John Edwards/Rielle Hunter

Rich and powerful men "cat around " because they can. John Edwards having a mistress came as no surprise to me. His getting her pregnant did, as did her going through with the pregnancy and birth: more and more evidence and a ticking political time bomb. But I thought, "Who are we to judge?" and not just because I liked his politics but because there were very stressful extenuating circumstances in the family. Mrs. Edwards was being treated for terminal cancer as her husband campaigned, with her blessing, for the presidency. There are pretty grim statistics about men leaving cancer-stricken wives, so I could see how darkness and the death-hour could drive a man to take temporary comfort from a young, willing woman.

I am certain that losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to a human being. Everyone knows that the Edwardses' teenage son was killed in a car wreck, and to me this puts them, and all who have lost a child, on a separate moral plane, another planet even, because I cannot, I will not, imagine that. Maybe that loss was behind the pregnancy, another chance at life, after one death in the family and another one coming.

For what it's worth, my judging-not stops with Ms. Hunter's recent interviews. "Johnny," as she calls her paramour, could not be honest with his wife because he knew "he would be pummeled." He can open his heart to Miss Rielle because " I won't abuse him." She goes on with the usual bimbo shtick about the proper way to treat a man. I guess Mrs. Edwards didn't know how to do that between funerals, the campaign trail, and chemo.

Rielle Hunter needs a good tight bitch-slap and Johnny should be shot. What kind of a man allows his mistress to trash his bereaved, dying wife and the mother of his children in front of the world? This is more tasteless than "South Park."

I am left to conclude that Mr. Edwards is just one more immature, entitled pretty-boy with his brain in his zipper.