video Every single person involved in the John Edwards story is awful. But People magazine is still Team Elizabeth, and gets Elizabeth Edwards' PR team's spin reaction to the GQ Rielle Hunter interview. And the Today show dug deeper. (more...)

Andrew Young certainly hopes so. The former John Edwards aide - who is admittedly leveraging all he can out of the former VP candidate's sex scandal with Rielle Hunter - is now starting to hint at other women Edwards may have been involved with. (more...)

The pictures are, in fact, kinda sexy. There, I said it. Rielle Hunter, the woman behind the man who might give the National Enquirer its first Pulitzer, has finally come out of her shell. In a big way. Her interview with GQ is all over the place (in more ways than one), but it's the accompanying photo spread that's getting all the attention. The revealing shots have drawn near-universal condemnation (even from Hunter) for their odd mixture of stuffed animals and a seemingly fresh-from-sexytime Hunter. I'm here to tell Rielle not to be so hard on herself. (more...)

video Now that Rielle Hunter is talking (and crying) it's time for the other player in the John Edwards soap opera to come forward and make the media rounds as well. Andrew Young was interviewed by HLN's Joy Behar (in what was billed an exclusive) - but since he was around, he talked to Anderson Cooper too. Results were predictable. (more...)

Governor Paterson's favorite person in New York these days is probably Hiram Monserrate, the former New York State Senator whose political path has gone from switching parties to an assault conviction to expulsion from the Senate to campaigning for his old seat. Monserrate is a walking distraction, at least until Election Day tomorrow. (more...)

video In case you missed it, here are some key concepts surrounding this bizarre story: presidential candidacy, baby dady, mistress, sex tape, cover-up, terminal cancer and mastermind. The players? John Edwards, Rielle Hunter, Elizabeth Edwards and Andrew Young (former staffer to the Edwards presidential campaign.) Yesterday, Geraldo Rivera interviewed Young about the existence of the so called steamy sex tape, a video of which follows. (more...)

Well, it looks like no matter how much you wish for it the Edwardses and their scandals are not going away (they're sort of like the Clintons except without the brains and success). Behold the latest installment. Rielle Hunter, former(?) mistress of John Edwards and mother of his daughter Frances (whom he officially admitted paternity of earlier this year), has given an interview to GQ for their upcoming April issue, something she felt comfortable doing now that "Johnny" had gone public. (Had she done it before she would have, um, "emasculated" him). It sort of goes down hill from there. Interestingly, Hunter says it was Andrew Young's idea to claim paternity. Alas, according to Hunter, the Dave Matthews anecdote is completely false ("No. We were on the porch, and it was raining. Those are the only facts that are correct about that night in Andrew's book. It astonishes me. The story is good enough without all the lies.") From GQ: (more...)

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Former John Edwards aide and faux-baby-daddy-for-hire Andrew Young was handed a relatively stiff sentence today, as a judge ordered he and his wife to be jailed for contempt for up to 75 days. At issue is Superior Court Judge Abraham Penn Jones' suspicion that the Youngs have failed to turn over all copies of an alleged sex tape featuring Edwards and mistress Rielle Hunter.

Meanwhile, on Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto waxes poetic about "small people" (like Young) making the "big people (Edwards) feel small." Has Cavuto already seen the tape? (more...)

video The National Enquirer really hit a grand slam in 2008 with their Rielle Hunter/John Edwards story: not only did it bring some previously unthought-of prestige to the tabloid (they're up for a Pulitzer!) for uncovering the affair, but now Edwards may actually be indicted by a grand jury for diverting political campaign funds for both Hunter and hush money. Now we're talking not just a politician's love-life, we're talking federal charges. Enquirer Executive Editor Barry Levine was on Bill O'Reilly tonight to discuss. (more...)

And now for a political corruption story that, by some miracle, does not involve any New York politicians. According to the Pulitzer Prize eligible National Enquirer a Federal grand jury is about to indict John Edwards: "'John is terrified that he's going to be indicted,' a friend told The ENQUIRER." Emphasis the Enquirer's. Also, Elizabeth may be helping to send him to jail, though they don't actually provide detail on this front...and really, who could blame her if this happens to be true. From the Enquirer: (more...)

poll According to this month's CBS/Vanity Fair poll 22% of those asked would be willing to forgive Tiger Woods his bad behavior (no word on whether Elin was one of the polled). This may seem like a low number, but Tiger should perhaps breathe a sigh of relief: he polls well compared to, say, John Edwards who only got five percent of the forgiveness vote. Edwards meanwhile can take some itty bitty tiny comfort in the fact that he is more forgivable than both Roman Polanski and Chris Brown. Yes, very small comfort. Eternal bad boy Charlie Sheen falls somewhere in the middle at 12%. (more...)

