The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com: Stories by Anne Taylor Fleming

Of Fraud and Fairy Tales: The Memoir as Novel

Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:11:37 GMT

So it happens again: another first-class storyteller dupes her agent, her editor, her publisher and a handful of high-falutin', praise-bestowing reviewers -- including the often viperish New York Times critic, Michiko Kakutani -- with a totally fake memoir, the poignantly named “Love and Consequences.” This leaves the rest of us scratching our heads and wondering just how many "literary" gatekeepers are asleep at the switch.

It’s hard not to titter a bit at their gullibility, especially in this case, especially if you hail from Los Angeles, as I do — the locale of this new tall tale. What we have here is a 33-year-old private-school graduate from Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley, one Margaret Seltzer, claiming to have been a foster kid raised in drug-and-gang-infested South Central L.A. A whopper that would have, could have and should have been exposed in a nanosecond, with a few well-placed questions or phone calls.

No question, the declining book business is ever-hungry for the next big hit and when something looks this good, this juicy, this heart-tugging — half-white, half Native American girl-kid finds love in the hood with her surrogate mother, “Big Mom,” while running drugs for the gangs — it becomes an irresistible package. You just don’t do your basic background check which any decent fact-checker could do or should do in an afternoon. There’s big-time denial and big-time fear (gotta have a hit, gotta have a hit) at work here.

No question, too, memoirs are the thing of the moment, have been for a while now. We don’t have the time for fiction anymore. We don’t have the energy for it. We don’t have the patience for it. We want it real. Witness the popularity of so-called reality television -- even though we know the “real,” in the best of circumstances, the most scrupulous of memoirs, is close at best, an approximation, a matter of memory.

Never mind. Give it to us as real as you can. Tell us who you hurt, who hurt you, what you snorted or shot up, when and where your Daddy molested you, your Mommy tried to stab you. Give us grit and redemption—always that combo or some variant of it: abuse and survival, self-abasement and triumph.

Make us feel good about ourselves (I didn’t have it that bad!). Make us feel good about America, about the promises of the Promised Land. These memoirs are our edgy new national fairy tales. See, you can survive anything here. Look at this foster kid. Wow. A victim and a toughie and a drug-runner and — the icing this time — a girl, and more, a girl who can spin literary gold out of her wounds. Street cred meets literary cred. What a find.

And what a fraud. What in the world went through Seltzer’s head over the years, three at least, that she was working on this book? Did she really think she was going to pull it off?

Did she think no one was going to notice somewhere along the way? Does she think that we all, in effect, live in a fantasy-world where one’s identity is negotiable. Push a little here, embellish a little there and, whammo, you are no longer a white private-school girl, but, by a true sleight of the imagination, an inner-city foster kid with a story to tell, rather, to sell. And more, a do-gooder who—on a web site and on the back-jacket copy of the book—talked about a foundation she had started to stem inner-city violence. Whoa—a foster kid with a golden tongue and a heart of gold. She became her very own fairy tale, a literary sociopath so deep in she could convince herself no one would notice—or perhaps care if they did.

Someone did notice: her very own sister, who called The New York Times after seeing a piece last week about Seltzer (that’s a great story waiting to be written, if our author wants to stab at the truth the next time). In her own defense after being outed, she said the most astonishing thing, a tip-off to her thinking. She said that she wrote the book while sitting in Starbuck’s in South Central and that she talked to gang kids there.

That’s it: slip into the locale, slip into the identity, like stepping into a movie screen. Maybe here, in L.A., that’s always the beguiling temptation -- to re-imagine yourself, become the star of your own invented story. That’s what all those contestants on all those reality shows are doing, stepping over a border into dreamland—even “Survivor” dreamland where people pretend to starve. In effect, Seltzer simply cast herself as the ultimate survivor.

Perhaps down the road, she will try to work the TV redemption circuit—or she could do it on the Net with a Website. It’s a trick -- but doable. She’d have to study James Frey’s attempt because it just didn’t work, didn’t play. He didn’t have enough heart, evidence enough self-abasement (speaking of self-abasement), certainly, to please Oprah -- who had previously sung his praises and herself felt wrathful humiliation at his unveiling.

