• John Edwards probably won't be invited to speak at the Democratic national convention unless he addresses those nagging rumors that he had a love child with Rielle Hunter. [Page Six]

Rielle Hunter lived a rich second life as a character in literary fiction before allegedly luring Democratic politician John Edwards into a rich second life as father to her love child. You'll recall the actress was the inspiration for the pivotal bad girl, Alison Poole, in a novel by Jay McInerney. And that McInerney's friend Bret Eason Ellis extended Poole's highly sexual run in two of his own novels, Glamorama and American Psycho. As luck would have it, the 2000 movie adaptation of the latter book, starring Christian Bale, retains some discussion of Poole. As this video excerpt makes clear, Rielle Hunter — sorry, Alison Poole — had a reputation that preceded her. Click the icon to watch.

The Raleigh News & Observer, which unlike other newspapers has never declared itself too good for the John Edwards love-child scandal, is first with the angle that will probably at long last propel the sordid tale into the Times and Washington Post and basically everywhere: Edwards' presumed speaking slot at the convention, which "ordinarily would be locked in," may be taken away unless he eliminates questions about his alleged affair and love-child. The News & Observer seems to have assembled the piece before the blurry new pictures of Edwards-and-daughter surfaced today, so it probably shouldn't have much trouble scaring up another statement like this, the only supporting quote in the article:

• Whoops! The "anonymous" magazine editor who was quoted in this week's New York cover story about plastic surgery? Meet Elle's Carol Smith. [Portfolio]

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.

Once-glamorous novelist Jay McInerney has opened up about Rielle Hunter, the alleged mother to John Edwards' love child and inspiration for a "sexually voracious" character in his 1988 novel, Story Of My Life. Though McInerney made his mark depicting the cocaine-fueled excess of New York in the 1980s, Rielle was still a bit much for him, he told the Post:

Lee Stranahan's post about lefty blogs ignoring the John Edwards affair was apparently the most highly trafficked story on the Huffington Post for at least two days. But when he crossposted the item to his "diary" on Daily Kos, it was suddenly not so popular! Go figure. The "liberal" militants there excoriated Stanahan in the comments, with one well-rated response declaring, "you are violating site standards referencing the Enquirer [and its Edwards coverage], a bannable offense." That's funny, because just a few years ago multiple Kos diarists trumpeted an unflattering Enquirer story about Bush, including one who said, "Sometimes the National Enquirer reports things better than the Washington Post." That person is still active on the site, but Stranahan is not so lucky!

After wisely deciding that the massive John Edwards love child scandal is, in fact, a news story deserving of coverage, the Democratic politician's home-state newspaper the Raleigh News & Observer used basic journalism to uncover some interesting new information. Although Edwards' apparent mistress Rielle Hunter has claimed since even before her child was born that it was fathered by married Edwards aide Andrew Young, and even though Young issued a statement confirming this, the name of the father has been omitted from the child's birth certificate. Any other newspaper like the Times or Washington Post could have obtained this information, since informational copies of birth certificates are public documents in California. But those newspapers are too busy arrogantly destroying their businesses by ignoring the story to bother asking for a simple piece of paper. So they don't have either the birth certificate (PDF) or these fun non-denials:

John Edwards' mistress has been receiving $15,000 a month in hush money via a rich friend of Edwards, the National Enquirer is claiming. The Enquirer, of course, was the only news outlet that bothered to seriously follow up on allegations that the Democratic politician was having affair with former campaign contractor Rielle Hunter, and thus it was the only publication to catch Edwards in a hotel last week visiting Hunter and his alleged love child. There's been no confirmation of any of this yet from reputable newspapers, like the one that told us about the secret scientist who knew where Saddam Hussein hid his chemical and biological weapons, or from the one that said Puff Daddy was in on the plot to gun down Tupac Shakur. So, gosh, who knows if it can be trusted! But if you still want some salacious details on this hush money stuff — or word from Radar on how the mistress is trying to negotiate her share of this feeding frenzy — it's yours after the jump.

Remember how Wikipedia revealed that there's a character in an old Jay McInerney book based on Rielle Hunter, the woman who allegedly gave birth to John Edwards' love child? Well some enterprising Wikipedia editor erased that nugget of TRUE and NOTABLE information. Thankfully Radar actually picked up the book itself, and they share some words of wisdom from the fictional version of John Edwards' alleged mistress.

So is it more embarrassing that only blogs and the Enquirer cover John Edwards' LOVE CHILD SCANDAL or that only PBS cares about his anti-poverty campaign? It's certainly an awkward week for this edition of PBS' NOW on the former Senator's work to air, though maybe it'll benefit from increased interest in Edwards' extracurricular activities. [PBS]

After all this Mickey Kaus blathering about MSM gatekeepers censoring the news and preventing the reader from learning "what happened yesterday" (or, at this point, last week), it's wonderful to see the citizen-journalists and crowdsourced new guardians of information acting just as ridiculously about this supposed John Edwards scandal. As you'll recall, the National Enquirer caught John Edwards sneaking into a hotel late one night to visit former staffer Rielle Hunter and her child. When they confronted him on his way out, he hid in a bathroom. Fox News confirmed the visit. But none of this meets Wikipedia's high standards of notability! You won't find Rielle or the Beverly Hilton even mentioned on the Edwards entry.

