Professor F.H. Buckley writes: Now the story has gone public, thanks to a muck-raking journal that as it happened also outed John Edwards. And everyone is wondering whether the story is true.
Except me. Because I don’t much care if it’s true. Given Heidi, I wouldn’t blame Ted. After all, she apparently refuses to live with him. And given Ted, I wouldn’t blame Heidi.
Novelists will sometimes mention some little incident that doesn’t really move the story line, but which nonetheless matters. The little incident that sticks in my mind is the story that she once ran out of the house and was found on the side of the highway by the police, who thought her suicidal. What sticks in my mind is that Ted hadn’t followed her.
From that story I have taken a picture of a mind utterly concentrated in self and entirely devoid of empathy. Which seems to be how his colleagues have found him, everywhere he went.
