Turns out the National Enquirer was telling the truth, after all. One would think that the photos they produced and the eyewitness accounts of security officers would have been enough. But I guess there is still a "Boy who cries wolf" attachment to their brand name.
Nevertheless, I am trying to figure out this whole John Edwards disaster.
Here is the poster boy (in more ways than one) for fighting poverty and eliminating the "2 Americas." Turns out he lives in the most palatial and expansive home in his own county. More talk than walk?
Now he follows that up with a stunning admission that he had a fairly lengthy affair. The poster boy for "faithful husband of cancer-stricken woman who declares that she wants her husband to pursue his dreams rather than stay nearby to attend to her life-threatening illness" turns out to be a philanderer. May even have fathered a love child.
Is it not odd that he fails to live up to the two main images he sought to portray?
- Crusader against poverty
- Faithful, loving husband
His two greatest failures come in the exact areas he sought to promote or trumpet.
Odd? Yes
Hypocrisy? Yes
Thoroughly human? Yes
And this last one may be the key. We often find that our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses.
Sometimes, even, we mortals trumpet and emphasize our virtue in the very areas where we know we are most deficient. Odd psychology but I have seen it a lot. The man who is always talking about sex, and making sex jokes, is usually the one who is having the least intimacy in his own life. The moralist who is most vicious and vile toward homosexuals is often a person with deep-seated gay tendencies he is trying to repress.
And we also usually discover that areas where are most proud in our lives become the sources of our greatest temptations, and, often, failures.
Romans 7:15 comes to mind:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
The verse really sums up us humans.
All in all, in the end, my friend, Steve, has a phrase that sums it up nicely.
People are mostly human.