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When I see these guys, with their Mediterranean ... [From Comments]

iplaudius — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:42:42 -0500

When I see these guys, with their Mediterranean visages and spectacular physiques, I imagine them as the descendants of ancient Roman soldiers, lost and confused in a modern world. Lacking the old measures and symbols of valor and achievement, they are constantly embroidering themselves with the simulacra of battle scars and aristocratic finery: eyebrow shaping, complicated hairstyles, scorched-earth depilation, glittery T-shirts, pimped-out V8 chariots, and other bright accoutrements. As with their ancestors, the drama of their lives again and again returns to ostentatious displays and violent contests of wealth and power and sex. It is the drama of the arena, the curia, and the opera house, brought low for the subjects and the times.

Sean Hannity Promises to Respond to Comedy Show That Fact-Checked Him [Punditry]

Pareene — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:40:45 -0500

We all saw the Daily Show fact-checking Fox clip, right? Where Hannity reused 9/12 rally footage and pretended it was from last week? Guess what: Hannity is going to "respond" tonight, on his show! So we'd better all watch!

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According to Dylan Stableford: "A rep for Fox says that Hannity will address the issue on his show tonight."

Seriously, what will he say? The video evidence is obvious, and Hannity is heard babbling about how it is "Thursday" over footage from a Saturday in September, thus making some sort of "we didn't intend to deceive we just used rally file footage" argument a nonstarter.

But, you know, this is Sean Hannity, who does not care about "the truth" or "honesty" or "not booking insane antisemites on the show and not mentioning that they are insane antisemites," so who cares what he will say.

It will probably just be something like "the Jews sneaked in that other footage and tricked me into airing it, because I, Sean Hannity, am an antisemite who hates the Jews."

People Begging Google to Be Their Stalker [Wtf]

Ryan Tate — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:37:08 -0500

Google said it can now keep a detailed list of everywhere you go, play your trips back like movies and generate "alerts" for unusual movements. Who wants this? The CIA? Nope: ordinary modern humans are asking to be tracked. Insane.

Google said in a blog post that it has been inundated with requests to add a "history" function to its Google Latitude, a mobile phone app that shows where your (authorized) friends on the service are located at any given moment. This would be the exact "feature" that Google intentionally disabled at launch to allay concerns about privacy, to much praise from civil libertarians. Google will add logs to your Latitude service now if you flip a switch, and it can also send you "Location Alerts" if you're especially enthusiastic about Orwellian internet services.

Why do we need this? Google's Chris Lambert explained:

I stopped at an awesome BBQ place on my way back from Lake Tahoe this summer, but I couldn't remember the name when my friend was asking about it a few months later. I pulled up my location history for that weekend, found where I was stationary on the drive home, and the restaurant name showed up in Google Maps.

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who once said, "They who would trade liberty for BBQ soon have none, deserve neither, and end up eating Prison Loaf thanks to small-town CSI wannabes with subpeona power."

[via Gizmodo]

(Top pic by gerlos on Flickr)

Just Take the Best Vacation You Can Afford, Which Goes to Hell [Recessionomics]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:14:02 -0500

The Way We Live Now: On the move. There is nothing tethering us to this dusty, tortured, goforsaken country any more—no jobs, no safety, no prospects. Once we hit the lottery or rob somebody or something, hello, vacation!

Tell us, Nomadic Family Traveler Jeanne Dee, how is it that you live your whole life just traipsing about the world with your family, on some sort of nonstop vacation? The answer is "budgeting." For just $25K per year off savings and investments, these people hopscotch about the globe while all the youth of England lay around like bumps on a log without any jobs and nobody in Iraq can make a dollar unless they're blackmailing Blackwater for it.

Also now's not a bad time for a luxury Caribbean vacation. Just FYI.

Who cares if burglaries are down because everyone is home, unemployed? Right here in the US of motherfucking A, the average Joe can't get one of the scant few jobs just because of a 20 year-old conviction for threatening two bums with a hairbrush, which was totally self-defense. If you'd been carrying a US Army ID card, you never would have had a problem in the first place, because muggers would let you off scott free, because of patriotism and a kinship between killers.

Unless you are personally named Norris Henry, 76 year-old Rikers Island guard turned New York Lottery winner, I feel pity for you in this time of economic woe, in America. If it makes you feel any better, China's looking just fine. Go there. Call it a vacation. Never come back.
[Pic via]

The Lesbian and Gay Center of Los Angeles [Open Caption]

Brian Moylan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:10:11 -0500

[Samantha Ronson is going to have to try harder to make Lindsay Lohan jealous than by hanging out with the very virile, ladies' man Adam Lambert at Bardot in L.A. last night. Image via X17]

A Year Condé Nast Would Like to Forget [Magazines]

Gabriel Snyder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:02:13 -0500

Final tally: ad pages dropped 32% (or 8,359 pages) at Condé Nast in 2009.

