Wordsworth in Blitzer Land

By Richard Cohen
WashPost
Tuesday, May 26, 2009

"The world is too much with us," the poet William Wordsworth wrote -- and that, of course, was before Elizabeth Edwards published her book and went on television to promote it, ducking questions about a child her husband might have fathered with another woman but answering other questions about marital infidelity and suffering all the time from cancer. What to do? What to think? What judgments can we make?

I don't want Elizabeth Edwards in my life. Yet I cannot avoid her. She shadows me. Her cherubic visage is on every passing television screen. I have been spending time of late in hospitals visiting a loved one. Elizabeth Edwards is on in every room I pass. She's on in the waiting area, in the reception area -- for all I know, she is on in the operating room. She is on the nightly news and "Charlie Rose" and "Larry King" and "Oprah" and, of course, "The View," the only truly essential show on television. Edwards, Edwards, Edwards, everywhere I go.

What to think? Why did she write this book? What effect will it have on her kids? What effect will it have on me? Why does she stay with John? (Why do I call him John?) Why didn't she leave him then? Why did she go on with the charade?

Wait! Can I pass judgment on her? She's got cancer, for crying out loud. Her husband cheated on her while he was running for president. Just once, he told her. A one-night stand, he told her. When her cancer was in remission, he told her. Does that make it okay? Does it make it less bad? Does it make it any of my business?

(More here.)