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Elizabeth Edwards Calls Rielle Hunter 'Pathetic' | 04/30/2009 9:55 am

Elizabeth Edwards Calls Rielle Hunter 'Pathetic' in Memoir Resilience

Elizabeth Edwards’s new memoir, Resilience: Reflections On the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities, hits bookstores on May 12 and addresses husband John Edwards’s affair with Rielle Hunter.
By The Staff at wowOwow.com
Random House Website
Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards, is finally speaking out about her husband’s very public affair with former campaign videographer Rielle Hunter. In Edwards’s new memoir, Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities (Broadway Books), she reveals that she knew of her husband’s affair before he ran for the 2008 presidential race and warned him to quit campaigning.

 

"He should not have run," Edwards writes in the book, which hits bookstores on May 12.

While the Daily News, which reportedly obtained a copy of the book pre-publication, reports that Resilience does offer further details about Mr. Edwards’s fall from grace, Mrs. Edwards did not write a cutthroat book that harshly attacks those who betrayed her. In fact, Edwards does not once use the name of John Edwards’s mistress, Rielle Hunter. But she describes the aspiring videographer as "pathetic." The book also talks about her husband’s lies and her immediate reaction to his confession of betrayal.

"I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up," writes Edwards, 59, who is terminally ill with cancer.

The paper also reports more book details:

Her own life may be tragic, she concludes, but Hunter’s is ‘pathetic.’ Even when Edwards confessed to his wife, he lied, claiming he had slipped up just once, Elizabeth writes. His original version of the story ‘left most of the truth out,’ she writes. While Elizabeth still hasn’t fully come to terms with her man’s roaming, the memoir is laced with a powerful dose of forgiveness. ‘I lie in bed, circles under my eyes, my sparse hair sticking in too many directions, and he looks at me as if I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. It matters,’ she writes.

Mrs. Edwards has been criticized for standing by her husband’s side. However, she and her husband of nearly 32 years have endured a lifetime of tragic adversities together. Their son Wade was killed in a freak car accident when he was only 16 years old. Days before the 2004 presidential election — when Edwards was running for vice president, Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer. During the campaign, as she supported her husband, she was undergoing rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. In 2007, she was told the cancer had returned, spread and was untreatable.

On January 30, 2008, Edwards suddenly withdrew from the Democratic presidential nomination race. In early August, after a string of stories in the National Enquirer, he confessed his affair to the public. His wife, though, had known of his extramarital activities for nearly two years. His campaign exit came exactly one month before Hunter gave birth to baby Frances Quinn, who many suspect is Edwards’s baby.

128 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

MK P
Sorry, Elizabeth — you husband is the pathetic one.   You, Rielle Hunter, and a lot of Americans were used by him.
By MK P on 04/30/2009 10:08 am
Rachel F
I have to agree. Hunter wasn’t the one with a terminally ill spouse; he was.
By Rachel F on 04/30/2009 10:10 am
C. Aune
But Hunter knew…so let’s just make them BOTH equally pathetic ;)
By C. Aune on 04/30/2009 10:40 am
Rachel F

I would disagree; even if they are both pathetic, they are not equally so. Hunter and Edwards betrayed common humanity in betraying the terminally ill Elizabeth; he betrayed more, though, than she did, because Hunter had made no commitment to Elizabeth Edwards — but he had. He betrayed Elizabeth’s trust, their life together, their children’s trust in him, etc. — things that Hunter was not party to and had no commitment to.

I’m not trying to defend Hunter; what she did was despicable. But what he did was worse — because he took advantage of two women, preying on the feelings of one and abusing the trust of another.

By Rachel F on 04/30/2009 10:51 am
MK P
Hunter didn’t betray the American voter by running a campaign and accepting campaign donations knowing full well that there was no way the story wouldn’t break at some point……………….
By MK P on 04/30/2009 11:21 am
Rachel F
Very true.
By Rachel F on 04/30/2009 11:52 am
MK P
What……..Hunter wasn’t his mother…………and I can just imagine the sad story he told her………you know how his wife didn’t understand him…blah, blah, blah…………
By MK P on 04/30/2009 11:20 am
C. Aune
Wow, so many women letting the "other women" off lightly…I find that interesting, and disturbing at the same time.
By C. Aune on 04/30/2009 1:03 pm
MK P
More interesting to me is that you would find it disturbing that a woman would hold her own husband accountable for his actions, rather than blaming someone outside the marriage.
By MK P on 04/30/2009 1:07 pm
C. Aune
hmm, I don’t believe I said that. Love is a mystifying thing and if a married women chooses to go with the better or wrose vow that is entirely her choice. I couldn’t do it I don’t think but I’ve never been in that situation. It’s Elizabeths choice, as the affair was the choice of the two pathetic people who had it.
By C. Aune on 04/30/2009 1:24 pm
Rachel F

"hmm, I don’t believe I said that"

Not in precisely those words. But you found it "disturbing" that we wrote that the cheating partner was culpable, and called it letting the other woman off "lightly".

By Rachel F on 04/30/2009 1:31 pm
MK P

It is Elizabeth’s choice — my point was, in calling Rielle Hunter pathetic — Elizabeth made a pathetic choice.

You must be very close to the situation youself to be able to pass judgement on Rielle Hunter.

By MK P on 04/30/2009 1:38 pm
C. Aune
I actually have met Mr and Mrs Edwards but I wouldn’t say I am close to the situation. I would call any women who has an affair with a man she knows to be married pathetic…or worse if this weren’t a family web site, LOL
By C. Aune on 04/30/2009 2:50 pm
MK P

You can place any label you want on the "other women" but, it’s the husband who broke his vows, came home and sat down for dinner and acted like all was right with the world, lied, and took advantage of both women………….so in my mind, HE is the pathetic one.  

And, sadly, will more than likely move on to another victim outside the marriage while keeping his wife a victim inside the marriage.

By MK P on 04/30/2009 3:20 pm
C. Aune
I was shattered when I heard he cheated on her, she is a most lovely women and he is a cad…but the way I see it is he could not have had an affair if the women didn’t participate. Hunter knew he was married. He would have been SOL if he couldn’t find a willing partner.
By C. Aune on 04/30/2009 3:29 pm