This video, captured by a Boston Fox 25 news camera, shows a girl who looks suspiciously like Caroline Kennedy's daughter, Rose Schlossberg, giving the mourners a decidedly ungracious middle finger. Note how the man next to her gives her a nudge of admonishment. Rather than hang her head in shame, she seems to revel in the familial scorn.

Perhaps one of the gathered crowd said something to garner her ire? Regardless: c'mon, Rose! Have a bit of class. Or at least don't get caught on camera!

While certainly many of the Kennedy clan are in no position to keep the dream alive, there are quite a few who could, if given the chance, maintain the imaginary castle. We've picked out six finalists, all of whom have pros and cons. Who, oh who, has the chops, scandal, ambition and all-around gumption to take Teddy's place at the top of the sprawling dynasty?

If you'll recall back to Clinton friend and White House staffer Vince Foster's suicide and the plane crash that killed Clinton administration Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Christopher Ruddy, at the time working at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, worked diligently to promote his theories that both men were murdered for political reasons, implicating that the Clinton's maybe-kinda-probably had something to do with it in each case. But that's all water under the bridge now for Clinton and Ruddy, who are now a couple of old chums.

Among those he has been friendly with lately is Christopher Ruddy, a conservative journalist who was a chief proponent of cover-up theories involving the Clintons during the 1990s. In his book, "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster," Ruddy rejected official findings that Foster, a deputy White House counsel, killed himself in a Virginia park and suggested the possibility of "a cover-up conducted by people who have, with the help of the press, placed themselves above the law." Ruddy also advanced the notion that Ron Brown, the Clinton commerce secretary who died in an airplane crash in Croatia in 1996, was actually shot in the head.

Ruddy today is the founder and chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative news-magazine. He told me he came around on Clinton after Ed Koch, the former New York mayor, introduced them. That led to lunches and more contacts, and now Ruddy says he was wrong about Clinton. "I do consider Bill Clinton a friend, and I think he would consider me a friend," Ruddy said. "And to think of all the wars we went through in the '90s, it seems almost surreal."

With the passage of time, Ruddy said he came to believe that Clinton was much less liberal than his enemies thought. After all, Clinton overhauled welfare, tamed the deficit and promoted free trade. While still a proud "Reagan conservative," Ruddy said he now thinks the attacks on Clinton in the 1990s went too far. "Did we like and enjoy all the salacious reporting and all the stuff going on in the '90s?" he asked. "I guess we thought, This is just politics. But looking back at my role, I was probably over the top. And if I knew then what I know today, I wouldn't have pursued some of that stuff as aggressively as I did. I did an honest reporter's job. But I have a different take on it now."

Ruddy also attributes his change of heart to Clinton's foundation, which has impressed him and other onetime foes. Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire publisher who financed Ruddy's investigations and other anti-Clinton activities, is now a contributor to the foundation. So is Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman whose Fox News was a regular thorn in Clinton's side. Clinton over the years has also made peace with other former adversaries, like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich. The elder George Bush told me he now considers Clinton "a real friend." When I asked what changed his view, he wrote in an e-mail message: "I didn't know him personally back then. I knew him, but not up close and personal. Now I do."

So if Clinton is friends with all of his old political opponents, who the hell is he hating on these days? Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy and Bill Richardson and Jesse Jackson and just about every other prominent Democrat who had the audacity to support Obama in the primary against Hillary, that's who!

People close to Clinton said he has largely got over his resentment at Obama but not toward Ted Kennedy and his niece, Caroline Kennedy. As Clinton sees it, they say, he did so much for the Kennedys over the years that he felt they became almost family. Nor has he forgiven Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who endorsed Obama even though Clinton appointed him to two cabinet posts. And the man once called the "first black president" remains deeply wounded by allegations that he made racially insensitive remarks during the campaign, like dismissing Obama's South Carolina win by comparing it with Jesse Jackson's victories there in the 1980s.

"None of them ever really took seriously the race rap," he told me. "They knew it was politics. I had one minister in Texas in the general election come up and put his arm around me." This was an Obama supporter. "And he came up, threw his arm around me and said, ‘You've got to forgive us for that race deal.' He said, ‘That was out of line.' But he said, ‘You know, we wanted to win real bad.' And I said, ‘I got no problem with that.' I said it's fine; it's O.K. And we laughed about it and we went on." The other side is moving on, too. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who once recalled an angry Clinton berating him on the phone for criticizing the former president's campaign rhetoric, is letting bygones be bygones, at least publicly. "No fence-mending is needed," Clyburn said through a spokeswoman.

