My commenters are right, and I was wrong about John Edwards's affair. While I'm for a more modern understanding of marriage, Edwards can't be my poster boy. He's heedlessly selfish and vain (and also a good politician and right on the issues). The most important information we ever got about Edwards's character was in 2004, when the Swiftboaters destroyed John Kerry and John Edwards stood there and didn't go out and savage them and George Bush. That was dispositive. I was angry at him then, and should have remembered it and not supported Edwards this time around.
Edwards's two other big character moments are the $400 haircut (along with the I'm so pretty video) and the affair. A year ago Glenn Greenwald, an otherwise-brilliant lawyer and blogger, cut Ben Smith of Politico a new one for reporting the $400 haircut. Said it was the sort of trivia that clogs up our political process. But Smith was right. The $400 haircut was important info and good gossipy-important journalism.
Why was he getting that $400 haircut? My wife, who always found it weird that Edwards was running when his wife had cancer, reminded me this morning of a British movie or teleplay we saw called The Politician's Wife. You can netflix it. (Personally I'm against netflix because I feel it means you have no more sex life.) In the movie the politician's long-suffering wife, played by Juliet Stevenson, watches her husband's affair with a floozie come out (before Sexism, there used to be a great expression: there's the girl you want to bring home, and the girl you want to have fun with), and the team of advisers and the penitent husband get her to sit still for it publicly, and weather the storm, to preserve his meteor. Up through that point, the movie feels very conventional. But it has a scorpion turn: the politician's wife decides to fuck all of them over in the end and destroy his career. Very English. Gail Collins hinted at this outcome in her column the other day, praising Elizabeth Edwards for not making an appearance. Guess I'm hoping Elizabeth pulls a politician's wife.
PJhil, your earlier article did not suggest Edwards was your poster boy. What comments are you talking about? All you did is say Edwards made the biggest point about our systems's economic inequality process, and that his family context should not be dispositive of his good political concerns.
On a clearly biased, personal note, I can't stand watching Edwards talk, something about his mealy mouth–and that $400 hair…I always wondered how much time he spent everyday combing it…
How can you be against Netflix?
Here's a (standard, banal shrink) theory on why Edwards (Clinton, Spitzer too) did it (low self-esteem): link to jpost.com
cid=1218104258373&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Personally, I think they all did it because they don't believe in anything, ultimately, so why not take advantage of immediate political-social power they've earned?
Their number is legion, and always has been.
I can't stand watching Edwards talk"
Didn't he turn into an Iraq war critic (execution? critic) the moment he decided to run for president(2008)? If so, how opportunist are his other suggestions?
Concerning the boy meet girl scenario: They seem to deserve each other. cheap.
John Edwards was by far the most compelling candidate this season for message.
I wish that he hadn't run, and instead encouraged and supported others raising similar questions and issues.
It is dishonest to know that you are the wrong messenger, and out of some ego for being the only possible one, continue on anyway.
On Netflix. There are many bad things about Netflix. One is that they are owned by a libertarian, an opponent of regulation, an opponent of taxation, an opponent of successful public institutions, and a contributor to rightwing thinktanks.
The model is ingenious (I "invented" it and applied it to spoken word audio tapes in 1994). It can be used for anything that is librariable: bicycles, tools, media, canoes, cars, RV's.
They are ambitious prospective abusers of the new commons, bandwidth, with their intention to dominate on demand copyrighted video services via the web.
The internet will crawl in five years, and netflix will consume a bunch of that.
boy meets girl.
The ladies ultimate weapon: pregnancy. No scenario for us romantics. much too cheap and boring…
I found myself impressed with Edwards' message this time around, and let myself be swayed by my father's early support of him. Dad knew Edwards from North Carolina days. But I didn't really like how he looked, and I find him hard to listen to. Then again, I find most politicians hard to listen to. I supported Edwards until he dropped out, then switched to Obama.
Last week I was in the "give Edwards a break, don't be so Puritanical" camp. I've got cancer. I can imagine being tolerant of a husband straying after 30 years of marriage and four children.
But on more reflection the whole picture does puzzle me. Elizabeth must have her own enormous ambitions if she pushed him so hard to run despite her illness. The timeline looks like she had found out about the affair already, before her recurrence. Lord, what a perfect storm of tragedy.
My recurrence was discovered almost exactly a year after my father's sudden rapid death from cancer, which had played out as Israeli bombs fell on his home town, his worst nightmare. I was in emotional despair after his death, really gave up hope for peace and serenity in this world. I do blame the recurrence on the emotional storms of July-September '06. We shall never know how Elizabeth's personal life might have affected her own health.
Many mainstream doctors hate to draw lines between such emotional storms and onset of cancer. I find the storyline convincing however, and I wonder about Elizabeth's internal demons and torments. Again, we shall never know; this is all speculation.
I think the accusation of shallow, egotistical and vain is probably just in John Edward's case. However this storm may burn off the crud of his ego and deepen him as a human being. I hope he faces the fire and lets it consume him… because peace and joy await him on the other side of the turmoil.
I'm glad he's not in line to be our next President.
PS, I loved and respected my father who had many, many wonderful qualities. However, he was perfectly lousy at picking candidates. Nobody he ever supported in his forty years of Democratic party activism ever became so much as the nominee, much less President. If my father liked a guy, he was doomed. Early this year my Lebanese-American cousin was trying to get my opinion of the Democratic candidates, and I just said – don't ask me, I am totally out of touch with what the average American voter wants. Remember Dad? Remember all the guys he liked for President? John Glenn???
I love you Dad and I know you're laughing with me in heaven…
"On Netflix. There are many bad things about Netflix. One is that they are owned by a libertarian, an opponent of regulation, an opponent of taxation, an opponent of successful public institutions, and a contributor to rightwing thinktanks."
Well, you named four admirable things about Netflix. I agree with you on the last one though–"contributor to rightwing thinktanks," but not, I suspect, for the same reasons. You no doubt don't like rightwing anything. I don't like them because they support neocon fanatics who want to bomb Iran.
Yeah, Liela, what do you say to someone who asks you, " What about AIPAC? Do you think that's a good umbrella org, with the best wishes for all of us? I'm just an ordinary goy American with many familly members who have served in the US Army & Mariens…"
Oops, sorry: Liela=Leila
I did go to your home page and empathised. Sorry for my typos.