“Hey, it’s only the National Enquirer,” responded all of John Edwards’s supporters:
Under the headline Obama Divorce Bombshell!, the National Enquirer claims their 21-year marriage has dissolved in a string of ugly fights that were prompted by the Mandela memorial incident and — far more outrageously — Mrs Obama’s discovery that Secret Service bodyguards had been covering up infidelity on her husband’s part…. Mrs Obama, the Enquirer claims, intends to stand by her husband until his presidency is over, at which time he will move back to Hawaii, where he grew up, and she will stay in Washington with their children.
For the moment, they are allegedly sleeping in separate bedrooms after Mr Obama’s attempt to ‘mend fences’ backfired so badly on a recent Christmas getaway to Hawaii that he returned to Washington with their two daughters, leaving his wife behind.
The National Enquirer, it must be said, quoted only anonymous insiders in support of these sensational claims, and is hardly the most reliable source of hard news.
Actually, the only thing that would surprise me here is if it turned up that the infidelity involved a woman. Obama’s body language always struck me as indicative of being even less comfortable around women than Ricky Martin’s did back when he first hit the big time.
As always, the watchdogs of democracy as all over the story, just like they were with JFK’s now-notorious philandering: “Washington’s media has ignored the story. But everyone remembers how the Enquirer famously got it right when it claimed the supposedly squeaky clean Democrat presidential contender John Edwards had fathered a love child by a former campaign worker.”