Oh, snap!

Elizabeth Edwards smacks down Annthrax Coulter in 2007:

I don't think anyone took Coulter seriously after that.

Around the blogroll and elsewhere: I Am Just Too Friggin Tired to Talk About It Edition

I'm on short sleep rations these days because of a timetable that must be met, and I can't afford to expend any energy talking about fecklessness, dicklessness, betrayal, the growing plutocracy, and the handing of America over to the corporatists today. So I'll let others do it.

Draftglass: "America is currently too fucking stupid, spoiled and hateful to make good, long-term decisions." (You MUST read this one.)


Ezra Klein, who used to be a cute progressive kid blogging at Pandagon, has joined the Borg.

Digby, as usual, says what I lack the time or discipline to say.

Skippy notes that for people like our own jurassicpork, the 13 month extension doesn't include any benefits for those who have already exhausted all tiers of unemployment. If you are about to become a casualty of the Stuff the Rich Nation, you will have a year and a half to find another job for when these rich people who have had eight years of these tax cuts and have not created jobs, decide to create some (despite the fact that no one can afford anything they make). If you are already one, not one person in our government other than the outgoing Congressman from Florida's eighth district and Sen. Bernie Sanders gives a shit about you.

Michael Stickings wonders whether "something is better than nothing" is our new standard of achievement.

Greg Sargent explains why we're angry.

E.D. Kain, the resident conservative over at Balloon Juice, thinks it was a pretty good deal on a page which features an ad by the Progressive Change Committee, about which Angry Black Lady has some interesting and cogent observations.

And finally:

Yesterday the sad news came across that it seems Elizabeth Edwards is reaching the end of her cancer journey.

Every day, for 8, 10, 12, and sometimes more hours, I'm steeped in the conduct of cancer trials. For me it's about how to collect data, and once the data collection mechanism is done, I'm pretty much done until they either need a system change or there's a problem. In the latter case, I may have to take a cursory look at actual data. When I see what we call "The death form" completed, it means that an actual person that someone cared about has succumbed. When I see someone with liver cancer who's still alive after six, eight, twelve cycles of treatment, it's a sign of hope. That's what drives home for me that what I do, as removed from actual patients as it is, is about hope -- not the hope that's based on blind faith, but hope for small victories like time measured in days and months, if not years.

Yes, it's appalling that a half-century into serious cancer research we are still all about cut, irradiate, and poison. But for now that's what we've got. And if it gets someone through to his daughter's wedding, his son's graduation, just one more summer of watching the sun set over a Caribbean beach, it's a victory, however small. And for those who get that time, it FEELS like a victory, in the way getting relief for the hundreds of thousands of new unemployed in return for stuffing the pockets of the wealthy doesn't.

In 2007 and 2008, John and Elizabeth Edwards were the only ones on the campaign trail talking about the America in which people now find themselves -- people who thought it would never happen to them. Back then the rumblings of economic collapse were only starting. And those who had succumbed to trickle-down economics over the last thirty years were still forgotten.

In 2008 August 2007 I offered to hold a fundraiser for the campaign at my house. You have to realize that my house is a money pit -- a 1950's POS cape in which nothing had been updated since 1975. We've been updating very slowly, mostly on the outside where it shows. My living room has the same ugly red carpet it did when we moved in. My kitchen is still a work in progress three years after I started refacing the cabinets. Our basement family room still had ugly dark paneling and ugly rust-colored carpet.

Over fifty people showed up to schmooze with Elizabeth Edwards for a couple of hours. She was as kind and gracious in person as she seemed on television and that my house was not ready for prime time didn't seem to matter. When she left to go to a book signing, I said "This is the coolest thing I have ever done."

Of course we all know what happened next, and as more came out about exactly what Elizabeth knew even as she was taking donations for a campaign that we knew even then would go nowhere, and that would have been an utter disaster had it succeeded in making it through the primaries, I found myself utterly disgusted with her. She KNEW, and yet she carried on as if she and John were the couple we all thought they were. She continued to take the donations even as she must have known in her heart it was for naught. She took advantage of me, my friends, my neighbors, and the others who came and paid over a hundred dollars to schmooze with Elizabeth Edwards.

Later on, we read in the book written by those loathsome hacks John Heilemann and Mark Halperin that she was a harridan to John Edwards' staff, that she would get hysterical, that she was impossible.

Wouldn't you be? And if you were faced with a recurrence of breast cancer in the middle of a presidential campaign and found out that your husband had thrown away not just your marriage, but a cause you both had supposedly believed in -- for a fling with an aging New York party girl who was the inspiration for a character in a 1980's Jay McInerney novel? Wouldn't you try to Act As If everything was normal?

In the Showtime series The Big C, the protagonist played by Laura Linney explains her unwillingness to tell her family about her Stage IV cancer diagnosis, "I just wanted a little more time where it's not about me being sick." I think that's what motivated Elizabeth Edwards too -- that and kicking the can of deciding what to do down the road -- putting it off because it's just too painful to deal with now.

I still feel angry at how we were sold a bill of goods about John Edwards, but I do understand why she did it. I understand why she thought that the bigass North Carolina house that he built her would somehow compensate for SOMETHING. I understand why she felt the need, after probably hundreds of house fundraisers like mine, to get out into the media and punishing her no-good dog of a husband for what he squandered.

