Here is what they are getting at: Andrew Young was gay for John Edwards. Oh, god, he was so, so gay for John Edwards. Wow! Like, from the first paragraph onward:

When John Edwards returned to North Carolina in the course of his long quest for the presidency, Andrew Young always met him at the airport in Edwards's big black Chevy Tahoe. Young drove, and Edwards rode shotgun, silently raising his left hand whenever he wanted a Diet Coke, which Young would wordlessly supply.

Just a bro, out on a road trip, wordlessly providing another bro with some Diet Cokes. In paragraph two, Young is folding Edwards' dry cleaning.

What was Young's job description again?

Young sometimes described himself as Edwards's "special assistant" and dreamed of serving in an Edwards White House. Other aides, with a combination of disgust - and, perhaps, a bit of envy - referred to him as Edwards's "personal servant," or worse, Edwards's "butt boy."

Yes, well, we're beyond insinuation now, aren't we.

Here are some more sentences:

• Starting soon after Edwards was elected to the Senate in 1998, staffers began describing Young as intensely 'jealous' of others who were close to the senator.
• "It's not enough to say that he idolized the guy - there's something deeper and weirder than that."

Oh, and Elizabeth Edwards, what say you?

"In months of talking with [John Edwards], I have come to understand his liaison with this woman, if I have, not as a substitute for me. It was more like his relationship with a former staff member," she wrote. She described an "obsessed" and "overbearing" young volunteer who "volunteered for everything, making himself indispensable," taking care of cars and dry cleaning - an unmistakable portrait, people close to her say, of Young.

This is not even halfway through this article, yet. As it goes on, we learn that Edwards did not reciprocate the passion, so much, but he was happy to "talk about sports" with Young, and even happier to allow Young to claim paternity of Rielle Hunter's child, forcing Hunter to move in with Young's family(!) and then they all had to move the West Coast for a while and then they went back to Chapel Hill. And John stopped taking Young's calls, and then Elizabeth started leaving nasty blog comments about him and leaving messages on Young's wife's voicemail demanding that Young reassert his paternity.

Oh, and then there is this:

And Young, with all the fury of a spurned lover, may be holding out yet another threat to his old idol, if it comes to that: an explicit videotape, two people who have seen it said, of Edwards and Hunter together.

Hah. Yes. Ok. Wheee! What a fucked-up bunch of people.

Someone give Ben Smith and Politico five thousand Pulitzers for this important investigative report into John Edwards' Waylon Smithers.

[Photo: AP]

Apparently, Elizabeth Edwards: less a fan of Rielle Hunter's than we thought. She's

• Talking to a divorce lawyer,
  
  
• Refuses to sign off on any confessions that her husband fathered Hunter's kid,
  
  
• "Vehemently opposes" a plan to have Hunter move near their family's Wilmington beach house, and
  
  
• Has been commenting on the internet under the commenter name "Cherubim." Maybe she was on here? Who knows?!

One blogger seems to have the goods on this Cerubim business, naturally. Via Daily Intel, look see some comments:

As you all continue to discuss Lisa Druke's lastest pay day story from the National Enquirer. I think you all should remember these important facts: John and Elizabeth Edwards have been married for 31 years. They had four children together, three are living, and one, recently, died. Elizabeth Edwards has stage 4 cancer. Any decent human being would not have inserted herself into their lives, and then sold stories about them to the National Enquirer for monetary gain. Lisa Druke, a.k.a. the Rielle (Real) Hunter fills me with disgust. I hope someday to never hear anything about her again.

More somewhat substantial conspiratorial insanity here. Also, commenteratti: at least you can say there's some royalty amongst you, now.

Oh. And then there's this. Remember former Edwards aide Andrew Young's book proposal we looked at last weekend? There's more.

• Edwards supposedly slept with other women besides Hunter. Obv.
  
  
• Elizabeth made John sleep in the barn after she found out about Hunter. She'd come in the middle of the night and start screaming "accusatory rants" at him.
  
  
• Hunter has a psychic. This psychic's name is Bob. Bob told Hunter how she should handle this thing and, presumably, to move to California.
  
