Millennium: TWX: He's a slimeball for cheating on his wife while she was ill and slowly heading toward death from it.

Can't we just agree they're both the scum of the Earth without bringing politics into things?

Well put. Too many people give their guy a pass because he votes how they like. Both of these guys are social retards that do not deserve to serve the Amercian people.

bronyaur1: This stupid piece of crap deserves everything coming his way.

Sadly, being a dickhead is not illegal, and I have serious reservations about his prosecution not because I have any sympathy for this selfish, ego-maniacal, vile shiathead of a "human" being, but because I don't like to see laws stretched to the limit of absurd technicality for the sake of attacking people for things that aren't actually illegal.

I hope he's acquitted, and I also hope he trips over his own feet, falls down the stairs, and breaks his stupid neck on the way out of the courtroom....

John Edwards is a douche, sure, but so was his wife. They deserved each other.

Excerpts from Game Change

John Edwards had a loving wife and mother of his children, she was pretty frickin good lookin too might I add, and she was a really smart and caring lady too. So you're going to cheat on her fine, whatevs. I'd say bad move but you're bored or something so whatever, we'll move on. But don't stick your dick in crazy. And, if you absolutely must stick your dick in crazy, if some otherworldy force is compelling you to stick your dick in crazy, do not stick your dick in crazy's cooch. John Edwards, you are now doomed to a lifetime of dealing with a batshiat crazy woman. And I gotta say, I'm kinda enjoying knowing that.

Read Game Change (the book) to find out what a piece of work Elizabeth Edwards actually was:

The denizens of the valley of staff were astonished by the narcissism that had infused their candidate. But for a long time, they continued slaving in the service of the illusion at the core of Edwards's political appeal: that he remained the same humble, aw-shucks son of a mill worker he'd always been. The cognitive dissonance was enormous, sure, but they were used to that. Because for years they'd been living with an even bigger lie-the lie of Saint Elizabeth.

Even before the cancer, she was among her husband's greatest political assets. In one focus group conducted by Hickman in Edwards's Senate race, voters trashed him as a pretty-boy shyster-until they saw pictures of Elizabeth, four years his senior. "I like that he's got a fat wife," one woman said. "I thought he'd be married to a Barbie or a cheerleader."

The Edwardses' eldest son, Wade, had been killed in a car crash in 1996; for a long time, Elizabeth went to his grave site every day and read softly to the tombstone. The combination of her suffering, resilience, and imperfections made her a poignant figure. But it was the illness that elevated Elizabeth to a higher plane. She confronted her treatment with bracing courage and wry humor, emerging as one of the most outspoken and widely admired cancer survivors in history.

No one in the Edwardses' political circle felt anything less than complete sympathy for Elizabeth's plight. And yet the romance between her and the electorate struck them as ironic nonetheless-because their own relationships with her were so unpleasant that they felt like battered spouses. The nearly universal assessment among them was that there was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing.

With her husband, she could be intensely affectionate or brutally dismissive. At times subtly, at times blatantly, she was forever letting John know that she regarded him as her intellectual inferior. She called her spouse a "hick" in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks. One time, when a friend asked if John had read a certain book, Elizabeth burst out laughing. "Oh, he doesn't read books," she said. "I'm the one who reads books."

During the 2004 race, Elizabeth badgered and berated John's advisers around the clock. She called Nick Baldick, his campaign manager, an idiot. She accused David Axelrod, his (and later Obama's) media consultant, of lying to her and insisted that he be stripped of the responsibility for making the campaign's TV ads. She would stay up late scouring the Web, pulling down negative stories and blog items about her husband, forwarding them with vicious messages to the communications team. She routinely unleashed profanity-laced tirades on conference calls. "Why the fark do you think I'd want to go sit outside a Wal-Mart and hand out leaflets?" she snarled at the schedulers.

Elizabeth's illness seemed at first to mellow her in the early months of 2005-but not for long. One day, she was on a conference call with the staffers of One America, the political-action committee that was being turned into a vehicle for John's 2008 bid. There were 40 or 50 people on the line, mostly kids in their twenties being paid next to nothing (and in some cases literally nothing). Elizabeth had been cranky throughout the call, but at the end she asked if her and her husband's personal health-care coverage had been arranged. Not yet, she was told. There are complications; let's discuss it after the call. Elizabeth was having none of that. She flew into a rage.

If this isn't dealt with by tomorrow, everyone's health care at the PAC will be cut off until it's fixed, she barked. I don't care if nobody has health care until John and I do!

