Thursday, July 24, 2008 - Posts
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Melinda, I don't mean to sound calloused and insensitive on top of my stated willingness to invade personal privacy, but, notwithstanding how plucky and determined she is, Elizabeth Edwards has inoperable metastasized cancer. Cancer grows, that's its job (though, to be sure, effective treatment can slow it way down and seems to be doing so for Edwards). Of course, one hopes for a miraculous survivor story, but a practical conversation about the other woman who might someday be raising her children is, though unimaginably difficult, not inappropriate.
I had breast cancer in 1995 and share Melinda's post-surgical hopefulness. If I'd had a less positive outlook, however, I would certainly have wanted my husband to remarry someone who could be a mother to my then-minor child. (I would, however, expect him to sequence the two events more traditionally than John Edwards has.) Now that Edwards must, as Emily Y. points out, inevitably exit political life, the next order of business should be the welfare of all his young children.
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I'm with Emily B that you can feel terrible for Elizabeth Edwards and still recognize the John Edwards' love child story is news. It's especially news since Edwards has always made biography his strongest selling point. I see Edwards as a sanctimonious phony with no public policy accomplishments, and no record of the kind of executive skill it takes to head a Cabinet department. So if the National Enquirer story has killed his chances of having a high post in an Obama administration, then thank you, National Enquirer.
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About a minute into overreacting to Bonnie's completely hypothetical scenario—hello, Elizabeth Edwards is still very much alive!—I see that I may be identifying with her a little too closely, as an oversharing cancer survivor and all. (Plus, my husband has a nice head of hair! OK, I made that part up. Good thing he never reads this blog.) Still, I can't bear to see her written off when there's always the chance of an alternate ending.
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OK, Melinda and Hanna, I wouldn't want to have the job of stalking John Edwards either. But so what? If it's true, the National Enquirer story about him and Rielle Hunter is news, absolutely clearly and by any definition I can think of. And if I'd stumbled on that story—yes I realize that's a fairly ridiculous hypothetical, since the prize goes to the digger, but just imagine for a sec—I'd surely have published it. And I don't really care if the hypocrisy parallel with Larry Craig is exact or not, or how far down the VP list Edwards was when the story broke. He is a major Democratic politician. He could run for election again. He could be in an Obama Cabinet. The press has been poring over sex scandals involving Republicans all year—not just Craig but also David Vitter and the D.C. Madam and whoever else I'm forgetting. I am sorry for Elizabeth Edwards, and their kids, and for the disillusionment of Edwards fans everywhere. But Rachael is right. His middle-of-the-night hotel skulking is fair game. (Plus the part of the story involving his friend Andrew Young is so odd that it's begging to be explained.) Sure, maybe Edwards would still make a great labor secretary or head of HHS, whether or not he's had an affair, etc. And if he loses out on that post because of this, that may be too bad. But tough patooties. He should have thought about that before he started it (if, if, if it's true). The purported hubris is staggering, and we're better off knowing about it.
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Bad juju? The National Enquirer lived down to its tabloid expectations and gave the press a sweetheart of a bone to chew in the weeks before the political conventions. Mickey’s MSM should send them a thank-you note. Rachael is right. The Edwards’ personal privacy is a non-starter. I am always amazed at the different places various journalists draw lines over where or how they will pursue a story that invades someone’s privacy. The truth is, we all have our own comfort zones and it varies from story to story.
As a private investigator in the '80s, my clients, leading lawyers of the day, would ask my partner and me if we would be conducting surveillance on, say, a CEO principal in a corporate takeover. “Of course not (how sleazy!),” we’d say (and think). We were professionals who did interviews, looked at public archives and wrote detailed, footnoted reports with tabbed attachments. By the mid-'90s, however, I had become an investigative producer for ABC News and soon found myself sitting in a rented windowless van with a camera crew waiting to catch a small-time Miami clinic owner involved in Medicare fraud. Another producer inside wore a hidden camera in her cap. It got worse. A couple years later, I persuaded the mother of an 11-year-old boy who had recently ambushed and killed several fourth-grade classmates to (exclusively!) share her raw feelings about the tragedy with the viewers of 20/20. She had another son in the school system and needed to remain in their small Arkansas town. I told her it was a way to tell her neighbors how sorry her family was for their loss. Melinda, I shamelessly enjoyed the byline but I still hope that mother was right to trust me.
John Edwards' humiliating dénouement and yes, Elizabeth Edwards' penchant for oversharing will make us all voyeurs to the couple's very bad summer, and I do sympathize. Their situation recalled for me the 1998 tearjerker Stepmom with Susan Sarandon, as a "terminally ill mother who has to settle on the new woman," (played by Julia Roberts) in her ex-husband's life. Ed Harris plays the movie triangle husband. After some bad blood in the beginning, the three come to an understanding about the future of Sarandon’s children. I am able to picture a falsely cheery Sarandon portraying Elizabeth Edwards in my conflated version and can see Ed Harris as the southern senator. I can even imagine a Brockoviched Reille Hunter but I cannot envision a frank meeting among the three (as a private eye, I never worked domestic cases). Maybe the adults in this mess will remember there are three small children affected and be able to convene such a civilized gathering. Should they pull it off, unfortunately, we can count on the National Enquirer to provide pictures.
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Anyway, Hanna, we agree that the Edwards family should be left alone. (And post-Alberto Gonzales, an AG whose biggest problem is a baby? Sounds good!) My son's question wasn't a hard one as in, "Uh-oh, what to say?' Just sad, as in another person he looked up to turned out to be human. Which is part of growing up, yes, but depressing all the same.
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Boy, have the tables turned. All that summer chick-lit that features the mother-in-law as the harridan has it backward. Clearly, we are deep in the age of Bridezilla. Inside the Styles of the Times today is a story about brides who want to help the women in their bridal entourage do "something for themselves." In this case, a little Botox, or Fraxel laser treatments. What I love the most is the hush-hush, benevolent tone of the whole enterprise—the white spa robes, the gauzy curtains, and the earnest bride vowing to do something more "meaningful" for her guests than just giving them a silly old bracelet.
Mother, now that we've found you a dress, can we do something about that nose of yours?
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No, I don't mean cancer should be kept under wraps. I just meant that for a prospective first lady, Elizabeth Edwards behaved more like a 24-year-old blogger. (Here's the link, which someone just sent me). I meant this admiringly; I deeply respect people who repeatedly, compulsively overshare, especially in public. And the voters loved it as well. And I have to say, I don't think your son's question is such a hard one. I mean, I'm not sure how much you divulge to a preteen, because I don't have one of those yet. But we are all complicated people. Edwards' concern for poverty seems to me to have nothing to do with his affair. Whereas how priests behave with children entrusted to their care has everything to do with their pastoral fitness. Ditto with Larry Craig, and his anti-gay votes. We can make distinctions here. Having an affair says something about a person—maybe a lot about a person. But it does not devalue their entire public career.
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I don't think it's Elizabeth's oversharing that was the problem! (And you don't mean, Hanna, that cancer ought to be kept under wraps, so as to avoid scaring the grown-ups?) Tonight, my 12-year-old who has been a big fan of Elizabeth's husband since '04—and still remembers that story about the girl with no winter coat—asks me, "So, was John Edwards not who we thought he was all along?'' Which is maybe not the saddest question of his that I've ever had to field. (That prize was handed out long ago, after he asked about the Catholic bishops: "Was what happened to those kids a conspiracy? Because otherwise, how did they all know to do the wrong thing?'') Still, this one is right up there. Oh, and he agrees with you, Rachael, that no one hog-tied the man and dragged him to Larry Craig land.
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