Enquring minds - John Edwards & Rielle Hunter

When John Edwards didn’t win the Iowa caucuses in January, he knew his campaign for president was over. When I read that he was confronted by two National Enquirer reporters in the basement of the Beverly Hilton in the wee morning hours last Tuesday, I knew his career in public life was probably over, too. At the very least, he blew his chance to be Barack Obama’s running mate and the next vice president of these United States.

If you haven’t heard about this, you’re missing one of the most compelling storylines to come out of this endless campaign. According to Newsweek, a few years ago in NYC, John Edwards met a woman named Rielle Hunter in a bar. She’s an aspiring actress and filmmaker who, when she was known as Lisa Druck, dated author Jay McInerney and was the inspiration for the “ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious” Alison Poole character in his novel “Story of My Life.”

Maybe she showed John Edwards her reel, or maybe she showed him some of the tricks she learned partying her way around New York in the 80’s. Either way, he was allegedly moved to provide her with hundreds of thousands of dollars start-up money for a production company and a six-month contract to produce a series of webisodes documenting his presidential campaign back in 2006. He either truly believed in the skills of a filmmaker with one IMDB credit or he wanted her to be able to see how the other half lives in his “two Americas.” The bottom line is he cut her some serious checks.

Last fall, the story started to get strange. In September, the webisodes disappeared. By December, Rielle Hunter was pregnant and had relocated to Chapel Hill, North Carolina - living in a rented house in a the same gated community as Edwards’ associate Andrew Young and claiming that Young was the father of her baby. This was odd for a few reasons, not the least of which being that she has reportedly been a guest for dinner at his house with his wife and his three kids. Talk about awkward; I can just hear his wife asking, “Honey, do you plan to be there at the birth of your boss’ love child that you’re falsely claiming to be the father of?”

The baby has now been born and both mother and child have relocated (again) to Santa Barbara – so the checks are still coming from somewhere. That brings us to Monday of last week and the events that will be remembered as the ending of John Edwards’ political career. He was in town to join Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at a press event on dealing with homelessness on Monday afternoon. If the story is true and he is the father of her baby, this would serve as the perfect opportunity for Edwards, Hunter, and their illegitimate little bundle of joy to spend some quality time together. So she came down to L.A. with a friend of hers, a “facilitator” if you will, who had reserved two rooms in the hotel under his name (presumably for the purpose of secrecy). The National Enquirer reports that Edwards showed up around 9:45, avoided the lobby, went down some side stairs to the bottom floor, then caught the elevator. The facilitator waited in one room with the baby while Edwards and Hunter were alone in the other. Apparently they ventured out of the hotel together briefly, then went back inside. Sounds like a condom run to me, which is a lot like locking the barn door after the horses have all gotten out.

Edwards reappeared a little after 2:30 in the morning, but when he exited the elevator in the hotel basement, he was greeted by questions from waiting reporters. He ran up the stairs to the lobby, but spotted a photographer and headed back down to the basement where he ducked into a restroom and held the door shut until security came to escort him out. Security probably would have escorted the reporters out instead, but they were registered guests at the hotel. Ah, those brilliant tabloid journalists – they’ll get ya every time.

The kicker in this story is that on Monday night at the Beverly Hilton, the Television Critic’s Association was holding a press tour, so the place was crawling with producers, actors, and writers. The rooms reserved by the facilitator were actually down the hall from the TCA hospitality suite. So while John Edwards and Rielle Hunter were (allegedly) enjoying what amounts to a conjugal visit, they were (probably) making the beast with two backs a stone’s throw from some of the same actors and actresses who will end up reading for the parts of John Edwards and Rielle Hunter in the movie that will inevitably be made about them.

Bush needs to get off the SOFA - Getting out of Iraq

Last week was tough for President Bush, mainly because of Iraq. With most Americans wanting U.S. troops out of that country, the Democrats in Congress wanting U.S. troops out, most Iraqis wanting U.S. troops out, and the Iraqi government wanting U.S. troops out, our boy-in-a-bubble President finally caught on that it may be time to start thinking about pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

I’m old enough to remember all the way back to the summer of 2006 when ethnic cleansing in Baghdad and other places was leading to millions of Iraqis being displaced as the country teetered on the brink of all-out civil war. Donald Rumsfeld, not-yet-indicted war criminal, was still in charge at the Pentagon and the metric for success in Iraq was mind-numbingly simple: if we stay we win, if we leave we lose. In November of 2006, millions and millions of my fellow Americans rejected that idea and voted for a new strategy in Iraq – one designed to bring our troops home. Too bad our President doesn’t read the newspaper, so he never got the message.