Unfortunately, there was no mention in the article about which models and starlets Clinton banged on Ron Burkle's dirty old man fuck-plane, which was a major disappointment. Oh well, maybe next time.

The Mellowing Of Bill Clinton [New York Times Magazine]

Not that any public statement this woman makes on her disastrous senate "run" can be believed, but on Today today the Princess of Camelot said "nonsense" to charges that Rose and whatever the others ones are named push her around.

"Anybody who knows my children and knows me knows that that is absolute nonsense," said Ms. Kennedy, who was appearing to promote this year's winners of the Profile in Courage Award, founded to honor her father, former President John F. Kennedy.

"All in all, it was a great experience for me," Ms. Kennedy added. "I know you may find that hard to believe, but I met a lot of interesting people, I saw, you know, how much there is to do."

And when asked what had driven her to withdraw abruptly in January, Ms. Kennedy deflected the question.

"That was the right decision," Ms. Kennedy said, adding, "When you make the right decision, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks."

And when faced with a question on David Paterson, the guy who embarrassed the nation by jerking around a woman who thought she was entitled to be appointed to a Senate seat for no reason in particular, she was all annoyed! "As I said, I've moved on, I'm looking on to, you know, what I can to, and hopefully I will be able to be, you know, courageous in my future services," she said. And then she bit Matt Lauer's face off and the world rejoiced. Except she was appearing via remote so that didn't actually happen.

Anyway, breaking, Paterson and the press are still the actual real-life reasons Caroline gave up the Senate thing.

Sure, Caroline certainly did think she was "above" the messy particulars of becoming a US Senator from New York, and no doubt her children were mortified that there'd be a bit more scrutiny of the family, but come on.

Has it been so long that we've forgotten how this actually came crashing down? When it became incredibly apparent that no one wanted her and that it'd be political suicide for Paterson to appoint her, at which point he made up for mind for her and told Fred Dicker at The Post that Caroline was withdrawing from the race? Or, you know, it was her kids advice, it could've been that, too. (It is kind of amazing in this story that is simultaneously about how Caroline Kennedy thought she deserved the seat because of her name and ALSO about how David Paterson never showed her the respect she deserves because of that name. Whatever.)

But more importantly, it was all Teddy's fault to begin with, because he is pretty sure the Senate always needs to have at least one Kennedy in it. Sadly, Caroline was the last good Kennedy.

And oh, god, Ted's nephew Joe is proof that there are not any good Kennedys left. He is all "oh Caroline has so much money and oh I hate my aunt" and he wears "custom-made cowboy boots," because that makes sense for a Kennedy, right?

Anyway. This is all from a new book about Ted. There is an Annie Leibovitz photo.

OK, here are some not-so-little people:
Caroline Kennedy at an Armani store opening.
And, of course, Peaches Geldof with some skinny boy thing.
All photos from Getty, except last two, from AP.

After speaking to a friend of Ward's husband, Page Six reported the two started their affair on an Outward Bound trip to Machu Picchu in Peru in 2005 and later met surreptitiously (and repeatedly) in New York. The gossip page had previously reported the affair started only "about a year ago." But the tabloid corrected itself after talking to the once-bitter husband's friends, including this one:

"Imagine how you'd feel, to find out what was really happening when your wife went every other week to quote-unquote work in New York."

If Sulzberger cheated on his wife — which he did, unless he was secretly separated for three years — it's all the more absurd to definitively conclude, as Page Six did last time, that "Caroline Kennedy is innocent" of an affair with the Times scion. If Sulzberger would cheat on his wife, he'd cheat on his mistress. Think what you will about the Kennedy/Sulzberger dinner-party chatter, but this relationship has no bearing on its veracity.

Does the affair have any bearing on Sulzberger's ability to lead the Times Company, then? Not really; he's made enough professional mistakes to make his private foibles a sideshow. The company under his watch instituted its first major layoffs, saw its debt slide to junk status and tried, in a down market, to mortgage the headquarters building it constructed at great expense. Sulzberger over saw ill-advised share buybacks, dividend payments and dumb acquisitions on the business side and fabrication and war propaganda on the editorial side, etc. etc. etc.

The Times publisher does get credit for avoiding the cliche of the mogul with a decades-younger galpal. Ward is 49, just eight years Sulzberger's junior.

