s story about John Edwards’ infidelities. The folks at the Corner (and here) are tut-tuting.
Question: Is public shaming an improper penalty for adultery? Part b. What impact might the changing legal status of adultery have on the answer to that question both as a practical matter and as a question of public morality?
I think that public shaming is the proper penalty for adultery.
Does anyone know why Kaus, Esq., Gateway, and Instapundit bother about what is printed in the National Enquirer? (Evidently Mr. Ponnuru does not). How many times was Patsy Ramsey reported therein to be on the verge of issuing a confession or being indicted?
In fairness to Kaus, if you follow the links you'll see that he's been following this story for a while, and wonders why the establishment media have gone out of their way to ignore it, leaving it to the Enquirer to follow it up.
NR suffers from the insufferable desire to be respected by a media establishment that despises them. It's very Nixonian, both scorning the establishment yet privately craving the validation thereof.
The story isn't how the story was broken, which is nothing but process fixated. The story IS the substance thereof, and the sad fact that the major media had to reason to know, but refused to pursue that story, while simultaneously spending YEARS pursuing an Air National Guard story.
NR can act like such a pack of pompous ................... Might as well not finish that thought.
I would like to be lumped with those who hold to the view that people mistrust the National Enquirer for reasons other than status anxiety.
I don't remember the MSM showing such reluctance to cover the Enquirer's stories when it paid someone to claim she sold painkillers to Rush Limbaugh. And here, it is not a question of whether the magazine's sources are reliable. They went there and caught Edwards in the act. The double standard by the MSM (this means you, LA Times) is pretty laughable.
Kudos to Mickey Kaus for covering the story while everyone else plays dumb.
I think it's overwhelmingly likely that the MSM would cover this kind of story with energy, not to say glee, were the philandering weasel one of the hated "Rethuglicans" instead of a liberal Democrat talking hair-do like the Silky One.
And I think that would be the case whether or not the weasel in question had a wife with advanced cancer and several young children. In fact, the MSM would indulge in a lot of crocodile tears and phony cluck-clucking over how badly the hypothetical GOP weasel had "hurt his family," etc., etc.