If Howard Wolfson is to be believed Hillary Clinton lost the nomination to Barack Obama because the press didn’t uncover the John Edwards love child story in time for all those Edwards votes to go to her. Regrets, we’ve had a few, etc. It’s a rather shaky theory especially considering that most of the Edwards voters went to Obama after he dropped out of the race. However! According to the Palm Beach Post the National Enquirer may have been doing all they could to help out Hillary (as some sort of weird retribution for all those philandering Bill stories back in ’92 maybe?).

An item in today’s Post says that “the troops at the Enquirer were instructed not to do any anti-Hillary Clinton stories during the campaign.” Really? One could argue there weren’t a lot of skeletons to be further flushed out of Hillary’s closet (Bill may be a different story) but the Post speculates that two Clinton chums — Clinton numbers man Roger Altman, who “poured $767 million” into NE‘s parent company AMI back in 1999, and the infamous Ron Burkle, who was tried to buy AMI last year — may have had more to do with it. Sometimes you get what you need.

The NYT, who until this week didn’t have anyone on the John Edwards love child story, has jumped into the fray with a bang. An article in today’s paper follows the Edwards love-child money right back to a wealthy Texan lawyer who may or may not have set both Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young up with their own representation but has only just remembered doing so, maybe.

The lawyers are linked through Fred Baron, a wealthy Dallas lawyer and former finance chairman for the Edwards campaign who was a key player in the campaign’s response to the scandal…After initially saying that he did not know how the lawyers were chosen to represent Ms. Hunter and Mr. Young, Mr. Baron acknowledged that he might have played a role.

It’s worth noting that one half of the byline on this investigative piece is Serge Kovaleski, the same reporter who uncovered the identity of Ashley Dupre, and if we recall correctly, he also broke the Woody Allen, Soon-Yi debacle back in 1992.

Ever wonder what would happen if politicians threw a convention and nobody covered it? Not that it matters since it’s unlikely we’ll ever find out in a 24 hour media age where even the most pathetic minutae is worthy of reportage (we use that term loosely), but it’s something that Slate‘s Jack Shafer is advocating (he’s also convinced the reason John Edwards isn’t being given a speech slot this year is because “voters finally want to hear him talk”).

If the political press corps were honest, they’d start every convention story with the finding that nothing important happened that day and that your attention is not needed…Instead, they satisfy themselves by being the co-producers of a bad reality-TV show about the coronation of a man who would be king.

So why don’t they? Because, it’s a party!

It’s like a vacation, only no spouses! There’s free food, plenty of booze, nice hotels, lots of pals in the press and politics dishing gossip, and the assignment is easy to report. Ferguson concludes that political conventions exist only to make the second convention — the “journalists’ convention” — possible.

A number of other people appear to concur with the latter, and judging by how many Denver event invites have landed in our inbox they seem to be correct. However, if Forbes is correct, it’s going to a smaller “second” convention than in year’s past since due to budget cuts everyone is sending less people. Anyway, does it matter? Maybe everyone should just take a page from NBC’s Olympic coverage and call it live from a television in the basement thousands of miles away.

And just like that John Edwards ceases to be the biggest asshole in his own love-child scandal.

I’ve got a theory about the motivations. Well, I don’t know that I could — I don’t know that I can put this one on the air…We know — we’ve been told that Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards. That’s part of the puff pieces on them that we’ve seen. Ergo, if Elizabeth Edwards is smarter than John Edwards, is it likely that she thinks she knows better than he does what his speeches ought to contain and what kind of things he ought to be doing strategy-wise in the campaign? If she is smarter than he is, could it have been her decision to keep going with the campaign? In other words, could it be that she doesn’t shut up? Now, that’s as far as I’m going to go…It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk…my theory that I just explained to you about why — you know, what could have John Edwards‘ motivations been to have the affair with Rielle Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk.

Let the rationalizing begin! After the John Edwards story officially broke last Friday — running almost non-stop on every cable channel — many news organizations are now in the process of trying to explain why it took them so long to take up a story initially reported by the National Enquirer last December. The general consensus seems to be that the reluctance may have been less about an overriding sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards than the fact that no one wanted to dirty their hand on a Enquirer story. Well he who laughs last laughs loudest as they say, and, as the WSJ points out the NI actually has a history of breaking stories (remember Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones?) so arguably people should have been less wary about getting their hands dirty.

On CNN’s Reliable Sources Salon‘s Joan Walsh said it was more a matter of there not being enough sources, even anonymous ones. CNN’s Jessica Yellin concurred but also pointed out (and we think she probably makes a very good point here) that if the media had been in “hot pursuit of the story and pushing it and putting it on the airwaves at that time, we would have gotten lambasted for ignoring a war, ignoring a tanking economy, and all these issues that matters to voters.” For his part Howie Kurtz says the situation became “ludicrous” and basically turned into “a conspiracy of silence by the media.” That said, up until today the majority of the NYT print coverage was relegated to the Caucus blog, the op-ed pages and a Week in Review story about disgraced politicians and television written by Alessandra Stanley (according to public editor Clark Hoyt the Times never even made “serious effort to investigate the story”). Of course, you may have also heard that Russia is in the midst of launching a war.

