Q. Are you struck with the overnight “canonization” of Elizabeth Edwards by the media?
A. I am indeed. No one takes away from her the anguish she faced with the death of her son….the emergence of breast cancer…the public infidelity of her husband and the humiliation that caused…the grave worsening of the cancer and her calm reserve as she faced death. All these things are to the good. But I am mystified by her failure to mention God in any way in her last words written for her Facebook. Of course in this ultra-secular society this nihilism has aided in her “canonization” as you put it. But when you evaluate her totally from a lot of things written about her, there is a reason for it.
Q. –which is?
A. Long story. The first ones to mention “Saint Elizabeth” were the co-authors of probably the best book written about a presidential campaign—one that even exceeds Theodore White’s The Making of the President series for 1964, 1968 and 1972. It’s Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilmann a writer for New York magazine and Mark Halperin of Time.
They and no one else imagined that John Edwards would crash the way he did in the arms of a veritable flower-child but even then the writing duo saw Elizabeth savoring the spotlight in the campaign and actually disparaging her husband as a kind of pretty-boy Know Nothing which of course is exactly what he was. But all the same they were stunned at the bitterness with which she described his shallowness to people around her—which eventually got to the press.
Later when she came down with breast cancer and John Edwards fell ingloriously as adulterer, there was the aura of “Saint Elizabeth” which they wrote about with some tongue in cheek. This is not to disparage her but her sudden “canonization” by the media crested just yesterday. Amazing.
Q. She never mentioned God or Jesus Christ or religious faith throughout the ordeal?
A. Not really. For more detail read David Gibson, a very liberal religious reporter for Politics Daily. I don’t fancy Gibson because he’s a far-left National Catholic Reporter type Catholic convert. But I’ve double-checked him on Elizabeth’s expressed views on God and religion and he’s very right.
He writes that in her written farewell ‘…she seemed to carefully evade a mention of God or Jesus or things eternal.” He quotes a guy who comments “Being anti-religion is so cool so Edwards’ non-theological theology gets props…. Still at her death bed and giving what most folks are calling a final goodbye, Elizabeth Edwards couldn’t find it somewhere down deep to ask for His blessings as she prepares for the hereafter? I guess the nihilism I’ve been discussing reaches up higher into the hard-left precincts than I thought.” As you know, Elizabeth was always to the Left of her candidate husband…supporting same-sex marriage and a whole lot of other things.
Elizabeth expressed the mixed-up views that fits a Hemingway hero Writing in conversation with liberal women bloggers a few years ago she said this: “I have, I think, somewhat of an odd version of God. I do not have an intervening God. I don’t think I can pray to him—or her [sic] to cure me of cancer…I appreciate other people’s prayers for that [a cure for her cancer] but I believe that we are given a set of guidelines and that we are obligated to live our lives with a view to those guidelines. And I don’t believe that we should live our lives that way for some promise of eternal life but because what’s right. We should do those things because that’s what’s right.”
This goofy nihilism of course led her to quote the ultra-nihilistic Bill Moyers who put out a TV special on the Book of Genesis…and if you can figure this out, please drop me a line and explain it to me will you? “You get the God you have, not the God you want.”
Well Tom, it is all of a piece today when ‘celebrities’ die - whether in an untimely manner or in the fullness of time: instant canonization. That has been the bane of Catholic funerals with the obnoxious ‘eulogies’ which have become commonplace in recent decades (I wasn’t pleased with the “Santo subito” cries at the death of Pope John Paul II either…). The ‘professional grieving’ we’re treated to at the passing of Princess Diana, Michael Jackson, John Lennon et al. is nauseating.
ReplyDeletePeople suffer and die all the time – most with much more to contend with than well-heeled public figures. And most of them suffer and die in obscurity with no fanfare or attention. Are their souls less important to God than those of celebrities? No. And the best and most charitable response is: prayers for their souls – something else we have lost in recent decades.
So for Mrs. Edwards and all the deceased, known and unknown: Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine. Requiescant in Pace.
This would have not been a canonized death had John not cheated on her. In modern media victimhood = virtue. In the eulogies, I haven't heard much of her good deeds, only what she went through.
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