John Edwards abused his loyal aide Andrew Young beyond reason, making him play gopher during his affair with Rielle Hunter and then convincing him to say the baby was his. And still, in his new tell-all book The Politician, Young is apparently harder on Elizabeth than he is on John. Young is filled with “rancor” toward Elizabeth, one early account says. He paints her as “obsessive” and “paranoid,” a micro-manager who fired staff for petty reasons, held grudges, and constantly left furious voice mails on Young’s wife’s cell phone calling Young a liar and cheater and Hunter a "completely crazy, desperate, pathetic woman."

Has ever a woman been tortured to such a degree? There must be something to these accounts, since they all sound the same. But they only make me pity her more. Clearly, she was a woman driven to insanity, our own American Medusa, a beautiful maiden transformed by the abuse of men into a poisonous monster. Listen to this conversation between Young and Edwards in the final days of their waning friendship:

"Elizabeth's taken all my keys."

"Elizabeth's taken all your keys?" I wanted to embarrass him by making him explain.

"Yeah, and she's got me sleeping in the barn. She yells at me all night, and when I sleep she gets in my face and screams."

Some more revelations:

—Edwards said he would never seek a divorce, because he still loved Elizabeth "in certain ways."

—John had a private phone for Rielle called the “Batphone.”

—Edwards buys HairTec Thick & Strong Shampoo by the case.

—Hunter employed her own personal guru named "Bob" who was present at her daughter's birth, and often refused to stay in hotel rooms because they possessed "bad energy."

—She believed Frances Quinn was "some kind of golden child, the reincarnated spirit of a Buddhist monk who was going to help save the world."

—Hunter had no health insurance, one of Edwards’ obsessions.

—Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton phoned his wife to say they were sorry about what was happening and to tell her she was in their prayers. Bill Clinton, a veteran of his own sexual disgrace and attempted cover-up, called Edwards and said, in effect, "How'd you get caught?"

Correction, Jan. 28, 2010: This post originally incorrectly called Andrew Young's book The Candidate.

Tags: andrew young, Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards, the Candidate

Jessica, the iPad's name may be unfortunate, but to my eyes, it also looks incredibly cool. As a hopeless Apple-phile, I admittedly want one (in my dreams). On the plus side, it seems to take us one step closer to all those sci-fi movies in which people control their computers by manipulating holograms in space with their hands. But it certainly isn't going to relieve anyone's concerns about how we're all becoming too plugged into technology. Maybe this is just a tie-in for Pixar (which Steve Jobs founded), but the thing looks disturbingly like the devices the blob-people all carried around and stared into, blankly, on the spaceship in the second half of Wall-E. I thought that was a dystopian fantasy, but if the iPad fulfills our every need, as Jobs, with his typical hyperbole, makes me half believe, then why would we ever put one down? The thing is so cool it actually scares me. I think I'm going to go hug my daughter just now, to remind myself of what's really real.

Photograph of iPad by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Tags: Apple, iPad, Pixar, steve jobs, Wall-E

I’ve always believed that a person who claims to give a crap about the environment should buy less, buy used, and wean herself off the wear-and-toss roundelay. When I’m feeling particularly ninnyish (after walking through SoHo, for example, where my greenwash-o-meter goes berserk) I might suggest to the mindful eco-shopper that she brush up on fabrics and the basics of fabrication—i.e., learn how to evaluate what she’s buying rather than trusting garment labels and “tips” from lifestyle journalists. But this isn't fun. It isn’t shopping; it’s study.

There are many do-good fashion companies out there. Loomstate and Edun are two of them. But the fact is that fashion is a business, quite possibly the most complex industry in the world, even. The supply chain—the “biography” of a garment from Monsanto to the Mall of America—is Byzantine and, because of this, inscrutable. The information we have to go on is based almost entirely on ad campaigns that are buttressed by a self-serving and unquestioning "lifestyle" press. So most of us know zilch about the clothes on our backs, other than who designed them. The designer's lifestyle, the lifestyle of fans and actresses, and the art direction of the brandare all we have to go on.