The New York Times today puts a stamp on this with a story detailing what we already knew; namely, that Judith Smith, Paterson's top PR consultant, jumped into the fray as soon as Kennedy withdrew her name and started mucking things up:

On Jan. 22, the morning after Ms. Kennedy withdrew, Ms. Smith spoke to Mr. Paterson, then went to the governor’s Midtown Manhattan offices, the advisers said.

There, she told at least two people to call major media outlets around the state. She instructed them to tell reporters that the governor had been dismayed by Ms. Kennedy’s public auditioning for the job, that he never intended to select her as senator, and that the tax and nanny issues had led her to pull out of consideration.

This looks particularly bad for Paterson for two reasons: one, he denied knowing anything about these leaks, which was obviously a lie; and two, Judith Smith had no authorization to know any of the confidential details of Kennedy's application, which she was leaking to the press left and right.

None of this will make Caroline Kennedy look any better. The damage to her is done (maybe with good reason!). Now Paterson also is clearly a lying, scummy backstabber. And his flack evidently developed so little good will that as soon as the Gov. denied leaking, the entire press corps set out to write stories outing the fact that the leaker was his personal PR person.

Time to fire your flack, Gov. [NYT]

• Lorne Michaels bought dinner for, and had an intense conversation with, Caroline Kennedy. Which means she's probably going on Saturday Night Live, contingent upon Fred Armisen doing that David Paterson impersonation the governor hates so much.
• Kennedy, meanwhile, rushed to pay six years worth of overdue state bar fees. Which explains why Michaels picked up the tab for dinners. [Gatecrasher]
• Kanye West hired someone to clean and photographically catalog his 450 shoes. In a down economy. Just imagine the sort of household servant jobs he cut. [Ask Men]
• Thanks to a move by top editor Larry Hackett, People's LA bureau chief is no longer in charge of the LA bureau. [P6]
• Guy Ritchie was flirting with various women at Soho House. Jude Law was his wingman. Uh, good luck, buddy. [Gatecrasher]
• Chris Buckley will be this year's commencement speaker at Yale. He plans to teach them "how to get a job at Starbucks," as a sort of joke, you see. By the the time the speech is actually delivered this summer, of course, it will have been reworked as practical advice. [P6]
• HBO may soon make a series about the plight of Ellen Barkin, whose $80 million windfall divorce from Ron Perelman was so traumatizing she still throws things at him when she runs into him at a restaurant. [P6]

Page Six is reporting that Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s girlfriend is Helen Ward of Aspen, Colorado, who he met on a trip to Peru "about a year ago." Sulzberger didn't announce his separation from his wife until four months or so after meeting Ward, but transferred an apartment to his wife's name prior to that, so it's entirely possible but not entirely clear that he was separated from his wife at the time his relationship with Ward started.

For what it's worth, Ward's husband is said by a Page Six source to be "crazy bitter" right now.

The Times won't comment on Ward. But a spokesman did give the Post a full-throated rebuttal to the speculation about an affair between Sulzberger and Caroline Kennedy:

"Mr. Sulzberger is not and never has been romantically involved with Ms. Kennedy."

Page Six goes on to say that since Sulzberger has a girlfriend, there's no way he could have slept with Caroline Kennedy. Because, presumably, Sulzberger's lover of the moment, who he's been seeing for an indeterminate amount of time, precludes him from having slept with someone else in the recent past.

And because boyfriends, like husbands, do not sleep around. As the Post's gossip columnists know particularly well.

(Top photo of Helen Ward from an Apsen, Co. dinner of the Aspen Institute, an organization that has collaborated, along with CEO Walter Isaacson, on several projects with the Aspen Science Center, led by Ward's husband Kevin.)

Dicker had an anonymous source close to the governor tell him all about the various problems Kennedy had, and why Governor Paterson never would have picked her. Dicker dutifully wrote all this up last weekend. Now, Paterson, naturally, says he doesn't know where that leak came from. Obviously he's lying, but the usual procedure is for the reporter on stories like this to keep his fucking mouth shut, since yes, he knows who the leaker is and where he got his information, but he granted the leaker anonymity, so it's bad form to scoff at official pronouncements or otherwise do things that would point to the identity of the source.

Dicker says fuck that!

Gov. Paterson yesterday insisted he had no idea who did the slime job on Caroline Kennedy - although the source of the information is about as close to him during the day as his wife is at night.

