The Scams, Scandals, Hoaxes, Frauds and Pranks of August

--7 Aug. 2008
John Edwards: The Picture of a Scandal: New developments in the story that cannot be reported.
"We're working off our timetable, not yours," says David Perel, editor of The National Enquirer. "I'm not letting other media drive the story for us." Perel is talking about the issue of whether the Enquirer should have published, by now, photos of a July 22 confrontation in a Los Angeles hotel between its reporters and former Sen. John Edwards. Edwards had, the Enquirer reported, come to the Beverly Hilton to see a woman named Rielle Hunter, with whom he has had an affair and a baby. In an almost surreal scene described on the Enquirer's website, Edwards was said to have fled to a men's room, pushing against a door while the reporters pushed and asked questions from the other side.
--Byron York, National Review

--11 Aug. 2008
Some Beijing Olympic Fireworks Faked
Because one organization is responsible for filming the Olympics--Beijing Olympic Broadcasting--foreign TV networks had no choice but to accept the altered video. Some of the fireworks seen in television coverage of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics games in Beijing were created digitally, according to a report in The Beijing Times. Twenty-nine fiery footsteps traced in the air above Bird's Nest National Stadium were created using real fireworks. But The Telegraph in the U.K. reports that because event organizers feared they would be unable to capture the pyrotechnics live on camera, a digital effects team spent almost a year preparing a computerized version of the 55-second footstep sequence, which was inserted into the live video feed.
--Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek

--12 Aug. 2008
China Had "Cute" Girl Mime Opening Ceremony After Singer Banned For Crooked Teeth
BEIJING -- A 7-year-old Chinese girl was not good-looking enough for the Olympics opening ceremony, so another little girl with a pixie smile lip-synched "Ode to the Motherland," a ceremony official said--the latest example of the lengths Beijing took for a perfect start to the Summer Games. A member of China's Politburo asked for the last-minute change to match one girl's face with another's voice, the ceremony's chief music director, Chen Qigang, said in an interview with Beijing Radio. "The audience will understand that it's in the national interest," Chen said in a video of the interview posted online Sunday night.
--Cara Anna, Associated Press