I sure hope not. That would be a bizarre choice on multiple levels.

The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.

Best investigative reporting on the planet. Read the New York Times if you want. They get lucky sometimes.

"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton

Unless and until there is some corroboration, this story is trash and unseemly. It certainly doesn't deserve to be on the front page of this site.

Moroever, I have litigated against the National Enquirer before and I can tell you pretty unequivocally that there stories tend to be a lot of smoke and very little fire. There are probably kernals of truth to the story (i.e. Edwards and Hunter could have both been at the hotel that night), but the most salacious aspects are typically false. Yet there is enough underlying truth for the National Enquirer to escape liability for defamation.

This stuff disgusts me.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. -Mark Twain

Sleeping two to a room would cut the problem in half. Seems obvious once I explain it, doesn't it? You just need more experience reading these papers. Start at the top - the NYT-equivalent Weekly World News.

Rust never sleeps.

of all of the tabloids for 30 years, not the "People" and "Us" glossies, but anything that still employs newsprint and photo-montaging. There is a gradation of 'truthiness' that can be applied to them--the black & white ones come in at about 10% (Madonna has never had a love child with Sadam, Bin Laden is not an alien lizard), but the Star and the Enquirer actually employ real lawyers, pay out millions to 'sources', and have a track record of accuracy where scandal is concerned slightly higher than that of the NYT. That is to say about 60 - 70%.

This scandal, however, looks pretty rock-solid. Their first source, when they broke the story several months ago, was paid a fortune and seems to have delivered some solid proof--in desperation, the Edwards (and believe me, his sainted wife knew all about this) got a married male staffer with three kids to volunteer for the assignment of the love-child's father. Enough supermarket readers (who are mostly lower-class white women--and of course, me) believed it at the time to torpedo Edwards' already doomed campaign. Curiously, the wife of the putative father hasn't divorced him. Or moved out. Or anything. As for the photos of this latest hotel visit, I'd be willing to bet they'll be plastered all over the next edition of the Enquirer--we'll just have to pay to see them.

A cynic might think that McCain pulled back from announcing Jindal as his VP this week--a move to deflect media attention, however briefly, from Obama's pre-coronation progress across the globe--because his people think this story will break big. After all, Edwards is near the top of the Dem VP speculation list. I think it won't. But we'll see. What an election year! I'm almost beginning to wonder if the Enquirer didn't choreograph it all from the very start...