Or maybe Martin Luther King. Take your pick. Rielle says John was her “project”, and she could make him great:

I struck up a conversation with the woman at the next event, as we waited outside. She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she’d previously had “many lives.” She’d worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She’d been a New York party girl, she’d been married and divorced, she’d been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.

…

I would soon learn that there was no such thing as small talk with Rielle Hunter. She told me that she’d felt a connection to me when we’d first met, that she could tell I was a very old soul. This meant a lot to Rielle. Her speech was peppered with New Age jargon—human beings were dragged down by “blockages” to their actual potential; history was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness. A seminal book for her had been Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now.” Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.

Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses—to feed his ego and serve the world. If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a “transformational leader” on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. “He has the power to change the world,” she said.

…

By this point, we were each well into our second glass of wine. “So tell me,” I asked, “what do you think of Elizabeth Edwards?” “I’ve only met her once,” Rielle said. “She does not give off good energy. She didn’t make eye contact with me.”

…

When I next saw Rielle weeks later, she told me that she’d been fired by the Edwards campaign. She seemed perfectly cheerful about it, but she proceeded to tell me a tale of woe—how the campaign hadn’t understood her, how they’d ruined the Webisodes, how they’d impeded her vision and how Edwards himself had failed to defend her. The chief villain in this saga was Elizabeth Edwards. “Someday,” Rielle said, “the truth about her is going to come out.”

Shocker of all shockers, the mistress sees the wife as the villain. That’s a new one.

But about the Gandhi/MLK thing. Is it just me, or does Rielle Hunter remind you of Penny Lane from the movie Almost Famous? I mean, check out this quote:

Groupies?! We are not groupies. This is Penny Lane, man, show some respect. Groupies sleep with rock stars ’cause they wanna be near someone famous. We’re here because of the music. We are Band Aids. She used to run a school for Band Aids. We don’t have intercourse with them. We inspire the music. We’re here because of the music. She was the one who changed everything. She was the one who said, “No more sex. No more exploiting our bodies and our hearts.” – Right. Just blowjobs, that’s it. –

Sounds scarily similar to me. And it’s probably because they’re cut from the same mold: insecure women who are desperate to feel special and loved by someone important, so they sleep with them and then invent a way to make themselves feel less cheap.

What was also interesting was another project Rielle said she was going to do, where she “helped” men get out of bad marriages by sleeping with them. She called it a “genius” idea. Was John Edwards her first test subject?

Now, Rielle’s probably right that John Edwards could be great if he just got out of his head. Someone get the guy a brain transplant, quick, so that he’ll have the capability of being a decent human being. I mean, let’s run down the list. He exploited families with sick children for financial gain. He manipulated tension between financial classes while living a more lavish lifestyle than most rockstars do. He used donations from supporters to pay for $400 haircuts and pricey trips to spas. He used his cancer-stricken wife as a shield from political attacks because he wasn’t enough of a man to face his challengers himself. He then cheated on his wife, in all likelihood even when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I mean, could the guy be a worse human being? I think the only way he could sink lower is if he raped kittens and murdered Grandma.

So hey, maybe Rielle was right. If he could just get out of his head — a.k.a, become a different person — he could be great. Someone find a list of possible brain donors!

And just for old times sake, here’s some LOL fun from last summer:

Hat Tip: Hot Air