The health-care call attained wide infamy in the Edwards camp. The people around them marveled at Elizabeth's callousness-this from a woman whose family had multiple houses and a net worth in the tens of millions. Yet no one called her out on her behavior, least of all her husband. His default reflex was to mollify her-or avoid her. No one doubted that, as her condition improved, the increase in John's travel had a lot to do with steering clear of his wife. What they didn't know was that the road would soon hold other enticements, too.

Damnit, ignore the first two paragraphs of my previous post. I copied/pasted from the last time I posted it and posted some of the text I quoted from a previous poster.

FARK NEEDS A POST EDIT FUNCTION.

Nrokreffefp: His private life should have no bearing on his political career, its as simple a concept as ad hominem attacks being logical fallacies.

Were politics not inherently about leadership, you'd have a point. But it is, and one of the most important qualifications for leadership -arguably the most important- is trustworthiness. There is more to this than morality: there are also logistical concerns, because people won't willingly follow a leader who they feel cannot be trusted. Trustworthiness, in turn, requires a considerable amount of personal integrity. By definition, that brings one's private life into the picture.

No one is completely 100% consistent, of course. If we could elect gods then things might be different, but there's a shortage of volunteers among the ranks of the divine, so we have little choice but to make do with what we have. Even so, however, there are degrees of trustworthiness, and the worst of these are manifestly unfit to lead.

I should stop watching CNN in the morning. When this "news" network ran this story, the talking head lavished shame and judgment on Edwards (he could have been president!) before spending a second telling the news, which was the contents of the Fark headline.

Real news organizations tell the news and leave moralizing to the people who hear the news.

ArgusRun: ph0rk: ArgusRun: [cdn.wg.uproxx.com image 600x338]

Pam scares me.

It's embarrassing, but I identify with her. Overweight, massively horny, totally crude and pretty violent.

/plus I hand out blow jobs like puffy stickers
//but I drink less

If only I knew a woman like you.....I only know prudes. It's kinda sad really.

mama's_tasty_foods: If you read Game Change, you see that Elizabeth was not a nice person. At all. Even so she did not deserve to be treated like John treated her.

And as bad a person as he is- a very bad and phony person indeed- I don't think he violated "campaign finance law" and so should be acquitted.

Meanwhile Andrew Young and his wife seem to have stolen a million dollars of the hush money to build their 'dream home.' The biggest crooks of all got immunity to testify against Edwards for a nonexistent crime!

This case is a kaleidoscope of greed and narcissism and insanity. I feel sorry for Edwards's children, but for him and the rest of the hangers on and groupies, I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.

Admit it: They deserved each other.

OldManDownDRoad: It gets better: Edwards wanted Bunny Mellon to mortgage her estate in Virginia and give him the proceeds ($50 million) for his "poverty" foundation.

Yep, he tried to screw an old lady out of her house.

Nightsweat: Dude, I don't want to hear this. I liked Elizabeth Edwards a lot. She had bad taste in men, but she was a good person otherwise.

Nope, she was a whiny shrew who was only tolerated by Raleigh society because of John's money. The old guard (the Proctors, the Bartons, etc) of NC families wouldn't have much to do with her or her grasping husband. That's the real reason he built that house in Chapel Hill - it was clear they would never be accepted by the "Five Points" crowd, who understood that he was just a jumped-up sandlapper and she was a social climber.

Oh, and she well knew of his proclivities - he was a p-hound from way back. But like a lot of wives who tolerate bad husbands, all she could see was a chance at re-decorating the Oval Office. Like Hillary Clinton, she wasn't so mad at his cheating, she was mad because she recognized that his stupidity at getting caught ruined her chance at the White House.

If Raleigh society hated her then I'm doubly sure I liked her. Stuck up windbags.

Geotpf: Damnit, ignore the first two paragraphs of my previous post. I copied/pasted from the last time I posted it and posted some of the text I quoted from a previous poster.

FARK NEEDS A POST EDIT FUNCTION.

No. That's half the point of Fark, telling who is paying attention, wile postng,

IAMTHEINTARWEBS: Nightsweat: Dude, I don't want to hear this. I liked Elizabeth Edwards a lot. She had bad taste in men, but she was a good person otherwise.

Really,
How long did you know her?

Not long. Met her twice. Spoke to her about ten minutes once.

personal life matters because if they are willing to lie and f*ck over those who love them and who they've promised to protect in front of family and community, who won't they be willing to lie to and f*ck over?
this man sold himself as carrying and trustworthy because he was a good family man with sweet dead son and very sick but fat wife that he dotted over.
that's why it matters. he maid it matter, beyond even the criminal complaint, because of how he represented himself as.