So, as with the bamboo snafu a few months ago, I wasn’t surprised when I read that 30 percent of the so-called organic cotton used by H&M, C&M, and Tchibo is “sullied” with the conventionally grown, genetically-modified variety. According to Eco Textile News, fashion’s vast, global supply-chain relies on third-party certification agencies like EcoCert and Control Union to keep an eye on the, uh, complexity. A network this distended is ripe for fraud:

The GM cotton found in the brand's collections has been traced back to India which now supplies nearly half of the global supply of organic cotton. According to Organic Exchange figures - to be released shortly - India produced 61% of the total amount of organic cotton produced in 2008/09 with some 107,000 tonnes of fibre out of the total 175,113 tonnes grown worldwide.

There has been a strong suggestion in the sustainable textile industry that all has not been well in certain sections of the Indian organic cotton sector for some time. Reports from reliable, trusted organizations and producer groups about fraud within the Indian sector of the organic cotton industry have been common-place.

Also in annoying fashion news: France is considering subsidizing the fashion industry with a “fashion bank” that would see the French fashion industry through these lean times, according to Reuters.

“I want Paris to remain the world's capital of fashion," French Industry Minister Christian Estrosi told journalists on Monday. "Today, we need people to share the risks."

Can somebody please explain the purpose of bailing out an industry whose sole purpose is to be timely, relevant, and trend-setting? If there is insufficient demand for French fashion, doesn’t that mean that said fashion providers have, uh, FALLEN OUT OF FASHION?

Tags: control union, eco chic, ecocert, fashion banks, fashion fraud, h&m, organic cotton

It was announced earlier today that Apple's wonder-device will be called the iPad. The name ushers in an entire crop of sad-but-funny comparisons.

A trending topic on Twitter this afternoon has been #iTampon, only surprising because #iPad has not been trending. It seems many people—including CNBC anchors and Jezebel scribes—are making the connnection between feminine care products and the iPad. One user, @johnpapa, went so far as to say, the "64 gig iPad will forever be known as the heavy flow model."

Clearly Apple needs to employ a few more females in the creative advertising department. Where's Peggy Olson when you need her?

Tags: Apple, iPad, iTampon, trending topics, twitter, unfortunate names

By way of the NYT's book blog comes this question from January magazine: Should kids' books be rated? Novelist Tony Buchsbaum was reading a review copy of a new YA novel, Will Dutton, Will Dutton, containing this riveting IM exchange:

boundbydad: thrust your fierce quivering manpole at me, stud

grayscale: your dastardly appendage engorges me with hellfire

boundbydad: my search party is creeping into your no man’s land

grayscale: baste me like a thanksgiving turkey!!!

Buchsbaum doesn't give any context for it, so I don't know if it's crude joking or a strikingly unsexy example of IM sex. What I do know is that he doesn't want his 14-year-old son reading it—or, at least, reading it without him knowing that the book was chock full of such language. Apparently it's a comic novel—not something that you'd immediately assume required the kind of adult supervision of, say, an after-school special on incest. So I can see his concern, and I can understand the knee-jerk reaction: If my kid is reading this, I want to know about it! But I think he's wrong. For one thing, I agree with the publisher's defense of the language—I suspect kids 14-and-up do "use this sort of language all the time." To me, it's just the kind of mocking, crass-but-kinda-creative talk a teenager might throw around, both to show he's cool and he "gets it," and just to take some of the shock value of this sort of thing and seize it for his own. As it happens, I just connected (thanks, Facebook) with some of the rudest, crudest teenage boys a girl ever had the privilege to know from my own youth, and this is just the kind of stuff they tossed around back then.

More importantly, this language, this attitude, this content, if you will—it's out there. Buchsbaum compares rating books to rating TV shows or movies, but I'd argue that the same content, in those contexts, is far more powerful. There's a big difference in reading about that "quivering manpole" alone and figuring it out and, as a teen, coming to terms with how you feel about the manpole, the word manpole, and its very quivering, and seeing it on the screen in a room full of parents or peers. That's why books are special, and that's why they should never be rated or censored. A book is the best way to come across something scary, shocking, or just new, and learn how to handle it yourself.

Tags: books, ratings

The NYT will be live-blogging Apple's announcement of its latest creation at 1:00 p.m. ET today, and I, a gadget-girl from my first Palm to my 3Gs (how many people do you know who actually own a Chumby?), will absolutely be watching. But the more I've thought about it, the more redundant I fear the the iBigFlatThing may be for me. I like my iPhone, my Kindle, my laptop. They do what I need them to do. I'm not sure I need a new gadget that combines some, but probably not all, elements of each of the three. But if Apple's history is any guide, I'm bound to want it. And it's their job to make sure it does something I haven't even realized I desperately need yet. I can't wait to find out what it is.