Right now, the Bush administration is negotiating a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqis that will allow for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for a good, long time. The Iraqi government, like everyone else not directly connected to the White House or the McCain campaign, would like to have some kind of idea of when they can reasonably expect to no longer be living under U.S. military occupation. The McBushes, as convinced as ever that staying = winning, see continuing the occupation as their goal. The problem is that the President (and the Republican candidate who would like to succeed him) has gone on the record saying that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is based entirely on the Iraqi government’s wishes. Last May, the President said, “We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation...It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.” He even said it with a straight face.

Of course, he doesn’t want to leave, so he’s going to drag out these SOFA negotiations as long as possible. It won’t work, though, because there are Iraqi elections scheduled for this fall and no Iraqi candidate can hope to win on a platform of allowing U.S. troops to stay indefinitely. All that will happen if the U.S. doesn’t agree to some kind of timeframe, timeline, or timetable for withdrawal is the Iraqis will look elsewhere for military support. And it’s a safe bet that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government won’t have to look much further than Shiite-dominated Iran. That’s why President Lame Duck (the great resistor of timetables) finally broke down last week and agreed to a “general time horizon” for troop withdrawal. And it only took him two years.

Clearly, this was the signal that somebody inside the White House clipping service was waiting for because the day after Yale’s most famous male cheerleader made this seismic shift from “we can’t leave” to “we can’t leave yet,” an e-mail intended for internal distribution was sent to thousands of people who signed up for official press releases, announcements, and etc. It contained a Reuters article about the Prime Minister of Iraq supporting Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw U.S. combat troops within about 16 months. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but I highly doubt it. In this White House, Barack Obama is like Voldemort in that his name must not be spoken (the closest the President ever comes is referring to him as “a particular presidential candidate”). So the only thing worse than an article appearing under the headline, “Iraq PM backs Obama troop exit plan” is calling attention to that story by giving it wide distribution on a Bush administration mailing list. Congratulations, White House clipping service, you have done more to bring our troops home with one keystroke than the Democrats have managed to do in the year-and-a-half that they’ve controlled Congress.

I’ve been known to turn the proverbial phrase and I fancy myself quite the writer, but I’m not good enough to come up with “time horizon.” As a concept, it’s too abstract for me to even try to wrap my head around. No matter how much “time” you’re talking about, you can never actually reach the “horizon.” As a unit, it’s un-measurable, but when applied to the President’s Iraq policy, the “time horizon” makes perfect sense. After all, the reason we went to Iraq isn’t the reason we’re still in Iraq, if the “surge” is working we can’t leave, and if it isn’t working, we have to stay. It reminds me of that Eagles lyric, “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Learning to love those love handles - The soup diet

Five years ago, I was living in New York City and in the best shape of my life. Maybe it was all the stairs I was constantly climbing up and down to get to the subway, or the fact that I would follow an intense free-weight workout with a full hour of cardio three times a week. I was 15 pounds lighter than I am now, but I still had issues with my body. Basically, I hated that I didn’t have and couldn’t get six-pack abs. Stupid, I know, but I was convinced the only thing between me and endless nights of coital bliss in the city that doesn’t sleep was my insufficiently sculpted stomach. These days, I’m more likely to find a washboard in the laundry room of my apartment building than I am to develop one in my abdominal region, but I’d still like to lose the weight I’ve put on since I moved out West. So a few months ago, I set out to get in shape for summer.

The key to effective weight loss isn’t complicated, it takes the right combination of strength training, cardio, and nutrition. But I was determined to re-invent the wheel. I wanted to drop the pounds without spending too much time in the weight room and doing as little cardio as possible (my gym doesn’t have TV’s on the treadmills). So I focused on nutrition. My best friend’s parents had recently lost about 30 pounds each by spending a month on something called “the soup diet.” This sounded really promising to me because they’re both in their sixties, so I know they weren’t lifting any weights. I figured with my workout routine and the soup, I could shed 15 pounds in about two weeks and have the bod ready for the beach by Memorial Day.

The soup diet is something hospitals use to get patients to lose weight before surgery. Essentially, it calculates your nutritional needs over a seven-day period and provides your body with just enough of what you need to survive while eliminating everything else. So there are no carbs, no sugars, almost no fats, and no alcohol – though you can stuff yourself on vegetable soup and you get to eat steak on the fifth and sixth days. It works, too. I lost 12 pounds in two weeks and the only cardio I did was walking to and from work.

