Well-said

Nutty? ‘Fringe’? We’re not sure if it was the woman who appeared on Oprah last week or her idiot followers online. The woman was Elizabeth Edwards.

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Time’s short, especially when you have cancer. You don’t have time for self-delusions. In the Edwards Fairy Tale, one adopted by a number of woman bloggers who should know better, John and Elizabeth lived in the Garden of Eden, or at least Allah, and all was perfect and wonderful between the two of them until one day, many, many years later, Rielle slinked onto stage. She lurked, she tempted and poor John, probably heady from a hot oil treatment, finally caved.

Rielle is an adventurous woman, according to mutual friends. She is not, however, a rapist. And to be Elizabeth or one of her online supporters, you pretty much have to cast Rielle as a rapist. It is all so much slut-shaming that we keep expecting the same actresses who played Amy Fisher in TV movies years ago (Drew Barrymore and Alyssa Milano among them) to show up playing Rielle.

Rielle’s a grown woman, unmarried. She can sleep with whomever she wants. It’s her business. She’s not taken a vow to anyone. Elizabeth Edwards told Oprah, “There is no excuse for women to do this. Women need to have respect for other women.”

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John Edwards cheated on Elizabeth. Rielle didn’t. John Edwards lied to Elizabeth. So it was really funny to watch Elizabeth’s blogging crew online work overtime to support Lizzie and attack Rielle. One huffed, “After a marriage of 30 years, she has a lot invested in the man.” Yeah, too much invested in him as was obvious during the Kerry campaign when John and Elizabeth were the picture of harmony (remember the front page photo of all their kids frolicking in the summer of 2004?) but when the press moved on, things weren’t so pretty. While Teresa Heinz-Kerry was ready to go any and everywhere (and did, winning over a huge number of Latinos in Texas with a speech tying her immigrant story into America’s shared history), Elizabeth preferred not to be too far from her husband and the rumors of his straying were already rampant within the Kerry campaign. Elizabeth did have “a lot invested in the man,” in fact, she had too much.

She still does…

Third Estate Sunday Review