Elizabeth Edwards Raps New York Times's Maureen Dowd
By Deborah Kotz, Washington Whispers
For all those meanies who've been bashing Elizabeth Edwards in the press, she has some grenades to hurl right back. In response to a recent New York Times column by Maureen Dowd that called Edwards's new book, Resilience, "just a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life," Edwards says Dowd is way off base and adds that she'd have been "foolhardy" to think she'd be protecting her kids by not writing about her life.
"My children aren't protected from the death of their brother, my breast cancer, or any of the things that have happened in our family," says Edwards. "They're smart kids, they have Google alerts. They already know." Dowd, she adds, "has written an editorial where she clearly does not understand this."
And then Edwards had some choice words for Anne Coulter, the conservative commentator who once called John Edwards a "faggot" and joked that she "wished he'd been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
"I called Anne Coulter and complained, asking her if she doesn't feel some responsibility to raise the level of discussion," says Edwards.
She insists her book wasn't written out of spite or revenge for her husband's admitting to having an affair and the possibility that he has an out-of-wedlock child with his mistress. "If I wanted to write an angry, vindictive book, it's not that I don't know how," she says. "I know how to write that. That's a really easy book." Instead, she says, she was trying to write in a "nonjudgmental, accurate way" about "all these yucky things that have happened to me." She does admit, though, that she didn't say things in the most "protective way" that she could have but rather in the most "representative" way.
And all that criticism from the media? "It doesn't bother me," she says, since it "allows us to have a conversation about things that are worth having a conversation about."
Check out Deborah Kotz's full interview with Elizabeth Edwards here.
Browse our gallery of Whispers political cartoons.
Follow Paul and Nikki on Twitter.
Read more Washington Whispers.
Tools: 
Share
|
| Comments (52) | Print
Reader Comments
Power hungry celebrity seeker
Some people will do anything to hang on to and cash in on their fame no matter what the cost, and the rest of us be damned. She knew about her husbands affair but selfishly kept her mouth shut to keep her chances of being first lady alive. If John Edwards had been nominated didn't she realize that the chances were good that word would get out and McCain would get in? She put all of us at risk for her and her husband's political ambitions and now she is trying to cash in on the remnants of her celebrity. Go ahead madam, sell your books, get on the Larry King show. I am sorry for your illness but your hubris is still astounding.
Elizabeth Edwards new book, Resilience
I don't get the comments that Elizabeth Edwards just wrote Resilience as revenge for her husband's affair. I just finished reading Resilience and found it very insightful, tactful, well written, and inspiring. It makes me want to know Elizabeth Edwards. She truly has had to "adjust her sails," as she wrote in the final paragraph of the book. In my opinion, she has a very admirable, positive outlook on her future even though she has had to deal with the loss of a child she obviously loved very much, a serious prognosis that her cancer is growing, and then the shock of the affair of her hasband. Any one of those challenges should evoke at the very least compassion and yet twin sisters Ann Coulter and Maureen Dowd spew their typical, omnipresent venom at Ms. Edwards. I just don't get it, and frankly, don't care to try to make any sense of their hate---what a waste of time and life.
Elizabeth Edwards new book, Resilience
I don't get the comments that Elizabeth Edwards just wrote Resilience as revenge for her husband's affair. I just finished reading Resilience and found it very insightful, tactful, well written, and inspiring. It makes me want to know Elizabeth Edwards. She truly has had to "adjust her sails," as she wrote in the final paragraph of the book. In my opinion, she has a very admirable, positive outlook on her future even though she has had to deal with the loss of a child she obviously loved very much, a serious prognosis that her cancer is growing, and then the shock of the affair of her hasband. Any one of those challenges should evoke at the very least compassion and yet twin sisters Ann Coulter and Maureen Dowd spew their typical, omnipresent venom at Ms. Edwards. I just don't get it, and frankly, don't care to try to find make any sense of their hate---what a waste of time and life.
advertisement
