Two Day Magazine

Happy quarto de Mayo, everybody!

Happy quarto de Mayo, everybody! It time for another (a)rousing edition of the Hollywood Outsider, twodaymag's weekly tour through the pop culture jungle given by the least qualified tour guide on the web!

This week we see that it must be spring because love is in the air. Well, it must be late spring, because this is the crazy kind of love that ends with somebody in a court room facing a possible 30 year prison sentence.

An Update On The John Edwards Trial

This is not a political column, but politicians tend to make the news from time to time for reasons other than their policies (shocking, right?). So, this will focus on the “human” side of John Edwards’ affair.

The crazy, crazy, CRAZY human side.

For those who might be unaware, John Edwards (not to be confused with John Edward, the scam artist who "communicates" with the dead) was a senator and running mate to John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. During that campaign, he had an affair with a staffer - Rielle Hunter. He is currently standing trail for allegedly using campaign funds to hide the affair from his wife, who was alive at the time but battling cancer that eventually took her life.

It's a love story for the ages, the handsome and brave senator tries to escape the oppressive rule of his cancer-ridden wife (who probably nagged him all the time, "When are you going to get off your lazy ass and be president? NAG! NAG! NAG!"), and find true love in the arms of the beautiful blonde princess - who is just very spiritual and misunderstood, and isn't in any way crazy.

At least that's how the Outsider figures Edwards saw it.

Edwards, who's blood tests have shown and alarmingly high level of narcissism even for a politician, met Hunter at a NYC bar and hired her as a campaign videographer. According to another staffer, Edwards seemed to take a very intense interest in Hunter. So, the staffer checked into her background, finding a lot of sex, drugs, rock and roll and (most alarmingly) astrology.

Eventually the affair progressed - as they often do - to the point of a love child. Well, Edwards figured that wasn't going to look good since he was a politician and not an NFL running back. So he decided to do what all values-oriented politicians do in this situation: Cover that shit up.

He paid best friend, Andrew Young, to take Hunter into his home and claim the baby was his. Young's wife Cheri has recently testified on some of the habits of Hunter.

Perhaps the best story was when Hunter got the wrong dressing on her Reuben sandwich (personal note: a very tasty sandwich when done right); she had to call her spiritual advisor on the best way to respond. Now the Outsider is nowhere near qualified to give spiritual advice to anyone, but if Hunter had called him, this would have been the Outsider's response:

"Uh, you're currently carrying a married man's baby and living with his friend in a large attempt to hide it from his wife and the general public. If whatever God we're talking about here doesn't care about that, it's a safe bet he or she doesn't give a shit about what you do with that sandwich."

Eventually, the National Enquirer (the country's real paper of record) found out about Edwards affair and published a story on it. Hunter wanted to respond by issuing a straight denial, then following with a counter statement that she had been abducted by aliens. The Outsider read the ABC news article three times and cannot, for the life of him, figure out what that statement would have accomplished.

Hunter did eventually release a denial sans aliens, but the damage from the Enquirer article had already been done. Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards had seen it, which lead to a total meltdown in an airport, complete with her tearing her shirt and bra off.

At first glance it would appear Edwards has a thing for crazy women, but in the case of Elizabeth, the Outsider thinks she deserves some slack here. It's easy to imagine that with the stress of a national campaign, fighting terminal cancer and then learning from the true paper of record that your husband is banging somebody who needs spiritual advice about her sandwiches, would make anyone tear their shirt off in an airport.

Hell, the TSA alone is enough to make people tear their clothes off in airports.

Now the Edwards camp's main defense is to make former friend Andrew Young and his wife look like shitty people who are just out to get him, and that they were only friends with him in the first place because of their own ambitions.

All of that is probably true, but it makes a poor defense because it falls under the well established "Law of Shitty Averages" which states that a shitty person is highly likely to have shitty friends, but the level of shittiness of the friends has no diminishing effect on the shittiness of the original person. In other words, Andrew Young might be a selfish, bad person, that doesn't make any of his accusations untrue.

Finally this brings up a much larger and more important point of, is this really any of our business? Truthfully, the Outsider is a strong believer in what happens in a person's private life should be private.

However, if the person is seeking public office and is illegally using funds to cover it up then, yes it kind of is our business. Having an affair shouldn't disqualify someone from public office, doing something illegal to be dishonest about it, probably should.

So the final answer is yes it is our business, but the Outsider really wishes it wasn't.

The Obama Love Diaries

Now let's move to the other side of the spectrum to our nation's current president. As far as marital infidelity is concerned, Obama strikes the Outsider as a pretty straight laced guy. But did you ever wonder what he was like as a young bachelor?

The Outsider really didn't, but since he was forced to find out, so are you!

Genevieve Cook dated the someday-to-be-president when he was 22-years-old and fresh out of Columbia University.

Cook, a 25-year-old grad student, kept a diary of that time and like most 25-year-old women's diaries, it's filled with flowery exaggerations suggesting a far more complex situation than was likely the truth.

Cook says things like (from Vanity Fair):

"Sunday, February 19:

‘Despite Barack’s having talked of drawing a circle around the tender in him—protecting the ability to feel innocence and springborn—I think he also fights against showing it to others, to me. I really like him more and more—he may worry about posturing and void inside but he is a brimming and integrated character.

Today, for the first time, Barack sat on the edge of the bed—dressed—blue jeans and luscious ladies on his chest [a comfy T-shirt depicting buxom women], the end of the front section of the Sunday Times in his hand, looking out the window, and the quality of light reflected from his eyes, windows of the soul, heart, and mind, was so clear, so unmasked, his eyes narrower than he usually holds them looking out the window, usually too aware of me.’

Saturday, February 25:

‘The sexual warmth is definitely there—but the rest of it has sharp edges and I’m finding it all unsettling and finding myself wanting to withdraw from it all. I have to admit that I am feeling anger at him for some reason, multi-stranded reasons. His warmth can be deceptive. Tho he speaks sweet words and can be open and trusting, there is also that coolness—and I begin to have an inkling of some things about him that could get to me.’  

Now this caused The Outsider to do some digging and after a few calls to some very important people, he managed to get a copy of Obama's diary from that time.*

He said the following:

"Oh God, we're more than a year into this and the crazy chick won't leave me alone. Don't get me wrong, she's a decent lay, but she keeps asking these weird questions about my plans for the future. I'm 22, give it a rest already. Everyone knows 22-year-old guys hate being asked about their future! I don't know how to get rid of her, I keep trying to ignore her and give her vague answers to everything she asks, but it appears to be having the opposite effect. She just thinks I'm that much more mysterious. Maybe I'll try telling her I'm too focused on life to be in a serious relationship? She won't take it personally if I tell her I'm having an identity crisis, right? My friend Dave tells me chicks usually buy that line."**

So there you have it. Even the president struggled with how to get rid of crazy girlfriends.

Is anyone else in the mood for a reuben?

*This is completely fabricated, please don't sue for defamation.

**Seriously

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