At least Seltzer didn’t cross her. That’s a career-ender. Not that Seltzer necessarily has one left, even as a novelist—which, of course, is what this should have been. Even though there’s a good chance (let’s be honest here) it would not have been published.

Meanwhile, as she licks her wounds or whatever she is going to do, she might take a look at the real casualties in the country’s inner cities, all those young black men in prison or dead on the streets — yes, girls, too. She spun them into her fairy tale. That’s her real shame. But then again, there is shame enough to go around.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a novelist, commentator and essayist for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is the author of a memoir, "Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey."

Gender Betrayal

Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:42:13 GMT

It is more than a little painful—some would say ugly—watching Hillary Rodham Clinton fight to the last to hold on to her dream. This was not the way it was supposed to be. The presumptive heiress apparent to her party’s nomination, she was supposed to, if not exactly coast to that nomination, at least have it sewn up before now. But it all got away.

Part of it, of course, is the charismatic upstart who slipped into the lead with his graceful oratory and charismatic calls for change -- making Clinton look retro-partisan and old hat, a trench-warfare policy wonk who couldn’t rouse the heart.

But part of it is even crueler: Hillary Clinton did not hold on to the women’s vote the way she needed to. It was their hearts—or many of them, anyway—that she left untouched and that, in a nutshell, is what has cost her the lead, and perhaps even the nomination itself, barring any miracles or major missteps on the other side.

Oh, she did get a good deal of the women’s vote. She held on to lower-income, non-college-educated women. White women, that is. Black women, of all incomes, voted for Sen. Barack Obama. But she didn’t hold the allegiance of her own cohort: the higher-earning, college-educated white women who you would have thought—she must have thought—would be hers for the asking; especially those of us who, like me, are her generational sisters.

I have been privy to heated battles among women, joined a few myself, as we’ve wrestled with the Hillary factor. With what we owe her, what she owes us, what we want from her -- gyrating, some of us, between gender loyalty and attraction to the new kid on the block, a less blemished, less obviously manipulative candidate.

Though one could argue that Obama's alliance with Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., a man whose extreme views he seemed genuinely not to share, was in effect a strategic—if also emotional—alliance, an attempt to be part of the black inner-city Chicago political world where he got his start. He is an operator, too. He didn’t want to play the race card, but played it with oratorical flourish when forced to.

Not Clinton. She never played the gender card, never figured out how to make it work for her, for the rest of us -- how to summon up the old historical goose bumps by conjuring the days we stormed the barricades. The first woman president of the United States: it should or could have had resonance. Meaningful even for younger women who get bored by feminist memories of yore, but who might have been reminded at how few female leaders there still are—only a handful in high elective office.

But she never played it, never reached and grabbed for the sentiment, never let us register any of the precedent-setting excitement her victory might bring. In fairness, she didn’t want to be patronized as the “girl” candidate -- notice, for example, how often she is referred to as “Hillary” while Obama is called by his last name -- or accused of reverse sexism. Indeed, she was accused of precisely that when she dared to talk about the historic nature of her run.

No doubt she is mindful, as well, that women still get judged more harshly — not just by men but often, and especially, by other women. In all the Wright brouhaha, Obama was not accused of being a Machiavellian panderer. But there is pander involved -- he spun it pretty, but it’s there.

Had Clinton had such a rhetorically incendiary spiritual leader, she would have been vilified to the max for making an unholy alliance -- what some, again often women, have accused her of making with her own husband. Best not shed a tear, even in exhaustion, if you don’t want to be dissected by the bully boy cable quipsters—from O’Reilly to Matthews and back again--as one of those emotionally volatile, manipulative females.

So no, can’t go there. Better leave the gender card on the table.

There was the other issue, of course, the fact that, to be viable as a woman candidate—certainly in the general election, for which she was positioning herself -- she had to be tough, show she could reach for that phone at 3 a.m., send young men to die in battle. As if that’s what we need more of.

