Vice Presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards was caught visiting his mistress and secret love child at 2:40 this morning in a Los Angeles hotel by the NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

The married ex-senator from North Carolina - whose wife Elizabeth continues to battle cancer — met with his mistress, blonde divorcee Rielle Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton on Monday night July 21 - and the NATIONAL ENQUIRER was there! He didn't leave until early the next morning.

Then the reporter cornered Edwards and Edwards hid in a bathroom for 15 minutes. Seriously.

Last year, the National Enquirer (with an assist from HuffPo!) revealed this secret torrid affair between John Edwards and this crazy hippie lady who used to kinda do some work for his campaign. We thought the whole thing was patently ridiculous! But now John Edwards is determined to prove us wrong, apparently.

This is a brilliant piece of old-fashioned scandal-mongering from The Enquirer, as it apparently involved months of reporting work and it ended in a perfect, inescapable gotcha moment. It's actually surreal! While we never assume that any politician is faithful, Edwards does have that strong-willed lovable wife. Everyone loves Elizabeth! (Except veterans of her husband's campaign, but that's neither here nor there.) And she's dying of cancer. So basically John Edwards will never work in this nation again.

Our mom will be seriously disappointed.

The Southern Poverty Law Center noticed, in a magazine piece about Emilia and her work with the school, this innocuous-looking line: "For more information about Glades Academy, call Chloe Black." That name probably doesn't mean much to you, but it's very familiar to a group like the SPLC, which battles racist organizations.

Chloe Black used to be married to David Duke. Former national leader of the KKK David Duke. Straight-up neo-Nazi David Duke.

While less visible in the white supremacist world than either of her husbands, Black has a strong movement history of her own. She met Duke at a college meeting of the White Youth Alliance in the 1970s, and, after marrying him, became vice president of his Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. She long held the copyright to African Atto, a weird 1973 booklet that instructs blacks on how to kill whites — and which was written, as was revealed by enterprising reporters, by Duke, who then claimed he was using it to compile a list of “radical blacks.”

Yes but that was years ago, you say! People change! Sure. Her next husband was Don Black. Another former Klan leader! But far, far more famous these days for founding and operating the most notoriously hateful site on the internet: Stormfront. Look it up yourself if you don't know the deal—it's generally considered poor Internet form to mention it, let alone link. It's basically a neo-Nazi message board. Fucked up shit goes on there.

Don Black claims to be unemployed, though he pays to operate Stormfront all on his own in a house owned entirely by his wife Chloe. And where does Chloe get her cash? From Emilia Fanjul, the Cuban-American sugar magnate socialite! Black is an executive assistant at Florida Crystals, the Fanjuls' sugar conglomerate. They had no comment.

They maybe didn't even know! Though a GOOGLE SEARCH would've revealed that in recent years Chloe Black has attended the conferences of hate groups and says lovely things about David Duke to the press.

So yes a neo-Nazi is flacking for a school designed to help poor minority children out of poverty, and using the money she makes to run a site dedicated to raising hatred and inciting violence against those little kids. And a wealthy socialite is involved!

WTF.

[Photo of Emilia Fanjul: New York Social Diary]

[Reason via Wonkette]

In a column in Ad Age, Fuller claims to know that the A-Rod/Madonna text message affair has been going on for months. Her "own source" even witnessed Madonna enter an elevator with A-Rod six months ago! They didn't come back down for an hour!

Isn't it strange, then, that their relationship only went highly public just over three weeks ago when Madonna and her two sons turned up wearing Yankees gear and sitting in A-Rod's box at a Yankee Stadium baseball game?

Wasn't that just a couple of days after news reports had appeared saying the tickets for her upcoming tour weren't being snapped up as quickly as expected?

Yes! That makes perfect sense! Madonna entered into this affair half a year ago and has now gone public with it in order to boost ticket sales for her upcoming tour. One wonders why she didn't try this homewrecking celebrity scandal trick when she was, say, trying to boost sales of her album, but maybe she just thought she'd save the big guns for the slow July news season? This goes even deeper than you can possibly imagine!

Her supposedly "estranged" husband, Guy Ritchie, has joined her and appears to be completely in on the whole marketing plan. He's been photographed with his two sons wearing Yankee booty at Central Park in recent days. My guess is that if Madonna's marriage is almost over and out, as has been reported, it's being maintained now by two total pragmatists who have made a pact to divide the financial rewards of a successful concert tour and album sales.

As for all the kabbalah, I believe it's just a cover that's been used to give Madonna and her new conquest more private time together.

Wheels within wheels. We're through the looking glass here, people.

For our part, we wonder how the woman who practically single-handedly invented the modern Celebrity-Industrial Complex at Us Weekly and Star is now sounding like a crazy HuffPo commenter? It's probably due to some conspiracy she entered into with Madonna and the Church of Scientology or something.

