when oversharing meets politics

Here’s one of the shrewdest takes on Elizabeth Edwards’s behavior in the unfortunate incident involving her weasel of a husband, from Hanna Rosin at the XX Factor [e.a.]:

I find this Elizabeth Edwards post on Daily Kos excruciating. We are supposed to ride with this couple through her cancer diagnosis and relapse, through their son’s death, their fertility treatments, and the rededication of their marriage, but then we are supposed to butt the hell out when the story line veers from the tragedy and heroics. If you believe in a system, you have to live and die by it. Elizabeth Edwards buys into the culture of overconfession. She is an obsessive blogger, for God’s sake. You can’t just get suddenly pissed off because the confessional culture came back to bite you. A “string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication”???

Yes, that was a huge mistake on the part of the Edwardses. It was they who put their great marriage front and center in his campaign, as Kaus wrote recently, when he was explaining why it’s important for the MSM to cover this story.:

Edwards’ most effective anecdote this year, however, was probably the story of his popular wife Elizabeths’ struggle against cancer. He made it the emotional center of a TV ad:

And Elizabeth and I decided in the quiet of a hospital room, after 12 hours of tests and after getting very bad news, what we were going to spend our lives doing. For all those that have no voice. We are not going to quietly go away.

During a joint 60 Minutes interview focusing on his wife’s illness, Edwards explicitly linked his behavior in that struggle and his fitness for public office:

Katie Couric:
Some have suggested that you’re capitalizing on this.

John Edwards:
Here’s what I would say about that.

First of all, there’s not a single person in America that should vote for me because Elizabeth has cancer. Not a one. ..[snip]

But, I think every single candidate for president, Republican and Democratic have lives, personal lives, that indicate something about what kind of human being they are. And I think it is a fair evaluation for America to engage in to look at what kind of human beings each of us are, and what kind of president we’d make. [E.A.]

Once Edwards brought America into his family’s private hell, all other bets were off and there was no more “zone of privacy.”

Soon it won’t only be the tabloids snooping into politicians’ affairs. This is the era of the citizen journalist, after all. And if the mainstream media proves itself too squeamish or “high-class” to report on these kinds of things—which involve lies, cover-ups, hush money, personal betrayals, and which speak directly to the issue of character—you can be sure after this major breach of the public trust from a former presidential candidate and his wife, a lot of freelancers will be operating in this territory from now on.

The public may not have a “right” to know, but the public wants to know the whole story—including the sordid stuff. Fairy tales they can get in People magazine. They want the full range of possible fabrications and truths about celebrities (and politicians), including the dirt.