Stupidity: It's What's for Dinner...
Poor John Edwards. He is destined to be remembered, if at all, as the democratic party's answer to Dan Quayle. On a day when Janet Reno sticks her foot in her mouth vis-a-vis terrorism, we now find Mr. Edwards similarly enjoying a podiatric fest with regards to the new democratic party bugaboo: Wal-Mart.

Turns out that while Mr. Edwards chants the party line about how Wal-Mart is unfair to it's workers (who, as far as I know, haven't been chained to their workstations), he's been working the old network to extort (allegedly) a new Sony PlayStation 3 from Wal-Mart. James Lileks has the GREATEST explanation of the whole kerfuffle here:

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/lileks112206.html

However, with reagards to Edwards, and a whole new generation of democrats like him: the old "do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do" argument lost it's lustre a long time ago. This is the 21st century, for better or worse, and it's very difficult in this day and age to be both a "principled champion of the common man" and a fucking hypocrite at the same time. You are under surveilance 24/7. There are reporters who treat your very words as divine manna fromt he heavens, bloggers who scour the net for reports of what you have said (going all the way back to your position on allowing the Huns to move into Dalmatia as a means of cutting the Roman military budget). You are under constant video surveilance by the media, by YouTube, by any jerk with a cellphone. Why, oh why, is it that when you know this sort of scrutiny is applied to you 24/7/365. do you believe that you can get away with being a hypocrite, a liar , and a moron?

It's either an incredible strain of stupidity, an arrogance beyond the capacity of the rational man to comprehend, or a deep-rooted belief that the "common man" that you "fight" so much for is, at heart, a drooling idiot with an attention span measured in RPM's.

Part of me leans towards the third alternative, because all the evidence points that way. But number two is quite popular amongst the democratic bigwigs, as well.

So, Wal-Mart is a pox upon the land, unless you want something unavailable elsewhere and can twist an arm or two? How convenient.

John Edwards can reliably be expected to be a liar and a cheat (he is, after all, a trial lawyer who made a fortune "channeling the spirits" of dead/disabled children as a courtroom tactic), and now he can add "historical irrelevancy" to his resume. Short of screaming "lesbian" a few times during his debates with Dick Cheney, he has no qualification for anything. Edwards is a confirmed mental and political lightweight, who should just pack it in already.

The American people no longer have any excuse: we have more sources of information, now instantaneously delivered, than any generation in the history of the world. Why we don't use it properly, to sift the thieves and hypocrites,from our political process, for example, is beyond me.
Unless, of course, John Edwards is right, and we're all really just drooling idiots with attention spans measured in RPM's.