Dumb & Dumber

[Geee]

Human Events:

Congressman Anthony Weiner used to like cameras. Former Senator John Edwards once adored courtrooms. Now they dread them.

A federal grand jury indicted Edwards (D-The People’s Court) on various campaign finance violations on Friday. A media grand jury convicted Weiner (D-MSNBC) of Tweeting a pervy pic the previous Friday to a college co-ed.

The ambulance-chasing barrister facing a jury from the defendant’s chair, or the camera-chasing pol calling the cops on a persistent reporter for New York’s CBS affiliate, seems the stuff of a Roald Dahl story. Irony is too weak a word; comeuppance too flippant. There is a fictional quality, something oh-so tidy, about the ruin of Weiner and Edwards.

It’s tempting to describe their falls as Shakespearean. They are more accurately Edwardian, Weineresque even. These demises are as unique as these protagonists. Pick your cliché: turnabout is fair play, hoisted on his own petard, live by the sword, die by the sword.

Each man is a personification of the very worst in American culture: litigiousness run amok in Edwards’ case; celebrity worship in Weiner’s. The foulness that they embodied ultimately befouled them.

The get-rich-quick lawyer trolled for get-rich-quick clients peddling get-rich-quick cases. He didn’t make wealth. He seized it as a courthouse highwayman. John Edwards attained riches unaccompanied by accomplishment. Then he crassly claimed to be doing the people’s work.

Edwards made his name and fortune exploiting a sue-happy climate and the emotionally-minded jurors who enable it. Through lawsuits he hounded not bad people but deliverers of babies, chemists who unhooked alcoholics from booze, and entrepreneurs whose market risks resulted in thousands of jobs. His millions cost consumers millions.

Every time a doctor refuses to give you a straight answer, speaks Corporatese, or compels you to sign a consent decree for a mundane procedure, remind yourself that it’s not him. He’s just having a John Edwards moment. If you envision the former Democratic nominee for the vice presidency on a commercial betwixt Judge Judy cases, it may not be your imagination running away from you. It may just be your memory running back to you.

[AceRimmer]

I'm much more amused with Oscar Meyer than Edwards, because everbody knew he was finished(politcally) the moment he admitted he was the father of the love-child and split with his wife before she died. Wiener, who's role model is Chuck Schumer, is the second most dangerous man on Earth to get in the way of a TV camera(besides Chuckie Cheese himself) but is now avoiding them like the plague.

 

So much for draining that swamp, eh Nancy?

[nickydog]

Oh, yeah. Nancy did say she was going to do that, didn't she? Ha!