But at this point, all that is behind us. What we need to keep in mind about Elizabeth Edwards is how she stayed out there, looking marvelous for a long time, trying mightily to sound the alarm about health care in this country. While she was out in public, she was a living rebuke to the "I Got Mine and Fuck You" doctrine -- someone with pots of money who still remembered that there are people out there dying because their insurance will not cover the cancer treatments that allowed her to stay out there fighting long after others with recurrent breast cancer have succumbed.

I wish Elizabeth Edwards a peaceful passing with no pain. I wish her children well. I thank her for what she tried to do to call attention to the inequities in our health care system.

And I hope that the image of this brave woman's last battle tortures John Edwards every single fucking day of the rest of his life.

UPDATE: Elizabeth Edwards died this morning at the age of 61.

Elizabeth Edwards at my house, 8/21/07.

Every day this guy does something that makes me like him more

Awesome news via Greg Sargent:

Obama's speech in Raleigh launching his economy tour is underway, and towards the end, during a discussion of health care, he drops a surprise aside that wasn't in the speech's prepared remarks:

"By the way, I'm going to be partnering with Elizabeth Edwards, we're going to be figuring all this out."

More on this when we can establish the details.

Late Update: The key political context here, of course, is that back in April, Elizabeth revealed that Obama's health care plan wasn't her favorite. Enlisting her as a public voice on health care could obviously help with the Obama camp's outreach to women and help win over skeptics in general.

Late Late Update: For an idea of just how effective Elizabeth Edwards might be as a surrogate on health care for Obama and against McCain, take a look at this take-down by Elizabeth of McCain's plan.

Smart move, especially since Elizabeth Edwards was cool on the original plan sketched out by the Obama campaign. Now we'll see if the presence of The Mighty Elizabeth is enough for the Hillarions or if they will insist on having their warrior princess in the VP spot or else they'll sell out their daughters.

The new media meme for the Edwards campaign

Last night Ana Marie Cox, who has somehow inexplicably become the go-to gal at Time.com, was on Countdown to weigh in on Elizabeth Edwards' remarks about a Hillary Clinton nomination energizing the Republican base in a new (and surprisingly uncatty) Time article about the Edwards campaign.

Cox put forth what seems to be the new media meme about Edwards, that his campaign isn't about winning the nomination, but is instead about how John and Elizabeth plan to live their lives for "however long Elizabeth has left."

Don't you love the way the media want to bury Elizabeth Edwards, and the sooner the beter? I was talking to a co-worker after last week's fund-raiser at my house; a co-worker who's as staunch a Faux Noisebot as you're likely to find. Not only does he find Elizabeth Edwards admirable, but also recounted the experience of a family friend who was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer -- fifteen years ago -- and is today cancer-free. So those who come to bury Elizabeth Edwards, not to praise her, had better get used to her. Because if anyone with this recurrance can tell cancer to go fuck itself, it's her.

I would tend to believe that the media are confusing Elizabeth Edwards with Lisa Moore, the terminal breast cancer-stricken character in the Funky Winkerbean comics were it not for the fact that the Edwards' populist, take-no-prisoners campaign is gaining traction. Up eight points in Iowa in the latest Time poll, and tied with Obama in New Hampshire, the reports of the death of John Edwards' candidacy are greatly exaggerated.

David Drezner:

It's amazing how well Edwards is doing. Recent polls of the first three states have Edwards ahead in Iowa and tied with Obama for second in New Hampshire* and Nevada. You can find less favorable polls, of course, but there's no question that he's in the thick of the race--an astounding accomplishment given the effort of the elite media to take him down and the celebrity of his two top rivals. One of the big un-discussed stories of the race is that Edwards is not slipping, a la McCain. On the contrary.

I could write a 10,000-word post on the elite media's distaste for Edwards: it's multi-layered. Elite journalists are in many cases members of the D.C establishment, which didn't take to Edwards even when he was a Senator, and which now hates him. Edwards is running against Washington in a very real way--not just rhetorically. He's winning powerful enemies with his "class warfare," his attacks on lobbyists, his criticism of Dems in Congress for caving in to Bush on Iraq, his call for reform at the D.N.C and Congressional committees. I feel confident saying that in the Giant Secret Conversation, in which elites socialize and leak and gossip, few are raving about Edwards.

[snip]

The media assault was unrelenting from the end of March to the end of June. The Haircut dominated. It found its way to every story about Edwards. Compared to Clinton and Obama, he got almost no coverage and when he did, it was negative. He came very close to losing control of his image and his narrative. In a now infamous, blasé post, Marc Ambinder, formerly of the Note and now of the Atlantic, confirmed what we had lost suspected, that the media were "trying to bury Edwards."

A candidacy with a less solid core would have gone under. His substance kept him above ground.

A hit-job by Leslie Wayne on the cover of the Times ratified the glorious, liberating feeling among supporters that we were part of an insurgency, one that simply would not get a fair hearing from elite journalists. So fuck `em, we said. Fuck `em once and for all. The hit-job created energy and intensity and prompted the blogosphere and his allies in a leading grassroots antipoverty group, ACORN, to rally around Edwards.

The press was challenging Edwards to abandon poverty as an issue, trying to convince him that it was a losing hand. So what did Edwards do? He doubled-down. He launched a tour through the South and Midwest focusing on poverty. Though derided in some quarters of the media, it generated a host of positive stories, including the first ones in months that included no mention of the Haircut.