An Era Truly Ends as Grunge's Muse Takes a Hallmark Movie Role [Eras]

Richard Rushfield — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:46:17 -0500

For a brief moment in the early 90's, the X Generation dared to dream that the world could be a better place. Or at least it could be a more, kinda less, in your face, making such a big-deal-about-itself place.

For those few years while Grunge was king, its people lived a modern day utopia of laying on the couch watching old sitcoms, sneering at anyone who got all-excited about themselves, dressing as though we had been laying in a bed of moss for a month and creating an art form that existed entirely in air quotes. It was a magical time and through it all, one impish band-hooking-up-with actress reined as the era's muse.

The years that followed have not been kind to the grunge ethos as earnestness and ambition have replaced sarcasm and slack. But through all the twists of fortune, the lost peoples of grunge could still look to one tiny flame burning on the distant horizon. As long as Winona Ryder continued to rob department stores, make demented rants on stage and hook up with even more musicians, somewhere, the Grunge Era lived on.

But now all that is over. With the news that Ryder will make a Hallmark Hall of Fame Movie the dream has finally ended. Granted it is a movie about the life of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson, which although it is a very very earnest topic, at least it will have serious drinking in it, so one could say it has a toenail in grunge. But still..

Given the milestone, it seemed a good moment to take a look at the icon's of grunge and see who has stayed true to the dream during the long disapora.

ICON: Kurt Cobain
GRUNGE ACCOMPLISHMENT: The era's troubador
WHERE HE IS NOW: Deceased
BETRAYAL OF GRUNGE ETHOS QUOTIENT: Almost entirely pure, however a posthumous cartoon appearance in Guitar Hero game raised eyebrows.

ICON: Layne Staley
GRUNGE ACCOMPLISHMENT: Lead singer, Alice in Chains; sung the definitional Grunge lyric "He who tries, Will be wasted"
WHERE HE IS NOW: Died of an overdose in 2002
BETRAYAL OF GRUNGE ETHOS QUOTIENT: Low. It's hard to beat a drug overdose for grunge purity.

ICON: Douglas Copeland
GRUNGE ACCOMPLISHMENT: Wrote the not particularly Grungey book which gave the name to Generation X
WHERE HE IS NOW: Living in Toronto where he has just written Generation A which according to his website champions, the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defenses we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world"
BETRAYAL OF GRUNGE ETHOS QUOTIENT: Enormous.

ICON: Doc Martens
GRUNGE ACCOMPLISHMENT: The era's official footwear.
WHERE HE IS NOW: Forced to abandon production for a time in their native UK and give up their vegan non-leather line, Doc struggles along as a novelty/nostalgia act.
BETRAYAL OF GRUNGE ETHOS QUOTIENT: Low.

ICON: Courtney Love
GRUNGE ACCOMPLISHMENT: The era's Yoko Ono
WHERE SHE IS NOW: Has relocated her long run disaster show to New York.
BETRAYAL OF GRUNGE ETHOS QUOTIENT: Her sell-out is total, complete and unquestionable, while on another level she remains somehow the brand's truest proponent.

ICON: Perry Farrell
GRUNGE ACCOMPLISHMENT: Lead singer of Jane's Addiction, creator of Lollapalooza.
WHERE HE IS NOW: An earnest global warming campaigner, occaisional Jane's reunion attendee and flogger of various palooza spin off's/
BETRAYAL OF GRUNGE ETHOS QUOTIENT:When he created Kidzapalooza, he took a step beyond possible grunge redemption.

Al Gore's TV Network Firing 80 People Due to Wild Success [Layoffs]

Ryan Tate — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:59:20 -0500

Current Media said it would shed 80 people, confirming earlier reports, and will make its unconventional format more boringly traditional. This might sound bad. But the San Francisco cable network assures us it is evidence of amazing success!

Current announced it will eliminate 80 jobs while shifting away from its trademark short-form video packages and "towards proven 30-60 minute formats" from more outside sources. This would mean less video production in Current's Bay Area home base, as reported previously by former Valleywagger Jackson West at NBC Bay Area.

Which means everything is totally awesome and on track, according to a Current press release:

This re-organization was not the result of a need to cut costs. Current Media will have its most profitable year. This financial stability will allow the company to re-allocate resources in order to put further emphasis on areas of the business believed to best position Current Media for continued long-term growth.

Financial stability leads to ~~sad job layoffs~~ glorious resource re-allocation, gotcha. More good news: Current journalists no longer have to travel all the way to North Korea to hear propagandist doublespeak!

UPDATE: Current COO Joanna Drake Earl said in an interview that the layoffs hit San Francisco and Los Angeles offices the hardest; and while the firings were not "driven by a need to cut costs," they will indeed result in a net reduction of costs.

