Edwards screwed but didn’t impregnate.

Are we surprised? No—especially not by the weaselish statement he released.

One of his punishments is that despite that it’s the opening night of the Olympics and despite a shooting war between Russia and Georgia, CNN is playing this story to the hilt. Every commentator has looked or sounded like he/she wanted to take a shower after talking about this story.

Kaus is taking his laps.

Glenn Reynolds echoes my thoughts.

EDWARDS ADMITS THAT HE LIED ABOUT AFFAIR: But the real story is how the mainstream press, despite knowing or strongly suspecting that he was lying, covered for him.

There are two Americas — the real one, and the one the press tries to fob off on us.

True dat. But people seem to prefer storytelling to the truth, so the press has no real motivation to tell it like it really is. Oh well!

Fierce MSM competition to see who can sit on a story for longer:

Romenesko:

Reflections of a Newsosaur | Charlotte Observer | TV Barn

Alan Mutter says the mainstream media “look foolishly out of touch by continuing to remain silent about the allegation that John Edwards fathered the girl recently born to a former campaign aide.” || Aaron Barnhart: “The Enquirer, along with my employer, McClatchy, is actually working the story, while most of the MSM claims to be keeping its hands clean.”

Kaus is still hot on the trail, of course. Yesterday, he quoted Kinsley [e.a.]:

the MSM told a story about Edwards—they told it often and loud—it was probably one of the best-known and totally accepted stories of the 2008 campaign: John loyally standing by his loyal wife as she deals with cancer. If the story isn’t true, they should run a correction. My god, look at the things they run corrections over—the spelling of people’s names, and so on. Yet they’re leaving this huge story uncorrected, and leaving their readers misinformed.

Kinsley is shocked, shocked that his formerly respected and respectable colleagues who are running the MSM show don’t bother to correct the record (which they establish to begin with, using showbiz techniques)

There’s rather a more pointed critique from across the Pond:

Indeed.

If the MSM is hiding this obvious story, what else are they hiding?

Stuff that actually matters, that’s what!

And that is why it’s important for them to report the distasteful stuff, too—in order to win our trust that they will report, as the NY Times once prided itself on doing,

Without Fear or Favor

That ethos for journalists—to report the truth—was a long time coming. Now it’s a long time gone.

Peggy Noonan hears the sound of the “silent majority”:

There’s a thing that’s out there and it’s big, and latent, and somehow always taken into account and always ignored, and political professionals always assume they understand it. It has been called many things the past 50 years, “the silent center,” “the silent majority,” “the coalition,” “the base.” The idea of it has evolved as its composition has evolved, but the fact that it’s big, and relatively silent, and somehow always latent, maintains. And watching that McCain event—vroom vroom—one got the sense it is perhaps beginning to pay attention to the campaign. I see it as the old America, and if and when it reasserts itself, the campaign will shift indeed, and in ways you can even see from 10,000 feet.

TigerHawk gives a hint of what some of the silent ones might be thinking:

Barack Obama has attacked the profitability of my industry, he has insulted my job (”corporate chieftain”), he vows to enact regulations that will make my job massively more difficult, and he promises to confiscate a much higher proportion of my income (raising my marginal tax rate by approximately 17%). Wild horses could not drive me to give money to his campaign even if I agreed with him on foreign policy (which I do not). I do not need social respectability nearly as much as I enjoy self-respect,

It’s always the silent ones you need to watch for.