But the corner was officially turned during the You-Tube debate. The "What Really Matters" video generated buzz and signaled that Edwards would be the first Democratic candidate in history to run against the mainstream media. More important, though, was his first comment of the night:

...[H]ow do we bring about big change? And I think that's a fundamental threshold question. And the question is: Do you believe that compromise, triangulation will bring about big change? I don't. I think the people who are powerful in Washington--big insurance companies, big drug companies, big oil companies--they are not going to negotiate. They are not going to give away their power. The only way that they are going to give away their power is if we take it away from them. And I have been standing up to these people my entire life. I have been fighting them my entire life in court rooms -- and beating them. If you want real change, you need somebody who's taking these people on and beating them.

With a single comment, he filled in the holes that the media had dug out of his narrative. It brought together his career as attorney battling violent crime by corporations, the "Two Americas" theme of his last campaign, his antipoverty agenda, and his battle against K-Street. It also distinguished him from Clinton, with her fondness for lobbyists, and Obama, with his inclination toward compromise.

Around the same time, the media finally noticed that JRE's policy positions were shaping the race. Or, as the Wall Street Journal put it, he has "sway over the party's agenda." With its substance, his campaign is built to last, able to withstand attacks from all sides.

One would think that after six years of "I got mine and fuck you" Republicanism, and the current anti-immigrant xenophobia that has Americans pointing their fingers of blameDOWN the economic ladder while corporations steal their wallets from their back pockets, an anti-poverty message would land like a lead balloon. But for the first time, Americans are understanding that they are one foreclosure, one credit card default, one health crisis away from poverty themselves. And the more Hillary Clinton snuggles up with her corporate benefactors, and the more John and Elizabeth Edwards are out there on the stump telling Americans to watch that back pocket, the stronger his campaign is going to get.

Is it time to set up the "Jodi Kantor Watch" blog?

Different Jodi, same bullshit. In 2004, the blog Wilgoren Watch was set up to deconstruct the New York Times' coverage of the Howard Dean campaign. During that race, reporter Jodi Wilgoren could always be relied on to write some kind of crap full of innuendo and allusions to insanity, loose cannonism, or some other Crime Against the Punditocracy that in her mind disqualified Dean from the highest office in the land.

Now the Times has a new Jodi sharpening her knives -- but once again, only for Democrats. In recent weeks, this particular hack has done hatchet jobs on Chelsea Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Barack Obama's pastor. Now, in tomorrow's paper, she all but accuses John Edwards of child abuse:

Emma Claire and Jack Edwards, 9 and 7, were on their umpteenth campaign trip earlier this month, this time through small towns where their father was decrying rural poverty and the power of lobbyists.

The two children barely listened. They scampered away from speeches as fast as their parents would allow, to vending machines and arcade games and swimming expeditions, a campaign bus stocked with Oreos and DVDs, and for a glorious half hour, a trampoline next door to a speaking event.

And they treated an interviewer the way politicians surely wish they could at times, refusing at first to remove their iPod earphones for a discussion of life on the trail.

“I don’t want to do this,” Jack protested to his father, John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator.

“I don’t care whether you want to do this,” Mr. Edwards replied.

A moment later, Jack hid his face in his hands.

“Mr. Jack, do we need to go in the back and have a conversation?” asked Mr. Edwards, lifting his son’s head.

Horrors! A presidential candidate is demanding that his child behave instead of doing whatever the hell he wants! Someone call Youth and Family Services!!

Now, if you read the rest of this article, in which Kantor goes on to talk about the logistical problems of running a presidential campaign when you have pre-adolescent children, you might be tempted to think she's just doing this as an illustration of the special challenges faced by today's candidates. But you'd be wrong:

Mr. Edwards, who lost his oldest son in a car accident 11 years ago, is determined to avoid regrets like the one Mr. Brownback described, even if it means dragging Emma Claire and Jack through thousands of miles and stump speeches.

Back in North Carolina, the Edwards family lives in a 28,000-square-foot pleasure palace, with a basketball court and a room dedicated to arts-and-crafts projects. This fall, the children will not be there much; instead of their routine of school, sports and friends, they will travel with their parents, spending days on buses and nights at Comfort Inns. Their mother and a tutor will school them on the road, a plan hatched, Elizabeth Edwards said, even before she learned that her breast cancer had recurred and would not be cured.

Inflammatory language much, Jodi? And just for emphasis, at least online, those two paragraphs are repeated on page 2.

What's so dangerous about the so-called "lifestyle" articles about the candidates penned by Ms. Kantor is that she finds a way to skewer all of the Democrats. She'll attack Michelle Obama in one article, then compare the Obamas' leaving of their daughters at home favorably to the Edwards' decision to bring their chidren with them on the campaign trail. And yet only the child-handling practices of the Democrats are open to question, despite the fact that Sam Brownback and Fred Thompson also have young children.

There is a very unpleasant and pervasive tone in the press that John and Elizabeth Edwards are supposted to just go home to their mansion, get out of sight, and sit and cry until Elizabeth's cancer gets the best of her. That this couple is going on and living their lives and doing what they had planned to do before Elizabeth's cancer returned ought to be an inspiration to the many, many Americans with cancer. But refusing to hide cancer makes people like Jodi Kantor uncomfortable. Or perhaps it's the threat that John Edwards poses to the corporate interests that pay Jodi Kantor's salary.

