Communal Empathy?

One of the many things I haven't been doing of late is following the political scrum leading up to next year's primaries and election. (The irony of being in J-school but not being able to stay up on current events—because I'm too busy being in J-school—is not remotely lost on me. It's just that I've surrendered on this point.)

Some stuff penetrates anyway—I do glance at the headlines, at the very least, and I do leave the house pretty much every day, so I get some news just through osmosis. And it is pretty hard to miss the tabloids' front-page headlines on the subway.

I did happen to see word that John and Elizabeth Edwards were going to hold a press conference on Thursday. And I did find out, through Zach, that the left-leaning blogosphere was going wild with speculation—about Mrs. Edwards's health and exactly what it would mean for her husband's candidacy.

I looked through about a dozen posts on this subject, and I could see people really struggling with their emotions. Everyone wished Elizabeth Edwards well, of course, but there was also a great deal of hand-wringing about the election. The comments I read showed people reasoning their way through every conceivable scenario and trying to figure out what each one would mean for Edwards, for the campaign, for the election, and for the country. The scale of collective angst was enormous.

And it occurred to me that in this moment, the public (or its blogging proxy, anyway) might have some sense of what it is like to be on tenterhooks, awaiting the results of a biopsy or a blood test or a CT or PET scan: to have one's mind race with all of the what-ifs, to work oneself into a frenzy, to try—and immediately fail—to think of anything but that test and the very real possibility that its outcome will be life-changing.

It's still one step removed, of course—the comment-writers weren't worried about their own health. They were, however, worried about their own futures. Just a little more acutely than they'd been the day before.