Rielle Hunter/Lisa Druck has stated through an attorney that she won't participate in a paternity test, as is her right. Her decision, offered alongside pretty reasons of privacy for herself and her child, leaves a major loose end in this sorry spectacle dangling. Edwards says he's not the father; both Hunter/Druck and former campaign aide Andrew Young have said that Young is the father; but a percentage of skeptical, Maury Povich-addicted Americans will now continue to believe the worst: that Edwards continues to lie, that Edwards is the father, that surrogates are paying baby-mamamony dearly to Hunter/Druck and Young to maintain the ruse. So long as the loose end dangles, so does the dark cloud hang over Edwards's head.
I have a theory regarding Hunter/Druck's reluctance to clear up the question. And it certainly has a lot to do with privacy, but not the same rationale of privacy that she's offered through her mouthpiece.
I'm blessed with great women in my life, and we've talked about an important point during the past two days. Acknowledging and by no means discounting Edwards's culpability in the matter, we've come back to the simple concept that it takes two to tango. Just as Edwards could have drawn a line and not crossed it, so too could have Hunter/Druck. Just as Edwards is guilty of being in certain places at certain times, engaging in certain acts, so too is Hunter/Druck guilty of the same. Of course, as an unmarried woman, her crime/sin -- they're so interchangeable in our American Puritan social ethic -- isn't adultery; his is. Her crime/sin is something else, whether actively pursuing a married man, or passively making herself sexually available to him.
Nope; this isn't about blaming a victim; Hunter/Druck isn't a victim. There's been no evidence that the relationship between the two was not consensual. I won't buy an argument that she was seduced by him; nothing we've learned suggests it and some things we've learned negates that notion outright and suggests the opposite; in the one video clip of an interview she gave to "Extra" last year, she calls herself "courageous" and suggests that she approached him. (There's a fascinating item by Jonathan Darman of Newsweek that was posted online Saturday, and it bears reading. In it, he quotes Hunter/Druck's inexplicable perspective on Elizabeth Edwards, among other things.) And it's not about mitigating his responsibility; again, he's 'fessed up.
Two purported facts were reported on Nightline on Friday night: One, that Edwards declared he's had no part in any payments made to Hunter/Druck or to Young, the former campaign staffer with the wife and family of his own. And two, that Edwards's former finance chairman, Fred Baron, has declared himself to be the source of payments made to Hunter/Druck and Young, payments of unknown details under unknown arrangements, presumably from Baron's own pocket.
If these two facts are correct -- and no one has disputed them -- then I wonder why Hunter/Druck has announced so vehemently that she will not participate in a paternity test.
Edwards says he's not the father. Baron says he's made payments to Hunter/Druck on his own, without Edwards's knowledge, request or approval. Okay, then why doesn't Hunter/Druck let her daughter's cheek be swabbed and let the paternity test absolve Edwards of responsibility? Doing so would prove what Edwards said it would, presumably without affecting the private arrangement she's made with Baron.
Except -- and here's my theory -- that taking the paternity test might also absolve Andrew Young of responsibility.
Which puts matters in a wholly different light.
It's clearly not outside the realm of possibility. Here's a woman who has admittedly engaged in sexual liaisons with two men in a short timeframe; that is, Edwards confessed his part publicly, and Hunter/Druck has stated publicly that Young is the father of her child, meaning that, based on the date of her child's birth, she declares she had sex with Young perhaps within a few months of her relationship with Edwards.
(That's the public record. If Hunter/Druck or the National Enquirer states now that she didn't have sex with Young -- as the Enquirer's filth-mongering editor claimed on Friday night -- then Edwards isn't the only liar in the picture.)
And to suggest it is certainly not out of bounds. Jay McInerney, the Eighties-era author, says the main character of his 1988 book, "The Story of My Life," is based on Hunter/Druck, who was his girlfriend at the time. He calls her "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year-old." Yes, people change, and Hunter/Druck's lifestyle may have changed as well. If so, a paternity test will rule out any other potential father of her child.
But what if a paternity test proves that neither Edwards nor Young is the father of Hunter/Druck's child?
If we assume that Baron acted altruistically to protect Edwards without Edwards's knowledge, at Baron's own expense, then it makes sense that his baby-mamamony was as much hush-money as child support. (And thousands of dollars per month, rumored but not proven, plus moving expenses from New York to North Carolina to California, plus the cost of those homes, buys a hell of a lot of silence.) Likewise, if Baron's motive was to protect Edwards, then whether or not he believed in late 2007 or early 2008 that Young was the child's father, it makes sense that he took care of Young too, funding the Young family's move from North Carolina to California.
But the hush money is no longer necessary. Thanks to a hot tip to the Enquirer in July, Hunter/Druck's requested meeting with Edwards became public knowledge, and Edwards himself has told their secret. So whatever payments are being made to Hunter/Druck are no longer hush money, but pure and simple child support.
And since that's the case, then Hunter/Druck's claim to her arrangement with Baron rests on the premise that either Edwards or Young is the father of her child.
Edwards rules himself out, and a paternity test would prove his declaration. So, in order for Hunter/Druck to continue holding her claim to Baron's payments, the father must be Young. But a paternity test would prove or disprove that as well.
And if the father is neither Edwards nor Young, then Hunter/Druck is a liar of another stripe and the payment plan she negotiated with Fred Baron might well be jeopardized, depending on the secret terms of that arrangement.
If so, then this entire sorry story comes down to money, and Hunter/Druck's machinations to have it.
A simple paternity test could shift the axis of this matter from one man's lies to one woman's calculations. If Hunter/Druck is sick of the attention being given to her life choices already, as reported by her attorney and her sister, then she certainly has reason to keep her daughter as far from cheek swabs as possible, for as long as possible.