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John Edwards Creates Two Americas: One for legit kids. One for illegit kids.

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  August 7th, 2008 at 06:08 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Streiff noted last night the media is just now paying attention to John Edwards and his baby’s mama.

But here’s the thing. Ann Coulter hits the nail on the head.

Hey, what sort of “elected official” was Ted Haggard again? He was the Christian minister no one outside of his own parish had ever heard of until he was caught in a gay sex scandal last year. Then he suddenly became the Pope of the Protestants.

When the Ted Haggard story broke, here is what I wrote.

Apparently some preacher in Colorado has been fornicating with some gay prostitute and doing crystal meth. At least that is what the media tells me.

For some reason, the media seems to think that all Evangelicals are led by someone and apparently this guy is suppose to be our leader. I don’t know who the heck he is. Never heard of him until today.

I guess in the media world this is par for the course. After all, they talk about “Black Leaders” and “Hispanic Leaders” and “Catholic Leaders,” so I guess we evangelicals are suppose to have one too.

Well, the leader of my evangelical movement is named Jesus Christ. I have no idea who this Ted guy is or if what the media claims is true is actually true.

After I wrote that post, I received several emails from lefty bloggers insinuating that I knew who Haggard was, was lying about not knowing him, and was trying to avoid talking about him lest it hurt my cause.

Again though, I really had never heard of this guy before. In fact, in my highly evangelical, Christian family of regular church goers, none of us knew who this Haggard fellow was.

Nonetheless, the media gave it front page treatment and nightly news coverage.

The former vice presidential nominee of the Democratic party, Presidential candidate this year, popular populist figure of the Democratic Party cheats on his wife who has cancer, gets some lady pregnant, sneaks around in the night to visit his baby’s mama, and the media acts like he’s a nobody not worth covering.

The double standard is impressive.

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  • streetwise

    Adultery by Dem presidential candidate and potential VP pick who continually used his family as a campaign prop, that’s NOT news.

    Or to use a phrase of the prior decade, that’s just about sex, unlike the hypocricy of the whoring Republicans.

  • Dan_McLaughlin

    in the prior VP nominee cheating on his party.

  • birdmojo

    And here, among folks who go to New Life, it was considered a big deal that their pastor was one of the pastors who Bush asked for advice on stuff. Heck, he was the President of the National Association of Evangelicals (No, the OTHER NAE).

    As I recall, there was this bill for something or other that Bush invited Haggard to the White House for… you know, have a picture taken standing next to the desk as Bush signs a bill. One of those kinda things.

    After the various incidents, a lot of people started pointing out to me that Haggard weren’t no big deal.

    Which was odd… but, then again, I live in Colorado Springs so I probably heard his name every week from various friends and acquaintances. But a couple of these friends and acquaintances were proud to point out to me that their pastor was one who gave Bush advice about stuff.

    But, then again, they probably only pointed those things out to me to get me to start yelling about the war on drugs and the 10th Amendment and whatnot.

  • bk

    Are the lefties saying that if Edwards “addresses this” (how?) then he should get some prime speaking spot at the Dem convention? I can’t envision any circumstances under they’d let him near the podium, much as they like to hear white male multimillionaires with huge carbon footprints talk about how he and the other Dems are the only ones who look out for poor minorities and women and the environment.

  • spainishirish

    The left-wing MSM’s expected bias has now veered into intentional spiking of stories and deliberate distortion. This is a new low even for that crew. I noticed the Enquirer editor has vowed to publish an even larger related scandal during the Democratic convention. This is the other sid to the MSM’s blatant partisanship–it often backfires on their golden boys.

    This also raises secondary questions about what the MSM has spiked regarding Obama. For exmample, I don’t know what if anyting Larry Johnson and the other disgruntled Clinton supporters have regarding the Obama birth certificate, but they have intimated it is something known to the MSM and spiked. Therefore, they intend to lob a stink bomb of their own during the Denver convention.

    If there is a there there, it would have been defused long before now if the media had done its job. As it is, there is at least a threat of several scandals surfacing during the conventin.

  • NightTwister

    …and had never heard of him until the story broke.

    The standard liberal response is that they don’t care about these things and they’re private matters. Because social conservatives speak out against such behavior, it’s proper to talk about it when they misstep (to show their hypocrisy).

  • aaronbg

    For some reason they think Christians claim infallibility even though to be a Christian you must accept your own failed nature.

    Christians rely on the strength of God to keep us upright and moral, when we fall it is because we rely on ourselves (our failed nature) instead of the strength of God.

    To a liberal this is unreasonable because the idea of a living God, who participates in our lives, is nothing more than mythology and superstition.