The only problem was that food is everywhere, especially on TV. I was watching the Food Network constantly (for the commercials as much as the cooking shows) and I discovered there was a particularly cruel hour of the night when I was at my weakest and the fast-food places were all advertising the fact that they’re open late. The 24-hour Jack in the Box on Santa Monica Boulevard gave me nightmares. Jack and his gigantic head would appear to me in my sleep saying, “wouldn’t you love some spicy chicken bites right now, Kenny?” It was horrific.

When the diet ended, I was so happy that I could eat whatever I wanted that I ate whatever I wanted. Soon after, I realized that I’d only lost water weight and started to put it back on. By the 4th of July, the scale was saying the same thing it said before I choked down all that soup and I was back to hating my midsection. Until I randomly spent what my friend Madaket would call a “totally warm & fuzzy” night with a beautiful girl who I’m sure wasn’t attracted to me because of my abs. I know this because I didn’t suck in my stomach while we were spooning and she didn’t run screaming from my apartment.

I used to be in love with a girl who was about five feet tall and 95 pounds who, ironically, thinks she’s out of shape when she gets too far over 100. She used to ask if I thought she needed breast implants. I’d always tell her that she’s a whole person, not a collection of parts, and I loved all of her. I’ve decided I’m not a collection of parts either, so I’ll be okay if I never achieve abdominal nirvana or the hormonally crazed hard-bodied hotties that come with it.

After all, there really are only two body types: Underwear models and everyone else. The only way to get an underwear model’s body is to work out like crazy while removing carbs, oils, fats, and sugars from your diet for the foreseeable future. That’s impossible; I love delicious food that tastes good. As I told a retired NFL lineman (who told me, “I played in my 70’s, I can’t tell the wife I hit 299”), I’d much rather have a piece of cheesecake than a six-pack.

Outsmarting the pundits - Obama looking & sounding presidential

By now, readers of this column should know that I was the first person to predict an Obama presidency back in April of last year. Since it took the chattering class of syndicated columnists and TV talking heads until this May to figure out what I had known for over a year, when he’s inaugurated in January I’ll naturally assume the title of America’s Smartest Columnist. I can’t say my prescience was based solely on the stunning power of my own intellect as much as it was because I worked on the Kerry campaign with my friend, Mike Simmons, who had worked for state Senator Obama back in Chicago.

We had gathered outside Washington, D.C., along with about five dozen other activists, to train to open and run canvass offices for a 527 group hired by the DNC. I heard the name “Barack Obama” so many times during that week that it stuck in my head. At one point, then-Chairman, Terry McAuliffe, came to fire up the troops with his usual “I’m rich, I’m Bill Clinton’s best friend, I don’t need to do this, I do this because I love it” speech, but nobody cared. All anyone wanted to know was how he planned to win southern states and how the party intended to use Barack Obama in the campaign. Terry didn’t have a good answer for us on either question, and I knew then that I had to find out more about this Obama guy. His keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention sealed the deal for me and made me understand why whenever I asked Simmons about Obama, he’d smile at me with this look that said, “just wait ‘til you see him.” This summer, the world will be getting its first look the same way I did four years ago.

As soon as it was clear that Barack was going to be the nominee, John McCain’s campaign started trying to tear him down. One of the first things they did was challenge him to travel to Iraq. Senator McCain even offered to travel with him and “educate” him along the way. Fox News was keeping a running count of how long it had been since the last time Senator Obama visited Iraq and the conservative talk shows and blogs went to town on the issue of his foreign policy experience. I find it funny that they never mention our current President’s foreign policy experience when he was sworn in consisted mostly of a few trips across the border to Mexico. In fact, when he took the oath of office, I don’t think his passport had been stamped even once.

What the McCain team didn’t count on was that Senator Obama, who has run maybe the most organized political campaign the country has ever seen, has the best advance people in the business. So when he scheduled a trip to Iraq, it also included stops in Germany, Great Britain, Israel, and Jordan. He’s planning a major speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate (where President Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”), he’ll almost certainly meet with the German Chancellor, the British Prime Minister, the Israeli Prime Minister, and the King of Jordan – all before he arrives in Iraq and meets with that country’s leaders as well as our troops on the ground.