Remember when we didn't think a phone needed to be a camera? Ah, the olden days.

So your older sister is a top-tier recording artist, a mononymous household name, and married to Jay-Z. How do you cope? Besides enrolling in dentistry school, the one tried-and-true path to younger-sibling success—and independent stardom—is diverging from the mainstream path. Think Ashlee Simpson. Sister Jessica hit it big in the late '90s with a stream of chart-topping, sugary pop tunes and an infamous MTV reality show, but when Ashlee entered the scene she chose to go less bubblegum and more brat. Her first album showcased singles like "La La" with quasi-tough girl lyrics, "You can throw me like a boomerang. I'll come back and beat you up," while Jessica was busy doing light-rock radio covers like "Take My Breath Away." Obviously Ashlee Simpson is more Avril Lavigne lite than Black Flag punk, but, you know, it's all in comparison.

Enter Solange Knowles, Beyonce's little sister. She already has one album under her belt, along with a cover of hipster-song of the moment "Stillness Is the Move." Last night at Highline Ballroom she appeared on stage with indie darlings Of Montreal, looking far more L train than hip-hop, and performed a cover of "I Want You Back." It was fairly awesome.

Tags: beyonce, siblings, solange knowles

The most interesting part of the “dog politics” piece Lauren mentions is, I think, the suggestion that supporters of mandatory neutering laws are unknowingly promoting a dysgenic breeding program. “The thing about mandatory spay-neuter,” an animal-welfare expert tells John Homans, “is that those who are most willing to have their dogs spayed or neutered tend to be responsible people. And often, their dogs also happen to be nice animals in temperament. So what you’re doing essentially is taking those dogs out of the breeding population.” Another expert calls this potentially “catastrophic,” suggesting that as we waste our time debating “homeland security” a super-race of feral pit bulls will quietly rise against us. Thanks, Humane Society.

Also interesting is how Homans’ piece reflects the deep intuitions he sets about critiquing. There is the persistent question of what a dog is “worth” and whether it is unseemly to spend many thousands on the care and feeding of a pup. We are told that a friend spent $14,000 on a sick dog that couldn’t be saved. When his own dog goes down, Homans notes that it is in “a hospital they’d be happy to have in Darfur.”

People tend to get moralistic about the pampering of pets. I don’t mean to pick on Homans; I share his intuitions. But there is something odd about the way the mind veers suddenly from a poodle’s MRI toward Darfur’s poor. Money is fungible. Countless purchases middle class Americans make start to look bad when you compare their value to helping starving Africans. Do you need that organic produce? That Netflix subscription? Think of Darfur! The same money that buys a game system can buy clean water for people going without, but we leave the Wii without comment while looking with scorn at people who bring their terriers to day spas. I suspect the reason for our moralism is something very close to what Homans is worrying over—dogs are in some sense substitute humans, not quite deserving of human status, and easily assumed to be hogging human resources. The innocent doggy stroller is taken to be responsible for all the strollerless babies out there.

Anyway, this was mostly an excuse to link to the classic “Your Dog Wants a Massage," starring Henry Wrinkler.

Photograph of dog in stroller by Chris McGrath/Getty Images.

Tags: dogs, pets

Gayle Haggard is making the press rounds this week to promote her new book, Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour. Gayle is the wife of New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard, who was caught having an affair with a gay prostitute and using meth. On the Today Show this morning, Gayle said that her marriage is "better than it's ever been," after going through years of therapy with Ted. Ted told Oprah yesterday that since he started therapy, he has not had "one compulsive thought or behavior," and bragged about all the sex he and Gayle are having. Though the American Psychological Association has rejected "gay therapy," meant to cure people of homosexuality, apparently the Haggards believe it works.

Gayle told Meredith Vieira that she thinks that Ted has been cured of his homosexual urges, and that she believes that "sexuality is conditioned." This is an issue that's currently being discussed in the California gay marriage trial, and according to the New Yorker's Margaret Talbot (and DoubleX contributor), "The idea that homosexuality is a choice, or a lifestyle, is a crucial element of the conservative argument that marriage equality is not a civil-rights issue." Though Gayle Haggard says that she was able to change her mind about her husband, it's unfortunate that her beliefs about homosexuality haven't budged a bit.

Tags: gayle haggard, ted haggard, why I stayed: choices I made in my darkest hour