I have no doubt that as low-key and friendly as this couple is, they are tough enough to deal with what is certain to be escalating second-guessing and innuendo from the press, particularly if Edwards ends up winning one of the early primaries. You don't get to where John Edwards is by crumpling like a cheap car. The question is whether the American people are smart enough to hear his message around the din of second guessing of the Edwards' decisions about their family life.

Accompanying the article is a video about the Edwards children's experience on the campaign trail. In the video, John Edwards reminds his son Jack about how in 2004, he caught the reporters on the campaign bus teaching him how to play poker, and when he pulled Jack away, the boy said "I want to go back with my friends." Edwards' response? "They're not your friends."

He was right then, and he's right today.

Now it can be told, or The Most Coolest Thing I Have Ever Done

Earlier in the week I alluded to a Very Exciting Event for which I was preparing.

Last Friday night we got home from Jamaica, scarfed some burgers, and then I made the mistake of checking my e-mail. Amidst the sale offers from FootSmart and Overstock.com was an e-mail from an old friend from our days in Howard Dean's campaign. He is now working with the Edwards campaign and wanted to know if I knew anyone who would be willing to host a house party/fundraiser on very short notice, because Elizabeth Edwards was doing a book signing nearby. I don't live in one of the preferred towns, but I said that in a pinch I'd be willing to host it here. Next thing I know I'm getting a message from the Edwards campaign thanking me profusely for offering to host the party.

Would YOU turn down the opportunity to have the possible next First Lady of the United States visit YOUR home?

I thought not. Neither could I.

I am an indifferent housekeeper at best. Mr. Brilliant and I both tend towards packrattery, and though we have made great strides at decluttering since the Great April Flood Adventure, we still have a long way to go. So since arriving home last Friday evening, I have been spending every spare minute trying to get this house in at least halfway reasonable shape for hosting up to 50-75 people and buying food and refreshments for that many people.

Thanks to the intrepid youngsters representing the Edwards campaign, who took charge of where to set up the VIP reception vs. the main get-together and kept people from blocking our neighbors' driveways, and to our friends George and Ruriko for their indispensable help in setting up the food while I was freaking out about where to put what, and especially thanks to Mr. Brilliant for agreeing to this insanity, we hosted what I hope is a very successful event for the Edwards campaign.

Now, our house is a work in progress; emphasis on "work" and very little "progress." It takes either some guts or a great deal of insanity to bring 50 people you don't know into a house where you are still putting cabinet doors on your kitchen, where your bathroom door is peeling from a long-ago flood from before you even owned the house, and where your basement family room SCREAMS "1976!" Frankly, I was less intimidated by the thought of having ELIZABETH EDWARDS IN MY HOUSE !!!!! than I was at having a bunch of Bergen County Democrats.

But the thing went off without a hitch, hopefully the campaign made some good money out of it, we have tons of cookies and cheese left over, and I am exhausted.

But Mrs. Edwards is just as amazing as you'd think. Indistinguishable from any of dozens of Bergen County suburban matrons, this woman is undergoing chemotherapy, doing a book tour, and campaigning. She'd been doing appearances and talking nonstop since early this morning, and headed to her book signing after leaving here. Whatever reservations you may have about her husband, just think about who he married. Then decide if he has the judgment required to be president.

I think he does.

Photos coming soon.

Elizabeth Edwards for President

John Edwards' biggest asset may also be his biggest liability. For it's impossible to listen to or read an interview with Elizabeth Edwards and not want to weep at the unfairness that this woman is now battling cancer again and that as a result we'll never have the opportunity to vote for HER as the candidate.

Excerpts from an interview with Salon's Joan Walsh:

You're here in San Francisco again for another gay rights event. Why do you support gay marriage? Why not civil unions?

I remember hearing [former GOP Sen. Rick] Santorum ranting about how homosexual marriage threatens heterosexual marriage. I could be wrong, but I think heterosexual marriage is threatened more by heterosexuals. I don't know why gay marriage challenges my marriage in any way.

But your husband feels differently; he's a civil unions guy.

Well, I think it's a struggle for him, having grown up in a Southern Baptist church where it was pounded into him. I was raised a Methodist in military churches. Poverty was talked about; I don't remember homosexuality ever being mentioned. And I don't think that Christians who aren't engaged in a political campaign ever talk about it. They talk about poverty and other issues talked about in the Bible. But in churches, in political season, there's plenty of ginning up this issue.

You came to San Francisco and gave a speech before the gay pride parade, but then you were criticized for not being on a float or marching in the parade ...

I don't care, it doesn't matter to me. People who are going to be critical about that probably aren't for my husband to begin with. But honestly, it would be an enormous luxury to come here and do a full-day event, for anything. We went to a town festival in Iowa, and they had things going on all day and we went for an hour, and then we're on to the next thing. We never get to come to an event and stay for all the activities.

I'm going to talk to you about the poverty tour, but I do have to spend five minutes on Ann Coulter. When we write about her on Salon, we have a smart, vocal minority of readers who say, Why do you bother? Why give her attention?

I've heard that too, I got that when I made the call.

So why did you bother to phone in?

Ignoring the fact that she exists doesn't make her go away. If it did, you wouldn't hear me utter her name. So I think maybe the better thing to do is simply confront people like her. Are you going to stop them? Under no circumstances will you stop them. But maybe you empower other people to stand up, and maybe that has an effect. When I travel, so many older people thank me for what I did. Because the vile kind of way Ann Coulter thinks and talks, that was not ever part of the public discourse until recently.

