A reminder not to get too carried away with praising the National Enqurier's credibility--especially when it comes to "love child" stories:
The tabloid, which is being celebrated for scooping the mainstream media on the John Edwards mistress
story, has quietly settled a lawsuit filed by a Cape Cod woman who
claimed the Enquirer published false and defamatory stories about her
supposed "love child" with Senator Ted Kennedy.
Lawyers for Caroline Bilodeau-Allen provided DNA test results from 1985 that show Kennedy is not the father of Christopher Bilodeau, who was born in 1984....
The
stories, published in 2006, alleged that Kennedy and Bilodeau - she was
unmarried at the time - began dating in 1983, while Kennedy was
separated from his wife, Joan, just before the
divorce was finalized. The tabloid claimed that after Bilodeau became
pregnant, the senator, then in his early 50s, begged Bilodeau, then in
her early 20s, to have an abortion.
Bilodeau-Allen subsequently sued American Media and two of its reporters, Richard Moriarty and Alan Butterfield, who is one of the reporters writing about Edwards's affair with Rielle Hunter.
That said, I somehow doubt this is enough to get Edwards off the hook. But a DNA test might!
--Michael Crowley