When Self-Serving Skanks Give Spiritual Advice

Text in italics is taken from the Newsweek article about Senator John Edwards' mistress Rielle Hunter.

While I almost never discuss politics in this venue, this particular scenario illustrates several points about the consequences of our actions. So this is one time that a politically oriented news story will make an appearance in a place normally reserved for strictly metaphysical topics. As you read, I think the reasons will become clear.

I read a rather disgusting article about Senator Plastic Locks, AKA John Edwards, and his mistress the self-serving slut--I mean, spiritual advisor. With the kind of advice she gives, the world is surely spiraling down in the big flush if we take it. I would run the mile from this particular "spiritual advisor" before she ever got her slimy paws on one dime of my hard-earned! This woman is the kind of person that makes a joke of psychics everywhere. She is a self-serving gold-digger whose psyche seems anything but balanced.

The Enlightened One, whose name is Rielle Hunter, (or perhaps Real Predator) told Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York. She thought he was giving off a special "energy."

We must now ask ourselves: could that energy have been his desire to have a fling with an easy piece so he could join the Newt Gingrich club of self-serving assholes who screw their wives over in their time of need?

The Madame Blavatsky wannabe had this to say about Johnny-Boy's wife Elizabeth, the poor idiot who has been fool enough to remain tied to Senator Plastic-Locks for lo these many years:
"I've only met her once," Rielle said. "She does not give off good energy. She didn't make eye contact with me."

Perhaps that was because she couldn't take her eyes off Senorita Man-Eater's dark roots and garish nail polish?

Not that physical appearance makes the person, but sometimes it certainly does fit them. Check out the description of Ms. Home Wrecker 2008:
She had frizzy blond hair with DARK roots, wore bright nail polish and moved like someone who knew how to work a room.
Can anyone say "trashy slut at the end of the bar???"

Rielle Man-Hunter told the reporter that human beings were dragged down by "blockages" to their actual potential; history was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness.

Blockages to their actual potential--like having an affair with a married man whose wife is battling a life-threatening illness perhaps? This doesn't seem a very spiritually enlightened act from where I stand! Being self-serving is never spiritually advanced.

Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.

For people like her, what this means is not concerning of the consequences your actions may have for others. Do what you will when you will and everyone else be damned.

Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses—to feed his ego and serve the world. If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a "transformational leader" on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. "He has the power to change the world," she said.

If Edwards is "on par with Gandhi," I'm on par with the Virgin Mary!

As for King, he had something that Edwards does not: character. Edwards' lackluster personality makes him a walking saltine cracker. While it's true that King was also guilty of the ignoble act of cheating on his wife, he was truly concerned with making the world a better place for his fellow human being. It is apparent that when all is said and done, John Edwards is vested only in serving the interests of John Edwards.

To compare Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King to John Edwards is an insult to the memories of these great men and the things that they achieved during their lives.

This was my reply to the article on the Newsweek website:
However old John Edwards' soul may be he is an immature a*s*s to cheat on his wife, who is currently fighting breast cancer. Seems he just had to get into the Newt Gingrich club of self-serving jerks who abandon their long-suffering spouses in time of need. As for the so called "spiritual advisor," I would run the mile from advice given by a person who is so eager to get into a guy's pants that she speaks ill of said long-suffering wife. What a bunch of self-serving jerks! Mrs. Edwards is better off without the jerk although, sadly, she'll probably stand by him, figuring she can't do any better. Being alone would be better than being with that plastic narcissist.

Not by any means my best writing--I try never to use the same adjective as many times in one paragraph as I used "jerk" in that one. I wasn't aiming for a Pulitzer prize with my comment, but it does go to show why a person needs an editor for serious writing. I read that comment three times before posting it and it wasn't until later that I realized what a poor writing sample it really is.

Then again, I'm not screwing the husband of some poor woman with a life-threatening illness. So I guess I can forgive myself for hacking out a poorly executed letter to the editor and letting it escape my grasp before it was properly finished.

The upshot being that while nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes--sometimes even awful mistakes--that being arrogant and self-righteous about said mistakes only makes them even uglier. Seldom have I seen anyone more arrogant and self-righteous than Senator John Edwards. I would say the same about Rielle Hunter, except that the truth is I think that she actually has terrible feelings of self-doubt, and to cover up for her insecurities she assumes an outre persona to hide the gigantic hole in her soul. For all her talk about people becoming "better reflections of their true, repressed selves," this woman's entire presentation is nothing but a mask for the vacuum inside of her. As Darman reveals in his article:

She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she'd previously had "many lives." She'd worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She'd been a New York party girl, she'd been married and divorced, she'd been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.

Rielle Hunter's true self is buried beneath the many masks and costumes she's put on. She is a gigantic black hole. People like this usually see themselves as flawed and ugly and are so desperate to cover up their perceived flaws that they make themselves truly ugly with their behavior. Where John Edwards' insecurities make him a pompous fool susceptible to flattery, Rielle Hunter's make her a psychic vampire feeding off the lives of others because the truth is that she hates her own life and more than that, she hates herself.

While I'm not suggesting that there are never cases where someone is married to the wrong person, and there is never an easy way to end a relationship that's gone bad, speaking ill of the spouse of the person you've gotten involved with, especially when said spouse is having difficulties of the sort that Mrs. Edwards is, lacks class, to put it mildly. And Rielle Hunter does not seem in the least bit concerned with the effect that her and Senator Edwards' affair will have on the Edwards children. Nor, in fact, does Senator Edwards. He's getting to pretend he's a teenager having a schtoink in the back seat of his car with the town pump. She's getting to feel like she's the concubine of the next messiah. They're both wildly enamored with their own delusions. And that sort of thing never ends well.

If John Edwards and Rielle Hunter were only screwing up their own lives with their actions, it would be one thing. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Edwards and the Edwards children are caught in the crossfire. And therein lies the real tragedy.

Our actions always affect more than just ourselves. And while it is impossible to go through life without ever causing harm or sorrow, the one thing we must do is to consider the consequences of our behavior. What we choose to do today will likely affect several if not many others. Truly considering what we would feel if we were in the position of those others will help us to cause less harm and sorrow, either deliberate or accidental.