Preening Edwards Worse Than a Ken Doll

Even his confession to narcissism was narcissistic
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 10, 2008 11:41 AM CDT
Preening Edwards Worse Than a Ken Doll
Ken doesn't deserve to be compared with Edwards, Dowd writes.   (Getty Images)

The real John Edwards shocker was not so much his affair, but his admission of narcisissm—yet even that confession was oddly self-loving, writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. While "it isn’t like we didn’t know that the son of a millworker was a little enraptured by himself," and “certain men assume that power confers sexual privilege,” his self-absorbed confession that he felt “special” and “invincible” leads Dowd to rescind an earlier comparison of Edwards to a Ken doll as “not fair—to Ken.”

Why is it that “super-strivers,” such as Edwards, “have a need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves”? Clinton the intellectual was stupid about Monica. Dubya plays the take-charge guy when he’s not running the show. And now Edwards, who called for “a moral, honest, just America,” cheated on his cancer-stricken wife. It was in remission, however—so at least his affair was “oncologically correct,” Dowd writes. (More John Edwards stories.)

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