Edwardsian Drama

I was going to leave him alone, but you guys want to talk about Edwards. The reason I was going to leave him alone is that I understand man’s ( though not woman’s) desire for variety. It’s built into men. What is a man, after all, but an ejaculatory organ to perpetuate the race. He’s got arms, legs, and a head, for what? For his own brief enjoyment of Mother Earth? No. The arms, legs and heads are adaptations that the ejaculatory organ needs so it can do its job – outrun its food and its enemies, and hold or hold down, its opposite member, the cunt. Sorry, that’s the nicest sounding word I can find for it. Rhymes with hunt. Everybody likes the name Hunter, even if they don’t like hunters or hunting. It’s a good sound, and so is “cunt.” Get over it. Cunt is a cozy word.

Here’s more, if you don’t like that. The ejaculatory organ is designed to perform its function over and over and over again. Several times a day it could start another soul of its species. That’s what it wants to do, and to do it, it has to move fast. It can’t stick with one cunt, because that cunt takes his gift of life and sits around mulling it over for nine months. The factory is shut. That is not efficient. The ejaculatory organ must find another cunt and lay her up for nine months. Then he’s got two going for a small marginal expenditure on his whole endeavor. Get my drift? It’s what man was made to do. And woman was made to closet herself and be of no Darwinian use, nine months after nine months after nine months. Since this is true of all women, a man has to move around and cover a lot of territory, to finagle himself (for this he uses the head) into those few open slots.

Being an ejaculatory organ myself, and having moved fast and got around, though always with a magical balloon primitive man did not have, which prevented me from fulfilling my function here on earth, I have some sympathy with other ejaculatory organs. But not too much, because I have avoided promising myself to one other, and therefore feel entitled to all. Edwards not only promised himself, but paraded his steadfastness before us, told us it was one of the major virtues, and whisking out his sick wife, demonstrated for us the depth, though apparently not the distance, of his devotion. When he gets a few miles on it, he can outrun it.

But there is another reason why I find forgiveness in my heart for this fallen fellow. He does, after all, suffer, on top of being an ejaculatory organ, from being a lawyer. All the slime you ever thought that smile implied. What is the purpose of a lawyer? If he knows his client is guilty, it is to present a one-sided view – to make all signs that point to guilt disappear. To have such confidence in his image of the client as innocent that he can project that image to a jury.

Lawyers get so used to this kind of thinking – obliterating what doesn’t fit and shaping up the remainder to look like a whole – it is inevitable that they should want to try it out in their own lives. Give it personal form. Use their talents for themselves. See what it’s like to maintain a false picture day after day after day, if you’re with it all the time, not just in court. That leads many, fittingly, to turn to politics. Is it possible to lead a double life in the public eye and leave only the innocent image in the eyes of the electorate?

Edwards almost had to do it, to be all that he could be. That is, be the loving, caring husband of the valiant dying wife, and, as Rielle put it, a great man at night, and also in the morning.

Tell me, America, do you feel lied to, betrayed? Has someone been thumbing his nose at you all through his impassioned speeches about character? When you heard this news, did you think back to how you felt when the brave couple first came on stage to announce that one of them had breast cancer and nevertheless wanted the other to continue the campaign? How sad you felt? How it ruined your night? Well it didn’t ruin John’s night, did it? John doesn’t have ruined nights.

You know how it must have gone, don’t you? He moved her to his home state, to a gated community where she would be the neighbor of his good friend, now the reputed father of the baby. Whenever the twain should meet, all he had to do was say, “Off to see my best friend,” and away he could go to the hideout. If anybody knew she was on the scene, his friend was taking the rap.

But John got careless. He wanted to see his baby. He was no longer running for president, no one would be watching him, he could come and go as he pleased. But not, apparently, to the Beverly Hilton, where he was caught. Nabbed exercising his second life. Plucked from the realm of the decent and thrust headlong into the toilet of deceit.

And that’s where he’s swimming now, folks. We’re all on the shore, watching. Any of you going to jump in and save him? Not anyone who’s been good all these years. And you know what? Not anyone who’s been bad. Because John Edwards committed the worst sin of all. He got caught, and thereby made all of us complicit in his crime, and a little less safe in whatever lies we tell ourselves and each other. We have witnessed a liar with a way with words. And if you’ll notice, Mr. Edwards’ pronunciation of “liar” and “lawyer” are very much the same.

Johnny boy, you’re up the creek without a boat. Let’s see you paddle. Nobody’s coming to your rescue. You’ve embarrassed each and every one of us with your high-minded talk that we nodded to. Nobody doubted your goodness. Now nobody doubts your badness. We’ve looked behind the curtain, and we see the rest of the show. That sound you hear is us tearing up our tickets.

Here, John, I don’t like watching someone drown. I’m going to throw you a lifesaver. It’s coiled and round, and if you take it out of the package and blow it up, it just might float you home. And remember this little helper; it could come in handy in your future philandering.

National Enquirer