Payback is a bitch, especially when it is over sexual matters.

It turns out that former senator John Edwards desperately called Bill Clinton in 2008 when the Rielle Hunter scandal broke and wanted some supportive words from Clinton that would help with the media firestorm.

Despite the fact that his wife has terminal cancer, Edwards had embarked on a major affair with Hunter, a videographer, who was then working on his campaign.

Now he needed Clinton to speak out.

This was the same John Edwards who, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1997 said "I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen."

As Politico magazine reports today in a profile on Clinton the Clinton people were ready for him this time

"John Edwards called, seeking a statement of support from Clinton when his affair with Rielle Hunter exploded publicly. A loyalist with a long memory, (Doug) Band sent back word, asking whether Edwards recalled his own denunciation of Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky controversy."

Touche as the French say.