CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
It’s so easy to judge these days isn’t it? What with Bristol Palin running around preaching against premarital sex and disgraced politicians attaching themselves to reality shows, it’s easy to surrender to our baser natures and moralize. It’s like they’re practically inviting some serious snarkiness.
So when Elizabeth Edwards went on “Oprah” on Thursday, or rather invited Oprah to her and John’s “dream house,” we knew exactly what would happen. With her sympathetic eyes and soothingly familiar voice, Oprah would gently but firmly lead Elizabeth around the show ring, then through a modified obstacle course of public soul-baring. Elizabeth has a book to pitch, called “Resilience,” a fitting enough title for a woman who has lost a child, been diagnosed with incurable cancer and, last year, watched her husband be outed as a lying adulterer by the tabloids. No doubt she has much to say about the perils of mortality and life in politics, but she knows which of these is her media lead (hint: it isn’t the cancer).
Thursday’s interview was, not surprisingly, much touted by Harpo Productions and, just as not surprisingly, Elizabeth was immediately taken to task by some for cashing in on her role as wounded wife. As the interview began, that criticism seemed valid enough. It was all so tediously familiar. Oprah arrived in her big Oprah car, the whole family piled out and pretended to be happy that Mom was about to go on national television to talk about what must have been a fairly horrible year in the Edwards’ dream house. The house was duly admired, and John sheepishly agreed to “be around” before hustling the children away so the two women could get down to business.
No one is better at these sorts of interviews than Winfrey, but even she seemed tired of the whole rigmarole. Although she led with the questions she had to lead with, you got the feeling that her heart wasn’t in it. Elizabeth’s only stated limitation was that Rielle Hunter, her husband’s former lover, not be named, but her answers were as vague as those of any accused politician. “He’s talked to me about questions people ask and things like that; he doesn’t know anything more than I know about this” was her answer to Oprah’s question about the paternity of Hunter’s child. And Oprah just nodded and moved on.
Which isn’t to say Elizabeth didn’t “dish.” She obligingly reiterated what she had written in the book -- that John first told her he had had a one-night “indiscretion” days after he announced his presidential candidacy, that she didn’t learn it was much more than that for a year, that she had screamed and vomited when she found out, that she wondered if it was because she wasn’t attractive enough (it must be said that the lime-green top she wore for the interview may not have been the best choice), that she didn’t know whether she could ever trust him again.
But for all her cutting comments about the unnamed Hunter, the “sort of woman” Elizabeth claims she had never met before, and the now embarrassingly famous pickup line (“You’re so hot”), her anger played cold and flat. It wasn’t until about midway through the interview, when she began talking about her love for her husband and her view of their life together that things got interesting.
Agreeing that the cancer gave her a certain perspective -- “Life is going to be less long and I don’t want to spend it fighting” -- she spoke passionately about the fact that in 30 years of marriage, through some of the worst tragedies a couple can endure, John had always been by her side, and how that made it difficult to allow the adultery to become the defining moment. She wasn’t making excuses for him -- her disappointment in him as a husband and a man is very clear. But if her attitude toward adultery seemed sophomoric -- “I have no idea why he did it” was as deep as it got, her thoughts about marriage were definitely not. She also spoke movingly, albeit briefly, of their son Wade’s death and how it made her own death less frightening and “a relief.”
Her own death “a relief.” Talk about burying the lead.
But there was no time for follow-up. The hour was running out and the house, with its full-sized gymnasium and indoor dog run, had to be admired and John brought painfully into the conversation to offer his full support to the book and admit that he had indeed been afraid Elizabeth would leave him when it all hit the fan. Then Oprah offered her benediction -- “there has been so much love between you” -- and was gone, leaving Elizabeth to prepare for the next round of interviews and the rest of us wondering why we have set up this absurd system of personal revelation that demands salacious and painful details from a woman who has some actual hard-won wisdom to dispense.
--
