The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Privacy Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Bad juju? The National Enquirer lived down to its tabloid expectations and gave the press a sweetheart of a bone to chew in the weeks before the political conventions. Mickey’s MSM should send them a thank-you note. Rachael is right. The Edwards’ personal privacy is a non-starter. I am always amazed at the different places various journalists draw lines over where or how they will pursue a story that invades someone’s privacy.  The truth is, we all have our own comfort zones and it varies from story to story.

As a private investigator in the '80s, my clients, leading lawyers of the day, would ask my partner and me if we would be conducting surveillance on, say, a CEO principal in a corporate takeover. “Of course not (how sleazy!),” we’d say (and think). We were professionals who did interviews, looked at public archives and wrote detailed, footnoted reports with tabbed attachments. By the mid-'90s, however, I had become an investigative producer for ABC News and soon found myself sitting in a rented windowless van with a camera crew waiting to catch a small-time Miami clinic owner involved in Medicare fraud. Another producer inside wore a hidden camera in her cap. It got worse. A couple years later, I persuaded the mother of an 11-year-old boy who had recently ambushed and killed several fourth-grade classmates to (exclusively!) share her raw feelings about the tragedy with the viewers of 20/20. She had another son in the school system and needed to remain in their small Arkansas town. I told her it was a way to tell her neighbors how sorry her family was for their loss. Melinda, I shamelessly enjoyed the byline but I still hope that mother was right to trust me.

John Edwards' humiliating dénouement and yes, Elizabeth Edwards' penchant for oversharing will make us all voyeurs to the couple's very bad summer, and I do sympathize. Their situation recalled for me the 1998 tearjerker Stepmom with Susan Sarandon, as a "terminally ill mother who has to settle on the new woman," (played by Julia Roberts) in her ex-husband's life. Ed Harris plays the movie triangle husband. After some bad blood in the beginning, the three come to an understanding about the future of Sarandon’s children.  I am able to picture a falsely cheery Sarandon portraying Elizabeth Edwards in my conflated version and can see Ed Harris as the southern senator. I can even imagine a Brockoviched  Reille Hunter but I cannot envision a frank meeting among the three (as a private eye, I never worked domestic cases). Maybe the adults in this mess will remember there are three small children affected and be able to convene such a civilized gathering. Should they pull it off, unfortunately, we can count on the National Enquirer to provide pictures.