[snip]

When you look back at the Clinton experiment in healthcare reform back in 1993 and '94, what do you learn from what they did, or failed to do?

I remember watching an incredibly impressive appearance by Hillary before some kind of congressional committee on C-SPAN. She answered the questions really impressively. Some of them were very hostile, but I remember one thing: She kept referring to [the administration's] program, and she would gesture to this huge stack of documents that represented their "plan." It's such a long time ago, I hope I'm remembering this correctly, but it made such a visual impression on me. And one of the things they did wrong was [presenting] the visual of this big plan, that government was going to do all of that, instead of explaining it, without that visual, just to say: "If you have a Blue Cross/Blue Shield card in your pocket, and you're happy with that, nothing's changing for you, except the cost is likely to go down. There's nothing for you to be afraid of." I don't think they did a good job explaining that.

Part of it is that when we talk in complex ways we exhibit enormous command of the information; we're speaking to elite media, but we're not speaking to the people who are going to be affected by the policies and reassuring them. It is hard to simplify some of these things -- they're really complex. But this is actually what John does extraordinarily well. [As a trial attorney he learned] to describe complex medicine to people who aren't trained, and to say the doctor is wrong, in a way that respects them and doesn't talk down, and moves them. And he can never be dishonest because there's another lawyer sitting right there, ready to take away what he needs, which is their trust, if he's dishonest. So I'm convinced he has the capacity to explain these complicated things in a way that people understand -- and not to be subject to that guy who's paid to call him a liar.

[snip]

I can't wrap this up without asking about your health. Were you prepared for the criticism you got for continuing to campaign?

I had no idea I'd get that kind of criticism. But you know, people who've been in this situation haven't criticized me. And the people who haven't -- I just hope they never go through it. And it got worse after [the] Coulter [incident]. Well, we were talking about home-schooling the kids anyway, before I got sick. John's gone all the time, I'm gone a lot, and it was going to be the only way for us to be together as a family.

But you know, after all I've been through, I realize: You don't know exactly what life lessons you taught your kids until much later. You don't. And maybe the most important life lesson for them is for me to say, When bad things happen, you don't let them take you down. If I hadn't continued to campaign, I'd be sending the opposite message: When bad things happen, go hide. Do I know with absolute certainty we're doing the right thing? I don't. Having been through what I've been through, I hope people trust I wouldn't risk my relationship with my children. I think this is the right choice.

The grit of Roger Ebert

While going through old VHS tapes the other day I found a tape I'd made of a special memorial program broadcast after Gene Siskel died in 1999. In some circles, it was Siskel who was regarded as the "real film critic" of the Siskel and Ebert duo, while Ebert was just a hack.

Of course, these are the people who gave me fits during my seven years of reviewing movies; the kind of cinéastes who don't like any movie that isn't made in the Czech Republic or by Lars Von Trier and isn't 4 hours long. People used to tell me I was a good reviewer, but mostly all I did was write about movies and tell people what I thought. I never professed to have any kind of great knowledge of the Art of Cinema. I wrote because I wanted to write, and that was all.

To those in the know, "film critics" are people like Jonathan Rosenbaum, David Denby, Armond White, and of course the Doyenne of All Film Criticism, Pauline Kael. But just as Beverly Sills made opera accessible to those who don't like opera, Roger Eberg has made film reviews accessible to people who just like movies and don't know a gaffer from a key grip.

When you strip movies of all the mystique, what you end up with are "honest stories of working people as told by rich Hollywood stars." This is something that Roger Ebert has always understood. The reason that Ebert's reviews have always been mandatory reading is that Ebert always evaluates a movie within the context of its genre and what it's trying to do, rather than judging an action shoot-em-up by how it stands up against Dancer in the Dark.

Yet Ebert has never been the kind of quote whore whose blurbs are usually the earmark of a movie you should be sure to skip. For while he has never been guilty of taking movies too seriously, perhaps no one else has been a bigger booster of creative filmmaking. And no one's image has been as iconic in its association with film criticism. And so it's hard to underestimate the courage it took for Ebert to appear Wednesday night at the Overlooked Film Festival, which he created.

The recent cancer announcements of Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow caused a nationwide epidemic of discomfort, as Americans faced the prospect of having to look cancer right in the face. Well, Elizabeth Edwards was right there at the Democratic candidates debate last night, and Tony Snow plans to return to work on Monday despite a dire prognosis. Roger Ebert has been rendered unrecognizable by surgery to remove part of his jaw as part of treatment for salivary gland cancer last June. He wrote about it earlier this week:

I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the Festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out.

So let’s talk turkey. What will I look like? To paraphrase a line from “Raging Bull,” I ain’t a pretty boy no more. (Not that I ever was. The original appeal of Siskel & Ebert was that we didn’t look like we belonged on TV.)

What happened was, cancer of the salivary gland spread to my right lower jaw. A segment of the mandible was removed. Two operations to replace the missing segment were unsuccessful, both leading to unanticipated bleeding.

A tracheostomy was necessary so, for the time being, I cannot speak. I make do with written notes and a lot of hand waving and eye-rolling. The doctors now plan an approach that does not involve the risk of unplanned bleeding. If all goes well, my speech will be restored.

So when I turn up in Urbana, I will be wearing a gauze bandage around my neck, and my mouth will be seen to droop. So it goes.

