Peace, Elizabeth

Believe it or not (and some in this blogosphere will not), I'm sad too about the passing of Elizabeth Edwards . . . but not for all of the obvious laudatory reasons that will crescendo - then fade - over the airwaves and ether in the coming days.

Ed Cone says that Elizabeth was a visionary in terms of the use of the Internet as a political tool. 

But as a doctor-in-public-service-in-North-Carolina who found out the hard way that Elizabeth's husband WAS a political tool . . . and, as a novice-to-the-medium who, back in 2005, bought into the notion (Elizabeth's notion - and Cone's notion) that the Internet could be used to really educate the public and right wrongs and change the world . . . I always found the rhetoric of the never-ending Presidential candidate and his feisty, opinionated wife very empty . . and the vision lacking . . . particularly when it came to really fixing healthcare in this country (Elizabeth's bread-&-butter talking point - especially after her cancer diagnosis).

Doctors-done-wrong by a broken system - serving conscientiously and with distinction in the very government programs her husband advocated -  were left out of Elizabeth's noble equations for healthcare reform. 

For instance, if I were diagnosed with breast cancer tomorrow, everything I've worked and fought so hard to hold onto (after getting the big government-sanctioned screw - and watching those who did me wrong get rich) would be lost in slow, painful increments. 

I suppose that might get me sympathy in Elizabeth's book.  But taking the ugly, demoralizing personal and professional hits because I did the right thing by another woman's very sick newborn infant never did.  

I never understood the tunnel vision.  And, of course, I'm still here in the ether.

Courtesy of Elizabeth's friends in the Greesnboro blogosphere, I learned hard lessons I would have rather not learned - particularly that "The Two Americas" is very much alive and well - if not exactly in the way the Edwardses would have styled it. 

That's part of the legacy too.

Tonight I'm wondering if the criminal investigation and possible prosecution of John Edwards was delayed or stalled because those-in-the-know-in-Raleigh knew this was coming . . . and chose to spare Elizabeth in her final days.

I've got no real problem with that if that's what happened.  It was kind.  But it would not have happened for you or me.

These things being said, tonight it's not about John Edwards (the mere mention of his name is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me) . . . whose self-centered, sorry performance in office as U.S. Senator was the focal point of my differences with Elizabeth. 

While I disagreed with her vehemently - philosophically and politically - about a whole lot of things . . . and I had no use for her big blind spot where John camped out . . . Elizabeth was also a daughter and a Mother and a sister . . . a woman of substance who lived and died by her choices . . . and Southern dame-in-the-best-sense who fought a good fight.  I believe that tonight she's at peace in God's arms. 

In the spirit of peace, I'm going to pretend I'm Rob Christensen at the N&O.  Comments on this post are closed.

Since you can't even read the obits online at the Courier Tribune (without paying $87/year), I can't pretend to be Ray Criscoe.

Like I said, that vision of the Internet as a tool for truth and justice wasn't all it was cracked-up to be.