Justin Timberlake & Amanda Seyfried | Michael Thompson | W October 2011

In between five — count them — five televised Republican debates for an election that’s over a year away, W magazine enters the political arena with its own candidate for president. Meet Justin Timberlake and his would-be first lady Amanda Seyfried.

Like so many powerful men, the new president Lake (Timberlake) seeks solace with another woman, suggesting that fashion has become its own political reality show. This editorial comes with the big tabloid bust.

Inspired by the Michael Thompson editorial, we decided to check in with some of 2011’s alleged bad boys.

Anthony Weiner

The former New York Congressman, who resigned in June over tweeting hunky pictures of his physique to women, moved this week to Greenwich Village from his Queens co-op with wife Huma Abedin. The couple returned from a late August vacation in Paris, to announce that the are expecting a baby boy with a due date of Jan. 1, 2012.

Last night, Weiner’s seat in the House of Representatives went to Rep.-elect Bob Turner, a Republican who will assume the seat that has been Democratic since the 1920s. The district includes portions of Brooklyn and Queens, and is home to three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans. Voters are nearly 40 percent Jewish.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

DSK and his wife Anne Sinclair have been back in France for about a week. The former International Monetary Fund chief was questioned by French police over accusations of attempted rape made against him by writer Tristane Banon.

Strauss-Kahn has filed a complaint for slander against Ms Banon, calling her story “a figment of her own imagination”. In France like New York, the paparazzi follow DSK around-the-clock but he has made no public comment.

The Wall Street Journal reports that insiders at France’s Socialist Party say that DSK’s reputation has been hurt decidedly among French voters and a presidential run is not possible.

Stateside in New York, Mr Strauss-Kahn still faces a civil lawsuit filed by the New York hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo. All parties agree that a sexual encounter occurred. DSK’s lawyers say the sex was consensual, while Ms Diallo maintains that she was sexually assaulted.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

The rumors are flying high and wide that Silvio Berlusconi, who leads an Italian fiscal mess that could bring down the Eurozone, is alleged to have made insulting comments about German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the woman who has inherited responsibility for stabilizing his economic mess. The allegations, as reported in the Daily Beast, are that Berlusconi called Chancellor Merkel an “unf—-able fat——”.

Today the Berlusconi sex scandal reached Panama. Newsroom Panama reports that

Valter Lavitola, a former consultant to Finmeccanica, the Italian company to which Panama awarded a $333.3 million dollar direct (without bidding) contract for the purchase of helicopters and other security equipment, is on the run for alleged extortion against Berlusconi and is believed to be hiding in Panama.

Lavitola is being investigated for alleged involvement with businessman Gianpaolo Tarantini and his wife, Angela Devenuto, who were recently arrested in Italy. The couple is alleged to have demanded more than $1 million from Berlusconi for not disclosing that the Prime Minister knew that their private parties set up for him, involved prostitutes.

Berlusconi insists that he wasn’t blackmailed by the couple, but Italian authorities are pressing the case without his cooperation.

Pope Benedict

Human rights lawyers, in concert with victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy, filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court in The Hage yesterday, asking The Hague to investigate and prosecute Pope Benedict XVI and three top Vatican officials for crimes against humanity.

The formal filing of nearly 80 pages by two American advocacy groups, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, was the most substantive effort yet to hold the pope and the Vatican accountable in an international court for sexual abuse by priests.

This is not the first time that a complaint against the Vatican has been filed at The Hague, and court watchers do not expect the case to move forward. It is the first time that a spokesperson for the court has admitted publicly that a case against the Vatican has been filed.