The irony, or ironies, is that she was running like a man to be the first woman president, leaving Obama to out-soft her and garner the vote of those white, liberal, educated and more anti-war women voters. Her people, her sisters.

Sorry. Not this time.

The truth is much of her reluctance to use the gender card goes below posturing and polls. It goes right to the edgy, toughened heart of who she is. Unlike Obama, who is a post-racial, bi-racial candidate, Clinton came of age in the thick of her particular fight. She has had to battle so hard so long, right from her childhood home.

She had, like so many of us in her generation, one of those larger-than-life, autocratic Greatest Generation fathers. These were the stiff-upper-lipped, old-school dads, who believed a woman’s place was in the kitchen…or bedroom, but not in the boardroom. Certainly not in the White House. These are the men who made their daughters feminists, made them fighters. I know; I had one.

Then, of course, in Hillary’s case, she married a man who was her intellectual partner -- but also a philanderer. That roughened her up and toughened her up even more. Combat is in her nature.

I don’t think her Iraq vote was pandering or positioning. I think she believed it to be right at the time—which is why she has never apologized. Just as she has never allowed herself to be judged for standing by her man, always deflecting any pity that might come her way because of his predilections.

Less well-off women, women who’ve had it tougher, give her a bye—more than—because they do identify with her and her stubborn, even admirable, endurance in politics and marriage. But her natural generational and gender allies have abandoned her for the more graceful, less battle-scarred male candidate.

As are most things having to do with the Clintons, this has been absolutely Shakespearean to watch.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a novelist, commentator and essayist for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is the author of a memoir, "Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey."

What's Wrong With Perseverance?

Anne Taylor Fleming — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:39:14 GMT

We like always to think of it as a virtue, the head-down, tortoise-beats-the-hare tenaciousness that exemplifies the admirable victors, the artists, the lovers, and -- yes -- the powerful, who persist in their goals long after the fleet and fleeting have taken their seats. Which, of course, brings us to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Nobody in recent memory, certainly no woman, has pushed and fought and hung as tough as our would-be first woman president.

More to the point, she has ignored and continues to ignore calls for her to step aside, despite the formidable math that stands in her way. She is clearly not afflicted with the traditional female need to make nice. Not by a long shot.

She has been excoriated in print and on the Internet for taking the low road, been analyzed ad nauseam by the TV punditry, been abandoned by former Clinton allies. Yet, on she goes, strangely, even fiercely, alluring in her persistence.

Am I crazy, or does she actually look better, glowier, more vital than she did months past when the nomination seemed to be hers for the taking? She is a radiant warrior -- or warrioress, if you will -- bringing to bear on her White House hunt the same grit and tenacity she has so clearly brought to her marriage. Back when many people, a lot of them women, urged her to abandon her serial philanderer, she brushed off their injunctions with head held high. In fairness, a lot of women seem to exemplify tenaciousness in love, trying to hold marriages and families together despite a straying mate. The domestic sphere is our orbit to manifest persistence.

But seldom do we see a woman show such ferocity in the service of her own blazing, trail-blazing ambition. Seldom have we seen a woman subtly, or not-so, go for the masculine jugular as this one has -- slashing at her male opponent with a kind of baiting, patronizing, survivalist's glee. You want to go a few more rounds? Great. I'm in. This is just getting fun. She seems more and more lit up, he more and more defeated, defensive, even though, technically, he is still in the winner's column.

It's quite a spectacle. One that leaves many of us with two minds. Yes, great -- if you are in the battle, full steam ahead. Don't pull your punches, don't curtsy and leave the stage. Don't whine or cry, a la Pat Shroeder back when.

To the young women around me, I say, watch her. You may have problems with her; you may think this is ultimately disturbing stuff, but there is something instructive -- even quite moving -- in her example. If you're going to play with the big boys, at some point, this is what it might look like.

But there is the flip-side. Clinton is flirting with seriously weakening the presumptive nominee -- he does have more popular votes and more delegates. In her zeal to win, she is showing a dangerous willingness to take down her party, a willingness to ding and demean Barack Obama as an untested lightweight unwilling to go for her jugular in turn.

