Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

Op-ed: Personal conclusions

Posted on August 14, 2008August 14, 2008 by Staff

Catherine Devine

Now this is a true confession, and I’ve never told this to anyone before, I swear to you, but I actually wrote to the John Edwards campaign in person and literally begged them – begged them! – to make him stop talking like a liar.

Look back at that sentence. Do you believe me? You shouldn’t, even though it’s the truth. But I wrote it exactly the way John Edwards would have told it. His gobbledy-gook would feed a family of five for a year … just add ketchup. (If you’re rich, of course, the possibilities are endless.)

To be totally honest … I knew Edwards was a phony the night he accepted the senatorial election. Ready? All I just really wanna say, candidly, is this is the best day of my life.

The man absolutely, totally, genuinely expects us to hang on his every word. Couldn’t he just scream like Howard Dean once or twice?

After I started noticing the former senator’s, um, public speech impediment, I started imitating it for fun. Then I started editing my own speech. It’s really easy to do. Thinking ahead takes only a synapse, and it comes out sounding pretty good. So I wrote to the Edwards campaign in a burst of generosity. They never wrote back, and the problem got worse – gradually but steadily, as that pesky narcissism snuck up on him, ultimately catching him unawares. He now blames this tragic affliction for causing him to make that “mistake.”

Not even in a public admission of guilt can Mr. Edwards admit to doing wrong. He reminds me of the E-Trade baby who rented a clown but underestimated the creepiness. (The rented clown might in fact be his own sorry narcissistic self, kind of like a bad dream.) “My Lord and my wife have forgiven me, so I am going to move on.” Okay folks, it’s over, let’s wipe all this puke off the floor so we can get out of here.

“I have come to the personal conclusion that I actually want the country to see who I really am.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. These words were spoken, with tape rolling, to the video producer he was courting on his personal plane. Did she fall for that nauseating pick-up line? Obviously so. She followed him to the tarmac, to dinner, to the hotel room, and all the way home to the editing suite where she played those endearing words over and over and basically sold them back to her client for a fortune. Listen, honey — not every sound bite gets to make the cut. Start thinking like an editor for a change.

This master of self-delusion fooled millions of people on his personal road to ruin. John Edwards wrote his own script. “In all candor … I speak from my heart … this is the honest truth … I have been stripped bare.” The music swells as the naked-ish candidate walks off into the sunset.

Catherine Devine is a writer from Carrboro.

1 thought on “Op-ed: Personal conclusions”

  1. Librarian says:
    August 14, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    Huh?

Comments are closed.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme