Opinion: What did Elizabeth Edwards know and when did she know it?
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Well, it looks like we’re going to be hearing plenty more in the near future from E2 -- Elizabeth Edwards. We’ve had her on ‘Oprah.’ On Monday comes the ‘Today Show.’ and Tuesday she drops in on good ol’ Larry King. (FYI, one condition of these TV interviews seems to be that no one says the mistress’ name.)
Mrs. Edwards might have hoped that media attention would focus on the new book’s title and theme -- ‘Resilience’ -- or how to successfully handle difficult personal times.
Dream on.
Of course, most attention has skipped the prose of the terminally ill mother to focus on one of her other difficult times -- her husband’s oft-lied-about-and-now-admitted affair with someone we’ll call Rielle Hunter. She was an Edwards campaign videographer who reportedly lured the wannabe president of the United States off the path of marital fidelity by telling him he was ‘hot.’
When he confessed to the affair on TV last summer, the Democratic former senator, former Democratic VP nominee and former Democratic POTUS candidate noted, for some reason, that at the time of the affair, first exposed by the National Enquirer, his wife’s cancer was in remission.
E2 has said her husband confessed to the affair shortly after announcing his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination. And that this caused her to cry, scream and vomit.
Today, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos blogs that he interviewed the couple shortly after Edwards’ announcement and noticed no tension between the husband and wife. He asked her on the video if she had a say in his campaign decision.
‘I probably could have vetoed it,’ Mrs. Edwards replied, ‘but I didn’t. Part of it was my health, which is good now, and the other is whether or not we would support him and, of course, I have to say he was beside me every step of the way during my fight against cancer.’
Stephanopoulos then notes she looks healthy.
‘Thanks, I appreciate that. And that’s what a marriage is about. I’m with him in the fights that he has to undertake.... The way I’ve always described it is that I’m a window, I mean, in a sense, another surrogate, somebody who believes in him and believes in what he’s saying and if I can reach out and talk to people.’
The unanswered question tonight: Did she know in this video and was just being a super actress sitting by her man’s side? Or was her husband sitting there by her side just about to sandbag her with the disturbing news? Either way, she kept the secret and kept on campaigning for him until he dropped out.
-- Andrew Malcolm
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