Yes, by all means the appropriate thing right now is to offer sympathy and encouragement to the Edwards family. Having lost my own mother to cancer as a young teen with four years of roller-coaster ride remissions, it is truly a defining experience. From their statement, Elizabeth's prognosis is good and I sincerely wish them well (especially their children). And here's the “but”... soooo, why again did they call a major press conference only three days after going into the Doctor's office for a suspicious pain? I'm just impressed they got the results so fast! I'm trying to go through their thought process. She goes in, gets scared to death, John comes home, they do more test, and finally they hear that at least the results aren't as bad as they could have been. Meanwhile, lets set ourselves up a big media event on this. Now personally, I would have taken the weekend to simmer on things, you know sleep on it. Then maybe send out a press release. I mean the sincere recognition of their ordeal would have still been picked up by the media. But a major press conference? Just weird. It just didn't seem an "appropriate" venue for this kind of news and though everyone hates of course to bring it up, the pregnant pause seems to be, um, was this "sensationalism-milking"? There I said it. I'm sure they're great people, doesn't detract from that, I don't know honestly who I'll vote for but I heard the news conference and as a simple Jane mom was left thinking, Wha?

I think it is admirable that they came out and told everyone, in person, everything there is to know about what happened with Elizabeth. In an age where secrecy and lies rule campaigns and politics, I thought it was refreshing that they were so open with the results, their decision making process, and in the end their decision to keep going. I don't think it was inappropriate at all. In fact, a press release would, to me, have been inappropriate because we can't get all the facts. Reporters can't ask questions of a press release, it doesn't talk back. With the conference we could see the courage and strength of them both and we could get all the facts and understand what is happening and what will happen or change. Especially amid false reports that he was stopping the campaign, a press conference set the story straight.

phoenix

Oh no...when we start holding up candidate websites to some "public display of sympathy" standard, the meta-analysis is going to get really squicky really quickly. With heebie jeebies, too.

Shelbinator--

Actually, what I was thinking of when I wrote this post was that Elizabeth Edwards' news presented a particular challenge to the other campaigns, and went looking to see how quickly and sensitively they responded. I don't think the standard I was looking for "public display of sympathy" but how good their rapid response team is. And I think we got a pretty clear answer.

Micah