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Mark Steyn on John Edwards; "A Ravening Justice"
Topic Started: May 23 2012, 03:20 PM (1,848 Views)
kbp

Not sure where I came up with the idea she had the big money.
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Joan Foster

EE was in her fifties or close when she had those last two children. I wonder if the fertility drugs that are often necessary to conceive at that age contributed to her breast cancer. Then, as she deals with that disease, he impregnates a much younger woman.
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cks
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Joan Foster
May 26 2012, 07:59 PM
EE was in her fifties or close when she had those last two children. I wonder if the fertility drugs that are often necessary to conceive at that age contributed to her breast cancer. Then, as she deals with that disease, he impregnates a much younger woman.
I have often wondered if that were the case as well. How much of the desire for children so late in life (after already having what seemeingly were tow accomplished children) was again (I know I sound like a broken record on this) the narcissism of Edwards? Young children would give him a cachet - seemingly young and virile - young children wold evoke a JFK comparison (cut without the health issues and of course the infidelities that such a comparison in these days would entail - hence the wedding anniversary celebrations at McDonalds) that he rightfully surmised (look at the Obamas) still cpatures many voters' imaginations.

I can well understant the desire to have children - mine are the light of my life and have made me a better person in ways to many to ennumerate. However, there is no right to children - I think that when one attemps to play God, there can be consequences that ensue that are not what one may want.
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Duke parent 2004
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cks
May 27 2012, 07:17 AM
I have often wondered if that were the case as well. How much of the desire for children so late in life (after already having what seemeingly were tow accomplished children) was again (I know I sound like a broken record on this) the narcissism of Edwards? Young children would give him a cachet - seemingly young and virile - young children wold evoke a JFK comparison (cut without the health issues and of course the infidelities that such a comparison in these days would entail - hence the wedding anniversary celebrations at McDonalds) that he rightfully surmised (look at the Obamas) still cpatures many voters' imaginations.
Perhaps it was Elizabeth who was the driver in this matter.. Children are often the glue that keeps the male from decamping.. I know of several marriages that would have fallen apart years ago had there been no children to consider.. Did Elizabeth suspect earlier than we suppose that Johnnie had appeared in a dream to Moses, just before "Thou shalt not commit adultery" was engraved on a stone tablet?
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cks
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Duke parent 2004
May 27 2012, 07:44 AM
cks
May 27 2012, 07:17 AM
I have often wondered if that were the case as well. How much of the desire for children so late in life (after already having what seemeingly were tow accomplished children) was again (I know I sound like a broken record on this) the narcissism of Edwards? Young children would give him a cachet - seemingly young and virile - young children wold evoke a JFK comparison (cut without the health issues and of course the infidelities that such a comparison in these days would entail - hence the wedding anniversary celebrations at McDonalds) that he rightfully surmised (look at the Obamas) still cpatures many voters' imaginations.
Perhaps it was Elizabeth who was the driver in this matter.. Children are often the glue that keeps the male from decamping.. I know of several marriages that would have fallen apart years ago had there been no children to consider.. Did Elizabeth suspect earlier than we suppose that Johnnie had appeared in a dream to Moses, just before "Thou shalt not commit adultery" was engraved on a stone tablet?
It could well be - both that she was the driver and that she suspected him of infidelities long before Rielle.

It is always difficult and in some ways a waste of time to speculate on what drives individuals within a marriage to do the things that they do. Just from observing my own parents and siblings, I have seen that there is much that does not make sense - but then again, just because it is someone or something that I would not choose only speaks to my choices not to theirs (and as such, neither makes it wrong or right).

What I have never been able to comprehend is why people would choose to have a child very late in life - the ability to see that child through to adulthood would be diminished to a great extent. Teenagers can be difficult when one is in one's late forties (when one is still not so old and set in one's ways that one cannot recall the angst of those years) and even more so in one's fifties. I shudder at the thought of coping with one's teenage offspring in one's sixties or seventies - dealing with others teens in my dotage as a teacher is one thing - at least I do not have to take them home each night and deal with them then as well as on the weekends - though, as students, they are never really out of my mind (except when summer arrives).
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kbp

OT
That having children later in life doesn't fit well with the SS pyramid plan either!
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Duke parent 2004
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cks
May 27 2012, 08:17 AM
Just from observing my own parents and siblings, I have seen that there is much that does not make sense - but then again, just because it is someone or something that I would not choose only speaks to my choices not to theirs (and as such, neither makes it wrong or right).
At the risk of boring folks here, I reproduce from the final chapter of Jacques Barzun's God's Country and Mine (1954) an "episode" that captures better than anything else I've come across the inscrutability of what binds some couples together.

I went up to Boston on a morning train, and opposite me in the grill car sat a young couple whom it would have been hard to overlook or forget. She was perhaps twenty years old, perhaps less, and of extraordinary beauty. But it did not advertise: one had to be attuned to it. Her oval face, framed in dark hair, might superficially be called of Spanish type, with prominent cheekbones, and perfectly molded chin, but a clear and rather pale coloring changed the expected effect of the most expressive dark eyes I have ever seen. Neither small nor tall, her figure was perfect in its lack of accentuation. What is even rarer, she did not trot or slink or hitch-and-drag but walked. She wore very little make-up, her nails were bare. When she smiled her face lost none of its symmetry or sweetness. Rounded lips, firmly tied at the corners, disclosed even teeth happily not too small, and these added a gleam of light that was like a witty afterthought. She was everything at once—pretty, handsome, lovely, and beautiful.

