If anyone wants to trash John Edwards, they can be my guest. I was supporting his candidacy all the way back to 2006. His ideals best reflected my own. I thought he was presidential material. To find out later that he had mined his own harbor was a disappointment. It was extraordinarily selfish for this man to have continued his candidacy knowing how his indiscretion would play out one day in the media. And he must have known that it was always a matter of when and not if.

But none of this was known during the campaign. He quit the campaign long before his affair with Reille Hunter was revealed by Fox News. In fact, by the time the affair had come to light, it was really not news at all. I thought it was nothing more than a vendetta, actually. And just one more sign that Fox News is nothing more than a creepy entertainment source for people too stupid to think for themselves.

But I digress.

 I find John Edwards to be a flawed and hopelessly irredeemable pol.  As matters stand, he could never win my vote. But as a man, I completely understand how he could have fallen into an affair with Reille Hunter. And I choose not to judge this behavior.

 I agree with others who have taken up this topic that we can never see clearly into a marriage. Is John Edwards a good husband? Has he met the needs of his wife? Has he done his part to provide for the welfare of his family?  When his kid hit a home run, was he in the grandstands cheering? I don't know.

Likewise, Elizabeth Edwards: did she attend to her husband's needs? In her condition, could she attend to his sexual needs at all? Again, I don't know. But I know something about men.

Just to think straight, a man needs sex. And as sympathetic as we might be towards someone in the advanced stages of cancer, it occurs to me that maybe Elizabeth Edwards was in no condition to meet her husband's need for sex. If so, then what is he supposed to do? The marriage contract, as I remember, is much clearer than the 2nd amendment; it includes the phrase "forsaking all others".  Forsaking all others can be a tall order for any man, but particularly one whose wife is sick. I, for one, choose forgive a man who strays when chronic illness prevents his wife from fulfilling her part of the marriage contract.

But what if she isn't sick? What if she is  simply unable or unwilling to perform every act her husband might like? Again, the contract is quite clear on this point. Forsaking all others. It means that if a wife doesn't give blow jobs, then the man does not get a blow job. Period. Now, I don't have the facts, but I'll go out on a limb and suggest that Hillary Clinton doesn't give blow jobs. Maybe she thinks giving blow jobs is demeaning to all women, or maybe she feels revulsion at the idea of sucking on a man's penis, or maybe her mouth is just too small and it causes her discomfort. But whatever the reason, there is pretty good circumstantial evidence ole' Bill doesn't get blow jobs at home.

So, hat is Bill supposed to do? A lot of people thought that whatever it was, it shouldn't be done with a BBW intern. Of course, everything we know now indicates he had for many years been getting his blowjob needs met by women with a need to get up close and personal with powerful men. Indeed, we may one day find out that John Edwards was getting his blowjob needs met by other able-bodied women besides Reille Hunter. I wouldn't be surprised.

What is a blow job, anyway? Why is it important? This is a hard question to answer, but I will attempt it. First, when it comes to what constitutes healthy sex, our society takes its cues from videotaped pornography. And blow jobs are a staple of pornography. Now, maybe if we all lived isolated, rural lives and never came into contact with information about sexual practices, then men would be satisfied with missionary sex and never be the wiser. But that isn't the reality we live with. In our society, a man knows that even if he is not getting a blow job, a lot of other men are. He can see all those men getting blow jobs on porn videos, and he hears about blow jobs from his friends. And he knows that in that way, those men are "luckier" (if not more virile and attractive) than he. So much so that a man who does not get serviced by his wife might be hesitant to even admit such a thing to his friends. What a shame, that a man has so little power in his marriage that he cannot even get a blow job from his wife. What kind of man is he? Maybe not much of a man at all. Such a lack could, um, eat at a man. Such a lack, along with a compulsion to remedy it, could even undermine a marriage.

Certainly, regular sex, sunny side up, is what all men hope for. But as Robin Williams has noted with his "same sex marriage" joke: in a marriage, it is always the same sex. Variety is the spice of life. If our marriage vows preclude employing contractors or involving other friendly third parties, then how do we break up the routine? Even if we save it for a rainy day, a blow job is the one thing a wife can do for her husband that he cannot legitimately get any other way. Nothing says I love you like a blow job.

Feel free to pile on to John Edwards if you want. I don't care: John Edwards is dead to me. But I wonder about what would drive his wife to invite Oprah Winfrey into her home to further publicize her husband's infidelity. But I speculate that someone who would subject her husband to additional public scrutiny concerning his failure to live up to his vows might be trying to cover up some lack of her own. Certainly, she deserves to have her say, and she is availing herself of this opportunity while she can. And maybe a man who breaks his vows deserves whatever he gets. But when does he get to have his say? (Answer: never.) I choose not to judge a man for going outside his marriage to get his sexual needs met, even if his wife is the poster child for sick and downtrodden first wives everywhere, if she cannot or will not take care of matters herself. Or if she doesn't do blow jobs.