You get the feeling from Clinton that this is her perversely finest hour. A time when every slight, from kindergarten on, is being brought to bear in her obdurate willingness to stay the course -- suggesting now that the Florida and Michigan votes should count after the party flat out said they wouldn't, and after Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. Rules be damned -- right?

But underneath it all is her dangerous willingness to let race finally finally infect the consciousness of this country. The votes, certainly in the industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, are showing a real racial divide. In the latter state, Clinton got 63 percent of the white vote -- inflaming the resentments of the hard-core industrial workers in those states to get it -- while Obama got 90 percent of the black vote. And 18 percent of Democratic voters said race mattered to them.

To the young women around me, I say, watch her...But there is a flip side... OK. The jig is up. We are face to face with our ourselves. Clinton has lasted long enough, and fought hard enough, for the race issue finally to be at the forefront, to grab the post-mortem headline in The New York Times.

Bill Clinton tried to do this in South Carolina -- put race squarely on the table -- and it backfired. The Clinton campaign, abetted by the prowling media hordes, tried to put it on the table again with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. story, only to have Obama try eloquently to take it off -- and seem to succeed in fair measure with his elegant speech.

But now it's back, really back. No thanks to Obama's so-called pal, Wright, himself. He told PBS' Bill Moyers that Obama was, after all, a politician -- and they had to say what they had to say. Sounds like wounded ego. Whatever, he didn't help.

The longer we go, the longer she hangs in, the more Hillary Clinton has been able to make the country wonder if, indeed, it is ready to elect a black president.

We hoped we were past that. We talked of Obama as the post-racial candidate. In their retro-shrewdness, the Clintons have called our bluff. They've taken us down the old, low road. She has done this at least in part by her obdurate willingness to keep on keeping on.

Obviously race would have come up in the general election in some form -- overtly, covertly, every which way. But it is front and center now: questions of Obama's electability and, under that or on top of it, his skin color. Even those who might applaud Clinton's tenacity and still be ardent supporters of her candidacy cannot help but feel some sickness and even some shame over the reckoning her ferocious persevering campaigning has helped bring about.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a novelist, commentator and essayist for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is the author of a memoir, "Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey."

Life as a Campaign

Anne Taylor Fleming — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:52:13 GMT

She can’t seem to stop.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is still making the grueling campaign rounds in hopes of what? Some miracle, some last-ditch suicidal revelation or gaffe from the other side? Is she, in fact, even thinking anymore? Or is she just going on trussed-up rote—hair coiffed, colorful jackets and smile in place—the daily ritual of running so deep in now it has become addictive, impossible to stop.

Of course this is what the Clintons do—both of them. They run for public office. They lose and win and run again. They push and charm with a dual sense of commitment and entitlement that is awe-inspiring. She was radiant in her West Virginia victory speech on Tuesday, as she has been these past few weeks, making her last-ditch case at various diners and day-care centers. She seems to be almost singing, under her breath, a verse of “This Nearly Was Mine”—the show-stopping second act song from “South Pacific,” currently in a stunning revival at Lincoln Center in New York.

See: sentiment’s fine. Corny is fine. This nearly was mine. Should have been, could have been. Could still be. Her chorus, her familial claque, Bill and Chelsea, are everywhere, too. Clearly the family that campaigns together stays together.

That’s the thing: what now? Clearly this campaign has been a bonding time for the Clintons. For years, the couple seemed almost to be living apart—she doing her Senate thing; he moving around the world doing good works and burnishing his post-presidential legacy. But former President Bill Clinton has clearly been on board for his wife’s run. He has been her most avid champion—if sometimes a bit intemperate, even angry, in making the case. He wants this for Hillary, no doubt about it. He has been everywhere, in hamlets and towns, exhorting what is sometimes just a small crowd to support his wife. It’s as if they were back in the beginning somehow, running hard in the rural byways and small towns of Arkansas, as if he—and she—had not already occupied the White House, together, for eight years. This nearly was hers.

