Just asking... if, as Edwards says, the affair with Rielle Hunter both began and ended in 2006, when he also told his wife about it, and Hunter's child isn't his, as he insists, then why, exactly, did he go visit Rielle and her baby last month? Catching up with an old friend? Does he honestly think he'll salvage a shred of his reputation with this shit? Also is that lie more or less believable than insisting that "friends or supporters" of his are sending Ms. Hunter thousands of dollars a month without his knowledge? Also, what the hell is wrong with him? Sigh. The early indications are that no one buys his bullshit. So. What next? The press will be furious and unforgiving. The distraction of the Olympics aside, now they have Edwards lying directly to them—insisting there was no story there to anyone who inquired, and abusing their love of Elizabeth to get them to back off. Now the press will turn on him, probably using his betrayal of his beloved wife as their excuse for endless castigation. Rielle will finally get her morning show booking. The devoted liberals will throw him under the bus for betraying the party. (Though some will continue to blame the media.) Now the race is on to somehow prove the paternity of the baby or—more likely—track down those payments. The Enquirer should already be on the money trail, so let's see what happens!

Today brings the joyous news that ovary-shaking Idol demigod Clay Aiken has become a father to a healthy baby boy through the miracle of cutting edge fertilization techniques (the specs of how it was all accomplished are available here, if you care). In honor of this most improbable celebrity parenthood, we thought we'd compare and contrast Clay's siring achievement to that of another unlikely new dad, Matthew McConaughey:

You didn't think we'd post last week's Top Ten of the coolest male TV characters without following up with one dedicated to all the honeys, now, did you? And while our definitive men's list—checked and rechecked by a panel of TV experts canvassed at various local correctional facilities and gourmet coffee outlets—surprisingly met with some vocal opposition, we're confident its vagina-filled counterpart will please even the most persnickety of TV-lady lovers. There's only one way to know for sure, however. Click play, and decide for yourselves.

The transcript was bad; the video is excruciating. Nightline host Martin Bashir—famous for interviewing Princess Diana and Michael Jackson—made some fratty/middle-aged comments last week when he was chosen to be the keynote speaker at the Asian American Journalist's Association: "I've never been in an environment with so many beautiful Asian babes in my life. In fact, I'm mightily relieved that the podium covers me from the waist downwards. I've been having trouble all evening." He also creeped out his ABC colleague, 20/20's Juju Chang. He's since said he's sorry (sorry he got caught!) Now that we have the video (full video from AAJA here), which will haunt him via the Internet for years, he'll be really sorry.

You, the public, recently got to preview portions of the horrific (currently in production!) movie script for I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, written by "Dude, I did 12 shots of Jamesons and totally puked on that chick's tits" bro-blogger Tucker Max. The primary question that arose afterwards was, "What kind of girl would go out with this asshole?" Well, ladies and gentlemen, we (purportedly) have an answer-with all of the "whores," bad sex, emotional manipulation, fried chicken, drunk driving, and, uh, other bad things that you would have imagined: A tipster forwarded us the following text, which they say is an entry that was deleted from Tucker Max's ex-girlfriend's blog. We don't follow the man's love life closely enough to know whether this is true, but the blog does have Tucker Max listed as its contact person. Portions of this post have been floating around the internet for some time now. That's our disclaimer. Now here's the alleged Tucker Max love experience:

They're one of Hollywood's most glorious odd couples: pixie dream girl Natalie Portman and Manson-resembling folk singer Devendra Banhart. Still, despite the fact that Portman was game enough to appear as an octopus in one of Banhart's videos, she still can't seem to shake those naysayers clucking, "Is she really going out with him?" She is — and she's hardly the first fresh-scrubbed starlet to fall for a charming, soap-eschewing bohemian. With the help of Molly McAleer, we've put together a Top Ten list of the world's most loved-up hippie womanizers. Is it their devil-may-care facial hair, their free love attitudes, or their penchant for sharing necklaces that draws in Hollywood's most beautiful ingenues? Burn some incense and meditate on the subject — we'll be out back crafting a swingset made of hemp and spit.