    It is sad really, but my prayers are with them.

  • liberalrepublican

    There is a big difference – it’s that Evangelicals took on stopping Gay Marriage as one of their biggest issues and top priorities.

    Ted Haggard was a MAJOR player in the movement.

    If Edwards had made stopping illegitimate children a MAJOR issue and was preaching about how extramarital affairs were destroying America, then it would be the same thing.

    Blatant hypocrisy is going to be a bigger story than human failings every time and it has nothing to do with media bias.

  • streiff

    the media has used as an excuse for not covering Edwards the notion that he’s no longer a “public person.”

    Erick’s point, going from Ann Coulter’s article which it would seem you didn’t read, is that Ted Haggard was definitely not a public person and that didn’t stop media scrutiny.

    Erick’s larger point is that there is no “Evangelical” polity that has cabal of leaders. Haggard was the pastor of his church and an officer in what essentially is a trade organization. He was never a religious leader because Evangelicals really don’t have such a thing.

  • BrianH

    and I had never heard of the guy until this scandal broke. Even then I had more of a “too bad for that guy and his church” reaction. It’s a shame that he didn’t live up to the things he represented. Still this guy was a big fish in a little pond.

    The national media coverage of the guy was a bit excessive given his local stature.

  • Rod_Patrick

    Some Americans believe that in the 21st Century, people are “advanced” and “progressive” in their thinking and behavior. To some, being a conservative is a joke.

    Democrats don’t give much credence on their politicians’ sexual behavior and preference. To some, sticking to one partner doesn’t make any sense. Participating in sexual orgy to a few democrats is not even a taboo, as long as he/she practices safe sex and is uncommitted. Most LBGT are Democrats, since the party principles are more accepting to their preference. “Open Relationship” is also acceptable to some of them. The Result: MSM doesn’t give much weight on this issue against the Democrats. In the case of Edwards, no one cannot really tell the inside story between him and his wife. That’s the main problem when an outsider tackles the other person’s personal and moral issue [eg. John Edwards'].

    Moral virtue is more akin to Republicans/Conservatives. Many of us are Christian conservative and we follow certain traditions with respect to sexual behavior. Thus, “morally right lifestyle” is assumed to be a requirement to a Republican/Conservative politician. It’s a general perception by many Americans and we can hardly do anything about it.

    Given such “de facto” requirement attached to republicans/conservatives, we cannot fault the MSM if it has become more unforgiving to republican and conservative politicians who have been found to be not meeting such “unusual” expectation.

    I cannot say that “I feel sorry” for Ted Haggard. He knew who he was, what he was saying and what he was representing. When MSM uncovered his deepest secret, it only means one thing: he, to some extent, was a hypocrite.

    Haggard’s experience must be a lesson to all the Republicans and conservatives seeking office:

    1. Given the difference in principles between two parties, double standard in moral aptitude really exists whether we like it or not.

    2. There are always high moral expectations for Republican/Conservative leaders, with or without the MSM hype.

    3. Better be prepared for some personal sacrifices if you want to become a truly good Republican/Conservative politician. Otherwise, you will pay a price.

  • spainishirish

    “strengthening families” and other such platitudes. If you fail to see how fathering illegitimate children would tend not to strengthen families, and thereby be hypocrisy of the highest order, you have made a decision based more on ideology than reason.

    To deny this is media bias doesn’t do the MSM proper service, either. This is known in the trade as “spiking,” where a news story runs so counter to the editorial stance that is has to be hidden. This is on display here, in all its full glory.

  • birdmojo

    For my part, I went to a handful of weddings there and was constantly amazed at the number of friends I had who went there.

    We’d have a poker night and two different friends of mine who’d never met before would show up and they’d start talking about how they saw each other there at New Life but never met before.

    Drove me nuts.

  • birdmojo

    I should also point out that the New Life thing was much more an issue from 2001ish-2002ish on (for me, anyway).

    Back in 1995, everyone was still talking about Focus moving in town and Mary Lou Makepeace was talking about how the highway sign saying “Focus on the Family Next Right” was NOT, in fact, a violation of “separation of church and state”.

    I miss Bob Issac.

  • aaronbg

    just wondering?

  • Achance

    is an exercise in lawyerly evasion, though. He never actually says the HE thinks faithfulness as expressed by sexual exclusivity is important or that he practices it. He says its important that you love your spouse and will stay with them; you, or at least some people, can do both of those and still not be sexually exclusive with them.

    If you do enough advocacy, avoiding absolute statements just becomes second nature; you always leave yourself an out or another argument, but I’m betting he’d given some thought to the answer to that question.

