The Wall Street Journal, in the newspaper's excellent investigation into the ties between Bill Clinton and Ron Burkle, explains why the former president is disentangling himself from the supermarket billionaire, as Gawker mentioned last month. Clinton will put some distance between his wife, the leading Democratic candidate in 2008, and politically toxic associates of the Yucaipa owner such as the Sheikh of Dubai and the official Chinese news agency. But is that all?

Ron Burkle, seen in the company of models like Gisele Bundchen since he separated from his wife, is a key member of Clinton's billionaire boy's club. (Former member: teen-massage-loving Jeffrey Epstein.) We don't really believe Hollywood's autumn rumor that the former president, notorious for receiving oral sex in the Oval Office, had entertained an actress on Ron Burkle's plane. (That was probably just an amalgam of Clinton's supposed affair with raunchy actress, Gina Gershon, and earlier pictures of the ex-president with girls on the Burklejet.)

Nobody really cares about Burkle's ties to foreign governments, apart from a few right-wing obsessives. It's Burkle's ties to pretty women that represent the real embarrassment, and threat to Bill Clinton's image as a reformed husband, or at least a more discreet reprobate. With Hillary Clinton in a battle for the Democratic nomination, her husband does not need a billionaire modelizer as a friend.