Today Hot Report

Isn’t it a little strange that a former Vice-Presidential nominee and two-time Presidential candidate can be cheating on his wife, who is fighting a battle against terminal cancer, and yet the media doesn’t care?

It seems like the perfect story complete with all the trappings of a soap opera, including a secret love child. So how has John Edwards escaped the media inferno that would usually appear at the first sign of something like this?

Is it because the story came from The National Enquirer? Maybe that would be a valid line to argue, but other Enquirer stories and scandals have gone mainstream in the past.

Is it because Edwards is no longer a public figure? Well, no. He was a Presidential candidate this year. His endorsement sealed the deal for Barack Obama. And some people have even speculated that he would consider a second bid for Vice-President or a run for statewide office in North Carolina. He’s hardly been shy as of late. Heck, the day the Enquirer caught him with his mistress he was in town to meet the mayor of LA at a poverty event.

So why exactly is Rielle Hunter still a relatively unknown name, but everyone knows about Mark Foley and Larry Craig? Both deserved their fates, political ruin, but neither man fathered a child out of wedlock. Neither man was seeking the highest office in the land. They were, essentially, regional politicians of minimal note who were plucked and thrown onto the national stage due to their outrageous behavior.

Edwards is a national figure, and yet the media is treating this story like it doesn’t exist. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we’re done with the era of sex scandals dominating the news cycle and distracting people from more important matters. If that were the case, I would be fine with the media leaving Edwards alone about all of this. It is a private matter, after all. But the problem is the double-standard.

If Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee had been caught behaving like this, you can be darn sure that CNN anchors would be breaking into their regular programming to eat it up like vultures. But they like Edwards, in the same way they like Obama, and that’s why Edwards is getting a free ride. At least so far, there’s only so much the mainstream media can ignore. We’ll have to wait and see how the story develops over time.