(Crossposted from"News From the Front.)
The John Edwards trial moves along with the speedy sadness of a grieving widow strapped to a rocket bike. (Via The New York Times.)
GREENSBORO, N.C. — For hour after grueling hour, Andrew Young sat on the witness stand in a small federal courtroom here last week and stared straight ahead, never once facing the man he had once looked upon as a father.
John Edwards, the former Democratic senator who is facing 30 years in prison, leaned forward and watched. Much of his defense rests on proving that Mr. Young, the man who had held his deepest secret, is a liar.
The charges in this trial, which is expected to stretch well into May, concern whether nearly a million dollars that Mr. Edwards and Mr. Young secretly solicited from two wealthy donors to help hide an affair was a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws during Mr. Edwards’s run for the 2008 presidential nomination.
But the trial also tells a painful story of family and love and broken relationships.
Go read the entire thing but try to avoid contact with sharp objects and/or caustic chemicals as you do. In a nutshell, Mr. Young heard Edwards speak in 1998, believed in his message and made it his goal in life to help him to become President.
And by 2009, according to an E-Mail mentioned in the NYT article, he wanted to take a shit on Edwards’ head.
I think most of us Democrats can relate to that feeling.
But what’s depressing me today is the fact that there were once some very valid reasons we supported him in the first place. And one of those valid reasons was his famous Two Americas speech.
Let me ask you a question. If you knew then what you know now about John Edwards, would any part of that speech be considered invalid? Or would it be even more relevant in this era of the Occupy movement?
Look I’m not defending Edwards’ actions in any way. As far as I’m concerned, the man made his own bed and he can go fuck himself in it. However, the words he spoke back in 2004 still have value.
Or a someone commented on my of my other diaries at The Daily Kos a while back, (In another context.) “Never mistake the Finger pointing at the Moon for the Moon”.
We still live in two Americas and we should never forget it.
Even she the guy who reminded us behaved like a dick in both of them.
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