Rielle Hunter’s Wild Ride
Horse murders! Scandal! Media pioneering! Passion! Generation X literature! Politico pregnancy! The Wikipedia article on Rielle Hunter is one of the most eye-poppingly bizarre things I’ve read in recent memory. Her history has already been featured in the books of Jay McInerney, her ex-boyfriend, and Bret Easton Ellis, but that was way back when she was seventeen. Since, she’s embarked on even crazier adventures, most notably seducing onetime presidential hopeful John Edwards, who sired her illegitimate love-baby. I think a new book, or possibly a movie, is definitely in order, but I’m sure the opportunists who write all those ugly political-scandal books are way, way ahead of me on this one.
The insanity began when Rielle was a mere teen. Way back before she became the media darling she is today, she was an equestrian enthusiast. Her horse, Henry the Hawk, was her pride and joy. Unfortunately, her father allegedly had the horse murdered when he decided the insurance money that would come from that disgusting action was more important than his daughter’s love for the animal. It was said to have had a deep, far-reaching impact on her emotional life, which is basically common sense. It’d probably be kind of hard to recover from your father killing your beloved companion for some wampum, don’t you think?
That story led to many others. It was part of the focus of Jay McInerney’s 1988 novel Story of My Life. Her experience within the scandal was the barely-disguised basis for the character Alison Poole, whose narrative about the horse begins and ends the novel. Alison is basically a conniving slut who’s been badly scarred by the family scandal and subsequent shame – quite a nice way to be interpreted as a character, don’t you think? Alison Poole also crops up in Bret Easton Ellis’s novels American Psycho and Glamorama. She and her horse were included in several books about the horse-murder uproar, as well.
When the outrage and intrigue of that topic died down, Hunter began and ended both an acting career and a marriage. She appeared in a few movies, plays, and what have you, some financed by her then-husband. It’s notable that she was so interested in being seen – now she’s got the limelight for a good, long time, and I wonder whether she’s pleased that it happened in this way.
Here, we come to the main event – her scandalous involvement with asshole politico John Edwards. So many rumors have flown back and forth on this topic (Diapergate! Potenial sabotage by staff members! Gross pick-up lines from Hunter!) that it’s best to just stick to what we do know here – that she got close to him under the guise of creating campaign-trail videos to be posted on YouTube, they began an illicit affair, and she bore a child as its result, which he denied voraciously for a solid chunk of time.
What a crazy life to lead. Almost everything in it seems to be the product of dysfunction, sadly. There’s so much to this woman that people seize on immediately…she’s basically a living, breathing scandal. Hopefully, there will come a time where things calm down for her, but I’m sure it will have to come after every detail of her existence is hashed and re-hashed in trashy books and movies. Maybe that’s all she’s wanted all along.
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