  • JTaylor

    he was just smoking meth and having sex with him…. he wasn’t seeking to marry the guy.

    Second, most liberals don’t understand the way the devil works. The devil attacks those that can do the most damage to Christianity. So what if the devil pulls into sin someone from the anything goes liberal progressive crwo. Where is the challenge in that. Now when the devil trips into sin someone who is suppose to be a leader in the Christian community — well that is a real win for the devil. This is why Christians need to walk with Jesus every step — so he can catch us before we fall. (Or pick us up afterwards.)

    Yes, it is sad when someone stumbles — but only those who are trying to walk the walk know the daily difficulty of living in Christ and not the world. The problem is that those who ridicule the fallen are almost always down in the mud and have no understanding of the difficulty of staying on that God’s path.

  • liberalrepublican

    You stated my point much better than me.

    It’s a double edge sword – if a party tries to win votes and power on the basis of moral values, it will suffer more when it’s morals lapse.

  • aaronbg

    …Haggard is not a politician whereas Edwards is. Haggard was not elected to a public trust position within the gov’t and therefore cannot be held up as a standard for the Republican party. To do so is to obfuscate the actual issue of a man who was elected to a public trust position, and then applied for the top spot in our gov’t.

    Apples and oranges guys.

  • liberalrepublican

    Look it up.

  • aaronbg

    …Haggard is not a politician whereas Edwards is. Haggard was not elected to a public trust position within the gov’t and therefore cannot be held up as a standard for the Republican party. To do so is to obfuscate the actual issue of a man who was elected to a public trust position, and then applied for the top spot in our gov’t.

    Apples and oranges guys.

  • aaronbg

    …I never said they weren’t Christian, what I said is that they don’t understand Christianity. Don’t come to me and assert a claim and then tell me to look it up…it’s your claim…you look it up.

  • streiff

    that doesn’t mean that they actually are.

  • aaronbg

    then say they are gonna vote for Obama….well you are no longer a Republican…at least that’s how I see it.

    And I am not referring to anyone specific so don’t jump the gun.

  • CrabCakes
  • liberalrepublican

    If he actively campaigned for

  • birdmojo

    I was saying that the former mayor had such discussions with the various folks around town.

    About 75% of Colorado Springs loved loved loved Focus on the Family in 1995. About 25% of Colorado Springs hated hated hated it.

    That 25% of Colorado Springs did stuff like ask the former mayor “isn’t that highway sign a violation of the Constitution?”

    I saw her deal with that question on two separate occasions (one of which was during a class I was taking at UCCS when she came in to speak to us).

  • aaronbg

    n/t

  • birdmojo

    Dude, I’m a libertarian nut.

    I know, for a fact, that “separation of church and state” does not appear in the US Constitution.

    It is also my opinion that a highway sign is not, in fact, respecting an establishment of religion. It’s not even freaking close.

    I have a fairly large problem with people who want to shut down debate by appealing to the First Amendment. I shouldn’t have assumed that everyone who read my stuff would know that. Sorry.

  • aaronbg

    The only qualification for being a Christian is the acceptance of Jesus as your savior. A Christian can be a Christian while still not fully understanding the implications of their faith. That is all I was saying.

  • aaronbg

    n/t

  • streiff

    that claiming oneself to be something doesn’t make it so. Contrary to popular belief, Christianity — at least as it has been understood for all but the last 50 or so years — is a tad bit more complicated than self avowal.

  • CrabCakes

    Christians rely on the strength of God to keep us upright and moral, when we fall it is because we rely on ourselves (our failed nature) instead of the strength of God.

    To a liberal this is unreasonable because the idea of a living God, who participates in our lives, is nothing more than mythology and superstition.

    or even worse, streiff’s comment to which I was immediately replying:

    people can call themselves most anything that doesn’t mean they actually are.

    So either I’m lying and I’m not actually a Christian (either deluded or lying) or I’m not actually a liberal (once again deluded or lying).

    Or maybe I’m neither deluded nor lying and you misunderstand liberalism and/or Christianity and/or either of their necessary implications.

    Either way, this is the kind of conversation that usually ends with both sides yelling words like “heretic,” “fundamentalist,” and “papist” at one another.

  • streiff

    you want, just so long as you keep in mind that no one here said anything even vaguely approaching the conclusions you’ve drawn.

  • Darin_H

    have never heard of this guy. I haven’t lived there since 1999, but no one I know had heard of this guy either. Though I’m from the Longmont area and lived in FC for a while too, so not really near the Springs.