Politics is a dirty business, but even among the thickest of thick-skinned folk there have been few scandals as stomach-churning as the John Edwards sex scandal. A man who was nearly a heartbeat away from the presidency had a lovechild with a staffer and pinned the blame on a loyal subordinate. The wife had cancer at the time; the lover, barely a political type, was a walking hippie stereotype with a history in astrology. The National Enquirer broke the story. The subordinate wrote a damning tell-all book. The whole tragedy was impossibly stranger than fiction. Out of all this irresponsible suffering, Newsweek has found an unlikely hero: Rielle Hunter. Columnist Jonathan Darman argues that it is in her silence throughout the entire ordeal that the public can see her true "dignity," and that she is unlike most mistresses of the modern era in that she has not used her new-found fame for financial stability or to generate more fame for its own sake. (more...)

video But no, the joke wasn't in the "package" part. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell certainly has a way with words: This morning on Fox News Sunday, the GOP Senate Minority Leader spoke out against Obama's economic stimulus package, and even tried to...make a joke? Maybe? We're really not quite sure what his comments about Tiger Woods and John Edwards having a better year than the stimulus package were supposed to mean. Does the economy have a sex problem or secret love-child that we should know about? What? (more...)

video Just like last week, former John Edwards aide Andrew Young was back on cable news to talk about the latest revelations in the Edwards soap opera, including reports the former Senator may now be engaged to Rielle Hunter. But that's not all! Young was on Fox & Friends this morning to discuss everything Edwards-related. (more...)

Next On "As The Edwards Turns" - A Marriage Proposal To Reille? Could be - or so says the breathless reports from the National Enquirer. Oh sure, there was a time in the not-so-distant past where we'd dismiss such a scandalous report from the tabloid progenitor itself. But no more - we now are openly cheering for their investigative journalism to be lauded with a Pulitzer Prize. (more...)

Andrew Sullivan devoted some space today to explaining why he is so (sometimes disturbingly) relentless in his criticism of Sarah Palin and yet, in hindsight, dropped the ball where John Edwards was concerned (no pun intended). Says Sullivan: (more...)

video Andrew Young is on a full media push to promote his new John Edwards tell-all book, The Politician. Depending on where he ended up on the dial, he got to reveal some reveal some salacious and unique details of his relationship with the one-time Presidential candidate. Here's a look at three Young cable news interviews yesterday. (more...)

Well, tis’ the season, evidently, to heap vast amounts of shameful detail on sleazy politicians who, so far as we knew, were long ago buried alive in vast amounts of shameful detail.  Not a week after Andrew Young, the malleable former aide to John Edwards, released The Politician, his account of the sordid exertions Edwards involved him in in the course of concealing his affair with a campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter, the New York Daily News has reported that Staying True, a memoir by Jenny Sanford, the soon-to-be ex-wife of the disgraced satyr-governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, will come out this Friday. (more...)

After Keith Olbermann's post-SOTU j'accuse of a bevy of conservative talking heads, in which he equated their cries of "arrogance" with the racially inflammatory "uppity," many thought Keith was overreaching at best.

Be that as it may, both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report covered a case of the pot calling the kettle "arrogant," as they reported on the unprecedented bit of reverse-place-putting that was the Republicans' Mini-me SOTU. It's not that Obama is "uppity," it's that the Republicans have been too "downity." (more...)

That's the question poised in Clark Hoyt's public editor column in the New York Times this Sunday, as Game Change tops the paper's nonfiction best-sellers list. The "racy" stories of "dysfunctional" relationships are captivating, but led Hoyt to a question of journalistic ethics: "How do you deal with a talker of a book reported in a way that the paper’s own standards do not permit?" (more...)

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Last night's 20/20 featured an exclusive interview by Bob Woodruff with Andrew Young, a former John Edwards aide and author of the upcoming tell-all The Politician. 8.1 million people watched, the highest-rated 20/20 in nearly three months. If you missed it, we've got a clip from the show, detailing Edwards' reaction immediately after the National Enquirer caught him at the Beverly Hilton visiting Rielle Hunter and their child.