  
• Edwards used to talk a bunch of shit on John Kerry until Kerry brought him on as his running mate. He called Kerry "Richie Rich."
  
  
• And the "best" one: Edwards had to call off a birthday date with Hunter. Now, you don't cancel on someone's birthday, because that's mean. But if you found out that day that your wife's cancer returned, you might tell your mistress to hold off no matter what day it is, because, you know, you need to handle this one. So he did. And "an unsympathetic Hunter screamed at him."

And honestly, I don't even know what to do with this:

Ted Kennedy once told Young about a would-be assassin who managed to get into his Senate office because one of his bodyguards was having a gay liaison with one of his top aides.

So, in conclusion, if this is true: John Edwards is a cooze, hell still definitely hath no fury like a woman scorned by a cooze, Ted Kennedy was almost killed because of a Gay bodyguard doing it on the job, and twenty years down the line, these are going to be the worst family reunions in the history of family reunions.

But really, John Edwards is definitely a cooze, regardless of this one. Reille Hunter's insane and meanspirited. Elizabeth Edwards is upset that the guy she loved and had a family with turned out to be one of the slimiest dirtballs in the history of slime, so she can't really be blamed for anything but being in pain. And Andrew Young's book is going to sell many, many, many copies.

• Andrew Young is testifying in front of a grand jury as to whether or not John Edwards used campaign funds to keep Rielle Hunter quiet, or as the legal categorization would have it, "Baby Mama Hush Slush." [Rush & Malloy]
  
  
• Chelsea Clinton's wedding on Martha's Vineyard is going to be at Vernon Jordan's estate in late August, as previously reported. We're saving the date and waiting for our invite. We should probably not hold our breathing. [NYDN]
  
  
• Mugatu-esque German designer Karl Lagerfeld got some talk-to-the-hand from Heidi Klum's publicist, who says that the German Vogue issue with Klum on the cover (with an apparent 140-page spread inside) sold more issues than any other. None of this matters, because Lagerfeld is still kind of a scary Mugatu-esque asshole. [Page Six]
  
  
• Oh noez! Ron Weasley (Muggle name: Rupert Grint) has the Swine Flu. Gawker exclusive: Weasley was taken to Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing of Hogwarts were they tried to use some healing potions to no avail. Then then had to ship him off on the Hogwarts Express back to Central London, where he became just another awesome celebrity case of Swine Flu. He is now better, and has flown back to the set of re-enactment documentary Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. Meanwhile, Hermione Granger (Muggle name: Emma Watson) is keeping her relationship with Weasley under wraps as she publicly announces her plans to attend Columbia University in New York, where I will attempt to charm her with my Muggle blogging skills Brown University in Rhode Island, where she will come into contact with a bunch of Jewish Hipsters who she will hate because she didn't go to Columbia, in New York, a far more magical place than Rhode Island. It will probably fail miserably. Also, Harry Potter (Muggle Name: Daniel Radcliffe) won't date Emma Watson because it'd be too weird for them. Good to know the competition is thinning out. [Daily News, Showbiz Spy, Just Jared]
  
  
• Otis! My man! Tobey Maguire's kid has a name, and thy Spider Man spawn's name is Otis. People has the inside dirt on the middle name, too. [People]
  
  
• Rumer WIllis is going to be a lesbian on 90210. I hate that show and thus you will get no elaboration on what's probably a tragically bad, sub-par attempt at Gossip Girl's ingenious stunt casting. I'm sorry Rumer Willis, but you're no Wallace Shawn. You just aren't. [Daily News]
  
  
• Courtney Love trashed her hotel room at The Inn on Irving Place. Have you ever seen The Inn on Irving Place? It's the closest thing downtown has to a Bed and Breakfast. Like, jesus, Courtney Love: trash The Bowery Hotel. Located conveniently near the old CBGB space, you can relive memories of when that kind of thing was cool in bougie style while throwing things off your balcony at legitimately hot celebrities drinking in Bowery's backyard. Trash the Maritime and throw things out of those weird porthole windows. Trash the douche-magnet Hotel Gansevoorte - seriously, people would love that. Trash DeNiro's Greenwich Hotel or SoHo's Mercer Hotel, which were practically constructed for celebrity destruction. But The Inn at Irving? Are you raging a war on cuteness? Also, you know trashing hotel rooms is, like, so 1999 when Scott Weiland, Marilyn Manson, and the rest o your Home for Formerly Addicted Friends from The Crow soundtrack or whatever aren't doing it anymore. Seriously, old lady, put it on ice and chill the fuck out. You're already inches from this as is. [Page Six]
  
