I’ve been following a John Edwards story for awhile now; it’s a story that appears to be gaining traction in the wingnutosphere (not surprising), but now Slate’s getting into the action? Slate editor-at-large Jack Schafer begins his take on the story with with a hand wringing plea:

Q: Why the Press Is Ignoring the Edwards “Love Child” Story?

Lurid, eh? I’m not even going to rehash the claptrap that’s bubbling up in the wingnutosphere. We’ll leave that to Schafer and the wags at National Review and there heretofore venerable BusinessWeek (which seems to have been reduced to a gossip rag). But let me give Mr. Schafer a very quick answer to his question:

A: The legacy media isn’t biting on this story because the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer broke the “story”, which was provided by an “anonymous source”.

Now, let’s do a couple of things. First, a minor housekeeping item: Mr. Shafer’s been involved in a scandal or two himself. As an editor at Slate, he allowed the publishing of a totally bogus story by one of his writers. When the bogus story was discovered, Mr. Shafer wrote a mea culpa:

“The lesson I learned isn’t to refrain from asking writers for detail but to be skeptical about details that sound too good or that you had to push too hard to get the writer to uncover or that are suspicious simply because any writer worth his salt would have put them in his first draft. All that said, it’s almost impossible for an editor to beat a good liar every time out.” …

And any editor or writer worth his (or her) salt would totally discount any claptrap pushed by the celebrity chasing doodyheads at National Enquirer - but that didn’t stop Mr. Schafer from tittering about the Enquirer’s report like a plaid-skirted middle school glee club heather, huh? It certainly doesn’t seem as if he’s learned much of a lesson.

Second, if the legacy media heathers decide that they must titter and squeal about the veracity of the claims of in the Enquirer, then they are also duty bound to get to the bottom of the following tabloid stories:

Bush Booze Crisis, National Enquirer, 2/21/2005

Claw Marks, Globe Magazine, 1/8/2008:

Google Bush divorce tabloid and see what you come up with (hint: more than 175,000 hits)

And finally, just to prove I’m not being a partisan hack about this, here’s one more from the Democratic Party side of the ledger:

What about it? Why, oh, why is the legacy media ignoring these stories, which have been floating around in the tabs for years now? Inquiring minds want to know. Time to get busy, fourth estate. Jack Schafer and Mickey Kaus and Byron York are watching and will hold you accountable.