Femme fatale Rielle Hunter

An extramarital affair that left an especially bad taste in the mouth of America was carried on between Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards of North Carolina and a woman named Rielle Hunter, whose birth name was Lisa Jo Druck. For a politician to jump into bed with a blonde is nothing new, but in this case Edwards, who had cultivated a boyish, squeaky-clean image, did the naughty deed while his wife, Elizabeth, was fighting breast cancer.

The name Hunter came by way of Lisa's 1994 marriage, which ended in 2000. The new first name, Rielle, was probably picked to stand out. Hunter had acted in a couple of movies just before and just after 1990, and a few years later she moved from acting to running her own film production company. It was through this company that she met the smiley, mop-haired Edwards, whose fame came from his remarkably successful career as an attorney.

Hunter began producing campaign videos for Edwards, and soon was producing more than that. Their affair came to public light in 2007 in the National Enquirer tabloid. Hunter was pregnant at that time and cited Edwards staffer Andrew Young (not THE Andrew Young) as the child's father. Inquiring minds wanted to know more, and suspicious minds assumed that Young, also a married man, was "taking the bullet" for the boss.

Edwards finally fessed up to the affair but denied paternity of Hunter's daughter. Celebrity Blogsburg has no idea which version is correct but suggests checking out the child's hair when the tyke gets older.

Elizabeth Edwards showed great strength during this ordeal and deserves considerable admiration. The disgraced John, who had just built his family the biggest house in the county while campaigning as an advocate for the "little people," also appears to have ponied up to finance a new life for Hunter and her baby in, as V.P. Dick Cheney liked to put it, an undisclosed location.

The snares of political power can be awfully ugly.