Edwards Baby Scandal Reaching Logical Conclusion

Report says John Edwards will admit fathering ex-flame's child

To the surprise of no one, a North Carolina TV station reports that John Edwards is expected to admit he is the father of that baby who looks exactly like him and with whose mother he was having sex for a while, a couple of years ago.

When Edwards confirmed last August that he'd had an affair but denied that he was the father of Rielle Hunter's child, the admittedly small portion of the population that actually cared about this story scratched their collective heads.

After all, why would he secretly visit this woman and her baby at a Beverly Hills hotel -- and then, hilariously, get chased by nosy reporters into a bathroom, where he locked himself until security personnel could come to his rescue -- if he had no idea who the baby's father was?

And yet, in an excruciating interview with ABC's Bob Woodruff, Edwards swore up and down that he was not that baby's daddy.

I would welcome participating in a paternity test. Be happy to participate in one. I know that it's not possible that this child could be mine because of the timing of events, so I know it's not possible. Happy to take a paternity test, and would love to see it happen.

If the report turns out to be true and Edwards does now make a statement that admits he fathered Hunter's baby, here is the amazing part: a man whose wrecked marriage and national humiliation should have proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you cannot get away with lying to the public about anything as juicy as an affair, yet somehow thought that in correcting one lie he could just tell what sounded like an even more incredible whopper.

Maybe he was trying to spare his wife and family more pain by only admitting to one difficult truth instead of two. Instead, he just gave the National Enquirer, a publication that has been nothing but aces on this tawdry story, more reason to keep digging.

Between the Enquirer's claim that Edwards is the father, identical allegations by the man who originally claimed paternity of Hunter's child, and a local news source saying that Edwards is about to make a public admission of paternity, it's not hard to connect the dots.

The child was pretty obviously born in Kenya to Barack Obama's grandmother.

Amateur geneticist Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.

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