To see all this took less time than to describe it, and I managed to order my sandwich without holding up the waitress or staring like a cow over a fence. It was the girl's companion who required scrutiny. Perhaps he seemed younger than she because he was so weedy and discouraging to look at. His shoulders sloped like a bad coat-hanger, and the coat itself, a melancholy herringbone, covered his frame like a blanket flung over a hat tree. While his companion was neatly rather than well dressed, he was hardly fit to go out—no tie, a spotty growth of bristles, hair overlong at front and back and unkempt in between. His face was remarkable for only two features—a vagrantly receding chin and slightly protuberant eyes, of the kind that seem to have as much lid underneath as on top. I should add that his glance was very fine, deep, and dark amid long lashes curling upward. His lazy way of sweeping the air with them was only to be expected.

I watched them eat. She was cheerful, indeed gay, paying no attention to anything but her friend, as if enjoying the idea of their trip together. She always turned to him to speak and hung on the few words he dropped. He was not sullen, exactly, but seemed vaguely annoyed at himself. In this conjecture, as it turned out, I was wrong. He did not sit straight by her side but half averted, his body at an awkward angle to the table. He looked so uncomfortable that I put him down as the younger brother or cousin, embarrassed as an ill-bred youth of seventeen can be at having to escort a full-grown young woman who is being nice to him out of kindness and good manners.

The train pulled in and I did not think of them again, although once or twice over the weekend her face arose in my mind with the question, Where have I seen such a person?

Two days later I returned to New York on the Yankee Clipper. I was already seated and reading the paper when someone, trying to hoist a bag on the rack across the aisle from me, brought within my field of vision a shape, a design of cloth, that made me turn my head. It was my friend in herringbone. She was with him, sitting in the outer seat. Neither noticed me, of course, but as they settled down they forced themselves once more on my attention.

Though less than three feet away, I did not hear a word they said. For four hours, they whispered, locked in each other's arms. It cannot have been very comfortable for the girl, half reclining across his lap, but she managed to endure it skillfully, shifting her position now and then, being at all times completely modest. It was not a necking party in public. No doubt the boy’s lethargy contributed to this seemliness, but the character of the occasion was really due to her. Her face and her behavior, her visible emotion were a study and wonder. She loved him, obviously. Anyone would rack his brains in vain to imagine why. It could not be his looks or manly bearing. It could not be his conversation, which was scant. It was not money: he seemed—they both seemed—anything but rich. For a moment the wild notion crossed my mind that he might be of princely blood, in sordid exile. He had the tired Bourbon look. But no, it was impossible to saddle any royal family with this creature who was holding an unimaginably beautiful woman in his arms like a scrawny messenger boy carrying a swath of long-stemmed flowers.

Not that he was indifferent to his burden. He held her close. He waggled his modicum of chin among the tendrils above her brow. He whispered, and his words may have been so electrifying that they transfigured him. And transfigured she was. She faced in my direction, all unseeing; I could read her quick thoughts fleeing across her face, her smiles, her suddenly closed and reopened eyes. When once or twice she got up and left him and brought back a cup of water, she came down the aisle like one hastening to meet a long-lost love. He gave her a slow beat of his eyelashes in response and this may have been enough for her. Not for me. I wanted to yank him to his feet, trim his head with a lawnmower, and shake him till the herringbones rattled together.

I was, once again, altogether wrong. They were certainly not brother and sister or cousins, but lovers, by intent or fulfillment. They wore no rings of any kind. Her look of the yielded heart and soul was sufficient clue. It is not rare to see women rapt with pleasure, with desire, with pride of possession or of self. One has seen the hungry mothering look and the adoring-calculating one, the eyes of reckless flirtation and the smiles of "I’m the Queen of the May." Only once in a lifetime, perhaps, one sees passion. She had it, he endured it. And what I took for negligence or indifference on his part may well have been respect or humility; I give him the benefit of the doubt. Why she chose him is nobody's business, not even hers. They understood one another and their priceless possession, however each might give or receive it. Taking in the scene, another passenger who went by winked at me and said: “Lucky guy!” But he too was wrong: “Lucky, lucky girl!”

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Loved your post, Duke Parent. I had to reread it to understand that you were not the author although I might suggest that you very well could have.
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Duke parent 2004
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Truth Detector
May 27 2012, 09:10 PM
Loved your post, Duke Parent. I had to reread it to understand that you were not the author although I might suggest that you very well could have.
Before typing out that long passage, I looked for an on-line version that might save me all that keying.. The first hit I got through Google for the book itself was, not surprisingly, at Amazon.. And the first review of the book at Amazon began, "The writings of Jacques Barzun have literally changed my life.". Now those words could very plausibly be attributed to me.
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As is often the case, on this blogsite, my life is enriched by those who share. Thank you.
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Baldo
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well, if there ever was such a thing a winner on a thread I say it goes to Duke parent 2004.

Take a victory lap!
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Joan Foster

That was a wonderful treat! Thanks DP!
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