I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers. So what? I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers.

Although months in bed after the bleeding episodes caused a lack of strength and co-ordination, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago restored my ability to walk on my own, climb stairs, etc. I no longer use a walker much and the wheelchair is more for occasional speed and comfort than need. Just today we went for a long stroll in Lincoln Park.

We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to
miss my Festival.

Why do I want to go? Above all, to see the movies. Then to meet old friends and great directors and personally thank all the loyal audience members who continue to support the Festival. At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is “overlooked,” or why I wrote “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick. I wouldn’t miss the Festival for anything!

If we had not recently seen Katie Couric attack Elizabeth Edwards on 60 Minutes for not having the decency to go home, die quietly, and not subject us to having to watch her condition slowly deteriorate, we might think that Eberts' friends concerns about bad press coverage to be misguided. But with cancer still the disease we dread most, it's inspiring to see high-profile people battling the disease refusing to just go away and hide. Roger Ebert loves movies, and for him to not attend this festival even if he had to be carried in on a sedan chair is unthinkable. And while there may yet be unfavorable coverage, so far what most papers are recounting is the standing ovation he received and the love the attendees have for this man who has arguably done more for the movies than anyone else in his field.

For those of us who have been admirers of Roger Ebert's work, the idea of a man who has made his living and his reputation through language being unable to speak is unspeakably cruel. And yet Ebert is right -- as long as he can think and type, he can still do his work. And so Roger Ebert joins Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow to form an unlikely trifecta of courage in the face of disease -- and show us how important it is to refuse to go quietly.

Katie Couric is going to be SOOOOO disappointed

I wondered during Couric's 60 Minutes interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards if perhaps she had an eye on Johnny for herself and that's why she was focusing so hard on Elizabeth Edwards' seemingly imminent demise. But now it looks like Katie may have a long wait. Here's some good news about Elizabeth Edwards, reported by AP's Nedra Pickler, of all people:

Elizabeth Edwards said Tuesday that she got some good news: She has a type of cancer that is more likely to be controlled by anti-estrogen drugs.

Mrs. Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, expressed frustration with reports that she's likely to die within five years. She said doctors can't give her a reliable life expectancy and even if they could, the information would be of no comfort to her.

"I don't care," she said in an interview with The Associated Press as she campaigned with her husband. "I'm going to fight exactly as hard if they tell me that I've got 15 years or if I've got 30 years. I'm still going to fight to get rid of this if they tell me I've got 15 minutes I'm still going to fight. It doesn't matter what the prognosis is. So it's not an important piece of information to me."

The Edwardses announced nearly two weeks ago that the breast cancer she thought she had beaten with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy had spread to her bone. They said they had no intention of ending his bid because doctors told her that although she's likely to die from the disease eventually, the campaign wouldn't interfere with her treatment.

Mrs. Edwards had her first post-diagnosis doctor's visit Friday and emerged encouraged. She said her doctor expected she had the most aggressive "triple-negative" cancer, but testing found that she had two of the three key hormonal receptors estrogen and progesterone. She said her the original diagnosis was "slightly estrogen heavy," but this time it's a strong marker and she also has the second marker.

"I consider that a good sign," Mrs. Edwards said in an interview in an art classroom before appearing with her husband at the Prairie High School gymnasium. "It means there are more medications which I can expect to be responsive."

The article indicates that patients with estrogen-receptor tumors in just the bone have a good chance at surviving for 10 years. While at age 57, that hardly seems enough, at least it's a start.

When cancer patients refuse to just go away quietly

If you've ever taken the journey of being a cancer patient's family member, you know how difficult it is. First you have a routine test that shows something not-quite-right. Then more tests. Then still more tests. And you know that the more the tests escalate, the more likely the news is to be bad. Then the news hits not just the person with cancer, but the entire family, like a ton of bricks, and you ask "What now?" If the cancer is aggressive, and the person gets sicker, not only may you have to deal with friends who back away because they just don't know what to say and because this visible evidence of mortality is frightening, but you find yourself fighting that impulse in yourself.

This is a journey that Tata is going through right now, and while I've posted this before, if you are NOT reading her diaries from Virginia, where her father is at home under hospice care, you owe it to yourself to click over right now and read them. This is how we all wish we would cope when cancer enters our family -- together as a family, with all the attendant laughter and tears and bickering and cooking and generally trying to make sense of it all. It's true that nothing brings even the most dysfunctional family together quite like cancer.

It's still terrifying to watch someone you know and love deteriorate. First there's the helplessness, that there's this beast of an illness that often seems to beat whatever you try to throw at it. But behind that, there's this nagging feeling that you're looking in a mirror at your own future. That future might be tomorrow, it might be decades from now. It might be cancer, it might be Alzheimer's, it might be getting wiped out by a piece of ice falling off a truck on Route 17, it might be another disease. If you're very lucky, it might be a heart attack in your sleep when you're 95 after having spent a lovely day outdoors on one of those early spring days when the ground is damp from just-melted snow and it's an unseasonable 70 degrees. But as I read somewhere recently, life is a cruise ship we all get on with the certainty that it's going to sink.

Most cancer patients choose to fight. They fight using conventional medicine, they fight using alternative treatments, but they fight. They fight because we all want to live. It's just that most of us fight within the confines of our own families, workplaces, and circle of friends. The rest of the world doesn't know of this fight, nor does it care.