Last night, Manhattan Borough President and proud parrot-owner Scott Stringer made a surprise visit to the Gawker Media inner sanctum. The perma-Upper West Sider, who is said to be eyeing a run at citywide office, confessed affection for Gawker and old sister site Wonkette. Interested in the machinations of new media, Stringer regaled us with tales of how it used to be: when he worked for future Congressman Jerry Nadler in the '80s, Nadler's press releases went to old media types not by phone or fax or smoke signal, but by Stringer himself, who used to ride the subways around town all day to hand-deliver the pages to the city's newsdesks.

Huh. So... he thinks he will be the next mayor? And, even more ludicrous, he thinks the support of Gawker will somehow help? (We have our suspicious as to which Dem campaign consultants recommended this little visit.)

(Most of these were found thanks to the tireless research of Daniel Radosh, whose work on the media self-censorship beat has certainly earned him something like a "Webby" but actually meaningful.)

So. We know the Times censors the usual seven dirty words. But they go far above and beyond the call of duty in their effort to PROTECT THE CHILDREN.

1. Nuts. Obv fine in the Food section, not so much when prominent leader of the civil rights movement uses it as a threat against a presidential candidate. Got it? No longer newsworthy!

2. Poo. In a piece about one-man indie band Final Fantasy, the Times Magazine wrote: "The sleeve of Final Fantasy’s most recent album (the title is at once innocent and vulgar, and can’t be printed here)..." The name of the album is He Poos Clouds. Which is gross, yes, but unprintable?

3. Sucks. The non-sexual casual meaning this word hasn't been shocking since 1900, right? Still. Mr. Radosh was not allowed to say that Christian Rock Doesn't Suck in the New York Times.

4. Fug. There's a blog called "Go Fug Yourself." Fug stands for "fugly" which supposedly means "fucking ugly" but it's really just a new cute internet way of saying ugly. Not in the Times, where that site becomes merely "a popular Web site focused on fashion disasters." Yes, good luck googling that.

5. Came. This one's fun because they refuse to quote something that was printed in a Harry Potter book! After it turned out that Dumbledore was gay, everyone reread those stupid books for clues. This is what the Times printed:

She proposes that when the two friends had a falling out in a dramatic duel, Grindelwald did not fight but "conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and" — the passage then gives way to an obvious (in retrospect) sexual double entendre.

The rest of that sentence is "came quietly." Hah. Get it? Miss Rowling you are the worst!

Honorable Mention: Goddamn.

The Times has printed the word "goddamn" literally hundreds of times, going back to 1857, but refused to reprint it when Sally Field said it at the Emmys in 2007. They just said "Ms. Field used an expletive in saying that if mothers ruled the world, there would be no wars," which once again makes it sound even worse than it actually was. Servicey!

Now if anyone can find good examples of the Times censoring "doody" or "wiener," let us know.

Follieri's story is different, really, because while the other rich actress- and model-dating horndogs find themselves in hot water for whoring and partying, Follieri's facing jail time for pretending to be the most pious motherfucker in New York. He boasted of imaginary connections to the Catholic Church to scam money from investors that he needed to keep up his lifestyle of being a the perfect wealthy, charitable Catholic.

As the Church faced fallout from the child abuse scandal, Follieri stepped up to help them unload their real estate properties and convert them into morally agreeable businesses. He hired the nephew of of the Vatican's secretary of state and went around claiming to be a "representative for the Vatican." But Follieri's only real connection to the church was a guy who could arrange to get him a tour of the garden every now and then. But the scam worked! Thanks, as always, to how easily duped the self-righteous rich can be.

While his love life with Anne was flourishing, in 2005 Raffaello found his most high-profile partners for the Follieri Group yet. That year, he became friends with Doug Band, a young aide to former President Bill Clinton. Doug, who was often seen cavorting with Raffaello in Manhattan restaurants like Nobu and Cipriani, served as a matchmaker. He introduced Raffaello to a Canadian real estate developer named Michael Cooper, a meeting for which Raffaello paid $400,000. More importantly, Doug introduced him to Bill Clinton and his close personal friends, including supermarket magnate and billionaire Ron Burkle. In April 2005, Ron formed a joint venture with Raffaello, called Follieri/Yucaipa Investments, to develop unused Catholic properties. Ron pledged $105 million to help his new business partner in this pursuit. One year later, Raffaello made his own significant donation, pledging $1 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, a charity founded by the former president. This move gave Raffaello a chance to spend more time with one of the most influential men in the world, and he seized the opportunity to vacation with Clinton in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. In a picture taken at that time, Raffaello has his arm draped around Bill Clinton on one side and Anne Hathaway on the other. Everyone is smiling for the camera. ­Raffaello seemed to have it all: fame, success, money, friendship, the perfect girl.