Try to contain your shock. From ABC:

John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.

In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.

Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.

Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby’s birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father.

But here’s the really sickening part.

Edwards made a point of telling Woodruff that his wife’s cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Hunter. Elizabeth Edwards has since been diagnosed with an incurable form of the disease.

The game of chicken being played between the mainstream media and the National Enquirer et. al. (read: the North Carolina News&Observer and the blogosphere) over whether or not to the John Edwards “love child” story entered a new stage today with the publication of photos that allegedly show Edwards with holding the baby in question. With the Olympics about to take over all news coverage for the next two weeks, it looks like Edwards might get a further reprieve from the spotlight, however with the continued attention of the Enquirer not to mention online heavy weights like Mickey Kaus and Jack Shafer, one imagines the MSM will be forced to cover it eventually. That said, at what point does the MSM, such at is it, stop being the measure of real news? When was the last time the networks told us something we didn’t already know?

Heard the one about John Edwards and his love child? Well if you haven’t maybe it’s because you are a victim of the mainstream media’s evil liberal bias. Over at Slate Jack Shafer is taking the press to task for refusing to report Monday’s National Enquirer‘s Edwards love-child story. If Larry Craig was fair game for all what makes Edwards so special? Isn’t he also a hypocrite who deserves the same over the coals treatment at Craig received last year. Why the kid-glove treatment? Is this maybe less about a liberal bias than a homosexual one? Lord knows middle-aged politicians cheating on their wives is a entirely novel story-line.

At least three-dozen daily newspapers in the United States published the Craig news the day after the Roll Call scoop…but this morning not a single U.S. daily mentioned the Enquirer piece…Or are they observing a double standard that says homo-hypocrisy is indefensible but that hetero-hypocrisy deserves an automatic bye?

Is is sort of amazing that in this age of the endless news cycle this story didn’t garner anything resembling mainstream coverage, however!, with the entire American Press corps following a certain Senator on his world tour we imagine it’s hard to keep up.

SCORE: Elizabeth Edwards 1, Ann Coulter 0.

MEDIA PROGRAMMING NOTE: John Edwards is scheduled to appear on today’s Hardball to talk about Coulter-Edwards I.

America Ferrera and John Mayer

It’s arguably the most exclusive magazine party of the year. (Graydon Carter‘s Vanity’s Fair Oscar party perhaps being the other.) John Edwards mingled with John Mayer. Sir Richard Branson (just back from dogsledding in Alaska) commandeered the corner of the bar like a Virgin spaceship, and allowed Henry Kissinger to ride co-pilot. Craigslist’s Craig Newmark chatted up Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales. New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick walked through the cocktail hour unrecognized. Michael J. Fox, too, virtually unnoticed, chatted with Elizabeth Vargas near the glass window overlooking Central Park. Arianna Huffington was noticed. (Line uttered in every pre-dinner conversation: “Is that someone? It looks like someone, I don’t know … do you?”)

Time Warner execs — like Richard Parsons and Jeffrey Bewkes — buzzed along the edges as the usual media-on-media action (including Ad Age‘s Nat Ives, WWD‘s Stephanie Smith, Jossip’s David Hauslaib, New York mag’s Jesse Oxfeld, Gawker’s Lockhart Steele and Doree Shafrir, ETP’s Rachel Sklar, Glynnis MacNicol, Julia Allison, Radar‘s Jeff Bercovici, NYO‘s Michael Calderone) made nice use of the open bar.

But as much firepower as there was at last night’s Time 100 party at Jazz at Lincoln Center, just 36 of the 100 to make 2007′s “most influential people in the world” list made it, and there were plenty of notable no-shows: No Obama. No Borat. No Queen of England. Rosie. No Leo. No Gore. No Timberlake. No Tyra.

But impassioned speeches — delivered over dinner by Elizabeth Edwards, Brian Williams, Bloomberg (with an ode to late Boston Celtics’ exec Red Auerbach — huh?) Branson and others — and a three-song set by Mayer more than made up for the relative lack of A-listers.

Others spotted during cocktail hour: Cate Blanchett, Mayor Bloomberg, Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan, Simon Fuller, Charlie Rose, Tina Fey, Mario Cuomo, Martha Stewart, Brian Grazer, Gayle King (no Oprah), Matt Lauer, Chris Matthews, Brian Williams, Ziyi Zhang, Police Commisioner Ray Kelly, Suzanne Vega, Harvey Weinstein, David Lauren and Lauren Bush.

FishbowlNY’s Coverage Of Last Year’s Time 100:

Inside the Time 100 Party

Diddy’s Time 100 Posse Bigger Than Most Posses

Time 100: The Most Influential People in the Room

More photos:

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