He's a liar.

The person responsible for the smear was an individual whose identity is well known to the press, whose full-time job is to do the governor's bidding, and who is intelligent enough not to call reporters to damage Kennedy's reputation without approval from the top - and that means Paterson.

Ha, this would be a great and upstanding story were it not for the fact that Dicker's own paper gave that source anonymity! Way to protect your sources, dude. Anyhow the Daily News already reported yesterday that the likely culprit behind the Kennedy attacks is Judy Smith, a flack close to the governor. The Post was just catching up to its own story. So weird. [NYP]

Fred Dicker, the New York Post's man in Albany, is a media demigod to all the second-string political hacks in that godforsaken city. Throughout this entire Caroline Kennedy saga, Dicker has been the one vacuuming up the gossip in Albany; the Times has tried to tackle the story with its prestige and connections to NYC big shots, but that paper's entire Albany bureau doesn't have nearly the clout of Dicker by himself. Nobody wants to finally land that NYT gig and then get sent to Albany, ya know. Today Dicker gets an explanation from the Kennedy camp that really sheds no new light on her reasoning. But they were due for some bitching after the governor's staff smeared them all over the tabloids last weekend:

CAROLINE Kennedy's "personal reasons" for withdrawing from Senate consideration were not connected to damaging claims from Gov. Paterson's camp that she owed back taxes, had a nanny problem or faced a marital scandal, two sources close to her have told The Post....

While neither source would say so, others close to the Kennedys believe the negative reaction of one of Kennedy's children was a determining factor in her withdrawing from consideration for the seat, which eventually went to Kirsten Gillibrand.

There's also plenty of bitching about Paterson in there, as you might expect. The more interesting way to absorb this story is as a dirty fight between the Times and the Post, both of whom have their own internal disagreements. In New York magazine this week, a Times reporter describes the, uh, motivation of the staff there:

Kennedy also smacked headlong into a newly emboldened Times city staff. “We’ve grown a pair of balls, and I’m amazingly proud of the paper,” says a Times reporter. “The turning point was the editorial page’s rolling over for Bloomberg on erasing term limits. The reaction from the reporters and editors is that we’re the last line of defense—we’ve got to hold the line.” Not for or against any particular politician, that is, but to stand up for small-d democracy. After inflating her candidacy by making her simple declaration of interest in the job the lead story of the day, they compensated by hitting her hard.

Ha, nice. The Post had corporate connections to Kennedy's campaign, and the NYT, of course, has those rumors about its publisher and Caroline, and everybody is vicious and mad and wounded and hurt and this story still has plenty of legs. Public service!

The new line from the Gov's office is, hey, he never would have picked her, because she was disrespectful, unqualified, and talked all wrong:

Friends said Paterson was adamant that she was never going to be appointed, even though she was considered the front-runner.

Paterson was turned off when Kennedy first called him and asked if she "could" be considered for the seat.

By asking if she could, rather than saying she wanted to be considered, Paterson immediately felt she wasn't really interested, the source said.

He also though she had "no political depth," according to the whisper campaign. Maybe he should have made that clear, you know, weeks and weeks ago? No matter! Now that Kennedy's career lies in ruin, it's a good time to mock her in the tabloids:

Paterson said that Kennedy had called him to say she was having second thoughts and "he asked her to wait a day and he thought she had agreed," another attendee recalled.

Then, he said, he couldn't get her on the phone for hours.

"He was absolutely frustrated that he couldn't reach her," the guest said of how Paterson described the scene. "He thought maybe she was sick. He felt she was being nasty to him, that she showed great disrespect."

Paterson then pointedly invited all of Caroline's close friends to his birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, but not her.

[NYDN, NYP]

Caroline was a quiet pretend lawyer who wrote some nice little books and probably sat on some charitable boards or something, no one was sure, but it was always nice to see her out, endorsing Barack Obama and looking pleasant and normal, for a Kennedy. Hah. Now her life is a mess, with everyone hearing about her failed marriage and learning that she (like all of us, but still) punctuates every utterance with "like, um, y'know." Suddenly the Governor of New York is ratting on a Kennedy's nanny and tax issues to the tabloids! And god, this is a classic line:

Several sources close to Ted Kennedy were "furious" that one of Caroline's allies invoked his brain cancer and his fatigue-induced seizure on Tuesday.

"No Kennedy would have said that," said a Kennedy family source.