Doug Band! You may remember him as Bill Clinton's guy Friday, who has a terrible habit of introducing the former president to complete scumbags and then also failing to keep Bill's own behavior in check.

By 2007, Burkle was suing Follieri for misappropriation of that million dollars. Because Follieri used it to pay for his penthouse and his lavish lifestyle, which he needed to keep up appearances as a successful friend of the Vatican. It really all would've been easier if he'd actually just made connections at the Vatican and managed real estate for them for real, right? But the one time they tried to do this, with a church in Philadelphia, it burned down and they sold it for no profit.

But once the Burkle suit was settled and the jet company sued him and the NYPD arrested him for bouncing a check and the PR company sued him and his foundation's only employee quit AND it became apparent that Andrew Cuomo was going to indict him, you would think actress Anne Hathaway would've given up on him? Or that he would've given up on his scam? Not so much.

So yes, it was an audacious and impressive lie that he lived, but it looks for all the world like he actually bought into it himself.

Oh, hey—would it be inappropriate to note that this thing looks a lot like that thing?

According to an insider, Keith was really upset that NBC didn't buy him a first-class ticket to Washington DC for Russert's private service. He was screaming into his phone demanding a first-class train ticket. Then he didn't get to go to the ceremony and he had to travel by car.

AND an "aghast witness" says Keith "went apoplectic" when he realized that there weren't any ketchup packets at the Kennedy Center. This is one of the weirdest gossip item we've ever read!

Olbermann was heard saying outside the service, "this place is going to hell," because his Washington staff couldn't find ketchup packets for lunch at the Center. An NBC insider claimed, however, "Keith did not have lunch at the Kennedy Center and was not eating on the set because he was anchoring a broadcast."

Honestly... the "insider" claiming to see a celeb berating an underling on a cell phone stories are kind of the lamest thing Page Six does. Nine times out of ten they are just obvious strikes against targets deemed unfriendly to the column. The story, while exclusive, is not even as entertaining as the one where they said Keith has a GIRL DISEASE. So if this is the worst they could do (WHERE IS HIS GODDAMN KETCHUP?) then Keith can probably rest easy.

He won't, though! He'll declare someone else tangentially involved the Worst Person In the World again and the cycle will begin anew.

Update: So Olbermann did mention this item on yesterday's show, by calling Page Six staffer Corynne Steindler the third-worst person in the world. Once again, further down the totem pole! A couple months from now he'll be accusing copy editors of smearing him. (Also there was a bit of an implied insult aimed at Corynne's photo, something Keith often claims to be above. And something Page Six never claims to be above.)

• "We love the way you smell right after you finish exercising." Mmmm, chilled gym sweat. It should really be bottled.
• "We love it when you argue with us about something — movies, sports, politics — that really doesn't matter." Pointless arguing — it's not just for sexless marriages any more!
• "We love the way you look when you're half-dressed or half-undressed." You can be half naked if you like. Or maybe you prefer half naked. Either way, David Granger is thrilled. And they say men are picky about how their partners look!
• "We love your certainty, even when you're sure we're wrong." Stubborn is especially sexy if you're also argumentative. And sweaty. And refusing to get more than half-naked.

Remember O readers: There's nothing "We" won't say we love about you, especially when "you" are anonymous readers and "we" are thousands of miles away and don't actually have to deal with any of the behaviors we claim are charming. Don't feel slighted — I'm sure the same sort of columns run in men's magazines all the time. Like, say, Esquire!

[WWD (last item)]

The association obtained credentials for some bloggers to attend the Scooter Libby trial. Founder Robert Cox claims the group "makes available" pro-bono legal services. There is some sort of partnership with Newsweek. Rabble-rousing blogger Jeff Jarvis is a member. But the association is a self-appointed representative of a hugely diverse group, and its legitimacy appears entirely self-assigned. Gawker Media, for one, is not aligned with the association, I am reliably informed.

The AP's decision to emphasize its meetings with this lone, opaque organization only makes its copyright crusade seem all the more surreal.

[AP]

The closest the internet can come to coughing up a reference to a "terrorist fist-jab" that doesn't involve Hill is one comment on political blog Human Events Online. The comment was deleted. And also it was insane.

Michelle is not as “refined” as Obama at hiding her TRUE feelings about America—etc. Her “Hezbollah” style fist-jabbing—mouth-twisted anti-American speeches is STRAIGHT from ISLAM!

See? Don't you feel bad for Ms. Hill now? All she did was alter and repeat, without citation or context, a ridiculous deleted comment from some anonymous nutjob and present it as but one reasonable interpretation of a goddamn fist-bump. Looks like we all owe E.D. Hill a little apology!