Attention-starved ring wraith Ann Coulter called (allegedly?) philandering former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards "faggy" today. Oh, Ann, you really, really are a chore. And I've seen the species of sweaty-collared, ham-faced males you've fawned all over at Langan's, you wearying length of gristle.

Oh, look, someone's left those floodgates ajar. Fox News "independently verified" the Enquirer story that John Edwards met with Rielle Hunter and her baby at the Beverly Hilton late one night. Their story is written in a lovely tone—equal parts sensationalistic and "reporting on what this nasty tabloid claims" careful prudishness. Now the Enquirer reporters are suing the Beverly Hills Police Department, because hotel security didn't let them have their gotcha moment. Huh. This means, as they note, that "Edwards now could be contacted by police to give an eyewitness account of what occurred." Hah. Have a great weekend!

The newspaper industry is in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The biggest kiosk seller this month was a highbrow liberal weekly that featured a tabloid satire of a presidential candidate and his wife. The biggest newsmaker this month was a supermarket tabloid that caught a former presidential candidate visiting his extramarital baby mama, and the major journals of record won't even blog about it. Surely this is the End Times of big media. What is to be done? Where are our journalistic standards headed? And how long before what you see above becomes an actual New York Times Magazine cover? It may just be the economy, but all the apocalyptic chatter about the "death of the MSM" is starting seem prescient. For years, newspapers have been struggling to reconcile the Internet's up-to-the-second information spigot with old-fashioned standards of reporting. It's hard to keep track of how many "blogs" the Times now has, or how indistinguishable most of their substance and style are from what you'd find in the print edition. Apart from writing cloyingly and belatedly about the new media revolution and its cultural implications, what has the Gray Lady really done to ensure its continued relevance? Judging by its books, not much—it actually asks more of its shrinking readership. By close of trading Thursday, the stock of the New York Times Co. was listed at $12.48 per share, half the price it was a year ago. The paper then announced it'd be increasing its daily newsstand price by 25 cents, beginning August 18. Oh, the company also posted double-digit losses in ad revenue this quarter, citing the worst month so far as June, with July fast closing in. Circulation is down (profits here are only up because of previous price-gauging), 100 reporters were laid off this year, and everyone's wondering whether the Sulzberger clan will simply call it quits and switch to a small soy agribusiness in northern California. It'd be more wholesome than acknowledging that this century's Huey Long got his freak on. Other media empires are hurting, too. McClatchy Co., Lee Enterprises Inc. and E.W. Scripps Co. all claimed profit falls by almost half of last year's earnings. And most industry analysts expect the locust year to extend into well next. That must mean more bullshit trend pieces.

Tony Pierce is in charge of all the L.A. Times blogs (there are like 30 of them or something? Crazy.) He is a good blogger and a keen editor (signing up Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to blog was weird and awesome). So he's probably regretting sending this email, which Times arch-enemy Kaus picked up as an example of MAINSTREAM MEDIA MISSING THE POINT in re: the John Edwards Love-Child and Mistress Scandal.

"It's something we're looking at and trying to determine what's there... [Edwards] remains a very newsworthy guy because of who he's been in this state and where we are." [Portfolio, Previously]

• Heath Ledger's father proceeded with funding a nautically-themed bar in Greenpoint, in which Ledger had been a silent partner. The guy who designed Beatrice is involved. [Down By The Hipster, P6]

If you want an efficient, capsule summary of why you haven't read anything in newspapers or seen anything on major network news about how John Edwards ran from National Enquirer reporters in a hotel parking garage, about how he hid in a bathroom for 15 minutes, and about how he was holed up overnight with his alleged mistress and love child — an awesome, amazing story — parse these three revealing sentences from Washington Post "gossip" columnist Roxanne Roberts, in response to one of many persistent questions about the scandal in an online chat yesterday:

You know what's "funny" about John Edwards getting busted (pretty damn convincingly) by the National Enquirer while meeting his mistress and love child in a Los Angeles hotel? Edwards' cover story was that he was in LA to meet with the city's mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa — and Villaraigosa, like John Edwards, cheated on his wife right after a primary election! And also, wouldn't you know it, Villaraigosa's wife Corina was battling thyroid cancer at the time, sort of like how Elizabeth Edwards is now battling breast cancer. Isn't that... awful? Yes, yes it is. But also it's part of a long trend among certain American political candidates to ditch their sick wives. In fact, you might remember this disturbing behavior from such examples as: the current presumptive Republican nominee for president!