Posted on 08/30/2009 4:17:10 PM PDT by kingattax
Potential readers should not be deterred by the vaguely Hallmarkish cover—and subtitle—of this book, both of which may be blamed on the publisher. I’m assuming that Broadway Books has a packaging-and-editing style all its own, because on page 88 it makes Elizabeth Edwards tell us something that “Edmund Wilson, the incomparable twentieth-century literary critic, said.” Perhaps someone at the firm felt that this would explain just exactly who Wilson was to a reader who didn’t know, but the effect is to be condescending and to diminish the impact of reading a senator’s wife who is well able to cite Edmund Wilson in her own right.
Elsewhere Mrs. Edwards gets her own way, quoting with familiarity and aptness from Sophocles and Millay and making astute comparisons between the novelistic characterizations of John Updike and of Henry James. (Her husband’s “campaign biography” book, Four Trials, was co-written with him by my friend John Auchard, editor of the somehow perfectly titled Portable Henry James and an academic colleague of Elizabeth’s; few such workaday volumes can boast this sort of step-parentage.)
One of the more noticeable features of John Edwards’s little book was the sense it conveyed that the candidate understood perfectly well that he had married the smartest student in his law-school class. And nobody who saw them together could fail to notice that he was always—and understandably—somewhat in awe of her.
(Perhaps here is the moment for me to say that I used to see a good deal of them both in Washington, beginning with my writing a profile of him in 2002, and that we have been on friendly social terms in each other’s houses. I think I may refer to her as “Elizabeth” rather than “Mrs. Edwards” from now on.)
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Minute 16...
“Of the 2008 contest, she reveals perhaps more than she quite realizes by telling us that John Edwards confessed his infidelity to her in late 2006, after he had announced his candidacy but before the campaign had got under way. If I were Hillary Clinton reading this rather throwaway admission, I might find myself whistling and growling a bit. After all, the then-presumptive nominee had more or less succeeded in living down her own erring husband by the time of the Iowa caucuses. And she might have ridden the punch of an Obama victory in Iowa, and come back swinging. But she placed third in Iowa, behind John Edwards, and many good judges think she never quite recovered from that. So Edwards’s last hurrah has a place of its own in American history.
And all through that hurrah, both Edwardses were living with the knowledge that a third party could at any moment gravely embarrass them. It must have required some unusual nerve for Elizabeth, by then quite a darling of the Democratic rank and file, to go on giving her fighting speeches and fund-raising appeals in between sessions of chemotherapy and acute marital misgiving. She says that she believed the affair to have been a one-off or a one-night stand, but nowhere else in the book or in her public record does she evince the kind of naïveté or credulity that would be required for this to be really what she thought. She is quite entitled not to “deal with” the possibility that the affair also led to the birth of a child”
___________________________________________________________________________
And that’s why neither of the Edwardses will ever be forgiven by the dem establishment. Edwards knew he had this hanging over him and would have to break eventually, but he hung in long enough to sink Hillary and Elizabeth played along.
i have some sympathy for her because of the cancer. i have NO sympathy for her for what john did to her with his girl friend. for years elizabeth lived well due to the immoral income of her ambulance chasing dirtbag lawyer husband (redundancy noted). either she knew what he was doing was wrong but liked the money too much or she is as amoral as he is, either way she lived well from his “earnings.” no different than the wife of a mob boss or the current first female, who ain’t no lady.
Every time I read a ‘tug at your heartstrings’ piece on Elizabeth Edwards, I can’t help but remember the elitist putdown she made about her next door neighbor, who she described as a “rabid Republican” who owned...shudder, shock...guns! That pretty much punctured the ‘poor Elizabeth’ balloon for me.
Wow, does she look BAD. I understand the cancer and chemo and all, but geez. She looks so old. She looks 80 years old.
Elizabeth Edwards is not a nice person at all. This was evident during the campaign. I’m sorry she has a terrible disease that I wouldn’t want anyone to have, but she is still a mean piece of work.
|
Why would she use this occasion to reveal that her father (or so her mother believes) was unfaithful to her mother? Is she trying to torture her children? Because revelations like that live way longer than the people who make them.
Why would she use this occasion to reveal that her father (or so her mother believes) was unfaithful to her mother? Is she trying to torture her children? Because revelations like that live way longer than the people who make them.
No actual barf alert; save for the pathetic presentation of 'Elizabeth's intellectual credentials'. Does not mention her capacity for deception; her penchant for lying and making a fool out or every citizen who 'so trusted' both her and her lying and disgusting; money-power driven, husband.
Posers; both of them. And what a waste of classical intellect - if in fact it exists. True or not; it remains easy to imagine that this too; is a figment of desperate imagination; whether 'Elizabeth's; or; the writer here.
[Have wonderful and great; and intelligent friends; and none of them; not even the Phi Beta Kappas; carries Sophocles on their sleeve. Pulllllezzzze! She sounds like she is describing an 'Elizabeth' from some eighteenth century 'salon' as found in a Jane Austin novel.
From what most of us have seen of Elizabeth Edwards is a study of 'Liberal crass'; and her 'quotes' do confirm at least that talent extraordinaire. . .
It must be terrible having to live with a woman like her.
I can almost forgive the Silky Pony, considering his wife.
great comment
cancer didn’t make Ted Kennedy a saint either
Yes bahbah she is a bitc_!
She knew John was a slimeball when she married, but she also knew he was going to “go places”, so she went along for the ride.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.