Mark Steyn- The tearjerker (Profile: John Edwards)

The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 07/11/04 | Mark Steyn

[mrustow]

Thanks for the graphic, I love it! (Dreamer?)

[TheMole]

"According to Sidney Blumenthal, Clinton-stain-mopper-turned-Guardian-columnist ..."

ROFLMAO

[Libertina]

In America, poverty doesn't mean hunger, it means fat - it's harassed moms shovelling 99-cent cheeseburgers into their kids because it's cheap and quick. Nor does poverty mean coatlessness.

Edwards's shivering 10-year-old can get a brand-new quilted winter coat for $9.99 at JC Penney, or secondhand for three bucks at my local thrift shop -
Awesome points!

[Dianna]

"He bears the memory of his father taking the family to a local restaurant after church only to leave when he realised he could not afford anything on the menu."

I've never seen the point made, but what kind of person do you have to be to deny your own father's accomplishments?

Think about that a second! I can see, perhaps, playing down being filthy rich. People often times won't take seriously someone who they feel has had an easy slide through life.

But if your dad was a hardworking man, who probably came from a lower background, but worked hard and became a manager and provided a better style of living that his own parents could have provided...would you denigrate that by making him poorer, a WORSE provider for you, than he was? How incredibly insulting is that?

My own daddy was one of those hardworking men. My grandparents had lots of kids and worked as janitors. My dad is hardworking and responsible, got into management and provided a much better life for us than he had had. I couldn't spit in his face by making my childhood sound deprived. I just couldn't do it.

[Ann Archy]

Are Edwards parents still alive??? If so, I wonder if they are embarrassed to be painted as losers.

[punster]

John Edwards is a shyster.

[Watery Tart]

Thanks, Pokey.

[Reprint entire article here as a way of highlighting good lines...]

[Smocker]

If you do the math, Edwards was born in 1953. In 1963 he would have been 10. By 1973, he's 20. Not even close to being depression era. And, if his father was the Mill manager, his salary would certainly have been enough to eat out once in a while.

He just wants people to visualize some kind of depresson era kid growing up poor, which is a far shot from what was probably a middle class background. But then, some kids can come from that type of background and be grateful, others, like him, will only remember the things they couldn't have.

[lainde]

Thank you for a great, COMPLETE, Steyn!!!!

[CyberAnt]

What I find interesting .. right after Edwards was picked there were all the prognastications about the "bounce" Kerry was going to get. A couple of days went by .. no bounce .. several of the very credible pollsters said .. no bounce. Then .. out of the blue here is Newsweak and Zogby showing that Kerry got a bounce and now he's ahead of Bush.

However .. none of these polls have Kerry above Bush's 53% which Gallup had several days ago .. and Newsweak and Zogby had Bush back down to the usual 44%.

If you go back and look at Reagan's '84 win .. the numbers were very similar .. like those same pollsters had done the same thing to Reagan .. making it appear Reagan was losing .. when in effect THEY ALREADY KNEW HE WAS WINNING.

This whole thing with the numbers has only one purpose. The purpose is to get us discouraged and defeated and TO GIVE UP. I simply refuse to allow that to happen.

[beyond the sea]

"There are two Americas," said Conan O'Brien on CBS. "Unfortunately for Edwards, neither one voted for him."

Thought I'd put this funny comment on a reply to that wonderful pictire of Jenna. She will come in handy in October.

[beyond the sea]

John Edwards: The political equivalent of breast implants.

As a lawyer friend of Edwards said of him: "Edwards will work for the little guy, as long as there's a million or two in it for him." What a guy that John $$$$$ Edwards! ;)

[traumer]

Is it just me - or do you too feel a bit uncomfortable here... Imagine these could be the next President and VP...

[Rummyfan]

Back when his maudlin 'twas-Christmas-Day-in-the-workhouse shtick was still new, I offered to buy a brand new coat for every 10-year-old coatless girl the Edwards campaign could produce if in return he included one substantive passage on foreign policy in his stump speech. I'm still waiting on both counts.

BANG! Thanks Pokey!

[knighthawk]

Ping

[Rummyfan]

I ignore all the polls. They are all the prognosticators have to talk about at this time and they - the polls - are pretty much meaningless. I always take to heart what Ann Coulter says: there's only one poll that counts, and this year it will be taken on November 2nd!

[nothingnew]

...so that was the first thing that occurred to me.

You're a genuis!

FMCDH(BITS)

[iconoclast]

I think he may have caught him in a fib.

Hard to get excited about that. Never seemed to do much harm to Clintoon or algore.

[iconoclast]

Another great one from Steyn ... though Conan is in fact on NBC, not CBS.

You can't be a couch potato and write like Steyn! ;o)

[Bullish]

Steyns' pen is a mighty sword indeed.