Tempest Spent

Well, America, it looks like our long national nightmare is finally over. The John Edwards jury reached a verdict. Sort of. They found the former Presidential candidate Not Guilty on one charge of campaign finance fraud and they deadlocked on the rest. It was a fitting end to a seriously weird ordeal. For me though, the John Edwards trial was less about the legal wranglings that went on inside the courthouse and more about the shenanigans that played out on the sun-baked steps. For that's where I spent the better part of seven weeks: waiting, laughing, occasionally losing consciousness.

It would have been singularly miserable were it not for the misfits that joined me there, a ragtag group of journalists who traveled a lot farther than I did to watch what passes for justice dribble out of that courthouse door. It was an experience I will never forget, no matter how much I pay for therapy in the coming years. Few hurricanes I've covered have left me as exhausted, sore or uncomfortably numb. You might say I'm glad it's over. And while I won't particularly miss taking Market Street by force every morning, I will miss the friendships I formed there.

Funny how the world works. A philandering millionaire bangs a videographer and a hundred other camera nerds make new friends as a result. I don't know if that's quite what you call 'the butterfly effect', but it's exactly what happened here. And while this probably wasn't the snark you dropped by for, right now, it's all I got. If you really want to know what's in my head, just take a look at my new pal Chuck Liddy, who found a way to express how every journalist who covered the John Edwards trial is now feeling...

 (Top photo by Jerry Wolford. Bottom photo by ...Chuck Liddy?)