Sitting at the stoplight today on the I-85 Southmont offramp, I looked across the road and took note of the Highway 8 Motel and couldn’t help but think about John Edwards. No places like that for Rielle, I thought to myself.
I really don’t want to be another talking head piling on John Edwards and ‘saying we told you so,’ mostly out of respect for Elizabeth Edwards. But no matter how much empathy you have for Elizabeth, it still doesn’t change the fact that her husband has been exposed as a phony and a total joke for a vice presidential candidate, whether in 2004 or today.
Of course the irony is the Edwards willingly chose to make just about every aspect of their personal lives public, whether it was the tragic death of their son Wade and their decision to have two more children (whom they would drag all over the campaign trail), or Elizabeth constantly interjecting herself into the campaign or building a mother of a mansion in Orange County and thinking no one would notice.
While a lot of people are wondering how, metaphorically speaking, Edwards could do such a thing, I’m wondering how he literally could do such a thing. Just how does a guy who’s led such public life over the last four years, actually go about having an affair? We see the life he leads, with wife, kids, handlers, PR and campaign flunkies, the press and adoring fans all over him all over him all the time. How was he able to establish that uh, connection that leads to, uh, romance? Where did he find the time and the place? Were there possibly more places like the Highway 8 Hotel than we think, far away from the media glare? Look what happened when he tried to sneak into the Hilton.
I guess it’s a secret of the rich and famous I’ll never know. Then again, maybe we will, now that the mainstream media is finally wise and there are many more questions.
Update Another strange Edwards reminder: Turner Classic’s showing The Apartment. Fred MacMurray is brilliantly devious.
