Apropos sideshows, did you hear John Edwards is running for president…again?

Today, John Edwards must be thinking that his 2008 U.S. presidential campaign is doomed to fail. After all, he chose what he thought was the slow news week between Christmas and New Year’s Day to maximize coverage of the announcement of his candidacy, only to have the deaths of James Brown and former president Gerald Ford suck up all the air time. This, after he tried to hold America in suspense about his presidential ambition until yesterday, only to have his campaign staff preempt his big announcement by accidentally launching his campaign website on Wednesday, which made what little coverage he got yesterday utterly anti-climactic.

Nevertheless, Edwards went through the motions of assuring his fellow Americans that – in case they didn’t get enough of it in 2004 – he will be rehashing his trite “two Americas: one rich and one poor” shtick for their edification over the next two years.

And, in what had to have been the most egregious gaffe of his campaign launch, Edwards to traveled to New Orleans to use the rubble and poor victims of Hurricane Katrina as props for his choreographed announcement. Unfortunately, the look on the face of every kid in this photo-op betrays the “campaign of hope” Edwards is trying to convey with his contrived smile.

Indeed, even the most cynical political commentators could not ignore the hypocrisy of Edwards showing up for a day to decry the fact that – more than a year after Katrina – these longsuffering people are still struggling to rebuild their lives of quiet desperation. Because during this time, instead of traveling to lend a helping hand – like so many people who are genuinely concerned about the gap between the two Americas did – Edwards was busy watching contractors build his plantation mansion in North Carolina that is so, well, presidential, it would make both George Ws (ie. Washington and Bush) blush with envy.

So much for this latest great white hope for black America….

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