  • CrabCakes

    (No, it’s not about what you think it’s about. I swear; you and your dirty minds!)

    My college roommate freshman year was from Ted Haggard’s church, and he worshiped the guy. He was convinced that God wanted him to spend his time out on the hill behind the dorm singing praise and worship music all evening rather than studying. He said God would give him the answers to the exam.

    I got a new roommate second semester, when first-semester roommate failed out; he was much more normal.

  • birdmojo

    But if you’ve driven to Denver you’ve seen the campus off there on your left.

    New Life’s big appeal is the whole “we’ve got a group for you!” thing. They have big church meetings on Sunday, but there are a million little meetings every other night of the week, some on the campus, most off… fellowships, Bible Studies, stuff for singles, MOPS, divorcees, marrieds without children, marrieds with toddlers, marrieds with tweens, marrieds with teens.

    It wouldn’t surprise me to find that they have D&D nights there (pardon me, “Dragonraid”).

    Maybe it’s just because my mom lives on the North side of town… but, dude, I’m an atheist and half of my co-workers at HP witnessed to me and asked me to go to one of the many (MANY) groups there.

    I don’t know how you can live in Colorado Springs and interact regularly with folks and not have one of them invite you to their married couples without children Bible Study on Tuesdays at Will’s place.

    Do I just work with more evangelicals than anyone else?

  • aaronbg

    the Christian faith is the belief that Jesus is the son of God and through him we are saved. If you believe this you are a Christian. Beyond that it is a matter of what part of your spiritual walk you are in, or what your understanding of your faith is.

    I am not saying you are or are not a Christian. I am saying that the far left liberal mindset has a hard time believing in a living God which actively participates in our lives. Some understand better than others.

  • BrianH

    The “North” end of town was where I lived then. Now it’s closer to the center. And when I worked at Digital (now HP) there, not one person witnessed to me. But maybe you’re in a different part of the company.

  • birdmojo

    When I worked at HP, it was in 1900 GoG campus at the time of the HP/Agilent split (BUILDING C, REPRESENT!!!) and I worked in Tools, Unix, Oracle, all that stuff in the years that followed for Agilent (and, later, supporting HP).

    I worked a lot of swings and a lot of mids (hey, it was the 90′s, I was in IT).

    When it’s 8PM, again, and you’ve finished your health checks and everything is Green except for the two heart boxes but those are known issues… well, you start discussing the meaning of life, the universe, and all sorts of things.

  • CrabCakes

    I think what you mean when you say “liberal” is “secular humanist,” though.

    “Liberal/Conservative” refers to a set of beliefs about which areas the government should and should not intrude into our lives.

    “Left/Right” refers to a preference for a particular set of economic policies.

    I don’t have a particular problem when folks use Liberal and Leftist interchangeably, since outside Libertarian and Populist circles, Liberals are Leftists in America.

    It irks me to no end when either “Liberal” or “Leftist” gets used interchangeably with “secular humanist.” There are plenty of secular humanists in both parties, but there are more Christians than secular humanists in either.

  • aaronbg

    n/t

  • aaronbg

    when I say liberal left I indeed mean what you said it means, I am not limiting it to secular humanist. My opinion is that many on that side of the aisle have a misunderstanding about what grace is and how man is fallible despite their spiritual salvation. Does this make them any less of a Christian? No. It just means that in their walk they have not yet come to that realization or understanding, if you will.

  • nivlem

    What a shame we are even having this
    conversation. If one claims to be a Christian, the earliest teaching is the
    ten commandments. Edwards broke one of
    these commandments. It is every
    Christians’s responsiblity to determine
    whether/not they want this person in a
    leadership position it if that individual cannot even abide by this one commandment. Its houldn’t matter what the individual has said or if he is a Democrat/Republican.

    The Democrats have been allowed to frame
    this debate, successfully, due to the
    Republican’s support. Republicans
    generally “take down” the individual that
    behave in this manner. To them, it really is right or wrong due to their
    beliefs and they, generally, hold their
    representatives to this standard.

    The Democrats, however, do not have a
    standard they hold themselves to unless it is an election year, and then they hold themselves up as Christians and family-first individuals. It truly is the height of hypocrisy.

    Now we are discussing if John Edwards is
    a private individual or not to determine
    if our media should/should not report on it. John Edwards is private when HE wants to be, and when he and his loud mounth wife don’t want to be we will have
    to listen to their drivel again. This
    couple has been unbelievably brazen. They asked to be in the public, brought
    their private lives with the loss of their son and Elizbeth’s cancer into OUR
    living rooms, and now want to claim
    they are private individuals. Another
    unbelievable disussion we have to have due to the MSM not doing their job.