Ok, source, but the Kennedys have traditionally demonstrated a willingness to say and do all sorts of crazy terrible stuff—maybe the quote should've read "in the past, no one would've reported on a Kennedy saying that, until they were dead." 'Cause honestly?

The Kennedy political dynasty began with a humble Massachusetts State Senator who birthed a mobbed-up fixer named Joe, who bought his kids public office with his bootlegging money (probably!) and connections to the Chicago mob (possibly!). He always wanted his eldest son, Joe Jr, to be President, but Joe Jr died in the War, and each additional son was somehow worse than the last. Jack was a chronically ill womanizer, Bobby wiretapped Martin Luther King and swerved left in the late '60s when it became politically expedient, torpedoing the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, and Ted was a drunk who actually killed a woman. (He became a much better citizen and Senator at some point after he gave up his presidential dreams in the '80s.)

And their kids! John-John started a fancy magazine called George about politics-as-celebrity, thus symbolizing everything wrong with the '90s and Democrats, Caroline turned out to be an entitled empty-headed princess after years spent gracefully out of the limelight, Bobby Jr is a publicity whore who spouts the crazy vaccines cause autism nonsense, and Patrick J. Kennedy, Ted's son, is a Congressman who also has problems with pills and, like dad, drunk driving. This is not even mentioning the one who died of a drug overdose (David), the tangentially-related one who was convicted of murder (Michael Skakel! Remember him?), and all the Kennedys who died in plane crashes, car crashes, and skiing incidents.

The only Kennedy "curse" is that they're a family of rich assholes and each succeeding generation is dumber than the previous one.

The Albany Times Union connected the dots. (UPDATE: As did the Times and Fox News, who say Gillibrand's appointment is definitely happening, citing anonymous sources.)

Gillibrand, long on the shortlist for Hillary Clinton's vacant senate seat, is close to quite a few of the people invited to Gov. David Paterson press conference Friday at noon to announce his pick for the slot. Plus a bunch of people from her upstate district are coming.

One rejected candidate was told it was Gillibrand, according to a "highly placed source," while another source said "members of New York's Congressional delegation were briefed Thursday afternoon that Gillibrand will be named."

Gillibrand is useful to Paterson because she's from upstate, and she's a Catholic. Appointing her now means she'll be on the New York ballot in 2010, which should help boost Democratic turnout upstate. That's important to Paterson, a former state legislator from Harlem, because he may be facing off against Republican Rudolph Giuliani, whose base is expected to be... upstate Catholics.

Gillibrand, a fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrat, has sneakily wormed her way into contention for the senate by doing a competent job in a series of increasingly powerful positions relevant to being a senator, and by completing sentences without saying "uh, you know, well" 47 times. Trained as a lawyer, Gillibrand is a freshman U.S. Congresswoman who formerly worked as partner in a law firm, special counsel in Bill Clinton's HUD, and founder of her local Women's Democratic Club.

Also: Senate hot.

[via Wonkette]

[Odds: The probability that this was the primary reason she pulled out.]

Here's what you've missed if you've had better things to do for the last 24 hours than keep up with the by-the-minute changes in the Caroline Kennedy story. We know she isn't going to be the next junior Senator from New York. We have no idea, however, why not. She announced last night that she didn't want the seat anyway, but in such an incompetent manner that all anyone in political circles has been doing today is collecting the various theories of why she dropped out. These are the five being most discussed.

1. She was incompetent, and pulled out to avoid the embarrassment of not being picked: This is really the most likely scenario. Her push to start at the top was a bad idea from the beginning. She didn't embody the HOPE of the Obama era. At least all her connections and money landed her some political consultants who were smart enough to tell her to get out while she was—if not ahead—at least not totally destroyed.
Odds: Even


2. She had tax and nanny issues: Well, sure, it's quite likely, if you believe the up-to-the-minute prevarications, that she did have issues with taxes and/ or an illegal nanny. So that stands in favor of this explanation. But calling this the primary reason she dropped out presupposes that had she not had these issues, she would have been the pick. And we still want to give Gov. Paterson more credit than than.
Odds: 2-1


3. Her marriage is a sham: One of the unfortunate things about going into politics is everybody wants to pry into your sex life. That's stupid America! So the Enquirer was floating the idea that CK's marriage to Ed Schlossberg was a big fake, and that they've been amiably separated for a while, and who knows what various tabloid-worthy stories might lie behind that? Just scandalous enough to kill her bid? In a state that still loves Giuliani, it's doubtful, but you never know.
Odds: 5-1