A smart woman friend of mine said of Hillary Clinton that she has been badly served by the men around her in this campaign. She was referring to Mark Penn and the other guys at the top of her organization— these guys missed the national zeitgeist change early enough, the Obama threat and the need to shake down every vote, prevail at every caucus, no matter how small. But she also meant Bill, making the case of his wife with such fervency he has turned off some voters—not to mention many pundits.

But the truth is without him, who knows? Hillary Clinton is a creature of this marriage to her bones. She was — and is — a strong-minded, gifted woman who would no doubt have found a way to have a meaningful life. But with her marriage to Bill Clinton, she moved into a different realm — as did he. They became more together than either of them might have been apart—and they both knew that right from the get-go.

I knew them then. I saw them as they embarked on their marriage and their journey to the top. They needed each other; they wanted each other. They wanted the pair they became. If she was, ultimately, the forgiving mother figure to his Peck’s bad boy, he was also the champion of her gifts, giving her a platform on which to hone and display them. It is an astonishing story—what they have achieved, what the marriage has survived.

It is way too simple to describe it as an arrangement, simple and simple-minded. Every long marriage has secret places, wounds, things forgiven — little things, big things. The Clintons have just lived a lot of theirs in public. Even so, we don’t know really know what goes on between them. Not really; not any of us.

Soon, it seems inevitable, they will leave the main stage—providing Hillary Clinton does not get the vice presidential nod from Sen. Barack Obama, which is something people are certainly talking about now. And if Obama, now the likely Democratic nominee, doesn’t prevail against Sen. John McCain, one can also imagine Hillary Clinton gearing up for the next time around. But current odds are that we will have a momentary Clinton respite —and that will be restful.

They are old-school—too messy, too hot for the new, cooler, post-modern world, Obama’s world. Even McCain, with his quiet voice if sometimes raspy temperament, seems cool by comparison to the Clintons right now. They are sixtysomething — hard to imagine because, like so many of our baby boom generation, they have seemed preternaturally energetic and driven.

No question, it will be restful, too, not to have that endless internecine generational warfare played out over and over: the liberal, dope-smoking, anti-war 60’s kids vs. the Bible-clutching, Clinton-hating reactionaries; all that talk about values and abortion and prayers in the schools. Funnily enough, the Clintons have always been kind of square in a way. They seem to have long prided themselves on being pragmatic and centrist, eyes always on the prize, hardly the hard-core caricatured liberals the right would have them. She is clearly running, as her husband did, from the center—the big lesson he taught the Democrats back when.

So we stick with her one last round, watching her barrel ahead, a hard glint of hope and determination in her eyes. It is sometimes like watching a first-rate athlete trying to play hard-ball against a deft opponent with a more graceful swing, a lighter touch.

Some are grumpy about her endurance, seeing her as a spoiler for her party. But others are inclined to let her have this non-victory lap, let her suit up one more time and make the rounds singing that plaintive refrain: "This nearly was mine."

It will be over soon enough. You can sense a bit of nostalgia already for the end of the spectator sport known as Clinton-watching. There has been nothing like it, like them. Not even close.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a novelist, commentator and essayist for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is the author of a memoir, "Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey."

A (Mostly) Graceful Exit

Anne Taylor Fleming — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:11:42 GMT

Exits are hard.

When to leave. How to leave. Should you leave them laughing? Or crying? Or both? Should you be sentimental but dry-eyed? Self-celebrative but self-deprecating? No question, quitting the game is a tough moment, especially when and if it all comes down to the wire, and you are being nudged out not just by reality but also by old, loyal chums. Leave now before more damage is done. Buck up and concede with grace.

Such was the dilemma facing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was finally ready to call it quits. She hit, it is fair to say, a perfect note, part narcissism (who doesn’t leave the stage without a fair dose of that), part magnanimity, especially when it came to Barack Obama.

