It's definitely not Stand By Your Man Month as Mark Sanford's wife and Bernard Madoff's mistress join Elizabeth Edwards in going public to take whacks at the cheating hearts in their lives.
After throwing out her lovesick husband, Jenny Sanford is posing for Vogue and telling an interviewer that the South Carolina governor, with whom she was not "madly in love" when she married him, “has got some issues that he needs to work on, about happiness and what happiness means...I think when a lot of men get to this midpoint in life, they start asking questions that they probably should have asked a long time ago.”
Meanwhile, a book by a married woman who had a fling with him reveals that Madoff, who was a powerhouse in grabbing other people's money, including her own, was otherwise "not well endowed" and a nervous lover to boot, avoiding her embrace in a hotel elevator on their first tryst for fear of being caught by surveillance cameras.
Such comedowns follow Elizabeth Edward's book about her husband's affair while using her terminal illness as an asset in his run for president and the news this week that he is ready to admit paternity of the child he fathered with the other woman.
There is "no such thing as a private affair anymore," Maureen Dowd writes today. "We live in a transparent era atwitter with indecent exposure."
True enough, but there are compensations. We can bury once and for all, the old adage about adultery that "it's always the woman who pays." Today there is some compensation with fashion magazine interviews, appearances on Oprah and book royalties.
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Edwards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Edwards. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Presidential Libidos
The flogging today of John Edwards in the public square, aka the New York Times, raises the question of what relevance marital fidelity has to the qualifications of an American president.
Trust and truth-telling come to mind, of course, but it gets more complicated in looking back. JFK famously cheated on his wife, while Richard Nixon, as far as we know, was a faithful husband while betraying the country.
Jimmy Carter told Playboy he "lusted in my heart" but presumably overcame his desires to become a disastrously naive president.
Uxorious Ronald Reagan, Bush I (although there were rumors) and Bush II bracketed Bill Clinton, who couldn't keep it zipped but left office with a budget surplus and no wars.
Now the Obamas, as they have in so many areas, have upped the ante on connubial bliss, often holding hands and displaying a closeness most recently reflected in their sneaking out of the White House for a dinner date last Saturday night.
But how much do we need to know about presidential marriages?
Elizabeth Edwards has dragged her husband into the spotlight for, as Maureen Dowd writes, "a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life in a book, and exposes the ex-girlfriend who’s now trying to raise the baby girl, a dead ringer for John Edwards, in South Orange, N.J."
We could have all lived happily ever after without hearing the details of their marital wreckage and, more to the point, is it at all relevant to voters who did not otherwise sense that John Edwards was not to be trusted, even if he had never succumbed to the stalker who told him "You're so hot"?
Trust and truth-telling come to mind, of course, but it gets more complicated in looking back. JFK famously cheated on his wife, while Richard Nixon, as far as we know, was a faithful husband while betraying the country.
Jimmy Carter told Playboy he "lusted in my heart" but presumably overcame his desires to become a disastrously naive president.
Uxorious Ronald Reagan, Bush I (although there were rumors) and Bush II bracketed Bill Clinton, who couldn't keep it zipped but left office with a budget surplus and no wars.
Now the Obamas, as they have in so many areas, have upped the ante on connubial bliss, often holding hands and displaying a closeness most recently reflected in their sneaking out of the White House for a dinner date last Saturday night.
But how much do we need to know about presidential marriages?
Elizabeth Edwards has dragged her husband into the spotlight for, as Maureen Dowd writes, "a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life in a book, and exposes the ex-girlfriend who’s now trying to raise the baby girl, a dead ringer for John Edwards, in South Orange, N.J."
We could have all lived happily ever after without hearing the details of their marital wreckage and, more to the point, is it at all relevant to voters who did not otherwise sense that John Edwards was not to be trusted, even if he had never succumbed to the stalker who told him "You're so hot"?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Elizabeth Edwards, Media Critic
The most cogent and heartfelt critique of the coverage of this Presidential campaign comes today from the wife of a candidate who was at the heart of the media melodrama.