4. She had an affair with Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.:The supposed love interest between CK and the NYT publisher remains totally unverified dinner party gossip material. But the Times' close—too close—coverage of CK's campaign didn't do anything to help kill the rumor. At most, this probably added up to one more thing on the negative side of the scale for Kennedy, rather than being the main thing that did her in.
Odds: 8-1


5. She was worried about her sick uncle Teddy: Since Uncle Teddy's own people were pissed when she floated this explanation, and because he was just as sick when she started her bid for the Senate, nah.
Odds: 25-1

Just hours ago, the word was the Caroline Kennedy dropped out because of some secret, undisclosed "personal" reason. Now the Post cites an anonymous source "close to Gov. David Paterson" as saying the gov "had no intention" of picking CK, anyhow.

"She has a tax problem that came up in the vetting and a potential nanny issue," the soruce said. "And reporters are starting to look at her marriage more closely," the soruce continued, refusing to provide any specifics.

Gossip columns have reported for more than a year that Kennedy's marriage to Ed Schlossberg is essentially over, and the gossip site Gawker.com has reported rumors that she's been linked to New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger.

Kennedy denied any issue over her marriage in an interview with The Post last month. Aides to Kennedy and a Times spokesperson couldn't immediately be reached.

The Times is currently going with the nanny and the tax issues as the true reason for CK's downfall. They leave out the other part. Close enough.

It's not like we hadn't given Caroline Kennedy plenty of warnings with our raving coverage:

• We were writing about her special friendship with NYT publisher Pinch Sulzberger before she ever dreamed of being in the Senate!
• The NYT, coincidentally, got the scoop on her Senate bid.
• We warned her this whole Senate thing was a bad idea.
• We pointed out that all she had to say was 'You know.'
• And did so again.
• Finally we were forced to un-endorse her.

The only thing we can't figure out is that politicians normally take their name out of contention to prevent skeletons from tumbling out of the closet (see: Bill Richardson), not to cause an avalanche of rumors and speculation.

You can read the entire, tortured string of previous fake reasons given for her decision to drop out in this exhaustive post. She was dropping out because she wasn't going to get picked; no, it was because Teddy Kennedy was so sick; no, the Kennedy camp says that's an outrageous smear; no, now she's back to dropping out. The latest word from her aides is that it all went down like this:

• Two days ago: "in the early afternoon, 1 o'clock some time around that time . . . became aware of a personal situation that she determined was going to inhibit her ability to perform a job that obviously takes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week advocating on behalf of New York."
• Governor David Paterson says, hey, why don't you take 24 hours to think it over? She says okay.
• "Shortly after, the Kennedy aide said, word began spreading that she was pulling out. Kennedy spent the evening thinking about what to do and finally late last night called the governor to say she decided to pull out."

So that's what happened, allegedly, according to quite reliable inside sources! Elsewhere, Teddy Kennedy's camp is said to be super pissed that Caroline tried to use her uncle's health as an excuse, because "It makes him look like he is at death's door," and could undermine his authority in the Senate. Hence this new, undisclosed "personal reason" that made her drop out. So what could that be?

—She is, freakishly, pregnant?
—Her kid is on drugs?
—An illegal nanny?
—A last-minute blackmail by shady forces?
—A big fat lie.

The truth will come out. [Pic via]

The inauguration and near-socialization of finance was already stoking Washington, D.C.'s ascent. Then came the squabbling over Kennedy's exit.

The feud, lasting a few intense hours, started with the New York Post's scoop about Kennedy withdrawing her name from Gov. David Paterson's consideration. The tabloid offer no details initially, but the Times soon confirmed with its own source, as did Newsday, along with the Associated Press's Albany bureau.

The New York media had home field advantage, since the story ran through Paterson's office. But the Capitol Hill press wasn't about to be upstaged on its own senate by a bunch of grubby Albany reporters. They picked up their cell phones, called Ted Kennedy's people — we're assuming, since that's where a DC reporter would go for the Kennedy scoop — and began publishing breathless denials.

The Washington Post lead its story by stating that while "New York media" was reporting Caroline Kennedy had withdrawn her name, there were "Kennedy family confidants angrily dismissing those reports." It later clarified the confidantes had said the reports were "smears aimed at undermining her chances."

