St. Elizabeth--More Than An Enabler?

St. Elizabeth--More Than An Enabler?

St. Elizabeth--More Than An Enabler?

A mostly political weblog.
May 8 2009 6:12 AM

St. Elizabeth--More Than An Enabler?

Friday, May 8, 2009

Roger Simon criticizes St. Elizabeth Edwards (" not just his co-conspirator but also his attack dog ") as does Kathleen Parker :

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First, Elizabeth was an integral part of her husband's campaign and knew of the affair, about which both later dissembled. She may have an overburdened heart, but part of that load surely is her own ambition. Although Elizabeth claims to have asked her husband not to run after he told her of the affair, is it really credible that he did it anyway, without her consent? Or that he talked her into it against her will?

Second, Elizabeth is blaming The Other Woman-Rielle Hunter-instead of the man with whom she had a marital covenant. ...

Meanwhile, it must be recognized that Elizabeth's first priority was helping her husband get to the White House. Her formidable, brave presence on the campaign trail was John's armor. As long as she was there, his innocence was assumed. Family unity? Or conspiracy to commit public fraud ? [E.A.]

Is Parker too nasty? Or not nasty enough! Here are some questions, for example, that weren't asked in Michelle Norris' nauseating NPR interview with Elizabeth Edwards today.

1) OK, you don't really care whether Rielle Hunter's baby is John's, even though that would mean his Nightline confession was a second edifice of lies (with the affair continuing long after he said on Nightline it had stopped). But you make it seem as if John just slipped up with this one woman who approached him . Do you really think Hunter was the only woman John was unfaithful with? Hello? Are you constructing another elaborate bogus media version of your marriage after the first version collapsed? (None of our business? Er, you're the one who's coming forward to expose your private life for some reason. Nobody asked you to. Asserting that it's not our business means we have to accept your version of it. We did that once before.)  

2) Your husband's campaign conducted an elaborate coverup to hide the Hunter affair, which involved lying to the voters and lying to the press and running down Hunter's character. You don't have a reputation as a hands-off politician's wife. Did you know about the coverup and the lies? Did you approve of them? At least you acquiesced in them. Why are you a beloved figure again?

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3) You're understandably focused on your own family. You won't say Hunter's name. She's "irrelevant to your life." You don't know if Hunter's child--which you call "it"--is John's. You just know "It doesn't look like my children." You say Hunter had no right to disrupt your marriage. "Women need to have respect for other women." But during the campaign an aide and friend of  John Edwards, Andrew Young, stepped up and claimed paternity of Hunter's child. Andrew Young has a wife. How do you think she feels about this? How do her children feel about it, and what other kids say about it, when they go to school? Do you really not care if she's going through whatever she's going through because she's playing her part in a lie constructed in service to your husband's, and your, unstoppable ambition? How are you respecting her and her marriage? 

P.S.: Some evidence that Elizabeth's book tour isn't just an attempt to cling to the spotlight, but is also part of a rehabilitation project for John. At about the 5:40 mark, Elizabeth tells Norris that John knows he "deserves to be in this purgatory, in a sense, until he's done some way to prove himself." In other words, you'll absolve him in the future, and we should buy that? ...  4:09 A.M.

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Alert: There's undernews under here ! Just sayin'. Might be BS, might not be. That's why it's undernews! But it's boiling. .... 4:06 A.M.

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I've sniped at people who sniped at the famous NYT front-page hype of Dr. Judah Folkman's anti-angiogenesis drugs , so I guess I have an obligation to report hype-deflating setbacks when they occur. Derek Lowe describes two studies in which angiogenesis inhibitors seemed to increase the number of tumors. ... This looks like the sort of bad news that ultimately proves helpful (why did the tumors increase?), but I am not a doctor and do not play one on TV. Lowe has some ideas, though. ... 3:59 A.M.

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