Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:51:00
Edwards uses wife’s cancer to raise money
This story is absolutely disgusting, but if we’re being honest, we all expected it, didn’t we?. I’m quoting the whole article because NYPost articles often go missing after a month or two, and this kind of sleazy activity should be archived somewhere.
April 5, 2007—Democratic White House hopeful John Edwards’ team has been collecting e-mail addresses from supporters who’ve sent his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, notes - and using them for fund-raising requests, aides acknowledged yesterday.
The link on Edwards’ campaign Web site invites people to “send a note to Elizabeth and John” and features a sad letter from the former senator penned just after the couple found out her breast cancer had spread and is now incurable.
But people who’ve been sending such well wishes have been hit with e-mail solicitations from Team Edwards, asking for donations just as all candidates are looking to post big online fund-raising numbers.
In the letter, Edwards says the pair is staying optimistic and fighting hard for Elizabeth. Below the letter is a space for writing the couple a message - which can’t be sent without all sections completed, including one asking for the sender’s e-mail address.
That, in turn, is added to the campaign’s online database for boosting Internet donations.
In response, message-senders get a “thank you” for their kind words, but no other indication that their e-mail addresses are being stored.
Late yesterday, after being confronted by questions from reporters, the campaign said it will add an option to allow well-wishers to decline getting future e-mails.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Edwards said she feels she let down both her family and the country by failing to get mammograms.
Appearing with her husband in Davenport, Iowa, she said by the time she felt a lump in her breast in 2004 and was able to have it removed, it had grown to nine centimeters and the cancer had spread elsewhere.
“I do not have to be in this situation,” Mrs. Edwards told a gathering of 500 people. “I am responsible for putting myself, this man, my family and, frankly, putting you all at risk, too, because I think you deserve the chance to vote for this man.”
Later, John Edwards said he knows his wife didn’t get mammograms because she isn’t in the habit of putting herself first.
“It’s not surprising to me that she would say that,” Edwards said.
Two things jump out at me after reading that. One, how sleazy and despicable to harvest those emails for campaign purposes. Two, Elizabeth and John are in fact using her cancer as campaign fodder with the statements at the end of the article. As I said before, this should not be acceptable to anyone.
EVERYONE - right, left, center, even Edwards’ own staff - should be condemning this disgusting behavior. Being the smart, insightful guy I am, I won’t hold my breath waiting for certain kinds of people to hold the Edwards’ accountable for such low-down dirty politicking. What’s next, we get to watch Elizabeth get chemo live on the dais of some fundraising dinner? Maybe we can watch as her body tries to reject the radiation and she vomits and loses her hair...John could sell it on Pay Per View and use the proceeds to keep campaigning. Or buy a bigger house.
Yeah...I want to elect this guy. Sure I do. I’d sooner vote for another Bush family member. In fact, and I say this with no joke or sarcasm attached - if somehow it came to a choice between Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, I’d gladly pull the lever for Hillary. He turns my stomach on a personal level. Pimping his wife’s cancer has only shone a light on who and what he has always been.
Hat tip: Malkin
Posted by JimK at 06:51 PM on April 05, 2007
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#2 Posted by Buzzion 
on 04/05 at 09:04 PM -
Not surprised in the least. Of course they actually didn’t need to do anything. Every mention of cancer and another presidential candidate gets and the end of the article gets a tag of “Edwards wife recently acknowledged that she has relapsed into her cancer.”
The blatant media bias has really disgusted me lately. From the report on Newt Gingrich’s comments on how voting ballots should only be in english since you are supposed to know english to be a citizen, and why that somehow needs the tag about his marital problems, found
here.
And then you have this story where the report talks about as if it was just a flag burning, but nevermind that they were burning the flag that was on the porch of someone else and not purchased by them. Original version of the story talked about how flag burning wasn’t illegal as ruled by the supreme court, as if that was actually the problem
Seriously Democrats just need to make sure their name gets linked to a topic once and a lot of media outlets will happily do their campaigning for them.
#4 Posted by xlokix on 04/06 at 11:09 AM -
I was even questioning the fact that her cancer happened to come back around election time, lol.
In other news: Holy crap! The UK sailors apparently didn’t mean what they said at gunpoint in Iran!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/06/iran.sailors/index.html
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#1 Posted by Drumwaster
on 04/05 at 08:57 PM -
Why, Jim, you sound almost… surprised.
Say it along with me:
This Is Who They Are.
This Is What They Do.
I’d vote for the Gottdamned Communist Party before I would vote for either one of those whackjobs for anything more powerful than driver for the PTA Welcome Wagon.