The "body-language" expert admirably attempts to explain the crazy gesture in a reasonable way, and E.D. basically ignores her. It's odd, to us, that E.D. skipped calling the gesture "black" and went straight to "terrorist," but Fox's modus operandi usually involves less straight-up domestic racism and more generalized fear of The Foreigner.

(Courtney Hazelett, take note! No one would've gotten on your case if you'd just criticized Spike Lee for hating America, not for being uppity.)

[Via MediaMatters]

Finally, our tech team produced a cocky, scrawny teen at Gawker HQ who admitted he started the whole problem by hacking our system to play "Thermo-Celebrity Snarkular War," which is not a game but a training and learning program that is hardwired into our Scientology Defense System. He triggered an attack, by us, on TomKat, that hot chick from The King of Queens, and the furry-headed kid from That 70's Show.

Just as all hell was about to be break loose, he challenged WOPR to a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, thinking that it would run the game a thousand times, realize that it is impossible to win, and shut itself down. Instead, it learned that no one at Gawker Media even knows how to play tic-tack-toe. After seven games, WOPR said, "You dudes are fucking 'tarded! I'm so outta here!" And the crisis was over.

So please log back in, resume commenting, and our regularly scheduled programming shall begin anew.

HIV has been found in saliva and tears in very low quantities from some AIDS patients. It is important to understand that finding a small amount of HIV in a body fluid does not necessarily mean that HIV can be transmitted by that body fluid. HIV has not been recovered from the sweat of HIV-infected persons. Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.

Oh, Texas. You never cease to make us want to give you back to Mexico.

Michael Roach and Christie McNally

• Buddhist teachers: +2
• Live in Arizona: -3
• Live in a yurt with no running water or electricity or DVR or even Bravo: -5
• Remain within 15 feet of each other at all times because they vowed to "never part:" -15
• (-3 of that is because he gets inspired in the middle of the night and she has to then wake up and follow him 100 yards down the road to his office so he can "work".)
• (-4 of that is because they actually inhale and exhale in sync with one another.)
• (-2 of that is for eating from the same plate and often reading the same book.)
• (-6 of that is because "When she uses an airport restroom, he stands outside the door.")
• The wife uses the honorific "Lama," usually only given to a male teachers under Tibetan Buddhist tradition: +3
• Many other couples — like, from around the world — flock to them for relationship advice: +3
• They managed to piss off the Dalai Lama: +1
• His monk friends tried to get him to choose between her and them and he chose her. Then they asked him to give up his robes, citing "two milleniums of Tibetan Buddhist tradition" and he refused: +3
• He kept her secret during a three-year silent retreat in the desert and started talking about her only after he figured out they could be caught on Google Earth: -3
• He went to Princeton: +2
• She went to NYU: +1
• He once amassed a personal fortune by turning an upstart jewelry company into a $100 million per year business: +3
• They met when she was a student in the seminar he was teaching in New York: -2
• After they met, "they began to see each other as angels:" -3/barf
• They go to movies, probably in their robes and everything. She is into the Matrix, he into the Truman Show: +2
• No sex or carnal touching, ever: -69

Total points: -80
Consolation prize: Nirvana

[Times]

(Photo: David Sanders, New York Times)

She's been here and she's had drinks with her dinner," a Jean Georges employee said. "She's had a cocktail or two, yes, between shows, with dinner."

The Times rounded up some New Yorkers shaken to their cores by the incident:

... said Omar Villaneuva, a doorman at 27 West 72nd Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue... "when you’re a news reporter, you’re supposed to report the news. You’re not there to swear.”

Peter King, who works in an architectural office on the Upper West Side, echoed Mr. Villaneuva’s point. “It’s overused, and we are crasser than we were for it,” Mr. King said. “It’s just another indication of standards declining. I mean, I curse like a sailor, but I know how to talk to my dad and talk to clients, versus how to talk to my friends.”

Sarah Bassine, a filmmaker, said that Ms. Simmons was a role model... “Certainly, a newscaster should be able to express herself or himself better. People who are in the public eye have a responsibility to conduct themselves in a responsible manner.”

Actually, between this cuss out, Bill O'Reilly's recently resurfaced Inside Edition tantrum and the million other on-air TV news meltdowns in recent (and not-so-recent) memory, on-air swearing (followed by not getting fired) has kind of become a sign that an on-air personality has finally arrived.
[Times]

Obama trounced Clinton as expected in the southern state, 56 to 42 percent with 57 percent of precincts reporting, by appealing to elite latte-sipping, coal-miner-hating whites around universities, plus working class blacks. JUST LIKE JESSE JACKSON.