All this will prove that the McCain campaign badly miscalculated their foreign policy offensive against Senator Obama (among many other things) since his meeting with a half-dozen heads of state before sitting down with American military leaders will make him look both presidential and like he’s passed the “Commander in Chief test.” As always, he’ll draw enormous crowds, there will be saturation coverage in the press, and John McCain will have to light what’s left of his hair on fire to get a mention on the Sunday talk shows.

I feel some sympathy for Senator McCain (like I did for Bob Dole back in 1996) because he knows he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of winning the election, but he has to go through the motions anyway. Once Barack gets back from his “Summer of Hope” tour, seeing the two of them on stage together will be like looking at one of those New Year’s Eve cartoons with last year represented by a decrepit old man and the New Year represented by a cherubic baby – only the baby has a degree from Harvard Law and a gift for public speaking. It’s just impossible to look at John McCain with the wispy white hair and crooked yellow teeth in that melanoma-stricken face of his and compare it to the classically-handsome visage and thousand-megawatt smile of Barack Obama and think, “this guy is the best hope for America’s future.”

Getting out of the groove, Madonna? - The Material Girl needed a pre-nup

I was born in the 70’s, so I grew up watching music videos on Music Television, not “reality shows.” Way back in the 80’s, there was nothing cooler than music videos. These days, the network is known more for creating reality TV stars than rock stars. It’s gotten so bad that I can spot every girl on “The Hills” from a block away, but wouldn’t recognize the Killers if every member of the band walked up to me and slapped me across the face. In my defense, L.C, Whitney, Lauren, Audrina, and Heidi are all attractive girls who are treated like genuine celebrities with talent, even though their main gig is starring on a reality show that isn’t even real.

The woman we have to thank for this sad state of affairs at MTV, Madonna, was in the news last week because she wants a divorce from her husband of eight years, film director Guy Ritchie. Unfortunately for her, she forgot to get a prenuptial agreement before they got married. Now her soon-to-be ex-husband is entitled to half of her fortune and I, for one, can’t resist laughing at the delicious irony of this woman potentially losing one hundred million dollars in a divorce settlement. This is the woman who taught the girls of my generation that sex sells, they don’t have to feel ashamed of using sex to sell themselves, and if you’re sexy enough, you don’t even have to be able to sing to make it as a pop singer. Especially if your first big album, “Like a Virgin” is in stores at the same time you’re naked in Penthouse and Playboy.

Madonna got ahead in late-1970’s New York City by utilizing her three biggest assets: her left boob, her right boob, and her willingness to show them to anyone who could advance her career. Make no mistake, had it not been for her numerous nude photo sessions, we never would have heard of this woman after about 1985. Instead, she went on to become MTV’s first reality TV star as everything she did was fully documented on the network as it focused less on musicality and more on personality. First there was a high-profile marriage to Sean Penn, a failed attempt at an acting career, a divorce once it was clear the marriage wasn’t going to work out, then her re-invention as someone else. The funny thing about this woman is that she always seems to re-invent herself as a new and different kind of slut, but to me the song remains the same.

That was until about 1999 when she decided she wanted to become British - Lady Madge of Wiltshire, wife of film director Guy Ritchie and a proper Englishwoman. They got married and had a son named Rocco, though not necessarily in that order, then waited around for “happily ever after” to arrive. Shockingly, it never came. So there she was three years later, on stage at the VMA’s again. This time, she was sucking face with not one, but two former members of the Mickey Mouse Club. Some people thought it was hot. I didn’t. For obvious reasons, I’d watch my Britney kiss Christina Aguilera all day long. But add a woman old enough to be their mom to the mix and I throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Last year, Madonna signed a new contract that will pay her $120 million to keep recording and touring for another ten years, pushing her net worth into the neighborhood of $600 million. The problem now seems to be that she’s outgrown her “British phase” and wants to move back to New York with Lourdes, David from Malawi, and Rocco; leaving Guy Ritchie back in England. Guy, of course, isn’t going to just roll over and take it, so their lawyers will have to work it out. Unlike Madonna, however, Guy actually is English, so he understands public opinion in Great Britain much better than she does. He’s acting like a man trying his hardest to make his marriage work. He’s taken a trip to New York to be with her, he’s fighting for his family, and he wants his son to grow us “as an Englishman.” If the divorce happens, it will be clear who wanted out. It will be the person worth over a half a billion dollars, and she’ll probably have to give up custody of their son and about $100 million to get the freedom she’s looking for.

She once sang, “boys may come and boys may go and that’s alright, you see. Experience has made me rich and now they’re after me.” I wonder if the “Material Girl” will still be singing when she has to pay Guy off to the tune of nine figures?