The crime, it has been said, is never as bad as the cover up that happens after the crime. John Edwards is truly learning what that means.

In a recent article in the New York Times, there was confirmation of what many people suspected; that John Edwards not only had an affair with Rielle Hunter but is the father of her child. It has been a little over a year, July of 2008, when he went on Nightline to admit the affair to Hunter. This was after the National Enquirer had printed stories about the affair that was ignored by the press initially. It was only when photos of Edwards coming out of a hotel that Hunter was staying in did he admit to the affair. Now, up to this point he had denied having an affair. He claimed it was sleazy journalism because it came from the Enquirer. Many people believed him because, frankly, no one thought someone would be so stupid as to deny something that could be easily checked. Furthermore, it was easier to believe the Enquirer as being a sleazy paper digging up a false story rather than a former Senator with a wife dying of cancer would have an affair while running for President. Logic said it was just too risky to be true.

We tend to give people in high positions benefit of the doubt more than regular folks. Check out a court show in the afternoon. The stock and trade of those shows is having some less than sophisticated person try to speak their case and the judge shouting them down pointing out how many children they have, how they haven’t finished school and how they can’t correct the mistakes they made. They are chewed out all days to Sunday. By the end of the segment they are painted as a loser with no redeeming qualities.

Just last week we had Kanye West and Serena Williams doing mea culpa on any venue they could get on, trying to explain the bad behavior they exhibited. In Kanye West’s case, I heard some commentators try to explain away his bad behavior due to the recent death of his mother, confidently forgetting photos that were taken of the rap star carrying a bottle of alcohol with him. He might have been mourning his mother, but the alcohol didn’t help. Couple that with antics he has done in the past and it would seem people should shun him. While people are willing to say he’s a jerk, he has been given a pass to some extent.

One thing Americans will do is forgive you as long as you are open and up front with things at the beginning. Edwards, unfortunately, is thinking like a politician. He figures by hiding the story he can control it and hopefully bury it. He also made the big mistake of denying something that is easily provable. On the interview on Nightline he admitted the affair but emphatically denied the claim that the child was his. Of course months before he emphatically claimed there was no affair. So instead of a story being forgotten now, it’s coming up again, digging up all the denials and making Edwards look even more pathetic.

What is to depressing to think about is his wife. Here’s a woman dying of cancer who had to sit by and watch him talk about the affair. While I don’t think things were the same between them they probably reached a medium both could live with. They had done the Oprah talk and she seems to have gone her own way and he was doing his in the background. Now the story will explode again with the daughter, something he claimed never occurred. The New York Times article, which touched on something that is just to cold to imagine, said that Edwards, when Hunter was concerned about the cover up, assured her that when his wife died he would marry her with a lavish wedding, even promising to have the Dave Matthews Band play at the wedding. His wife isn’t even dead and he’s planning a wedding with his mistress. How cold is that?