I've been reading about John Edwards and his affair all day. I've gone from incredulous to pissed to sad to resigned. In the height of my pissed-offness, I called my mom to rant. She works for a breast cancer foundation and has what I call a pretty solid moral code, so I thought for sure she would rant right along with me. I mean, Elizabeth was wronged - while undergoing breast cancer treatment. Edwards is a scumbag, right? But no, when I said "I think it makes John Edwards a pretty weak man to cheat on his wife while she has breast cancer", she shocked me by saying "well, it makes him a pretty human man".
Huh. Really? Human? I was unconvinced. So I hung up the phone, contemplated doing some yoga, realized that would take moving so I watched a baseball game on TV instead (STL Cards were ahead and then LOST to the Cubs in overtime...disasters everywhere I'm telling you). And then I started to think about what my mom had said. Are his actions human? And as a potential VP and one time Presidential contender, is he allowed to be human? What does that even mean?
I do know this: we are all flawed. We make mistakes. We hurt people. We fall in and out of love with each other at different times in our lives, and sometimes the bonds we have are strong enough to withstand the ensuing hurricane - and sometimes they aren't. Partnerships are hard, hard, hard work. And we don't always have the perseverance to reach the light in the tunnel unscathed. Sometimes we don't reach the light at all. No one - not the children, the friends, the parents, and certainly not the reporters know what is truth in a partnership. We can only speculate, and 9 times out of 10, we will be wrong. So, I will not speculate on John and Elizabeth Edwards' partnership. I would rather my weaknesses not be explored in public, so I'm not going to explore John Edwards'.
Instead, I'm going to keep asking what is human. And why in today's political sphere, we expect our politicians to be God-like. And I'm going to keep asking myself - and others - what is really important right now. Will John Edwards advocate less for rights of poor people because he had an affair (that we really know nothing about)? I don't think so. Will Elizabeth be less of a role-model if she forgives him? No, definitely not. Was Hillary? I think we've all seen the answer to that in the past 8 years. What matters right now is moving beyond the personal mistakes of our politicians and back into policy and justice for all.
I have to admit, despite my pledge not to scrutinize or speculate, my sadness about this news is lodged somewhere in the region of my heart. You see, I wanted the fairy tale of John and Elizabeth we all read about in the papers and magazines. I really, really wanted them to stay golden. But in real life, the fairy tales don't often exist. We are human after all.
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4 comments:
I wrote about this tonight as well. Truly, I think its a personal issue between John Edwards and his wife. It's nothing the public needs to know about. Men have had mistresses since the beginning of time.
There are just so many important issues to deal with - and the news media being saturated with something like this seems like such a waste of resources.
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I wrote something very similar last night. My only issue is that he launched a presidential bid knowing this was far too public (more than 2 people and it's public) to risk.
I agree, and I haven't actually worked that issue out in my mind yet. This would be a very different post if he were the presumptive candidate.
I wanted that fairy tale, too. Maybe that's why I had such a big reaction to the news.
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