. . . truly didn't understand

Rusty crusty and totally visible piece of heavy equipment (there's a pun here somewhere)

Today's newspaper reported that scientists are working on a way to make three-dimensional objects invisible. . . something about bending light rays around objects instead of having them bounce off those objects. It's the rebounding light rays that make things visible. How many times in my life have I wished to be invisible? Many. How often have I thought, "Oh, to be a fly on the wall. . ." There was a television show in the '50s, "The Invisible Man". To be visible to the audience, the man was wrapped mummy-like in white bandages. Sometimes he would be merely an empty suit; other times he would be totally invisible and going about his do-good deeds (which was titillating to me as a kid, because I figured that he was nude when we couldn't see him at all.)


All of this is leading to this: at what point do middle-aged ambitious powerful and wealthy politicians feel that the light rays are bending around them instead of bouncing off them? At what point do they believe they shed their mummy wrappings, and even their empty suits, and become totally invisible?


I try not to be judgmental. . . I know there are things that happen in the privacy of marriages and homes and families about which we have no idea; nor do we have the right to know, or the need to know. I realize that every person, every family, has some secret shame, some skeleton in the closet, some metaphorically crazed relative stashed in the attic. . . things we have done that were they widely published would cause reactions that would vary from uncomfortable squirming to personal devastation. However, WE ARE NOT RUNNING FOR PUBLIC OFFICE.


John Edwards merely joins the already long line of policiticans, all men, by the way, who behave badly and apparently think they are invisible. At what point does the monumental ego required to be a politician tell these men that they are not only invisible, but invincible, untouchable? At what point do they think, "Oh, I want this, right now, and the consequences be damned." Or even that there will be no consequences? The act of infidelity is one thing. . . the self-delusion is what I truly don't understand.