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It's with some trepidation that I continue to report on the sick, sad, can't-make-this-up story surrounding John Edwards. I never liked the guy, he's no longer a public figure, he'll never be a public figure, and all of this ugliness occurred when he was a private citizen, albeit one running for the most powerful position in the world. Nevertheless, I know I'm not the only one who can't look away from this story. So here's what's breaking in our Tar Heel Soap Opera: (more...)

I guess this can be called the first iPad news dump. ABC News is reporting that John and Elizabeth Edwards have officially split, which is only shocking in so far as it took this long to happen: (more...)

"The New One is the shimmering vessel that we are pouring all our hopes and dreams into after the grave disappointment of the Last One, Barack Obama."

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Another day, another scandalous political book being leaked to the press. I'm going to wager that after the Going Rogue deluge, followed by the Game Change deluge, the country may not have much more attention to give to the bad behavior of our pols...particularly John Edwards. Nevertheless, here's the latest dirt on Edwards courtesy of his former aide Andrew Young, the guy who initially took responsibility for Rielle Hunter's baby. (more...)

"I think the members of the mainstream media would rather see the earth explode first than to reward us with a Pulitzer Prize"

. -- The National Enquirer’s executive editor Barry Levine describing his newspaper’s chances of getting a Pulitzer nomination for their coverage of John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter. (more...)

When John Edwards finally admitted paternity of his daughter by mistress Rielle Hunter -- in the wake of not one, but two damning books -- many disappointed Democrats breathed a sigh of relief that the man's career was dead and gone. Time, on the other hand, started crafting an article about Edwards' comeback entitled "Rehabilitating John Edwards: Difficult but not Impossible." (more...)

slideshow Game Change authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann joined Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough in discussing their best-selling and oft blogged about book. Halperin mentioned during the event that the authors are in discussions with HBO about making a film version of their best-selling book. Their dreamcast? Meryl Streep playing Hillary Clinton and Will Smith playing Barack Obama. (more...)

Color the world shocked. After months and months of denials, followed by damaging (and sometimes creepy) revelations John Edwards has finally, publicly admitted he is the father of former mistress Rielle Hunter's child. Edwards provided the following written statement to NBC News: (more...)

Game Change, the dishy, exhaustively researched, and occasionally overwritten new book on the 2008 election by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, has dominated both political gossip and book publicity for the past week. It’s produced a small political scandal, a New York magazine cover story, and innumerable blog chatter. The book has been number one on Amazon since the day before its release, and the print run has reportedly already been increased twice. Nevertheless, the book is difficult to acquire in some parts of the country. For example, in lower Manhattan, the first four bookstores I checked had all sold out all their copies. The Strand had placed twenty-nine back orders for it, while the Union Square Barnes and Noble—where the woman in front of me was also asking for it—had placed about one hundred. With this in mind, we at Mediaite want to give you everything you’ll need to keep up with the chatter on Game Change, without your needing to read it. (more...)

That's the provocative claim (the web loves reactions -- and clicks!) made in Emily Miller's column for Politics Daily, entitled "Does the National Enquirer Deserve a Pulitzer for Breaking the John Edwards Scandal?" Well, Ms. Miller, what does the paper deserve? "I believe the time has come for us to recognize the Enquirer's political investigative reporting," she writes, fairly.

Though I don't know the other nominees for the 2009 investigative category (the deadline isn't until February), and I'm sure there are many worthy entries, it's clear to me that the Enquirer deserves consideration for what remains the highest honor in American journalism.