Let’s be honest. She was at the National Building Museum in Washington on Saturday to service his ego and needs, not her own. Her time was over. All she had to do was pass the baton as best she could. She has not his soaring rhetorical gifts. There has always been something about her that bespeaks the smartest girl in the class, something a little practiced if fluent, a little schooled.

But her exit speech was as graceful as it gets. She did exactly what she had to do: endorse Obama full-tilt and urge her supporters to do the same. The speech was in sharp contrast to her Tuesday night speech after the last primaries, when she couldn’t seem to say anything about the historic nature of the night when the first African-American became a major party’s nominee for the highest office in the land.

Too painful right then to go there. She did the math over, insisting she still had 18 million voters on her side and would release them, presumably, when Obama came up with something to help salve her wounds. By Saturday, the wounds were tucked back under the pantsuit, and the old pro was at the podium one last time.

When she walked off, there was a kind of nationwide exhalation. It had been a long bruising fight. True, there were in that audience, and around the country, many impassioned Hillary supporters -- including cadres of irate women who think she was dissed repeatedly by the sexist bully boys of the mainstream media along with the lowlife blogger boys of cyberspace who called her every name in the book.

Let us not forget she was running at a time when the hot Hollywood comedies are sophomoric sex romps like “Knocked Up,” all having at their center a frantic, frat boy x-rated insecurity about the power of women, sexual and otherwise. That old puerile stuff.

It is remarkable, then, that Clinton did so well, even, and especially, with men -- hardworking, beer-drinking, blue-collar men. The women supporters were one thing, the men entirely another. There were exciting moments and exciting victories and a candidate as tenacious and gritty, as capable of playing hardball, as the next guy. Hats off to her for that and for the way she finally took her leave.

Here’s the thing: it’s hard, in the aftermath, not to be angry and relieved all at the same time. Angry because you’re a woman and there is no question there was a nasty undertone to a lot of the coverage she received -- smirky, dissective and dismissive. It came from women often as much as from men — both Maureen Dowd and Peggy Noonan seeming to polish up special vitriol when it came to Clinton, a seeming lifetime of animus packed into every column about her.

Given the antipathy Clinton engenders — and has for years — it is amazing, really, she had the chutzpah to run at all, the tenacity, the willingness to put herself out there one more time. Some can, and did, write it off as pure ambition. What politician isn’t full of rampant ambition?

But no question, there is also relief that is has come to an end. The Clintons and their marriage and the bargains they make and have made have haunted our consciousness, and certainly the national media coverage, for so long. There is on the stands, even now, a Vanity Fair piece dissecting Bill Clinton’s post-presidential life, rife with innuendoes about his private life and solid reporting about the morally compromised fat cats he hangs out with.

There would have been a lot more of that had Hillary Clinton garnered the nomination, a lot more prying into the former president’s alliances, personal and professional. We live in a media world where private lives are fair game — often, most of the game. You just can’t be sitting on secrets. It makes you tense and armored, which is how Hillary Clinton looked until those much-dissected tears and until, as defeat grew ever-near, she seemed at long last to relax into her warmer self.

It was late. She was overmatched by a natural -- a man cool and careful and gifted, a man who has mastered the art of being open and accessible while holding something back. A man both hip and earnest. A man so determinedly gracious in victory that his opponent had no option but to follow his lead, which she did — even though, in the dark of night or those private moments, the loss must sting hard.

She’ll be back, no doubt, after Obama's campaign finds the right role for her, but it will be in the service of someone else’s need and ego not her own. Her vaunted ambition notwithstanding, she is a team player, Hillary Clinton is. Just ask her husband; just ask the many senators whose respect she has earned. She will do the same for Obama when he calls, hiding her deep, personal disappointment as she rallies those disaffected women and blue-collar men to his side.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a novelist, commentator and essayist for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is the author of a memoir, "Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey."

Haunted by Elizabeth

Anne Taylor Fleming — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:10:57 GMT

What what she thinking?

That’s the question that continues to haunt the painful saga of John and Elizabeth Edwards. Not that she loves him and stayed with him after he confessed to having an affair (and possible lust child; though whether he told her about that we don’t know).