"Watching the campaign unfold," Elizabeth Edwards writes in the New York Times, "I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride.
"And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities."
She cites an independent study showing that during the early months of 2008, 63 percent of campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals.
But the media circus is a tacit collaboration between politicians and reporters, who assume (with considerable justification) that voters will be more interested in the cost of John Edwards' haircuts than his poverty proposals. If the media are shallow, the public and politicians have been their willing partners in what Mrs. Edwards calls "the Cliff Notes of the news" and "strobe-light journalism."
Only now, in desperation, after months of picayune personal attacks, does Hillary Clinton propose Lincoln-Douglas style debating on the issues without a moderator, as Barack Obama seems headed for the nomination despite the networks' best efforts to make mud fights out of their previous encounters.
"As we move the contest to my home state, North Carolina," Mrs. Edwards writes, "I want my neighbors to know as much as they possibly can about what these men and this woman would do as president.
"If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie 'Network' but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can--as voters--do ours."
Well said, but don't hold your breath until that happens.
"Watching the campaign unfold," Elizabeth Edwards writes in the New York Times, "I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride.
"And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities."
She cites an independent study showing that during the early months of 2008, 63 percent of campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals.
But the media circus is a tacit collaboration between politicians and reporters, who assume (with considerable justification) that voters will be more interested in the cost of John Edwards' haircuts than his poverty proposals. If the media are shallow, the public and politicians have been their willing partners in what Mrs. Edwards calls "the Cliff Notes of the news" and "strobe-light journalism."
Only now, in desperation, after months of picayune personal attacks, does Hillary Clinton propose Lincoln-Douglas style debating on the issues without a moderator, as Barack Obama seems headed for the nomination despite the networks' best efforts to make mud fights out of their previous encounters.
"As we move the contest to my home state, North Carolina," Mrs. Edwards writes, "I want my neighbors to know as much as they possibly can about what these men and this woman would do as president.
"If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie 'Network' but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can--as voters--do ours."
Well said, but don't hold your breath until that happens.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
First Ladies in a Fix
The Washington Post today ruminates about the role of Presidential spouses and concludes that they, well, differ from those of the past.
They sure do. In half a century as an editor, I knew First Ladies from Eleanor Roosevelt to Nancy Reagan, both of whom wrote for me. They differed from one another back then, too, but what they had in common was, after Mrs. Roosevelt, they had little to say about policy issues--in public.
But now, according to a professor of government quoted by the Post, “there is a greater acceptance of assertive women that is consistent with other societal trends. But there is still a divide in the country in what people want and expect. Look at how much people like Laura Bush."
First Ladies were in a bind back then, and they still are today. How much resentment of Hillary Clinton comes from the fact that in 1992 she said she was not the little woman who bakes cookies and stands by her man? She wasn’t, isn’t and is now running for President on her own, but some voters will never forgive her for not being Barbara Bush or Nancy Reagan.
For other spouses, it’s still like walking a tightrope. Shouldn’t Michelle Obama have kept her high-powered job instead of helping her husband? Is Jeri Thompson too involved in Fred’s campaign? Is Elizabeth Edwards too outspoken? Does Judith Giuliani ring Rudy’s cell phone at the wrong time? What gives with Elizabeth Kucinich’s pierced tongue?
Today some of them will be talking about all this on TV with Maria Shriver, who as the wife of Governor Arnold and the niece of Jack Kennedy, knows a little something about the subject.
In 1960, when I sent a reporter to interview her aunt, Jacqueline Kennedy, she sounded like a Stepford wife: "The most important thing for successful marriage is for a husband to do what he likes best and does well. The wife's satisfactions will follow...If the wife is happy, full credit should be given to the husband because the marriage is her entire life."
She never deviated from this submissive line, but even then, it wasn’t simple. When the reporter was about to leave, Mrs. Kennedy looked him in the eye and said, "But I'm smarter than Jack, and don't you forget it."
They sure do. In half a century as an editor, I knew First Ladies from Eleanor Roosevelt to Nancy Reagan, both of whom wrote for me. They differed from one another back then, too, but what they had in common was, after Mrs. Roosevelt, they had little to say about policy issues--in public.
But now, according to a professor of government quoted by the Post, “there is a greater acceptance of assertive women that is consistent with other societal trends. But there is still a divide in the country in what people want and expect. Look at how much people like Laura Bush."
First Ladies were in a bind back then, and they still are today. How much resentment of Hillary Clinton comes from the fact that in 1992 she said she was not the little woman who bakes cookies and stands by her man? She wasn’t, isn’t and is now running for President on her own, but some voters will never forgive her for not being Barbara Bush or Nancy Reagan.
For other spouses, it’s still like walking a tightrope. Shouldn’t Michelle Obama have kept her high-powered job instead of helping her husband? Is Jeri Thompson too involved in Fred’s campaign? Is Elizabeth Edwards too outspoken? Does Judith Giuliani ring Rudy’s cell phone at the wrong time? What gives with Elizabeth Kucinich’s pierced tongue?
Today some of them will be talking about all this on TV with Maria Shriver, who as the wife of Governor Arnold and the niece of Jack Kennedy, knows a little something about the subject.
In 1960, when I sent a reporter to interview her aunt, Jacqueline Kennedy, she sounded like a Stepford wife: "The most important thing for successful marriage is for a husband to do what he likes best and does well. The wife's satisfactions will follow...If the wife is happy, full credit should be given to the husband because the marriage is her entire life."
She never deviated from this submissive line, but even then, it wasn’t simple. When the reporter was about to leave, Mrs. Kennedy looked him in the eye and said, "But I'm smarter than Jack, and don't you forget it."
Friday, October 12, 2007
Ann Coulter's Glossolalia
She has been speaking in tongues again. This time Ann Coulter tells a cable TV host of Hebrew origin that it would be better for America if Jews “perfected” themselves and became Christians.
The woman is clearly in the grip of “glossolalia,” defined as “the vocalizing of fluent speech-like but unintelligible utterances, often as part of religious practice.”
Until recently, such behavior was a mystery. But now neuroscientists have taken brain images of women speaking in tongues and found that their frontal lobes--the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do--were relatively quiet. (Spoiler alert: Several of the researchers had Jewish-sounding names.)
In the grip of such religious ecstasy, Coulter can’t be held responsible for what she says, as would a normal person who was just plugging a book on cable TV.
Previously, she had seemed to be a victim of Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder, a pathological need to be noticed that afflicts politicians and show business people. But Coulter’s self-destructive streak of disinhibited pronouncements suggests something deeper.
Politicians and performers set limits to what they say by the need to be liked. Not Coulter. After calling John Edwards a “faggot” and then being publicly rebuked by his wife, she replied, “If I say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The Edwards campaign turned Coulter’s attacks into a fund-raising tool, so yet another conspiratorial possibility arises: Is Coulter secretly acting as a Zionist agent to arouse sympathy for American Jews?
In any case, medical attention is needed. Is there an exorcist in the house?
The woman is clearly in the grip of “glossolalia,” defined as “the vocalizing of fluent speech-like but unintelligible utterances, often as part of religious practice.”
Until recently, such behavior was a mystery. But now neuroscientists have taken brain images of women speaking in tongues and found that their frontal lobes--the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do--were relatively quiet. (Spoiler alert: Several of the researchers had Jewish-sounding names.)
In the grip of such religious ecstasy, Coulter can’t be held responsible for what she says, as would a normal person who was just plugging a book on cable TV.
Previously, she had seemed to be a victim of Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder, a pathological need to be noticed that afflicts politicians and show business people. But Coulter’s self-destructive streak of disinhibited pronouncements suggests something deeper.
Politicians and performers set limits to what they say by the need to be liked. Not Coulter. After calling John Edwards a “faggot” and then being publicly rebuked by his wife, she replied, “If I say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The Edwards campaign turned Coulter’s attacks into a fund-raising tool, so yet another conspiratorial possibility arises: Is Coulter secretly acting as a Zionist agent to arouse sympathy for American Jews?
In any case, medical attention is needed. Is there an exorcist in the house?
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Elizabeth Edwards Channels Nixon
One of our 37th President’s hallmark moves was to bracket his slanders with the phrases, “Some people would say...” and “But I’m not one of them.”
In her Time interview this week, Elizabeth Edwards echoes the Master by attacking Hillary Clinton while pretending to defend her:
"I want to be perfectly clear: I do not think the hatred against Hillary Clinton is justified. I don't know where it comes from. I don't begin to understand it. But you can't pretend it doesn't exist, and it will energize the Republican base. Their nominee won't energize them, Bush won't, but Hillary as the nominee will. It's hard for John to talk about, but it's the reality."
Nixon too always “wanted to be perfectly clear” as he stirred the mud.
Mrs. Edwards’ passionate belief in her husband and apparent freedom to speak her mind freely in the face of her cancer are admirable, but not limitlessly so. Among the many reasons John Edwards is mired in the polls is the impression that he will do or say anything to get elected. Having his wife do a Nixon impression is one of them.
In her Time interview this week, Elizabeth Edwards echoes the Master by attacking Hillary Clinton while pretending to defend her:
"I want to be perfectly clear: I do not think the hatred against Hillary Clinton is justified. I don't know where it comes from. I don't begin to understand it. But you can't pretend it doesn't exist, and it will energize the Republican base. Their nominee won't energize them, Bush won't, but Hillary as the nominee will. It's hard for John to talk about, but it's the reality."
Nixon too always “wanted to be perfectly clear” as he stirred the mud.
Mrs. Edwards’ passionate belief in her husband and apparent freedom to speak her mind freely in the face of her cancer are admirable, but not limitlessly so. Among the many reasons John Edwards is mired in the polls is the impression that he will do or say anything to get elected. Having his wife do a Nixon impression is one of them.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Behind the Obama-Bashing
On the Drudge Report this afternoon, in three successive links, Barack Obama is taken to task by Mitt Romney, Elizabeth Edwards and a New Hampshire voter.
At a campaign stop in Nashua, Obama had said about Afghanistan, "We've got to get the job done there. And that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."
A Romney spokesman jumped on this as being “emblematic of Senator Obama's lack of experience for the job of commander-in-chief.”
In a magazine interview, Mrs. Edwards accused him of lifting speech material from her husband.
“Obama,” she said, “seems to be using a lot of John's 2004 language, which is maybe not surprising since one of his speechwriters was one of our speechwriters, his media guy was our media guy. These people know John's mantra as well as anybody could know it."
The woman in Hanover, N.H. at a restaurant gathering of eight people told Obama, “You can be it. But you've got to stop--excuse me for being blunt--you've got to stop getting involved in the way people are fighting each other, chewing you up a little more."
Aside from the fact that Drudgers are likely to enjoy Obama-bashing, there may be something else here. Obama’s remark about Afghanistan, aside from being to the point, is not remarkable, and the idea that he needs to steal John Edwards’ “mantra” is ludicrous.
But his New Hampshire admirer, Maggie North, may have a point. What bothers Romney, Edwards, Clinton and the other candidates is the appeal of Obama’s freshness to voters like Ms. North. They are under pressure to turn that against him as inexperience.
If he is to run this campaign gauntlet, he is will have to find ways to stop reacting defensively and take the initiative in making the case that experience got us into this mess and that what he will bring to the table is good sense and judgment.
At a campaign stop in Nashua, Obama had said about Afghanistan, "We've got to get the job done there. And that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."
A Romney spokesman jumped on this as being “emblematic of Senator Obama's lack of experience for the job of commander-in-chief.”
