Breaking news about John Edwards' admitted affair fissured the political landscape on Friday. And I am angry. He's not a candidate for president but he's about to get more media attention than either Obama or McCain in the next days. I watched Bob Woodruff's (excellent) interview with Edwards Friday night on Nightline, and that's enough for me. I've had enough of John Edwards and I want to move on with the business at hand: the upcoming conventions and seeing if we can at all get a sense of who the two candidates really are between now and the election. I'm furious that Edwards lied for as long as he did, thereby bringing the focus on his smarmy secrets at this time, possibly soiling the Democratic Party in the minds of some voters and possibly turning off young and would-be first-time voters completely.
When Edwards, without assistance or questioning by Woodruff, brought up John McCain's cheating in his first marriage, then quickly added that he didn't want to talk about that, I cringed. When he told Woodruff that this affair occurred at a time when his wife Elizabeth's cancer was in remission, and then quickly added that there's no justification whatsoever for his behavior, I about cried.
I can't make sense of this kind of destruction. Which got me to thinking about Wordle. With help from Google and the Associated Press I copied the text of John Edwards' statement admitting the affair and Elizabeth Edwards' statement after her husband's admission and ran each of them through Wordle. I then did that tweaking thing with "different fonts, layouts, and color schemes" and took photos of the finished products on my monitor. You can click on the pictures for a better view. Their words speak for themselves...
This is John's Wordle:
And this is Elizabeth's Wordle:
