Friday, August 15, 2008
(12:00 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Friday Afternoon Confessional: John Edwards
I confess that I was led astray by John Edwards. What has led me to this conclusion? It's not just the fact that he cheated on his wife who had cancer -- though I have to think that even in more enlightened Europe, people might be able to work up a little outrage about that. It's not the fact that the woman he cheated with appears to have been really into New Age bullshit and honestly wasn't very attractive. It's not even the unbearable hubris that led him to seek his party's nomination even knowing he had this skeleton in his closet.What really cut to the quick for me was the fact that his poverty non-profit was in large part a slush fund allowing him to keep up his public profile in anticipation of running for president in 2008. I further confess that this article, which just came to my attention, was actually from last year -- meaning that I should've known. The one issue that not only made me vote for Edwards but also made me a little bit smug about it was poverty.
I confess that before his affair was revealed, I might have dismissed any ethical questions about this non-profit -- in fact, maybe I already did and simply forgot about it. After all, wasn't the best way to fight poverty precisely to elect John Edwards? Now I'm wondering how much of that money was spent on healing crystals for his little fuck-buddy.
(I confess that though I've been writing in the first person, this post grows out of an IM conversation with Brad.)
