The beautiful Edwards relies on his wife to take a stand

In a very neutral piece of reporting, Ben Smith, writing at the Politico Blog, notes that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the lovely John Edwards, is the first person on the Democratic side of the aisle to come out against MoveOn.org’s distasteful ad attacking General Petraeus’ honesty, loyalty and patriotism:

Not sure it’s really meant that way, but in any case, Elizabeth Edwards makes hers the first campaign to directly criticize MoveOn.org’s “General Betray Us” ad, breaking with the Democrats’ strategy of, basically, ignoring it.

“Someone who’s spent their life in the military doesn’t deserve ‘General Betray Us,’” said Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

Oh, did I mention that Smith captions the above post a “Sister Souljah moment,” a caption that helps explain the first clause in the first sentence quoted?   For those of you too young to remember, the original Sister Souljah moment occurred in 1992 when rap “artist” Sister Souljah thought that we ought to have a free day on which black people could kill white people without any penalties.  In the face of this manifestly inane, racist, vicious idea, Bill Clinton, who was already a presidential candidate, said he thought that it was, in fact, a bad idea.  By doing so, he distinguished himself from the rest of the Democratic pack, which was afraid to state that obvious principle.  In other words, a Sister Souljah moment is the moment at which someone bravely states the obvious, when surrounded by people too cowardly even to do that.

What’s interesting about this Sister Souljah moment is that John Edwards is not having a Sister Souljah moment.  He’s delegated that task to his wife because he, personally, is apparently too cowardly to state the obvious.  By the way, did you notice how Ben Smith glossed by that little disconnect by saying “Elizabeth Edwards makes hers the first campaign.”  Either I didn’t realize that Lizzie was running for office, or Smith is trying to tie Lizzie’s statements to Edwards, to make it sound as if Edwards had something approximating a moral backbone.  Maybe Silky Pony is hoping that his beauty will confuse people and they’ll think that he and his wife are the same person!

Of course, perhaps I shouldn’t pick on Edwards quite so much.  At least he delegated this task to his wife.  None of the other Democratic candidates has even attempted, whether personally or through proxies, to make the obvious moral point — namely, that MoveOn.org went beyond the pale when it launched a subsidized attack against a high-ranking General for having the temerity to tell a truth its don’t want to hear, and that they want to hide from the rest of America.

Hat tip:  Drudge