Putting together a celebrity slideshow isn't for the faint of heart: just ask our own Molly McAleer, whose titanic work in the pursuit of compilations could kill a lesser man (and has — don't ask us about that intern in '06). So how do you survive filling out an eleven-page slideshow when your subject is that most rarest of species: celebrity virgins? Well, if you're an employee at Us Weekly, you cheat a little, padding your list with both non-virgins and non-celebrities alike! Hard-nosed investigative analysis after the jump:

Anonymous sources can usually put some faith in the journalistic principle, that the anonymity of a source is a sacred thing, to be protected even at the risk of jail. But they should have less faith in a reporter's competence. Last week, a New York Times reporter withheld the name of a critic of the Chinese government but gave him away accidentally by mentioning the restaurant he owned. And there's an equally moronic slip in this week's cover story on plastic surgery in New York magazine.

We hardly have the right to act prissy around here, and the flouting of taboos is an essential component of gossip blogging. But some things just aren't funny: VH1's new gossip blog Scandalist's portrayal of murdered six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey with a birthday hat reading "I'm 18" ("Look who's legal!") is gross and cruel. Hey, Anthony Miccio, anyone editing over there? What's going on? To VH1's parent company Viacom: is this the sort of "content" you want associated with your "brand"? [Scandalist]

Hooray! The National Enquirer has published photos of former political person John Edwards with a baby. The baby is almost certainly made up in part of DNA he left in a woman named Rielle Hunter, a former Edwards staffer who now spends her time cashing checks and hiding in hotels and denying everything to the media (until Good Morning America finally books her!). So now would be a perfect time for, like, established print media to cover this story, right? Anyone? Ha, no, they are all too embarrassed. Once again, it's up to the internet! The story is still sneaking in through the cracks. McClatchy ran a "why isn't Edwards answering our questions" piece that will set the tone for future MSM stories on this terrible subject. Leno and Conan have mentioned the story too, which definitely suggests that the era when no one would've known about this unless the Times picked it up is finally over.

Uh-oh: parents do love other kids more. Especially if they're their real kids. A new study finds that foster- and step-children are "twice as likely to die" from unintentional maltreatment. This does not bode well for the children-of-many-colors of Brangelina! (Remember, it's their biological kids that commanded millions for magazine covers, not the ones she adopted as a single mom.) [Science Daily]

Remember Poltergeist, that 1982 horror film that was rumored to be plagued by a curse? What with the untimely deaths of two of its young stars, and reports of various odd occurrences on set. Can a movie be cursed? The Exorcist saw its fair share of mishaps, including injuries and the deaths of several crew members, as did Peter Berg's recent flop The Kingdom. And then there's Valkyrie. Well, it looks as though The Dark Knight, that Batman blockbuster mega-machine that's roiling in movie theatres currently, may be joining those ranks. Death and violence has surrounded three of its stars since the movie wrapped, Morgan Freeman's car accident last night being the most recent.

Hasn't Anne Hathaway been through enough, you fiends? The pixie-ish actress is just getting a break from the nonstop tabloid coverage of her breakup with her ex, Italian playboy and scam artist Raffaello Follieri, and his subsequent arrest for fraud. But even though Follieri's in jail, the relationship is still haunting Hathaway: the rumor is that he had a stash of nude photos of the actress, which are now in the hands of the FBI and...maybe somewhere else?

When the city shook this week, scattering whole herds of TV paragons from their studios in bug-eyed panic, one institution stood firm: Dirt Sandwich. Better yet, the week's greatest hits in entertainment news saw it all, from Billy Bush's pants-soiling to Mark McGrath's penultimate humiliation as the outgoing host of Extra! to the seismic justice rocking Judge Judy's courtroom. And when the Earth stilled, there were Elizabeth Taylor and Miss USA (among others) to give the aftermath a touch of awkward class. Yes, behold Dirt Sandwich, as assembled by noble Defamer videographer Molly McAleer — monolithic, omniscient, sturdy and altogether delicious. Take a bite, won't you?

