In the NYT: Beginning to address the MSM's ignoring the Edwards story

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The Opinionator
An Affair to Forget
By Tobin Harshaw

O.K., (Slate's) Mickey Kaus has a whole weekend to gloat: “John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today. In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.”

It’s going to be a rough stretch for Edwards, but how about the Opinionator and the rest of those in the mainstream media, who odd bedfellows like Kaus and Ann Coulter and Gawker’s Ryan Tate and Daily Kos’s Lee Stranahan have been pillorying for ignoring the issue.

Now Tom Maguire is already questioning our news sense: “So what is Edwards’ motivation here? Does this admission let enough air out of the balloon that the media go away (as if they had really even arrived — I can’t wait to see the NY Times non-coverage of this.) I doubt it.”

Well, I’ll leave it to my betters at Poynter and Columbia Journalism Review to weigh my rectitude against my cowardice, or whatever, but as far as this Opinionator was concerned, it seemed, given the lack of anything concrete to grab onto, the perfect sort of issue to be covered in the blogosphere. So congratulations.

Meanwhile, David L. Dayen, known on the Web as D-Day, asks us to consider the real victim: “This has been a really bad year for the personal lives of candidates that I respected and admired. First Eliot Spitzer and now this. But I can’t say that it’s much of a surprise. Politicians, power, sex; it’s always been part of the stew. This is true on the left and true on the right (McCain’s first marriage, anyone?). The difference is that only one side consistently attempts to legislate morality. I really feel bad for Elizabeth Edwards and the family, more than anything.”...

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/an-affair-to-forget/?hp