FRAMESHOP:FRAMESHOP: THE MOST REPUGNANT ARGUMENT...EVER

Imagine you were diagnosed with cancer.  Horrible, horrible news.  The worst.  You are struggling to figure out what your life will be about from this point forward, forced to confront questions most people never face.  You family is in deep anguish.  The thought of your own death is suddenly an unwelcome house guest that will not leave.

Now, in the midst of all that, imagine someone walks up to you and says, "Whatever you say and do from this day forward will always be an attempt to exploit your cancer for money and personal gain." 

Got that?  OK, good.  Hold on to that feeling of absolute disgust.

Second exercise:  imagine your child just died in a car accident--was taken from you by a horrific turn of events that sometimes happens.  You wrestle with your own guilt for years, struggle to move on--to keep a cherished place for your lost child in your heart and in your mind without descending into self-absorbed grief.

Now, same as before, imagine someone walks up to you and says, "Whatever you say and do from this day forward will always be an attempt to exploit your child's death for money and personal gain."

Hard to imagine any human being (e.g. Anne Coulter doesn't count) would be so repugnant as to say or write arguments about another person along those lines, right?

Meet John Dickerson, the latest author of the most repugnant argument ever: that the Edwards family, who have suffered great personal tragedy with the loss of their son and contracted chronic illness, must by default always be exploiting those tragedies for personal gain.

Disgusting.  Slate should issue an apology to its readers and its advertisers for the utterly repugnant opening argument Dickerson makes here:

I think John Edwards just made an ad about his wife's cancer, but I'm not sure. In his latest New Hampshire spot, the gutsy and appealing Elizabeth Edwards talks about her husband's toughness...Elizabeth Edwards starts by talking about her husband's intelligence and how he works harder than anyone she has ever known, fighting for the voiceless. That he just finished a three-day tour talking about poverty grooves nicely with that message. The ad ends with this line: "It's unbelievably important that in our president we have someone who can stare the worst in the face and not blink." What is Elizabeth Edwards talking about? She's clearly referring to something in her husband's past, but what? 

What makes this opening statement so cowardly and hateful is the way Dickerson hides his repugnant accusation inside a false just-so story--as if he is really wondering what Elizabeth Edwards means.   How can she not be talking about her cancer and  her lost child, right?  I mean, if she has cancer, if she lost a child--then she must be exploiting them?  The only way she could not be exploiting them is if she did not have cancer, if she never lost a child.

Dickerson's odious premise is medieval in nature and Victorian in execution.

In those times, people believed that illness did not just change the body, but also degraded a person's moral fabric.  The sick were not believed to just carry disease, they were not to be trusted--they were viewed as dangers to the soul of society.   To have suffered chronic illness in those times meant not only enduring physical pain, but entering the category of social pariah--destined ultimately in the Nineteenth-Century to urine stenched sanitariums and the dank cages of carnivals.

Seemingly without any sense of self control or sense of modern perspective, more and more journalists seem to be picking up sharp objects to poke the Edwards family through the bars.   

Whether or not you support John Edwards' campaign for president is irrelevant, here.   Simply put, when someone gets cancer or loses a child, that does not put them on a list of society's moral degenerates to be suspected of lies and deceit at every turn.  To suggest or even insinuate otherwise--whether in the context of a political election or in a smoky tent at a roadside circus--is a thought not worthy of his century, let alone this country.

© 2007 Jeffrey Feldman, Frameshop