The good news: DNA testing has confirmed that John Edwards is not the father of Rielle Hunter's baby.
The bad news: The father is Bill Clinton.
Ha ha — just kidding! It's almost impossible to get pregnant by having the type of sex Bill Clinton prefers.
Also, by now, everyone has heard the news that Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter, has refused to grant a paternity test.
I wonder if Edwards knew that when he was making his chesty offer to take a paternity test? Edwards gushed to ABC's Bob Woodruff: "I would welcome participating in a paternity test, be happy to participate in one ... happy to take a paternity test and would love to see it happen."
As Edwards knows, our paternity laws were written by Gloria Steinem, so if the mother doesn't want a paternity test, it can't happen. So when Woodruff asked if he was going to actually take the paternity test soon, Edwards quickly noted, "I'm only one side of the test."
With Rielle in on the scam, Edwards could boldly demand a paternity test and then self-righteously defend his mistress's decision to refuse a paternity test. How dare you gainsay this woman's right to her privacy! Because if there's one person who's gone the extra mile to keep Hunter from becoming a public figure, it's John Edwards.
Edwards is closely following the Kennedy model of responding to charges of misconduct. First, admit only as much as can be currently proved. Second, get the other party to block any further investigation. I guess he really is "Kennedy-esque"!
For example, when the cops found DNA on the murdered body of Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Conn., the Kennedy suspect, Michael Skakel, suddenly remembered he had been up in a tree that night masturbating! (Talk about a tree-hugger.) You can see how something like that could slip your mind.
After Teddy Kennedy plunged his car off the Chappaquiddick Bridge with Mary Jo Kopechne in it and then failed to report the accident for nine hours, Kennedy admitted he had driven off the bridge — but said he was in a state of shock for the next nine hours, preventing him from reporting the submerged car with a woman trapped in it.
Indeed, Kennedy was so disoriented he was barely able to dream up a highly unlikely alibi.
The historical parallel to Edwards' pincer move with Rielle Hunter is that Kennedy ostentatiously demanded a full investigation -- while the Kopechne family stoutly objected to an autopsy of their daughter.
According to "Senatorial Privilege" by Leo Damore, the evidence suggested that Kopechne died gasping for breath in the car while Teddy Kennedy was busy trying to convince various people to say that they were driving his car.
There were lots of houses nearby with lights on, but Kennedy avoided them after he escaped from the car, so he could sneak back to his hotel undetected and begin establishing an alibi. Evidently, Kennedy is better than Edwards at sneaking into and out of hotels.
If Mary Jo had suffocated, then she had been alive for hours after the car plunged into the water. But an autopsy was required to determine whether Kopechne had drowned or suffocated.
Both the coroner and the diver who retrieved Mary Jo's body from the car believed Mary Jo had suffocated, not drowned. The diver found her body contorted in the back of the submerged car as if she had been trying to press her face into the last air pocket in the car. The coroner concluded there wasn't enough water in Mary Jo's body to indicate a drowning.
But for the first time in Massachusetts history, no autopsy was performed in a possible manslaughter case. Mary Jo was buried within about an hour of her body being pulled out of the channel under the Chappaquiddick Bridge.
Naturally, Kennedy wanted a thorough investigation — to clear his name! — but the Kopechnes absolutely refused to consent to an autopsy of their daughter. What more could he do? The Kopechnes' lawyer, Joseph Flanagan, refused to say who was paying him to fight the autopsy.
Similarly, Edwards aggressively offered to take a paternity test, knowing that the New Age hippie chick who still thinks she's going to marry him would not hurt him by allowing a paternity test. Edwards certainly is adept at reading stupid women, or as his campaign called them, "the base."
Democrats are always claiming to have the Kennedy magic, but, once again, another Kennedy-wannabe falls short. To be a real Kennedy, John, you have to kill her.
