From The Seattle Times
By Ellen Goodman

What I keep remembering during the long conversation about cancer and politics, about ambition and parenting, about Elizabeth and John Edwards, is the video I watched the day before their announcement.

On YouTube, the candidate was shown grooming his hair in a TV green room, while a soundtrack from “West Side Story” played the tune “I Feel Pretty.” It was no less an attack ad for its snide humor. The message was that Edwards was not one of “us.” He was a member of some android species of politician.

Then John and Elizabeth came before the public with two statements: Her cancer is back. The campaign will go on. They began talking publicly about how two people choose to live in the face of illness and the universal death sentence that is suddenly more imminent.

This is what Elizabeth says: “Either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday or you start dying.” “I am denying it (cancer) control over how I spend the rest of my life.” “The best thing you can give your children is wings.”

It doesn’t get more real than this. Nor does it get more raw. Nor more human.

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