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March 21, 2007 
Early indications are that John Edwards is having a spot of trouble.
After hiring, supporting, and then finally accepting the resignation of Amanda Marcotte -a vitriolic Christophobe- as his campaign blogger, he went on television trying to argue that Jesus would be offended at the greed and indifference of the average American. Now it seems that several key endorsements from his home state of South Carolina are slipping away. And thus begins a case study in hypocrisy.
Mr. Edwards, reportedly worth anywhere from 12 to 60 million dollars, continually uses class warfare and populist rhetoric to try and show that he is one of us; the “little guy”; “working people”. The truth is, he is just like us. He has a family with children that desire Christmas presents from Santa Claus. A Playstation®3 for instance. But the Edwards campaign thinks that by virtue of his one term in the US Senate and a failed bid for the vice-presidency in 2004, that he needn’t wait in line like the rest of us for the much awaited PS3® consoles. CBS reported that one day before the release of the PS3® game consoles; the same day he was criticizing WalMart policies in front of labor union activists, one of Edwards’ aides was using his office to try and obtain a Playstation®3 for Edwards young son.
People waited in line for days. There were nationwide reports that some people were even shot, stabbed and assaulted over cutting in line. But if you believe Edwards, his aide -a young, presumptuous teenager- acted without his permission and he’s sorry. Last December, his website launched his candidacy a day earlier than planned. In response, the Edwards campaign stated that an Internet “glitch” caused the website announcing his candidacy to “accidentally” go live. As any of the millions of webmasters out there knows, a site doesn’t go-live until you upload it to your server. Human error -not a computer or Internet glitch- led to Edwards’ site going live a day earlier than planned. A true cynic would argue the human error was intentional. It seems as if the eager beavers of the Edwards campaign have chalked up quite a record for acting on behalf of their boss without his express consent.
John Edwards does not represent the “little guy”. He represents large, predatory, legal firms advancing specious arguments, such as the theory that cases of Cerebral Palsy were the result of medical malpractice by doctors during “botched” deliveries. His courtroom victories were more about his ability to sway a jury with emotional oratory than medical science.
He was also responsible for setting the North Carolina legal precedent whereby doctors and hospitals were to be held responsible -not for actually screwing up a surgery or patient; not for failing to advise a patient of the risks of a particular procedure; but for failing to ensure that a patient fully understood the risks of a particular procedure. How dumb and devoid of responsibility does one have to be, in order to lack comprehension of the inherent risk of brain damage or death from surgery?
Because of the efforts of bottom-feeders like John Edwards, the physician not only has to worry about all of the things a physician should worry about when slicing you open, but the threshold for proving malpractice was lowered as well. This is one of the major reasons that medical costs are so high and also why universal health care will remain prohibitively expensive.
Malpractice insurance and defending against the constant threat of being sued every time something happens to a patient, whether through the fault of the doctor or not has become a doctor’s biggest liability. But to a hypocrite such as Edwards, it turns out that using Hurricane Katrina-scarred New Orleans as a backdrop to announce his candidacy or references to WWJD just adds fuel to the arguments of his critics who say that he has spent his entire career as the quintessential ambulance chaser.