In a magazine interview, Mrs. Edwards accused him of lifting speech material from her husband.
“Obama,” she said, “seems to be using a lot of John's 2004 language, which is maybe not surprising since one of his speechwriters was one of our speechwriters, his media guy was our media guy. These people know John's mantra as well as anybody could know it."
The woman in Hanover, N.H. at a restaurant gathering of eight people told Obama, “You can be it. But you've got to stop--excuse me for being blunt--you've got to stop getting involved in the way people are fighting each other, chewing you up a little more."
Aside from the fact that Drudgers are likely to enjoy Obama-bashing, there may be something else here. Obama’s remark about Afghanistan, aside from being to the point, is not remarkable, and the idea that he needs to steal John Edwards’ “mantra” is ludicrous.
But his New Hampshire admirer, Maggie North, may have a point. What bothers Romney, Edwards, Clinton and the other candidates is the appeal of Obama’s freshness to voters like Ms. North. They are under pressure to turn that against him as inexperience.
If he is to run this campaign gauntlet, he is will have to find ways to stop reacting defensively and take the initiative in making the case that experience got us into this mess and that what he will bring to the table is good sense and judgment.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Edwards Pushes the Pity Envelope
From all evidence, Elizabeth Edwards is a courageous, highly intelligent woman whose devotion to her husband makes “admirable” seem like an inadequate adjective. But a new commercial now running in New Hampshire raises again nagging questions about her role in John Edwards' campaign for the Presidency.
In the TV spot, Mrs. Edwards lauds her husband’s “unbelievable toughness, particularly about other people, and...his ability to fight for them."
She goes on to say, "You're not going to outsmart him. He works harder than any human being that I know, always has. It's unbelievably important that, in our president, we have someone who can stare the worst in the face and not blink."
We are on the outskirts of exploitation here and possibly beyond the boundaries in suggesting that a man’s response to his wife’s cancer tells voters what they need to know about his character and courage in the Oval Office.
Edwards did something similar with his operatic apologies for voting to take us into Iraq in 2002, stressing the need for “honesty” in a president but overlooking the fact that telling the truth, George Bush notwithstanding, is only a minimal requisite but that good judgment over taking the country to war is a vital quality for a Commander-in-Chief.
The impression keeps recurring that John Edwards at heart is a smooth-talking lawyer who will do anything to make his case, and it is no discredit to her that his wife is doing everything she can to help him.
In the TV spot, Mrs. Edwards lauds her husband’s “unbelievable toughness, particularly about other people, and...his ability to fight for them."
She goes on to say, "You're not going to outsmart him. He works harder than any human being that I know, always has. It's unbelievably important that, in our president, we have someone who can stare the worst in the face and not blink."
We are on the outskirts of exploitation here and possibly beyond the boundaries in suggesting that a man’s response to his wife’s cancer tells voters what they need to know about his character and courage in the Oval Office.
Edwards did something similar with his operatic apologies for voting to take us into Iraq in 2002, stressing the need for “honesty” in a president but overlooking the fact that telling the truth, George Bush notwithstanding, is only a minimal requisite but that good judgment over taking the country to war is a vital quality for a Commander-in-Chief.
The impression keeps recurring that John Edwards at heart is a smooth-talking lawyer who will do anything to make his case, and it is no discredit to her that his wife is doing everything she can to help him.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Blonde Bombshelling the News
Cable TV is giving the Fairness Doctrine new meaning this week as Elizabeth Edwards launches a surprise counterattack on Ann Coulter and flaxen-haired Paris Hilton breaks her silence on Larry King tonight.
But these celebrity blondes are only part of the picture, the dark side if you will. The Daily Show, as always, is onto the main story about the platinumming of the news, as Samantha Bee so well and warmly described it not long ago.
But these celebrity blondes are only part of the picture, the dark side if you will. The Daily Show, as always, is onto the main story about the platinumming of the news, as Samantha Bee so well and warmly described it not long ago.
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