Then someone like Elizabeth Edwards comes along, figuratively singing "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going", and because her husband is a presidential candidate, we are unable to completely turn away, because whether we like it or not, Elizabeth Edwards has brought cancer into everyone's family. For some, it brings back memories of journey's taken. I suspect that (along with some strange mandate to give credence to the ravings of Rush Limbaugh) is part of what drove the mean-spiritedness of Katie Couric's questios on 60 Minutes.

For the record, I don't think that's what's driving Limbaugh; I think Limbaugh's ravings are proof that John Edwards joins Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate that scares him (and his American Idiot^TM audience) to death, because either one of them could defeat any of the three Republican front-runners. Imagine how a good-looking, successful man loving his wife even through cancer will look against the thrice-married Rudy Giuliani or the twice-married John McCain. It's enough to make you think the Republicans will put up Mitt Romney just so they can compete on the sick wife playing field.

The battle that John and Elizabeth Edwards face together is just another facet of what is making this campaign so interesting. Bill Maher asked John Edwards just a few weeks ago whether he felt he was at a disadvantage being the white guy in the race. In retrospect, that joke seems kind of poignant, because now the Edwards campaign is, instead of being the least interesting one in the race, yet another representation of the many faces of the American family -- the one dealing with illness. Not to get all Katie Couric here, but that is undoubtedly comfortable "for some."

Walter Shapiro in Salon:

Embedded in Couric's smarmy comment was the implication that any public figure afflicted with an incurable disease has an obligation to climb on an ice floe and sail off to oblivion so that TV viewers in the prized 18-to-35-year-old demographic do not have to acknowledge their own mortality. Or that, at least, Elizabeth Edwards, whose breast cancer has recurred, owes it to the world to spend her remaining years offstage with their two small children, Emma Claire, 8, and 6-year-old Jack.

It will be weeks, perhaps months, before we begin to get an accurate measure of the political ramifications of Elizabeth Edwards' health. The issues raised by the candor and determination she and her husband have shown are too unprecedented to be unraveled by instant polls or interviews with oft-quoted political experts.

One theory is that voters crave presidential candidates with unblemished medical charts and problem-free lives, whose emotional burdens rival those of the contestants on "America's Next Top Model." That would rule out all three Republican front-runners, since John McCain and Rudy Giuliani have had their own brushes with cancer and Mitt Romney's wife suffers from multiple sclerosis. Another theory is that Elizabeth Edwards has touched something deep in the American psyche and pretty soon we will see supportive bumper stickers that read, "I Know Someone with Cancer -- and I Vote."

Voters and campaign contributors will, of course, offer the final verdict on the Edwards campaign. But so far the public arguments raised against the former North Carolina senator's continuing his presidential campaign, with his wife's fervent participation, are flimsy.

[snip]

On the surface, a far more substantive concern is that Edwards would find it difficult to function as president if Elizabeth's health dramatically deteriorated. In truth, however, people become president at a time in their lives when fate inevitably requires them to face up to health crises and the death of the people they love. Unless they amend the Constitution to allow callow 17-year-olds to run, this will always be a major risk in electing a president.

During a few short months at the start of his presidential candidacy, John Kerry endured the death of his mother and surgery for prostate cancer. In 1994, with Bosnia in flames and healthcare reform headed for a cliff, Bill Clinton had to confront the death of the most pivotal figure in his life, his mother, Virginia Kelley. As soon as Clinton left the funeral in Arkansas, he flew to Brussels for a NATO summit.

Being distracted by personal life is part of the terrible burden of the presidency. Both Nancy Reagan and Betty Ford were diagnosed with breast cancer while their husbands were in the White House. In her autobiography, "The Times of My Life," Betty Ford writes about her first night in the hospital for a mastectomy, "Jerry says he's never been so lonely as he was going home to the White House that night. He was more upset than I."

But many of these human details have been airbrushed out of remembered history. No one links the death of Clinton's mother to the way that his presidency almost fell apart in 1994, climaxing with the Gingrich Revolution. No one connects Kerry's personal travails with his maladroit presidential campaign. Betty Ford is remembered for her honesty at a time when breast cancer was a taboo topic, but Gerald Ford is remembered for pardoning Nixon.

Presidential races are often about more than control of the levers of power and the policy direction of the nation. Prior campaigns forced the nation to confront questions about religion, divorce and career-minded first ladies. This time around, especially for the Democrats, everything is on the table: race (Barack Obama), gender (Hillary Clinton), Hispanic heritage (Bill Richardson) and now cancer (the Edwardses). In an election cycle in which the Democrats are poised to surmount age-old political prejudices, outmoded views about the proper conduct of people with cancer deserve to be jettisoned, whether or not John Edwards ever makes it to the White House.

If voters in polls weren't already giving indications that the Holy Trinity of So-Called Values Issues -- guns, gay marriage, and abortion -- were less important than usual, this array of Democratic candidates would shake many people into realizing that a new day really is dawning, and what we're seeing on the campaign trail is something truly extraordinary.

It's an ill wind that blows no good, and whether voters decide that John Edwards is the candidate best-equipped to represent Democratic values in November 2008 or not, the presence of John and Elizabeth Edwards on the campaign trail gives voice to the over 1.4 million people who will be diagnosed with cancer just this year, including the over 178,000 women who will find themselves fighting Elizabeth Edwards battle against breast cancer. The time is long past for cancer patients to just go away quietly lest they upset those who want to think it can't happen in their families. It can. And in millions of families every year, it will.

