Edwards says in the updated version of her book released Tuesday that she spent two years trying to "reinvent" her role as a wife so that they could stay together despite the affair. But she says the "tender thread" holding the family together unraveled at the very end of 2009 -- three years after John Edwards first told his wife in private that he'd had a one-night stand with a videographer.

"One day, I did not want to try anymore," she said.

The couple has since separated and he acknowledged fathering a child with mistress Rielle Hunter during his 2008 campaign for the White House. The 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee also acknowledged a federal investigation into his campaign funds, with former campaign aide Andrew Young saying a grand jury asked questions about money used to keep Hunter in hiding during the presidential race.

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Nothing about Rielle Hunter's decision to sit down with Winfrey on Thursday was a good idea.

Hunter repeatedly claimed that she was doing this to correct a flawed public record about herself. And I can see it, can stretch far enough into the heart-wants-what-the-heart-wants school of domestic complexity to consider that during this turgid scandal, in which Hunter carried on an affair with Edwards while his wife was battling cancer and he was running for president, Hunter might have gotten the fuzzy end of the press's lollipop, that the enforced silence might have left her misrepresented as the heat-seeking, home-wrecking strumpet of our pulp fictive fantasies.

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"It is not my experience that a third party wrecks a home," Rielle Hunter told Winfrey. "I believe the problems exist before a third party comes into the picture."

"So you don't think you wrecked his home?" Winfrey asked Hunter.

"I do not believe I wrecked his home," Hunter said.

Hunter's appearance on Winfrey's show is her first televised interview since the former North Carolina senator first admitted two years ago that he had an affair with her. In January, Edwards said he and Hunter have a 2-year-old daughter after initially denying it. He and his wife, Elizabeth Edwards are now separated.

Hunter told Winfrey she believes people see her negatively because of the affair.

"A lot of people bought into the myth of the marriage, the Edwards' marriage as being a storybook story and it was so perfect and so wonderful and I destroyed it," Hunter said. "It fits into the two-dimensional story line."

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And it gets worse. I feel bad for Rielle Hunter. I don't think she's a villain, a slut, an animal huntress who preyed on the slimy husband of a sick woman. I think she's dizzyingly naive and the ultimate product of the 90s New Age movement: someone who really thinks Being Is Free, that there's no cost higher than the cost of not being yourself. You put that woman anywhere near John Edwards, whose core belief seems to be that Being Is Whatever It Takes To Be President, and you're going to get not only fireworks but also first-degree burns.

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This happened. Like, this photograph actually exists, people.

Beyond that head-shaker, there is the revelation that Hunter -- who seems every bit the self-righteous, self-mythologizing New Age kook she's been portrayed as during her years of media silence -- fancies herself as a romance guru, a mistress turned relationship expert. Her romantic approach can be most succinctly summed up as: the exact opposite of Elizabeth Edwards'. In Hunter's view, she has gotten right everything that Elizabeth got wrong. Johnny, as she calls him throughout the interview, is 100 percent truthful with her, Hunter says, because "he has no fear that I'm going to abuse him." She continues:

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The man who there but for the grace of God might have been our Democratic presidential contender made a sex tape with his mistress Rielle Hunter? He allegedly was mixed up in domestic altercations?  It's enough to make one beg for fresh revelations from Charlie Sheen and Tila Tequila.

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But John Edwards really may have done it.

That's what Andrew Young, a former aide, has been claiming. And now, with Young -- who, to cover up for his boss, initially claimed Edwards' daughter with Rielle Hunter was his -- publishing a tell-all and doing a big interview with ABC News, there's new information that adds some credibility to his claim.

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Why admit it now? Why not just keep clinging to the fiction, secure in the knowledge that no one believed him anyway? Well, a spokesman told Politico it was because, "There was just a lot of stuff that needed to be figured out. There were a lot of kids to talk to, which is not an easy thing ... The whole question of the child support agreement — that was what triggered this particular timing. That was the last piece."

It's certainly possible that's true. But there appears to be a much likelier explanation: Edwards' former aide Andrew Young, the one who initially claimed Quinn Hunter was his child in an attempt to shield his boss, has a tell-all book coming out soon. And one week from Friday, Young's interview with ABC News' "20/20" was scheduled to air.

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What finally pushed Elizabeth over the edge? According to an unnamed source, it was the allegations soon to be published in a tell-all memoir by former campaign aide Andrew Young -- the same married father of three who briefly covered for Edwards by claiming he was the father of Rielle Hunter's child -- that Hunter "wasn't the only woman [Edwards] seduced on the campaign trail." If that were true, the source says, "she'd have to divorce him, because then he'd be a ‘serial cheater.'"

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Sure,  take it all with a grain of salt or ten: This is the National Enquirer --  but that's the pub that broke news of the affair, and it hasn't been wrong about the story yet. If the report proves true, then we can finally end this charade about "who's really the dad," and families can start healing, and long-suffering wives can start accepting, and politicians can stop lying -- or, at the very least, child support arrangements can be made, stat.

Last Thursday, as War Room reported, Hunter testified in front of a grand jury to determine whether or not campaign funds were illegally funneled to her. So the twists may keep coming, but perhaps one chapter is (dare we dream?) closed.

At this time, Edwards has no plans, sadly, to appear on Maury Povich.

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Grand jury proceedings are secret, so thus far no one's been able to confirm that Hunter -- who brought her daughter, Frances, allegedly her child with Edwards -- was actually there to testify. But the grand jury had just reconvened, and it's not as if she could just sit and watch the proceedings.

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"Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me," Stephanopoulos reported.

"They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign."

If it's true, this is pretty amazing; perhaps even unprecedented. Of course, it could also be a bit of ass-covering from people who want to continue careers in politics and have seen the reaction to the news that Edwards went ahead and ran even though he knew his affair could leak.

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I am not the only person wondering, this week, as we commence one of the most sadomasochistic publicity jaunts in political history, what on earth Edwards is trying to accomplish by holding forth about her personal pain and exposing herself and her family not only to further gossip and humiliation, but to political censure. Her conversation with Oprah (which was so raw and extensive that at one point it made me do something a talk show never has: heave a monstrous and unwilling sob) was a good reminder of why Elizabeth is such a compelling player in this drama, and, alas, offered an opportunity to guess at some twistingly sad answers.

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The National Enquirer was the first to report the story, which has since been picked up by outlets in North Carolina, Edwards' home and the reported location of the grand jury. The tabloid is often thought of as untrustworthy, but it has a solid record on these types of stories, and it consistently led other media outlets in reporting Edwards' affair.

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