Everything involving the John Edwards affair made me sick – the affair itself, the lies, the hypocrisy, the financial shenanigans, the way the media covered the story, and the lack of moral accountability. It was all just… gross. We had some idea that Elizabeth Edwards would write about what happened, and now she has. The New York Daily News got their hands on an advance copy of Elizabeth’s new book, Resilience.

In the book, Elizabeth writes that when she learned of the affair, she threw up. Yep, I nearly did too. She also writes that John told her of the affair in 2006, shortly after they had decided he would run again in the 2008 race. As it turns out, John even lied about the extent of the affair when he first told Elizabeth. Gross.

Elizabeth obviously felt betrayed, but she stuck with him. What really bothers me about that is not so much that both of them lied about this fake “happy family” they had, or that Elizabeth didn’t leave him, but that John Edwards basically made his dying wife part of the reason to vote for him. It’s as if he was saying to the world, “You should vote for me because I will be with Elizabeth to her last dying day, and no one else.” When he was already fooling around. Just… gross.

Campaign cad John Edwards cheating ways made his wife, Elizabeth, sick to her stomach – literally.

After the former presidential hopeful confessed his betrayal, Elizabeth Edwards writes in her new book, “I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up.”

Elizabeth, 59, who is terminally ill with cancer, speaks in far more detail than before about her husband’s infidelity in her new memoir, “Resilience,” due to be published May 12 by Broadway Books. A copy was obtained by the Daily News.

Despite feeling deeply deceived, Elizabeth Edwards nonetheless publicly stood by her husband’s side, lending his candidacy the aura of a warm, loving family life.

But she had actually wanted him to quit the race to protect the family. Edwards admitted the hanky-panky to her days after declaring his candidacy in 2006 – almost a year before the National Enquirer reported it.

She was afraid of the destructive questions Edwards’ affair with videographer Rielle Hunter would raise.

Later events proved her right. “He should not have run,” she says.

Edwards did not publicly admit the affair until last August – seven months after he quit the race, and the National Enquirer had reported he was the father of Hunter’s infant daughter.

Edwards denied paternity, and his wife’s book doesn’t address that issue.

But it does highlight Elizabeth Edwards’ anger and sorrow at being duped by a man whose four children she’d borne and whose political ambitions she’d passionately supported for so many years.

Hunter initially seduced Edwards using a worn come-on line, Elizabeth writes: “You are so hot,” Hunter told him outside a swank New York hotel. The campaign ultimately paid Hunter $114,000 to produce a batch of short films on his candidacy.

She lashes out at Hunter, now 45, whose name she never actually uses in the book, as a parasitic groupie who invaded the Edwardses’ life.

Her own life may be tragic, she concludes, but Hunter’s is “pathetic.”

Even when Edwards confessed to his wife, he lied, claiming he had slipped up just once, Elizabeth writes. His original version of the story “left most of the truth out,” she writes.

While Elizabeth still hasn’t fully come to terms with her man’s roaming, the memoir is laced with a powerful dose of forgiveness.

“I lie in bed, circles under my eyes, my sparse hair sticking in too many directions, and he looks at me as if I am the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. It matters,” she writes.

From New York Daily News

I totally understand her anger at Rielle Hunter, but if Rielle is “pathetic”, so is John. Not only did he cheat, he lied and used Elizabeth’s illness in a really craven, sociopathic way, all to get some votes. I can understand why Elizabeth is staying with John in theory – she doesn’t have many years left, and she wants to spend this time with her husband and children. But at some point, I just feel like she needs to acknowledge that her husband was more culpable in the affair than the bimbo who got pregnant.

John and Elizabeth Edwards are shown at Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People Gala on 5/8/07. Images thanks to PR Photos.com.