Most everyone knows, I liked John Edwards. I liked his ideas and I'm usually a sucker for a moderate. When I talked to my mother on the phone last she asked me what I thought about the John Edwards affair. My answer last night was the same as it is this morning: I wasn't surprised and it doesn't affect my opinion of him in the slightest. I believe my exact words last night were, "Oh, that. No, I wasn't surprised. No one can be that lily white".
"But he did it as his wife was going through 4th stage cancer", said my mother.
"Yeah. That sucks. But people have affairs under all kinds of stressful circumstances. Men have affairs when their wives are pregnant or because there's some huge stressful issue happening and it rarely helps and always sucks".
Infidelity and adultery run rampant in politics. It's nothing new or unusual and we Americans are always quick to moralize and condemn people for behavior that offends our sensibilities or our moral codes. The older I get the less able and willing I am to wash all things with my morality brush. I have a enough to do in keeping my own turds in a pile without projecting my own code of ethics and morality on other people's behavior.
I tend to view infidelity and adultery as a symptom of something else- an inappropriate response to a stressful situation in a relationship or in some cases, part of addictive behavior. Yes, it's happened to me and it was always about them and their inability to deal to deal with life on life's terms. Does that make them "bad" or "amoral" people? Not always.
So, I enjoyed reading this article from AlterNet and thought I would share it with those of you who are still hanging tough with me.
