Elizabeth Edwards drawing a backlash

She has suffered the death of a child. She has terminal cancer. And after her husband, a presidential candidate, cheated on her, the details surfaced in spectacularly public, humiliating fashion - in the pages of the National Enquirer.

So why are people being so mean to Elizabeth Edwards?

In the media, at least, reaction to Edwards' new book, Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities, and her promotion of it on Oprah, The Daily Show, Larry King, and other talk shows, has been mixed, if not excoriating: "One of the most sadomasochistic jaunts in political history," declared Salon.com's Rebecca Traister.

The Huffington Post's Lee Stranahan - in "The Lies of (and to) Elizabeth Edwards" - goes further: Edwards was complicit with her husband, two-time presidential candidate John Edwards, "in deceiving Democratic voters on an unprecedented scale."

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wondered why "Saint Elizabeth" would drag her husband "into the public square for a flogging" and called the book "gratuitous."

All of this makes Connie Schultz - a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the wife of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown - wonder whether anyone has actually read Edwards' book, which she describes as a "tiny, well-written, powerful" story written by a woman "who is running out of time."

"What's completely lost in this is why she is talking," Schultz said. "There is still this belief that a political wife should be seen and not heard, except when she can help him. 'Thou shalt not "out" the cad.' Elizabeth Edwards has every right to speak out in whatever way she wants.

"When has a broken heart ever been rational?"

Schultz said that when she wrote her book about her husband's campaign, "some people were livid and thought I had no right to tell the story that had been my year also."

But Lillian Glass, a communications and body-language expert for Cosmopolitan magazine and the TV show Dancing With the Stars, said that from a public-relations standpoint, Edwards' performance on Oprah was a disaster. There were the images of John Edwards skulking in a hallway, Elizabeth Edwards' denunciation of his former affair-mate, Rielle Hunter - whose name she refused to say - and her comment, "This is a really good man who really did a very, very bad thing, but if you take that piece out, I do have a perfect marriage."

"What really made me cringe was all that misdirected anger," Glass said, noting that in the Oprah interview, Edwards is "rageful toward the mistress, she won't say her name, she's letting him get off scot-free. She should have gotten out there and said, 'I was disgusted, he disgusts me, he ruined his chances, and I'm scared.' "

On the other hand, there's that other wronged wife: Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose own discussion of her husband's philandering (which also came during a book-promotion tour) was "very polished. She was angry, and you knew that - she refused to hold Bill Clinton's hand the day he got busted, remember? The dog was his only friend."

But Clinton also had eight years of experience as first lady, noted Susan McManus, a political-science professor at the University of South Florida, which meant that when it came time for her take on history, she was more polished and dignified.

Edwards' decision to go on Oprah might be one reason she's being criticized by the likes of Dowd, "who may, frankly, be disdainful of such venues," McManus argued.

"These writers don't think much of TV to begin with, and the fact that Elizabeth Edwards chose to do this in a pop-culture venue tends to diminish her."

If there's a silver lining, it's that Edwards' excruciatingly awkward appearances with her husband on television might show other wayward spouses just how difficult it is to repair a marriage shattered by infidelity, says Ruth Houston, author of Is He Cheating On You?.

"I think she should be commended for speaking out so frankly," Houston said. "And who knows? Maybe someone thinking of doing this will think twice, after seeing what the Edwardses are going through."

While Elizabeth Edwards does seem to place more blame on Hunter for the affair, "if a woman plans to stay with her husband, it's easier to do that because he's the one she's going to live with."

Still, there is straying and there is straying. "To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy marriages are the same; all infidelities are different," said Mira Kirshenbaum, author of When Good People Have Affairs. She said she identified 17 kinds of extramarital adventures in her book.

The media onslaught, most of it by women judging women, "is so tiresome, so hurtful, so unproductive," said Kirshenbaum. If Elizabeth Edwards is in denial, it's because she needs "all the protective mechanisms she can get."

"Think about it: to know that you and your husband are responsible for an event that ripped the guts out of your marriage, your love, your hope of a happy future together is a very special kind of hell.

"And for that, Elizabeth Edwards deserves our love and support."