With the press overflow well on for 2008 campaign memoir Game Change, and an Edwards-specific excerpt in this week's New York, the Rielle Hunter/baby daddy is back with an adulterous vengeance -- just in time for journalism's award season. And as Miller writes: "Despite the legwork reporting done by the National Enquirer, there's little evidence that any of the reporters covering the Edwards campaign were interested in ascertaining if the accusations were true," so maybe it is a time to teach that status quo Washington press corp what's what. In this particularly egregious example, they were scooped for nearly a year, Miller argues. Sure, it sounds link-baiting, but Miller's argument isn't as crazy as it sounds and her analysis and background are trenchant -- deserving of a full read and legitimate consideration. "The TV networks and many print outlets have dismantled or cut back their investigative teams," she writes, "while the Enquirer continues to incur the expense of putting reporters on months-long stakeouts and paying them to literally knock on doors in search of sources." Why not give them a nod of recognition? Does the National Enquirer Deserve a Pulitzer for Breaking the John Edwards Scandal?

video Back in the spring of 2007, long before the world learned about Rielle Hunter, the candidacy defining revelation regarding Democratic presidential contender John Edwards was that he spent $400 on a haircut. Once revealed this little tidbit of information was quickly picked up in the media, and then blown up, so that in the months going forward Edwards had to battle his dogged pretty-boy image as much, or more. as he was explaining past controversial decisions made in the Senate. The haircut story was first broken by Ben Smith at the then only three-month-old blog Politico (perhaps an small early warning sign of scooping power they would develop down the line). Yesterday Smith revealed the source of haircut tip: wonder-boy Obama campaign adviser David Plouffe. Says Smith: (more...)

Last week Eugene Robinson, a local New Jersey Councilman, seized national attention  after falling victim to a prostitution blackmail scandal, testified in court that he hadn't had sex in 20 years. Despite the fact that the whole thing was a conspiracy (unbeknownst to Robinson, the woman he was fooling around with was a prostitute hired by political enemies taping the whole thing so they could later blackmail him), the media circus has unsurprisingly been focused around his no-action-since-'89 claim. Even the AP couldn't resist using the money quote in the lede of the story, before revealing the blackmail scheme: (more...)

Ten days ago the New York Times ran a A-1 takedown piece on John Edwards that included a number of shocking allegations which, combined with the placement the NYT gave the story, pretty much ended any chance Edwards had of making a return to the political world. Not that there was much chance left, but still. (more...)

video By now you probably have heard about the John Edwards-related book proposal splashed on the front page of the New York Times this weekend. But you may not have heard it explained by Geraldo Rivera. The Fox News host has a unique storytelling method, and when confronted with a story as salacious as the Edwards scandal, Geraldo is at his best. This weekend he didn't disappoint. (more...)

The New York Times is not going to be scooped by the National Enquirer anymore! The Times is running an A-1 story today about the latest developments in the John Edwards "drama," which according to the story's opening graf is "moving slowly but deliberately to its conclusion." Slightly less slowly and perhaps more deliberately after this piece! Reading between the lines, it seems the New York Times got its hands on a hot book proposal and rushed its contents to press before anyone else was able to beat them to the punch, or, for that matter, go on record about it. (more...)

In her column today, Maureen Dowd writes about cowardly Internet bullies — all those bloggers out there who say the meanest stuff, and are seldom called to task for it. "On the Internet," she writes, "it’s often less about being constructive and more about being cowardly." Granted, Dowd puts her name on everything she writes. But the whole 'cowardly not constructive thing' -- not so much. • Just last weekend MauDo went after Anna Wintour. Alright, maybe she was more interested in celebrating the "sacred monster," but some of her jabs cut pretty deep: "Behind those bangs and dark glasses, is Anna human? Or did she tie Hermès scarves together and make a daring escape from District 9 in a getaway car driven by Oscar de la Renta?" Ouch. • Dowd is a big fan of pet names (usually objectionable ones). Hence headlines like "Will Hillzilla Crush Obambi?" • John Edwards got his share of smack from Dowd after his $400 haircut in a column called "Running with Scissors." We haven’t reached the point," she writes, "where we can handle a green-tea-soy-latte-drinking, self-tanning-sea-salt-mango-body-wrapping, Norah-Jones-listening, yoga-toning chief executive." • NYT public editor Clark Hoyt included Dowd's attacks on politicians in a column called "Pantsuits and the Presidency," responding to readers' complaints about the Times' slanted political coverage. A thick slice of those comments revolved around mean Maureen Dowd was:

But Dowd’s columns about Clinton’s campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband ... She often refers to Barack Obama as “Obambi” and has said he has a “feminine” management style. But the relentless nature of her gender-laden assault on Clinton — in 28 of 44 columns since Jan. 1 — left many readers with the strong feeling that an impermissible line had been crossed, even though, as Dowd noted, she is a columnist who is paid not to be objective.

Photo: Nancy Kaszerman/ZUMA Press via Salon.