{"id":13971,"date":"2007-12-19T10:07:38","date_gmt":"2007-12-19T15:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13971.html"},"modified":"2007-12-19T10:07:38","modified_gmt":"2007-12-19T15:07:38","slug":"baseless-edwards-rumors-when-the-silly-season-gets-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/baseless-edwards-rumors-when-the-silly-season-gets-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"Baseless Edwards rumors: when the silly season gets stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to believe that a National Enquirer story about John Edwards’ “love child” is the lead political item<\/a> on Memeorandum right now, but we’ve apparently reached a point in the campaign at which baseless nonsense deserves to be treated as a big deal.<\/p>\n

Mickey Kaus, the in-house blogger for the Washington Post-owned Slate, began pushing this garbage<\/a> in October, based, of course, on a report in a supermarket tabloid. You know the story was cheap when Mickey proclaimed, “This isn’t the first time kausfiles hasn’t met Drudge’s journalistic standards!”<\/p>\n

Edwards denied the rumor, saying, “The story is false.” Kaus said this denial was far too vague. Edwards later added that the rumors are “completely untrue” and “ridiculous,” before concluding the story was “made up.” Kaus was troubled by this<\/a>, too, arguing the denial was too strong.<\/p>\n

Today, Kaus is at it again<\/a>. (emphasis in the original throughout)<\/p>\n

Drudge teases the National Enquirer<\/em><\/a> … Update:<\/strong> The Enquirer <\/em>posts the gist…..<\/a> One initial point: There’s no reason to conclude this story was planted by one campaign or another. I’m familiar with how the initial Rielle Hunter\/Edwards rumors, true or not, got to at least one news outlet–and no campaigns, Dem or GOP, were involved. It was a story going around–I’d been hearing it for months. Not all rumors are plants. And some are true. Even in the Enquirer<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it turns out, the Enquirer seems to have pulled the story — clicking on the link leads to a page with no article — but that hasn’t stopped the desperate “debate” from unfolding anyway.<\/p>\n

It’s been a frustrating campaign season, in which nonsense has gotten far too much play, but this may very well be a new low. A “love child” story from the National Enquirer<\/i> is driving the political discussion.
\n
\nWhat’s the basis for the story? The candidate denies the charge, the staffer denies the charge, and there’s no evidence to suggest either is lying. No one has hedged, or tried to parse their words — everyone involved said the story is flat false. On the other hand, we have a report from a supermarket tabloid, which has since been pulled from its website.<\/p>\n

Sounds like a scoop to be taken seriously? Not so much.<\/p>\n

As for Kaus, publius argues<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If Mickey Kaus wants to use Slate — a professional, well-regarded political “magazine” — to parrot the National Enquirer’s “story” on John Edwards, shouldn’t Slate fire him if this story turns out to be wrong? I mean, if a reporter from Kaus’s hated NYT ran with something like this, he or she would certainly be risking their career on it. Seems like what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If Kaus wants to be journalistically reckless (like Drudge), he should get his own blog.<\/p>\n

Slate should understand that it too is now running this ridiculous story. And there should be consequences for doing so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds good to me. I’m at a loss to understand why the Washington Post would want to finance this nonsense.<\/p>\n

Update<\/i>: As several readers have noted, the Enquirer’s story is now back up on its site. I don’t know if it was taken down for substantive reasons, technical reasons, or editorial reasons — it really wasn’t there when I wrote the post — but whatever the motivation, the “article” has been re-published online. As for its validity, I remain highly skeptical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to believe that a National Enquirer story about John Edwards’ “love child” is the lead political item on Memeorandum right now, but we’ve apparently reached a point in the campaign at which baseless nonsense deserves to be treated as a big deal. Mickey Kaus, the in-house blogger for the Washington Post-owned Slate, began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}