Passages...

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the 2004 democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards has lost her battle with terminal breast cancer.

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If there was ever a woman of constant sorrows in American Public Life, it was, sad to say, Elizabeth Edwards. She lost her oldest son to a car accident, her famous & ambitious husband turned out to be a bounder and a cad and ultimately cancer laid her low.
But through out it all she remained reasonably upbeat and focused on participating in the health care debate.
She was, a very common type in the US, a political spouse made of finer more ineffable stuff than her partner.
Frankly she required little polish from what I could see Elizabeth Edwards could have taken a very successful flyer in the New Hampshire Primary if the timing was right.
Some people though aren't consumed with ambition.

Still as we grieve and review the lifes of the mighty and the departed it is worth remembering that sometimes we grant too much credit to the famous for facing up to life challenges that they'd have to meet fame or no fame.

Keep that in mind when to get to the part in Sarah Palin's memoirs when she draws on the inspired example of Helen Keller to overcome the embarassment of Levi Johnston's Playgirl spread.