    The sooner this all comes out, and John
    and Elizebeth are run off the public screen, and their shallow, plastic persona is brought to light, the better the public will be. This couple has, and
    continues to disgust me.

    As everyone at RedState says “CleanUp”. Only this time, it’s “Cleanup” in North Carolina.

  • BrianH

    on Rockrimmon. I’m not IT, but customer support and I can understand killing the dead times between calls with philosophical discussion. Things have changed so much since those days… and yet, not so much.

  • aaronbg

    n/t

  • JKH1232

    The only part of the Left, writ large, that requires atheism is dogmatic Marxism. The original Progressives were decidedly Christian, and even in my own denomination there’s a spread from right to left in the various churches I’ve attended.

    There is some truth that some members of the left evangelize secular humanism very loudly. But, out of the number of reasonably devout folks I’ve been around, it’s an even split on politics.

  • birdmojo

    So… no.

    I’ve still got a handful of friends who still work their in accounting, however. (A couple of third tier guys on the print team as well but ever since Lionel Rivera decided to play chicken with a 9-figure company, they’ve been looking for employment elsewhere.

    Once again: I miss Bob Isaac.

  • CrabCakes

    Plenty of folks in general fail to understand “what grace is and how man is fallible despite their spiritual salvation.” I could point to the judgmental attitudes prevalent in many of the conservative churches in my hometown toward divorcees and pregnant teens. I think I can safely say that if there are Democrats in those pews, they’re few, far between, and sure as heck don’t tell the pastor about it.

    Confusing the issue by injecting political inclinations into the mix is unhelpful, in my ever so humble opinion.

  • BrianH

    In the corner. Best view in the whole building.

  • birdmojo

    I worked Cellular/Blackberry and, later, Print Support (er, “output management”).

    I used to hang out with Steve and them in the smoker’s hutch a handful of times a day.

  • streiff

    is actually very Christian. I mean, Christ himself forbade divorce. His rules for divorcees are also pretty clear (at the same link).

    This gets back to what I was referring to. Christianity actually has…get ready…rules.

  • aaronbg

    but the original post was about the hypocrisy of holding Christians to a higher standard by not understanding that Christians are fallible humans just like everyone else and that in the case of Haggard he fail due to not relying on the strength of God..instead he relied on his failed human nature.

    My last post on this.

  • CrabCakes

    I was referring to Aaron’s claim that “many on that side of the aisle have a misunderstanding about what grace is and how man is fallible despite their spiritual salvation,” which was an explanation of this comment:

    Liberals just don’t understand Christianity…For some reason they think Christians claim infallibility even though to be a Christian you must accept your own failed nature.

    This issue being discussed here is the “liberal” (Aaron’s term) misunderstanding of Christianity that demands that people (Christian’s in particular) be perfect.

    The issue you are discussing is the moral laxity of many Christians today in contradistinction to the historic teachings of Christ and the Church.

    To Aaron’s comment that “liberals” misunderstand grace and human frailty, I pointed out that that misunderstanding is hardly limited to “liberals.”

    To your assertion that the many Christians disregard the “rules.” I would agree. Of course, as an Episcopalian, I would point out that many of the more “conservative” Protestant denominations today are the most prone to rebel against traditional hierarchies and traditions. I like hierarchies and traditions quite a great deal (unless your name happens to be Henry VIII, of course…)

  • aaronbg

    n/t

  • birdmojo

    (I don’t want to use his last name because, hey, I don’t have his permission.)

    But he was the big Harley-Davidson-looking guy. Long hair, sunglasses, looks like he would cut ya if you ticked him off, heart of gold. Smoked like a dang chimney.

  • NightTwister

    And our half of the campus is Avago now.

  • Rod_Patrick

    Haggard is the Conservative leader even though he is not an elected leader. His position in the Church is enough for him to undergo strict criticism. Whether you like it or not, a conservative religious leader has greater moral responsibility as compared to elected politicians.

    We have already seen so many churches and Christian communities which have been destroyed by the failure of their leaders. In fact, this is the main argument of the left why they call the “right wing” conservative as “hypocrite”. The same is true in the case of conservative politicians.

    Being a conservative is a life-long commitment requiring some personal sacrifices. History tells us that when a conservative leader failed, returning from the good graces of the public would be too difficult. Is it bad? I don’t think so. That’s the essence of being a conservative. Please also note that History also tells us that the rewards for staying in the course are much much greater than the attendant sacrifices.

    Thus, I extend the above “lessons” not just to ordinary politicians professing to be conservative but also to all conservative religious leaders.