A story about a lost soul. So desperate for 'enlightenment' that it fails to be enlightened.

She sounds like a user. Like she uses clichés and people the way some use tissues.

And I read an article just yesterday that said that 'beer goggles' is a real phenomenon experienced in bars. And so is the morning after realization that you went home with 'that' I'd guess.

Perhaps she was a flame for the Edward's moth. Either way, Hunter is as shallow as a rain spot on a hot road. She wanted the 15-minutes of fame and now doesn't. Edwards wanted an escape and now is more trapped. That's life...

I think that line meant "in the more openly autobiographic later novel Poole was exactly as McInerney had described her in his earlier work"

It could have been more explicit perhaps but I got the idea. The "well-coiffed" line was sort of crappy, but what are you gonna do?

However this is my real question: So you think the fact that this article connects the character and a real person is somehow being hidden? Craftily camouflaged?

What part of "this article is about Rielle Hunter" is hard to grasp? The title, with Hunter's name in it? The lines about how several authors based their characters named "Allison Poole" on Hunter?

That Bright Lights novel was a bit of 80s fluff to be sure, but I found it funny. I see it very much like Tom Wolfe's fiction, bad fiction writing that nonetheless chronicles a world I didn't know, which makes it more interesting than a lot of other fluff out there. Both Wolfe and Mcinerny would be better off just doing journalism, something that Wolfe used to do very well before he became a bad novelist.

I don't think there was any notion in anyone's mind except yours that the writer here was using sneaky and snarky tricks to describe Rielle Hunter while pretending not to. I can't speak for others, but her photo at the top of the page was the first giveaway for me.

Why bother?

Party-girl daughter of sleazy, horse-slaughtering attorney leads life of dissolution and excess.

Slick trial lawyer with a streak of narcissism a mile wide (and who came within three percentage points of being vice president) latches onto said party girl to feed the yawning chasm of his ego.

Isn't this combination of dim-witted, useless rich and self-centered politician a perfect statement on what makes America tick?

we may have just dodged having another resident astrologer in the White House a la Nancy Reagan's. We may have dodged it by a lot, I mean he didn't necccesarily ever have that big a chance, but still.

Wow, I remember McInerney's book, that was Allison Poole? I remember sort of merging the character with the Allison evoked so well in the song of the same name by Elvis Costello, it made a nice soundtrack while reading it.

I always loved the hilarious last lines of that song (it had nothing to do with violence as some had surmised, "my aim is true" was about devotion, he said) which describe, in a self-deprecating way, that embarrasing condition of desiring someone who you think is sort of an idiot:

Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking

When I hear the silly things that you say

I think somebody better put out the big light

'Cause I can't stand to see you this way

Sounds like Edwards (and/or his enablers) just put a camcorder in Hunter's nimble hands so she'd have a pretext for following him around on the campaign trail. To refer to her as a filmmaker seems overgenerous, just as to pay her $100,000+ also seems excessive, given the services she was actually performing. Hunter is trash, John Edwards is trash. Roll the credits, already.

Maybe the term "Breck girl" was already is use elsewhere.

Translate: Goddam, you too-cool-for-school snarky Republican meme-monger.

And: "In 'Story of My Life,' Poole is exactly how McInerney describes her."

Holy cats, Justin. Do you mean that McInerney exactly described a character that he himself invented? He's one smart eighties writer, isn't he?

I hope you aren't doing something really spooky-subtle here--writing about a character based on a person and hoping that we'll think that you'r writing about the person herself.

That's not how fiction works and, I hope you'll realize, Justin, how honest journalism works.

Wow. Nicely done. Thank you very much.

It was cALLED "pINK fLAMINGOS."

Lots of editing glitches here, guys and gals, and what about:

"...but there are two separate men that could be the father."

Last time I looked, men were people, not things.

But then again Ms Poole says she never met any men.

Personally I found this article fascinating in a "six degrees of separation" kind of way.

Sometime around 1990, as a college student, I read "Story of My Life." Christmastime, 1996, I was living in Boulder when the JonBenet story broke and drippy Alex Hunter was all over the news. And now this with John Edwards. I mean, who could have guessed that those three things would somehow share a connection...

Personally I found this article fascinating in a "six degrees of separation" kind of way.

Sometime around 1990, as a college student, I read "Story of My Life." Christmastime, 1996, I was living in Boulder when the JonBenet story broke and drippy Alex Hunter was all over the news. And now this with John Edwards. I mean, who could have guessed that those three things would somehow share a connection...

What a piece of poorly reported dreck! As we've seen elsewhere on the web, Hunter (as Lisa Hunter) did have some tiny roles in feature films, but she was never "enscounced" in the film industry.

Did Jouvenal just take a quick tour through Google and cut and paste some old stories, a new conversation with O'Brien (who spoke to Salon, but to whom?) and some blog posts together and call it work? This is really lame.

Lisa...Rielle...honey:

Enough with the coke and f*cking around and acting classes and gurus. Please try to contribute something to this world before you kick off. And no, having a politician's baby, or the politician's aide's baby, doesn't count.

Why do people like this exist? I think we can safely lump Monica Lewinsky into this category--although it seems she's moved on from wallowing in self-imposed victimhood celebrity. Where do they come from? Don't they feel guilty about all the problems and damage they inflict from their selfish, destructive behavior? Why do we give them time on TV or space in newspaper print?

I really, really wish that this country gets over its repressed fascination with sex and especially celebrity sex. Sex is a natural impulse and with precautions taken it's safe, healthy, normal and a private matter. But we go nuts when a politician's caught with dropped trou. Does playing this "gotcha" game make for better policy, elect better leaders or improve the effectiveness of our governments? Guess not.

Maybe we should all stop worrying about who's sleeping with who and Girls Gone Wild and focus on keeping our country from roaring over the goddamned cliff...