• But Would You Want the Byline?

  Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2008 7:07 PM | By Melinda Henneberger
  
  
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  OK, Rachael, so how about the selfish reason most of us wouldn't want to be that particular messenger? Unless I trip over a presidential candidate in the Bois de Boulogne some night - unlikely, as I live in Maryland - I am just not that eager to write up whose-what-is-going-where; that sort of thing might give readers a little wahoo, she said haughtily, but they will not respect you in the morning. Or on any subsequent morning. This is an especially tragic admission, I know, coming from your adultery, I mean, marriage correspondent. (While I'm confessing, I also got thrown out of Arthur Ashe's apartment building on purpose the day the world found out he had AIDS, so as to avoid having to ask him, "So, sir, plan on dying soon?' And doesn't every reporter have at least one story like that, about hiding behind the potted plant when they were supposed to be harrassing people?) Nobody who could also make a living doing data entry wants to be the one to break a story like this. I mean really, I try to put myself in the gum-shoes of the guy who says he chased John Edwards into a bathroom stall, and is there any chance in heaven he is thinking ah, now this is the reason I got into the biz; why can't every day be like this? No, he is going home, drinking himself to sleep as it's getting light outside, and dreaming about the various ways God will pay him back.  Bad juju, I tell you.
  Filed under: John Edwards, media coverage, adultery, journalism, National Enquirer, Edwards love child
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