If we have learned one thing watching Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, it is that marriages are complex, each and every one, with its bargains, and attachments, and wounds that run deep. After, of course, insisting she was not some little woman standing by her man, Hillary Clinton was in many respects just that. It was clearly what she needed to do, sailing on post-presidency into the Senate and her own fierce run for the White House.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

No, the question in Elizabeth Edwards's case is: Why in the world did she go ahead and let him run -- run with him, run hard all across the country, giving her all despite her stage four cancer and her two young children -- after she knew. After she knew about his dalliance with a bouncy, blond so-called filmmaker with a penchant for New Age spirituality.

In these days of her public humiliation, one wants not to add to it. He is the cad, the creep. Looking back at his charm, his expensively coiffed hair, his caramel-voiced defense of the poor --- while he built a palatial country estate. All this was a bit suspicious at the time. There were overtones of another Slick Willy.

But then there was Elizabeth Edwards. She was the moral anchoring point, the class act. So authentic, so warm, so unslick, so graceful, so brave. If a woman of such obvious depth and concern for the country, a woman who had lost a son and had faced cancer with openness and strength -- sharing it all but not in a sympathy-begging way -- if a woman like that loved a man like that, well then, he must be OK, too.

He must be, underneath the mediagenic voice and looks, real, too. Because he loved her. Because he was proud of her and said so at every turn. Because she was his sounding board, his best surrogate, his No. 1 campaigner.

The country needed her husband, she told us, with that wonderful smile, and she was willing to throw heart and soul into his run. Not just for him, not just to help him fulfill his ambitions -- but for us. She made believers of us all -- not about him, but about herself. She was the real deal, someone we could all emulate, want to get to know, want for a friend.

Yes, there was carping at the time from some quarters as they launched their White House quest, running side by side and hand in hand. What about the kids? They were little; they needed stability, a mom at home (what about dad?). And what about the cancer? Was she, the mother of such young children, jeopardizing her health by barreling around the county helping to humanize and sell her husband?

There was a bit of that, and the implication that her ego, too, might be involved -- that she wasn’t quite as selfless as she appeared. But, with her energy and accessibility, she made believers of just about everyone, especially after she announced the cancer was back and she -- they -- would still run full-tilt.

Amazing, touching and, perhaps in hindsight, a little nuts. Because she knew all that time about the affair. She had to know the tabloids were after the story and after her husband -- stalking him as he stalked the White House. It’s just a little bit bizarre, that disconnect, even from someone so special and admirable.

Somewhere in all this, she, too, put the blinders on. One can only assume she was thinking that he wouldn’t be found out. What if he had somehow gotten into more serious contention? What if he had actually won the nomination? What if had come out now, on the practical eve, of the convention? Would the media and the public just swallow hard and say, oh well, old news. None of our business.

Not this year. It would have been a mess, a bigger one than there is now.

That’s what is both troubling and sad. You can make the argument that this is private stuff, private pain. Many people clearly believe that would be a more desirable state of affairs -- where personal lives and personal indiscretions are not constantly fair game. But that is not the world we live in right now, nor the country.

Elizabeth Edwards, so spot on in every way, had to know that. It wasn’t going to be tucked under any rug in her nice, new house. She could forgive him and re-embrace him -- as she says she has. But the country might not be able to do that anymore. Bill Clinton seemed to get away with bimbo eruptions when he was first running for president, but the level of cad fatigue has geometrically increased. And, by running with her husband, Elizabeth Edwards, in effect, invited us all in -- yes, even those nasty tabloids who had been chasing him from day one.

I just wish she hadn’t. I don’t want to know. I didn’t want to see the requisite mea culpa from the latest cad, didn’t want to have to imagine the disgust and hurt of his wife and family.

At least, John Edwards made the repentance rounds on his own. Elizabeth Edwards did not have to stand by her man, like Silda Spitzer, her face etched in pain and humiliation. That’s something. But the bottom line is the same: if you want to keep it really private, you can't run for public office. Not today.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a novelist, commentator and essayist for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." She is the author of a memoir, "Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey."