As Hannity self-righteously trashed Edwards with statements that amounted to, Edwards knows nothing about the two America's that has become his hallmark issue. This theme was illustrated with images splashing across the TV screen of the Edwards' sprawling home contrasted with residents of a mobile-home park nearby. The residents, prodded on by an unseen questioner, happily reported that Edwards doesn't know them at all. 

Unlike Edwards, I'm sure that Hannity's American idol, George W. Bush hasn't stopped coming by the "rood" (rural hood) regularly for near-beer, horseshoes, and a good old get to know you wrap session, no matter how busy he is ginning up support for the worst decision in American history, or making the military base rounds to essentially call Democrats p!##*@#.

Meanwhile, in the reality-based world, few images illustrate pure unmitigated vanity and fascille character development more than this one, except for maybe the one below.


Top Gun
For the "Top Gun" photo-op above,
Bush sported the strap-on unit usually
worn on his back during public appearances
to keep him in contact with his handlers.
On this special occasion however, Bush
wore it closer to the area that was doing
the thinking for him when he started the
Iraq war.

By the way Sean, back when you were griping about the use of a military aircraft capable of transporting Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi non-stop from D.C. to her home in California, you didn't mention that your fearless leader appropriated a S-3B Viking jet to land on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in order to give his "Mission Accomplished" speech when the aircraft carrier was close enough to San Diego to easily be reached by the more economical and environment-friendly helicopter.

This was self-aggrandizing propaganda; vanity on an institutional level that the taxpayer had to foot the bill for. It's you Sean, who does not understand the nature of the battle of the war that's being waged on us, and anytime you have a guest on who tries to clue you in, you shut them down by shouting them down. You are a feckless apparatchik of the Bush administration, a sycophant who believes he has earned special favor with those who are unwaveringly correct and just.

In reality, you are merely a tool for a family who actually knows zero about that other America Edwards refers to. The old man didn't know how to grocery shop, never even saw a scanner, now that's down-home. Quick, bring on the pork rinds to counteract the perception the "people" may have that we're not one of them. The mother declared that Hurricane Katrina victims were better off after they lost literally everything, and for some survivors, everyone, because they were out of the elements temporarily living in what, lavish conditions in the Houston Astrodome?

Your hero surveyed the Hurricane Katrina damage from the isolation of a private plane. My God, there could be typhoid teeming in that deluge, or other poor people diseases. As Bill Maher remarked, Sean Penn showed more leadership during that time than the president of the United States. The wife told the Today Show's Ann Curry that "no one suffers more than the president" over the Iraq war. What rarefied stuff are these people smoking? I wonder how the people back in the trailer park would feel about that last one Sean?

Obviously, anyone who has or will lose a loved one in the war that undid America, no matter the socioeconomic class, has and will suffer incomprehensibly for the rest of their lives, but it is a fact that a disproportionate number of those who serve and die for this country, do so not from the upper echelons of society whose icons you are so enamored with, but more often than not, from that other America that John Edwards talks about. That other America that Edwards has taken up as a cause compelled by his roots, not a cause celebre as you are inclined to associate yourself with.

What was it you adamantly rallied around in recent memory, government intervention in the Terry Schiavo case? That emergency Congressional attempt to replace Constitutional law with Sharia-like right-wing theocratical dogma in which former Republican Senate Majority leader and de facto medical authority Bill Frist, remotely diagnosed Schiavo as almost, just almost, being capable of deciding her own fate, when in reality her brain was a mere fraction of the size of any normal living human being. Good One Sean. Or maybe it was just the "War On Christmas".