You Couldn’t Make This Up…
February 4, 2010 - by
20/20’s story the other night about John Edwards and mistress Rielle Hunter was brutal; after watching Edwards die the death of a thousand cuts I thought, This fellow needs a break and if he doesn’t get one this may end more badly than anyone’s imagined.
You couldn’t make up what’s happened to Edwards: Sitting in a bar in New York a blonde yoga teacher turned New Age Spiritualist spots him across the room and is struck dumb because he’s bathed in ‘aura’ of light – or so she described it later. Next they end up in his hotel room.
A month later the blonde spiritualist is on Edwards’ payroll making a hundred thousand dollars and traveling to Africa with him and advising him on how to get elected President based on her reading of the alignment of his stars.
Edwards returns from Africa, receives the ‘Father of the Year Award,’ renews his wedding vows with his wife and his mistress gets pregnant.
He moves Rielle to Chapel Hill, gets her an alias, provides her a house and a BMW and in an act of unabashed audacity talks his thirty-three year old aide (who has a wife and three children) into saying he’s the one who got Edwards’ mistress pregnant.
Just before the Iowa Primary a National Enquirer reporter blows their cover and the mistress, aide, wife and three children go on the lamb dodging reporters, hiding out in a hotel penthouse in Hollywood, Florida, a $14 million mansion in Aspen and a rented $20,000 a month estate in San Diego.
With the bills adding up Edwards arranges for a ninety-six year old heiress to send checks of between $10,000 and $200,000 in chocolate boxes to pay to keep his mistress under cover.
The baby’s born, the New Age Spiritualist mother decides the infant’s destined to save the universe – and the father asks the aide and a lawyer friend to fake a paternity test to prove the child’s not his.
Next the aide finds a sex tape starring Edwards and his mistress, the mistress sues the aide to stop him publishing using the tape and the aide – with the checks from heiress Bunny Mellon no longer flowing – in effect uses the tape to blackmail Edwards for welching on a promise to support him for life.
John Edwards tops any character you ever read about in a novel: For a decade he lived for the limelight but now his world’s crashed down around him and he can’t turn on a TV set or open a newspaper without seeing himself being ridiculed. His wife’s given him the boot, who knows what his children are thinking, and he’s paying a battery of lawyers because a Grand Jury’s investigating the checks in the chocolate boxes.
Not long ago John Edwards was the Golden Boy of politics waltzing across the stage – now the music’s stopped but it hasn’t hit him yet the dance is over but it will and when it does he may just come apart in front of our eyes.
So before that happens let’s step back, give him room to breathe and hope he has enough sense to ride quietly off into the sunset or go into a monastery and make the most of obscurity.
You Couldn’t Make This Up…
February 4, 2010/
20/20’s story the other night about John Edwards and mistress Rielle Hunter was brutal; after watching Edwards die the death of a thousand cuts I thought, This fellow needs a break and if he doesn’t get one this may end more badly than anyone’s imagined.
You couldn’t make up what’s happened to Edwards: Sitting in a bar in New York a blonde yoga teacher turned New Age Spiritualist spots him across the room and is struck dumb because he’s bathed in ‘aura’ of light – or so she described it later. Next they end up in his hotel room.
A month later the blonde spiritualist is on Edwards’ payroll making a hundred thousand dollars and traveling to Africa with him and advising him on how to get elected President based on her reading of the alignment of his stars.
Edwards returns from Africa, receives the ‘Father of the Year Award,’ renews his wedding vows with his wife and his mistress gets pregnant.
He moves Rielle to Chapel Hill, gets her an alias, provides her a house and a BMW and in an act of unabashed audacity talks his thirty-three year old aide (who has a wife and three children) into saying he’s the one who got Edwards’ mistress pregnant.
Just before the Iowa Primary a National Enquirer reporter blows their cover and the mistress, aide, wife and three children go on the lamb dodging reporters, hiding out in a hotel penthouse in Hollywood, Florida, a $14 million mansion in Aspen and a rented $20,000 a month estate in San Diego.
With the bills adding up Edwards arranges for a ninety-six year old heiress to send checks of between $10,000 and $200,000 in chocolate boxes to pay to keep his mistress under cover.
The baby’s born, the New Age Spiritualist mother decides the infant’s destined to save the universe – and the father asks the aide and a lawyer friend to fake a paternity test to prove the child’s not his.
Next the aide finds a sex tape starring Edwards and his mistress, the mistress sues the aide to stop him publishing using the tape and the aide – with the checks from heiress Bunny Mellon no longer flowing – in effect uses the tape to blackmail Edwards for welching on a promise to support him for life.
John Edwards tops any character you ever read about in a novel: For a decade he lived for the limelight but now his world’s crashed down around him and he can’t turn on a TV set or open a newspaper without seeing himself being ridiculed. His wife’s given him the boot, who knows what his children are thinking, and he’s paying a battery of lawyers because a Grand Jury’s investigating the checks in the chocolate boxes.
Not long ago John Edwards was the Golden Boy of politics waltzing across the stage – now the music’s stopped but it hasn’t hit him yet the dance is over but it will and when it does he may just come apart in front of our eyes.
So before that happens let’s step back, give him room to breathe and hope he has enough sense to ride quietly off into the sunset or go into a monastery and make the most of obscurity.