When concern trolls strike

When the daughter of a co-worker passed away suddenly last year, I can't tell you how many people said to me, "You can't possibly understand because you don't have kids." My response to that was, "And YOU can't possibly understand because YOU are going to go home tonight and tuck your kids into bed" [or call them on the phone, depending on their age].

You do not have to be in the exact same situation as someone, or even potentially be in that situation, to empathize with someone's loss. In the year since then, I've become closer to this person, and I have often said that I only regret it took a tragedy for us to become friends.

The other day we were talking about meaning, and she said that in an odd way, her daughter's death served to give her own life meaning in that she now appreciates every day in a way she never did before. She worries less about what is to come. Listening to her in the context of the revelation of Elizabeth Edwards' illness, I understood how there can be a serenity in the face of a grief that would seem to be too big to endure; in the Edwards' case the loss of their 16-year-old son a decade ago. Whether John Edwards' political life in general, and this campaign in particular, are a search for meaning or a manifestation of the meaning that seems to be a compensation, however small, for such a huge loss, is something only they can answer. My guess, reinforced by the astonishing interview they gave to the mean-mouthed Katie Couric on 60 Minutes this evening, is that it's the latter -- that dealing with a son's death and a life-threatening illness make life that much more precious -- and add urgency to the drive to make the lives of others better.

There are "concern trolls" who don't see it that way. Couric is apparently one of them, questioning as she did the decision to continue to campaign instead of staying home with their children. The Edwards' response to this was heartbreaking -- that they want their children to have the wings they'll need to leave the nest. Somehow I don't think the children's departure from the nest was what this remark referred to. But whether this campaign is about doing something positive for this country or about preparing the Edwards children to live without their mother (and I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive), I don't think anyone is in a position to question them. Until you've walked in a particular pair of shoes, you have no idea how you would respond.

The pundits, howver, think they know better, one of them being Joan Venocchi of the Boston Globe:

Together, they are running for political office. Together, they are also running from deep family tragedy -- the death of their son, Wade, at age 16. He died in an automobile accident on April 4, 1996. In reading their family's story, it's hard to tell where one race begins and the other ends.

As a mother, I found this book painful to read, but impossible to put down. Elizabeth Edwards's grief is so sharp that it slices through the page to your heart.

But as a political observer, I also find it hard to read "Saving Graces" without noticing the frenetic new life she and her husband invented after their son's death.

John Edwards ran for the US Senate, then for president, and then for vice president as John Kerry's running mate in 2004.

Elizabeth Edwards had two more children, a daughter and son, who are now 8 and 6. She took on the daunting task of new motherhood in her 50s; they also have a daughter, Cate, 24.

Elizabeth Edwards also immersed herself in every aspect of her husband's political campaigns, all the time thinking how much Wade would have relished the adventure. The Edwardses are building an extravagant 28,200-square-foot dream house, west of Chapel Hill, N.C.

This is not a judgment on the way this family chose to deal with their loss. Still, the memoir reveals a desperate effort, especially on Elizabeth Edwards's part, to fill her life with anything -- speeches, travel, lofty goals for America -- that will fill the void left by her son's death. She never will; no mother could. But she will keep on running until someone makes her slow down.

That is where John Edwards could step in, or should. But, for whatever the reason -- her strong will, his strong ambition -- the two keep racing forward.

How does Joan Venocchi know that Elizabeth Edwards is running away from her grief over her son's death? Obviously Venocchi has never actually known someone who lost a child, because one thing I've learned is that there is no "right way" to handle this loss. You don't "get over it", but you find a place in your life for it; like a room you close off and visit every now and then when you can bear it. And as long as Venocchi, if she has children, can get on the phone and talk to them any time she wants to, she should just shut the fuck up.

The fact of the matter is, as Jane Hamsher points out, that right now the Edwards' are making people very uncomfortable. For all that our society medicalizes everything from childhood to menopause, we don't want to have to look at sick people, let alone sick people who have endured a grief few of us can imagine -- and can still manage to find some good in the world and in their lives. People like Rush Limbaugh, who didn't even wait 24 hours before going on the attack, and Joan Venocchi, want Elizabeth Edwards to just go away -- so they don't have to think about how THEY would behave under similar conditions.

I don't know how I would behave either. But I would sure as hell hope it would be as courageously as the way Elizabeth Edwards has handled the crap that the fates in their infinite cruelty have dished out to her.

UPDATE: David Sirota has more on Katie Couric's double-standard where working through a family illness is concerned, and Athenae has some thoughts on the "work or family" choice under the circumstances.

Yeah. What he said.

DrFrankLives at NCBlue.

One appearance at a comedy festival with Marc Maron and Ana Marie Cox morphs from twit into human being

See what the Power of the Maron(^TM me) can do?

I don't know anyone who is not a member of that family can speak to the actual wisdom or merits of their choice (is there anything more personal?) but I can say what I felt when I heard the news: It felt right to me. It sounded true to both John's and Elizabeth's beliefs. And I have no doubt at all that continuing the campaign was both Elizabeth's idea and her desire. (As I wrote earlier today, she's nothing if not genuine.)

(Andrew Sullivan is pretty classy about it too, thus proving that not all conservatives have to be vile pigs like Rush Limbaugh. Thanks to ShakesSis for the heads-up on this)