“She had put so many quarters in the shiny slot machine of their mutual ambition. It was hard to walk away.”

Live long enough, and agree with Maureen Dowd, who rips the Elizabeth Edwards book up one side and down the other,

John Edwards’s political career is over, and he’s being investigated by the feds about whether he used campaign funds to underwrite his affair. Nobody — except Rielle — has any interest in hearing from him again. Americans would have been relieved if the last we heard of him was that cringe-inducing “Nightline” interview last year, when he made the argument that he was a helpless narcissist and that he hit on Rielle when Elizabeth’s cancer was in remission.

But now Saint Elizabeth has dragged him back into the public square for a flogging on “Oprah” and in Time and at bookstores near you. The book is billed as helping people “facing life’s adversities” and offering an “inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life’s biggest challenges.”

But it’s just a gratuitous peek into their lives, and one that exposes her kids, by peddling more dregs about their personal family life in a book, and exposes the ex-girlfriend who’s now trying to raise the baby girl, a dead ringer for John Edwards, in South Orange, N.J.

Today the NYT has the obligatory “Democrat wee wifey” photo: Like Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. McGreevey, and Mrs. Spitzer, there is Elizabeth, standing by her man, who looks over her shoulder:

As I said yesterday about Elizabeth, Lord knows she needs all the support and compassion she can get. Unfortunately she won’t be finding any from me.

Drop the cheating SOB, Liz. And stop dragging your kids to the photo-ops while you’re at it.

UPDATE
Jules found the Philosophical poser of the day.