You know the drill: It all starts with the seductive glare of the klieg lights and the flashbulbs, followed by the ever-present entourage — stylists, publicists, various hangers-on — and the next thing you know, there’s a sex tape and someone’s career will never be the same … as a politician, that is.

That might have been a description of the latest antics of one of any of those celebrities-for-no-good-reason that pepper the pages of your garden-variety supermarket tabloid, but in this case, it’s about former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards. According to his apparently disillusioned former aide Andrew Young, Edwards and his ex-mistress, Rielle Hunter, made a sex tape together that Young and his wife discovered in a rented North Carolina house where Hunter had stayed for part of 2007. Now, Hunter is trying to block Young from releasing any video clips or stills to the public as she raises her and Edwards’ infant daughter, Frances Quinn.

There are a number of possible take-aways from this sad story, but for starters, the importance of keeping up good relations with those you ask to do your dirty work might be one of them. Young is currently on a media tour promoting his book, “The Politician,” about his years of working with Edwards and his eventual falling out with the titular legislator. –KA

ABC News:

“There was one tape that was marked ‘special,’ ” Andrew Young told ABC News’ Bob Woodruff in an exclusive interview, describing his discovery of a tape in Hunter’s trash. “It’s a sex tape of Rielle and John Edwards made just a couple of months before the Iowa caucuses.”

Though Young never saw the woman’s face in the tape, he said she was “visibly pregnant” and was “wearing a bracelet” and a “thumb ring” typically worn by Rielle Hunter.

“It’s her jewelry,” Andrew Young’s wife, Cheri, told ABC News. “It could be on another woman with the same jewelry.”

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