In browsing What Would Don Draper Do? yesterday —your one-stop Tumblr shop for tips, advice, and musings from everyone's favorite Sterling Cooper jr. partner/secret whore-child—it suddenly occurred to us that there are few people, fictional or real, whose loafers we'd more rather slip into. You know—just to see how it felt to be Donald Draper, shtupping his Jewess department-store-heiress mistress on the side. Which got us further thinking—what other iconic TV characters would we like to be, or do, or maybe both be and do? We left it to the capable hands of Defamer videosmith Molly McAleer to compile this ultimate Top Ten Countdown of TVs Coolest Cats. We're sure you'll agree that each in his own way demonstrated consistent grace under fire, panty-moistening sex appeal, and more cool that a seal hunt in December. And yes, we're well-aware that we left off many of your favorites; that was intentional, as this is the definitive Cool Cat list. Feel free to contribute your own nominees and clips in the comments. In the meantime, take it away, Parker Lewis!

An earthquake is just an earthquake. But the tech press corps is desperate to make a commonplace natural event, like today's shaking down in Los Angeles, into a story about their favorite companies. Take Twitter user MissRFTC, who was in mid-pelvic exam when the earthquake struck, and announced this to the world. An hour later, MissRFTC was on the phone with "a senior writer from CNET." (Our first guess was Daniel Terdiman, a CNET reporter who often writes about the Internet's quirky culture, but it turns out it was the utterly straitlaced Dawn Kawamoto, better known for hardnosed reporting on Hewlett-Packard board scandals that led the computer company to sic investigators on her.) We're not sure who worries us more: The compulsive oversharer who felt obliged to Twitter about her 15 minutes in the stirrups of fame, or the reporter who thought this might be a story. But mostly, we're jealous we didn't pick up the phone first.

When the waters finally rise and sluice their way into New York City streets, it will be the bloggers-crazy, beautiful, typo-ridden-who become the first responders. I mean look at the reportage from the front of California's ELE earthquake today. Perez scooped CNN! Because he was there, feeling the rumble and hum of his assets shaking in his chair. So what are these intrepid shut-ins saying of the event? Take a look at a little earthquake reaction digest after the jump.

That familiar feeling is washing over us all again. It's the same feeling that we get at the end of each and every work week. You know what we're talking about. Your brain is tired, your stomach is empty and you're ready for it just to be the weekend already. Well, before you head home to tip back a few root beers, make sure you get a good base going by grabbing hold of this week's Dirt Sandwich with two hands and tearing into it with reckless abandon. Nothing gets the weekend started like Molly McAleer's exquisitely crafted, open-faced look at the wonderous world of celebrity infotainment program. From Christian Bale's arrest for assault to James Blunt's orgy off the isle of Ibiza, you can bet that all of your cravings will be (at least temporarily) satisfied once you let the glory of the Dirt Sandwich wash over you. Enjoy!

We dislike giving any unnecessary PR to [bad designer], the L.E.S. twit who duped the free NYC paper Metro into putting him on its cover for a racist publicity stunt about a (probably nonexistent) attack by a pack of young black girls on a poor "victim" wearing a [bad designer] t-shirt that said "OBAMA IS MY SLAVE." But sometimes it's important to give coverage to those shining beacons of stupidity among us, so that we all know how not to act. Jewish Week tracked down [bad designer, who's Jewish] for an interview about his bad reputation. Sample: "'I've received death threats on the phone, especially from black people,' [b.d.] said. How did he know, over the phone, their ethnicity? 'They sound African-American.'" There's more!

On the surface, the life of the average paparazzo seems almost impossibly glamorous and adventuresome—spent loitering outside one of L.A.'s many ultra-exclusive social establishments, or ducking sniper fire on the branch of an electrified fig tree trying to capture a Chosen Twins double-breast-feeding session. But there are several things we felt you should know before dropping your lucrative dermatology practice to follow your dreams of running away with the pap circus; Defamer videorobics instructor Molly McAleer has generously compiled them all here for you here, along with A/V supporting evidence. Just watch it. That's all we're saying. And keep one eye on that Cash Warren character. Getting Jessica Alba pregnant isn't his only trick shot.