David Gregory, of NBC's Washington-based Meet The Press, appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show and led with word from "a source in the Kennedy family... that Caroline Kennedy has not — not — withdrawn from consideration." Here's the video, which, in fairness, includes some sober caveats from Gregory:

AP was embarrassingly fast to disclaim its own story, reversing itself entirely:

After wavering briefly, Caroline Kennedy renewed her determination Wednesday to win appointment to the U.S. Senate seat once held by her slain uncle, Bobby Kennedy, a person close to the decision said.

...The AP initially reported Kennedy had withdrawn from the race but corrected the story about an hour later after the person who gave that information said it was an error.

Presumably this correction then had to be corrected when it turned out the original story got it right.

But the New York press embarrassed itself too!

Specifically, the Post's Frederic Dicker face-planted badly, reporting just this past Monday that Paterson was "certain" to pick Caroline Kennedy for Hillary Clinton's old senate seat, according to "several unhappy contenders for the job." Drudge Report ran the story under the headline "It's Caroline!"

Dicker is the dean of state political reporting, if only because he's the only member of the press corps who can stomach Albany. His competitor at the Times, young Nick Confessore won't move upstaet. And yet Confessore scooped Dicker on the purported reason for Kennedy's departure, concern over the health of her ailing uncle, who has a malignant brain tumor and suffered a seizure at Barack Obama's inauguration.

Dicker's response? To blatantly contradict his report of two just two days earlier. Instead of Paterson having his heart set on Kennedy, the guv was now telling her she didn't have a shot. At least rival Confessore's version, in which Kennedy made the decision to leave, left the Post's earlier story looking more plausible.

Dickers' saving grace is that he and the Post scooped everyone on the news that Caroline Kennedy was out. There's a good lesson there: If you're wrong, be the first one to point it out.

(Because the Post had broken the story, the Daily News joined the Washington press in quoting Kennedy family sources denying Kennedy was out (mentioned in this Newsday story). The rival tabloids must always piss on one another's work, even if it means an alliance with DC.)

Caroline Kennedy told associates her decision was related to uncle Ted's illness, according to the Times, which sounded at first, to us and others, like an implausible excuse. Ted Kennedy's brain tumor has been a serious concern since the summer, well before Caroline was in contention for Hillary Clinton's senate seat.

But then came the evidence that Ted Kennedy and his associates were fighting Caroline's decision. After the New York Post, Times and the Associated Press reported Caroline was withdrawing her name from Gov. David Paterson's consideration, indignant denials emerged from Washington, DC, where uncle Ted is the go-to source for all things Kennedy.

NBC News' David Gregory, of the DC bureau's Meet the Press, called into Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show to say he'd heard the rumors were false. And the Washington Post quoted "Kennedy family confidants angrily dismissing" the reports. Even AP backtracked, clarifying that after "wavering briefly," Kennedy had "renewed her determination Wednesday to win appointment to the U.S. Senate seat once held by her slain uncle, Bobby Kennedy."

Things didn't turn out that way. But the back and forth between New York and DC media was easy to mistake for a surrogate to a tug-of-war between Caroline Kennedy and her uncle.

If Caroline Kennedy purportedly told friends she quit over concerns for her uncle's health, Ted seems to have not wanted her to yield to those worries.

And yet he couldn't stop her. She was deeply anxious. And why shouldn't she be? Were Ted Kennedy to soon die, she would will be left to govern without him.

That scenario seemed more likely Kennedy's seizure at Barack Obama's inauguration. When the senator spoke at the Democratic National Convention, he said he wanted to pass the torch to Barack Obama and "a new generation of Americans." The ailing senator made it, but the inaugural incident would have raised the question, particularly among those who love him most, of whether, having done so, he was preparing to say goodbye.

Ted Kennedy would not be content merely to see Obama as president. What of the Kennedy family legacy? What of his own — his initiatives, his allies, his staff? The dream of an eternal Kennedy dynasty is a lot to place on the shoulders of a basically apolitical woman with just a couple of years of government leadership under her belt, inside a municipal bureaucracy at that. And yet Caroline is the best-qualified remaining member of the clan to keep the family name continuously present in the senate — and far preferable to Andrew Cuomo, whose messy divorce from Kerry Kennedy was laced with accusations of infidelity and did not endear him to Ted.

The senator, one might reasonably surmise, must have pushed Caroline hard, right up to the end. But this was one affair he could not put in order.