Am I the only one that can see through the smoke? Sen. John Edwards has come under a lot of media scrutiny lately for having an affair with one of his staffers. Of course, he isn’t the first politician to succumb to such temptation. But he is claiming to have notified his church and his wife and to have asked both for forgiveness. Maybe he did, maybe didn’t. Either way, they are both covering for him. Is that ruse?

I frankly don’t care. I think the more important ruse going on is the supposed “objectivity” of the media. The Republican-controlled media is making an appeal to the Puritan public in order to justify shutting Edwards out of the running for vice president. As if having an affair with a staffer is enough to disqualify someone for being the second in command, but somehow shooting someone (even if by accident) and being in on the scandalous ruse of going to war on false grounds is, strangely, honorable. Of course, one could say that Dick Cheney never cheated on his wife, but that’s like saying that criminal isn’t guilty of theft when in fact he’s a murderer. Big Dick may not have cheated on his wife, but he doggone sure cheated on the truth.

Meanwhile, media conglomerates play up to the public’s fear of infidelity even as the war rages on.