SHAMLESS

My Mom would often say, "have they no shame?" This is the way I feel about a couple of things I've read recently: one on John Edwards who loves to call himself the poor man's bud; the one who is going to eliminate poverty in America. The guy who is the son of a textile mill worker. OK.

He charged University of California at Davis, $55,000 for a speech on get this: poverty. How do they live with themselves? I mean, the guy gets $400 haircuts and lives in a house with a basketball and squash court, I hear, not to mention that it is the biggest house in Chatham country as any North Carolinian will tell you. Let's don't even mention the fact that he got $500,000 from a hedge fund, which is typically open to only a limited range of investors, mainly the wealthy. Mr. "I just want to help the poor" here is a little hypocritical, wouldn't you say?

Edwards, of course, is not alone. This whole speech fee thing is irritating to me. St. Ronald Reagan was given a mil by the Japanese for a speech, Bill Clinton regularly gets a hundred thousand, and then there's Rudy Giuliani who was about to be run out of town before 9-11 and was recently given a $100,000 for a speech at Oklahoma State University plus $47,000 for a private jet.

I must say too that Institutions of Lower Learning who are parties to paying this sort of money for speeches must start their days with stupid pills. I don't get it.