The editor of the National Enquirer drops a Dostoevsky reference and the words "philippic" and "verisimilitude" in a WSJ op-ed to tell the mainstream media: You're just mad you got scooped on the summer's best fucking-related stories. [WSJ]

An expanded version of this story about the Republican running mate's son—with details from the National Enquirer's print edition—is here.

"The bondholders, who own a portion of American Media's junk bonds, want the company's private-equity owners to give them a larger take in return for retiring some of its debt, according to sources close to several bondholders." [Post]

• Star Jones has a new man! Meet Herb Wilson, the executive chef at Manhattan's Soho and Tribeca Grand hotels. [People]

Just as Sarah Palin was preparing to speak at the Republican convention in St. Paul (more on that momentarily), word bubbled up that the National Enquirer alleged in its print edition that John McCain's running mate had an affair with a business partner to her husband. With the sensational charge, the supermarket tabloid is gambling the measure of respect it has earned from more buttoned-down media in the wake of its reporting on John Edwards's affair with a campaign staffer, which was partially admitted to be true by Edwards himself. And early signs are that it may lose that gamble: The Enquirer issued a wishy-washy statement to the Huffington Post addressing its charges only in the context of other allegations, rather than backing them head-on:

American Media, the publisher of Star and the National Enquirer, has come to an agreement with its creditors to "refinance" $570 million of its more than $1 billion in total debt. That's code for going to the people you owe money to and saying, "Funniest thing—I just can't pay you. Wanna change our deal a little bit? Or would you prefer I just declare bankruptcy and we both get screwed?" As savvy financial types like to say, if you owe the bank $1 million, they own you; if you owe the bank $1 billion, you own them. Although AMI squandered millions needlessly on things like, you know, the services of Bonnie Fuller, the Enquirer's upsurge from the John Edwards scoop may be just the thing to push them back towards profitability. If they can figure out how to sell some extra ads on it, that is. AMI's ad sales were down slightly in the first half, though not as much as the rest of the industry. So chin up. Remember, down is the new flat! [WSJ]

• Arianna Huffington says her website is not for sale, but that's probably just because no one is interested in paying $200 million for it. [Gawker]

The National Enquirer's John Edwards love child scoop turned out to have actually sold some extra issues! Funny how that works. The scandalous rag's August 11 issue claiming Edwards was paying $15k per month in hush money sold 738,000 issues—about 10% better than average. Unfortunately, the "tenfold increase in usual monthly traffic" to the Enquirer's website probably means that all their extra cash is going towards bandwidth payments—web advertising is pre-sold, and traffic spikes don't translate to immediate money. UNFORTUNATELY. [WWD]

• Barack Obama will appear on the cover of Time for the seventh time this year. [Drudge]

John Edwards will surely one day be exposed as a despicable liar-one so manipulative that he could deny the obvious even when "stripped bare" during his confessional Nightline interview. Unfortunately, today is not the day.

Octogenarian Post gossipeuse Cindy Adams reports that the Enquirer tomorrow will run a photo of Rielle Hunter holding the baby John Edwards maybe held in that photo that was maybe him in that hotel room he met Rielle at. They will have "proof" that it is the same baby and "proof" that it is not photoshopped. Cindy Adams also reports this: "ENOUGH already with New York's financial woes. Soon, instead of a torch, the Statue of Liberty will hold up a tin cup and pencils." [NYP]

The National Enquirer is having an amazing week thanks to its coverage of John Edwards' philandering, but the supermarket tabloid is probably still going to die along with troubled parent company American Media Inc., the Times' David Carr reports for tomorrow's paper. It doesn't seem to matter that three of the best papers in the country all ran stories about how the Enquirer was right about Edwards and they were wrong or that the tabloid still owns the probably-not-finished scandal. AMI is so deep in the hole — nearly $1 billion! — that most analysts aren't even keeping track of the Edwards coverage or anything else about the company because they've written it off. One gave this fairly devastating quote to Carr, anonymously:

John Edwards is a lawyer, so he tends to be careful about, you know, "lies." Like Bill Clinton before him, he tries to make them technically true and hope no one notices the outs he leaves himself. Today, the Enquirer claims (reports?? who knows with them) that Edwards "restarted" his affair with Rielle Hunter after he says he confessed to his wife and ended it. Also he "was sexually involved with Rielle when she became pregnant." (Speaking of pregnant-click to see the totally helpful contextual ad that pops up when you hover over that word at the Enquirer's site.) Ha ha also: "Experts are now calling for a federal investigation into Edwards' use of campaign funds." Experts in what? So John's lying about everything, right? Kind of... "The story is false, it's completely untrue, it's ridiculous," Edwards said when confronted with the first Enquirer story on his affair. Then, when he admitted the affair this month, he explained that that wasn't actually a lie: "When a supermarket tabloid told a version of the story, I used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it. But being 99 percent honest is no longer enough." As others have noted, that math does not make very much sense. But Edwards is helped in his crusade to be 99% honest by the fact that flaky Rielle Hunter seems unreliable and prone to flights of fancy. So her affair with Edwards actually happened, yes, but how many of the details as she recounts them are accurate? How many of the stories she told her friends are based on reality and not fantasy? Sources close to Hunter can only reveal what Hunter told them, which is hardly concrete proof of anything. So is this story true? Did the affair start up again? In Edwards' confession, he said: "But that misconduct took place for a short period in 2006. It ended then." That misconduct. Leaving himself room to not admit to a further, separate misconduct that happened later. See what he did there?

Reading about reading about National Enquirer founder Generoso "Gene" Pope Jr. in today's Wall Street Journal, it's hard not to wonder, how come MIT-educated CIA operatives don't start trashy tabloid publications anymore? And is that related to that other salient question, how come kids named "Generoso" don't seem to come through Horace Mann anymore? (The blanket answer to all this is that people just don't know how to have fun anymore, or else the progeny of Russia and China's mafiosos would have run DNA tests on Andrew Young's chewing gum by now, but that's another story.) Anyway, in a month that has seen so much news production "Made In China" so to speak we'd like to take a moment to appreciate the month's leading supplier of original domestic, vertically integrated, by us-for American newstrash, the National Enquirer, for some of the great techniques and philosophies of news gathering Gene brought to American publishing.1. Inculcate reporters in "When In Rome" philosophy of reporting:

With the National Enquirer taking a victory lap for correctly reporting that John Edwards had an affair with campaign contractor Rielle Hunter, it's worth noting that the Democratic politician is still disputing the Enquirer's claims that he fathered a love child with Hunter. Also worth recalling, then, how the supermarket tabloid face-planted with a 2006 story claiming Sen. Ted Kennedy fathered a love child with Carolina Bilodeau-Allen while separated from his first wife. DNA tests conducted two decades prior had already established that Kennedy was not the father, contradicting the Enquirer's paid sources. Earlier this month, the tabloid was made to pay for its front-page mistake, the Smoking Gun reports:

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.

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.

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!

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:

The National Enquirer spent months chasing John Edwards and digging into his relationship with Rielle Hunter before busting him spending the night in a hotel with the woman and the former Democratic presidential candidate's alleged love child. It was impressive and quintessential tabloid work. But there's no reason the paper should have had the scandal all to itself. Isn't this the sort of thing traditional newspaper tabs like the Post used to cover? And even starchy broadsheets should have had some interest — it was the Miami Herald that busted Gary Hart in 1988 (when his mistress left his townhouse — shades of the Edwards affair) and the Times that broke the story of Eliot Spitzer's whoring earlier this year.