  
• There are 210 diamonds on the ring Kevin Jonas gave to his bride-to-be. Even I'm sitting at home with a gallon of ice cream, crying. We can haz inadequacies? There was also a small engagement party none of us were invited to. They went out for Pizza. [People and Pink Is The New Blog]
  
  
• Levi Johnston, shopping a book. I laugh loudly every time I see mention of Tank, his multi-faceted bodyguard/publicist whose name is Tank. He also does birthday parties. [Page Six]
  
  
• Matt Damon doesn't want Clooney or Pitt to take home the People's Sexiest Man Alive three-peat. Instead he's lobbying for Hugh Jackman. I'm still lobbying for Robert Gibbs. [People]
  
  
• Kelsey Grammer is already making jokes about the short-lived, massively underrated sitcom Back To You. [Page Six]
  
  
• Taylor Swift used to pick up Sparklers on the wrong end and burn herself as a child. SWOON. She can do no wrong. [People]
  
  
• Lewis Black believes in the power of the word "fuck." He notes that it's essentially a punctuation mark to many New Yorkers. This is one of those things that isn't "funny because it's true" so much as simply being true. The kind of true thing you hear, and you're like, yeah, what of it? [Page Six]

Boy, you gotta feel for John Edwards, right? He probably just wanted some no-strings campaign sex with an uninhibited crazy woman. Who could've known Rielle Hunter (born Lisa Druck, aka Lisa Jo Hunter and Rielle Jaya James Druck) would get knocked up, believe his "love" nonsense, and demand to have his damn baby! If only Senator Edwards hadn't been so damn handsome, charming, and concerned about poverty when no one else seemed to care. If only his father hadn't been a mill worker.

Anyway. Last year, Rielle had this baby girl, and the Enquirer said John Edwards was the father of this baby girl, but a couple months before Rielle had moved in with married Edwards staffer Andrew Young and his family, and Andrew said it was his baby, though he was not on the birth certificate. Why are there so many schmucks determined to "protect" this idiot man-child Senator at the cost of their own dignity? Who knows. The hair probably.

That was then, though, and this is now. Now, according to The Daily Beast, Andrew Young is now shopping this book, about how the late Fred Baron paid him to take in Rielle Hunter and her baby, and pretend it was his. Publishers are pretending they don't want to touch this book because of sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards, but we have seen no evidence of that sympathy.

Honestly Young should probably just sell the pictures to the Enquirer and leave the book-writing to Dean Koontz and Malcolm Gladwell.

"I have this recollection of somebody asking me for lawyers in New York, and I remember naming three or four, and he must have been one of them... It was either her who called or somebody on her behalf...

"I remember getting a call from Pam and her telling me that she was representing him... I may have sent him over there, but on the other hand I may not have. I don’t have an accurate recollection...

"I have a brief recollection of giving someone some cash. My assumption is I loaned some small amount of money to the both of them..."

Baron had previously admitted to paying for Young and Hunter's posh living arrangements but said he didn't know how they found their lawyers. So the Times here is establishing that he might be a liar and also that he may have helped orchestrate the exoneration of Edwards as father of the love child.

The newspaper is apparently quite proud of its scoop, placing it on A1. Editor Bill Keller appears to be in full retreat from his haughty statement that the Edwards scandal is "a supermarket tabloid's anonymously-sourced story" that he would never "recycle." In today's story, his own newspaper not only mentioned the Enquirer's proven reports that Edwards had an affair but also alluded, in the second paragraph, to the tabloid's stories about Edwards fathering a love child. Neither the Times nor any publication other than the Enquirer claims to have proven that allegation through its own reporting. Sounds like "recycling!"

And presumably the Times' standards editor changed his mind about the scandal being "classically not a Times-like story."

[Times]

(Photo via Wikipedia)