It was a good day. I went for a bike ride. I browsed through a bookstore. I spent some time in my favorite coffee shop, with a vegetarian pannini sandwich and a pot of Earl Grey with Lavender tea.
I also spent far too much time poking around the Internet, reading articles I would normally ignore. I made the mistake of diving into the comments at Slate and came out convinced that a large segment of the population who reads Slate is insane, Emily Yoffe is a scold and that my brain needed an acid bath.
Apparently I've had my head in the sand for far too long, because the “news” that John Edwards allegedly fathered a love child has been around for a year. This piece of “news” was published by that bastion of truth, The National Inquirer. The sources of this “news” are unnamed (therefore unverifiable) and another man has stepped forward to claim paternity of the love child in question.
None of the above was enough to stop Jack Shafer of Slate from calling Edwards a “sex hypocrite” for violating the sanctity of his marriage vows and lamenting the mainstream media's disinterest in the story, which he attributed to bias on the part of the liberal media. Apparently, since the media reported the arrest of Republican Larry Craig for soliciting gay sex in the stall of a bathroom, they are also duty bound to report on the unsubstantiated rumors swirling around John Edwards. Rumors which he denied when the National Inquirer broke the story last October and December. Rumors he denied again when the National Inquirer published a recent update.
I moved from the article to the comments, which left me desiring the above mentioned acid bath to remove the etchings of memory of my brief foray from my brain. After several hours and a visit to one of my favorite feminist/political/miscellaneous fun stuff blogs, I was able to stop the spinning in my head and figure out what really bothered me about the story. It was a hatchet job, full of “if”, “but” and “yet” statements and beautifully constructed gems, to wit “If Edwards had had no affair, he wasn't a hypocrite, not then and not now”. Language carefully constructed to call Edwards a philanderer without explicitly calling him a philanderer, to leave the reader with the impression that Edwards is a philanderer.
Oy, the mind spins.
Emily Yoffe (who called Edwards a “sanctimonious phony”, but I digress) continued her habit of acting sanctimonious towards her readers* with this response to a reader who wanted to smooth over a relationship after having a one night stand with a good friend's brother: “Look, I'm going to leave aside the question of one night stands, I just hope your not making a practice of them”.
If she is leaving aside the questions of one night stands, why is it necessary to make such a comment?
Moving on from the sanctimonious, the New York Times had an article today about brides paying for (and sometimes requiring) botox and other treatments, including breast augmentation and tooth bleaching, for their bridesmaids. While the times played off the brides gone amuck angle, I still found myself a little skeeved out by the idea that a bride could require and compel members of her wedding party to submit themselves to sundry beauty procedures.
Thankfully, I don't have any friends of the type mentioned in the article.
*Prime example: In response to a reader who was not interested in having kids and wanted advice on how to shut up members of the why-haven't-you-had-babies brigade, Yoffe took it upon herself to give the reader the “you might change your mind someday” speech.
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