She added that "It's always a very sad day to eliminate positions" but that the layoffs were "about being a good media company listening to our consumers... any media company in the business of show production is... watching the dial" in terms of results and adjusting as necessary.Indeed, it sometimes seems like Current is becoming more like the traditional media companies it was intended to serve as counterprogramming against, what with the outsourcing of production, devotion to "consumer" feedback (like ratings!) and layoff rounds.

But Earl said the company remains "very committed" to audience contributions, albeit in "different ways" than through collecting short-form videos, a format now dominated by YouTube and "somewhat confusing" to viewers anyway, according to Earl. Not all short shows have been eliminated; some, like Vanguard Journalism, have actually been lengthened.

So maybe Current TV can grow with its hippie, San Francisco soul intact. That's going to mean acting more like ruthless capitalist media barons. But it's probably the best hope for the remaining employees at the all-too-baffling (and all too obscure) cable network.

(Pic: Gore at a Current TV event last year. By Simone Brunozzi.)

Hearst Is Amazingly Not Broke [Media Crack]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:52:01 -0500

In your woebegone Wednesday media column: Hearst gets money, layoffs at Current TV, Conde Nast gets internet religion, and Sesame Street characters are the swing votes in Fox News' war for righteousness.

What's this? Keith Kelly says that Hearst is sitting on a $1 billion "war chest," and that the company "is said to have revenues over $7 billion and to be profitable — as well as debt-free." Hey Hearst, Conde Nast is calling—they want to know what your secret is! For making money! Haha! Man. Somebody should definitely have the Hearst CEO repeat that one to Si Newhouse at some point. At a party or something. Just slide right over and lay it on him. That would be so funny.

Current TV is laying off 80 staffers, about a fifth of its work force. Interesting quote from them! "This re-organization was not the result of a need to cut costs. Current Media will have its most profitable year." That's a new sort of explanation, for this type of thing. Our condolences to the departed.

Conde Nast is doing something related to the internet! Says here Conde is "embracing magazine Web sites more as enhanced platforms for the titles' editorial missions rather than simply as companions to the print product." Does that mean they will have good magazine websites instead of not so good ones? Time will tell!

The Ombudsman of PBS is now forced to write columns on the topic of whether Sesame Street characters are biased against Fox News. People are stupid.

Welcome to Our Newest Obsession: Jersey Shore [Heightened Reality]

Brian Moylan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:48:01 -0500

Usually the commercial breaks during The Hills are for rolling our eyes at the inanity on the screen. Last night, however, they were for awesome, thanks to the new promos for Jersey Shore. Get ready to have your mind blown!

This is the new MTV reality show about a group of guidos living in a beach house for the summer. It's like one of those crappy email forwards full of pictures of guys with bad designer clothes, prickly hair, and fake tans throwing gang symbols at the camera, but it's actually alive. This is such a genius idea that we can't believe it hasn't been done before. No, Growing up Gotti does not count. We have the promo for you, but we have to ease you into it. Here are all the things that are going to be great about this sociological experiment. December 3 can not come soon enough.

Hair: The coiffure of the guido in his native habitat is a thing of beauty. As distinctive as the fluke of a whale and as arresting as the plumage on a turkey's tail, it is an amazing sculpture of gel and ingenuity. This is not so much as vanity, but artistry. You should buy an HD television to watch it in all its majesty.

Muscles: A guido without muscles is like a paraplegic without a wheelchair—he just wouldn't be able to function. Also, they make him spectacular to behold. Especially when he is in contest with others of his species.

Tanning: Hipsters have the ashen death pallor that is cultivated through hours of cruising the city at night and afternoons spent lying in a filthy unmade bed contemplating the importance of Animal Collective. Guidos just lie in a magical bed for 10 minutes a week and—Bam!!—they are a wonderful golden brown color. The darker they are, the more dedicated they are to their craft. We like ours to be the color of wet infield clay, but really we can appreciate the full color spectrum of browns.

Sunglasses in Nightclubs: This is not behavior that is exclusive to our subject but it it one they excel at over all other cultures. It has something to do with the tackiness and size of the sunglasses in comparison with the substandard lighting systems of the nightspots that they frequent. Also, they can not put them on the top of their heads, in case they crush the gel sculpture that is resting there.

Mating Rituals: As much as we hate the idea of their species propagating, we can't get enough of the intricate dances where the males try to woo the females. The female's plumage to attract a mate is equal to, if not surpassing, the males. When the two get together, it's like rubbing French manicured nails over a nylon stuffed with honeydews. Also, they often lead to...

Fights!: We don't know whether it's macho posturing, roid rage, or something in the water in parts of New Jersey, but when it comes to sparring in public the only creature that does it better are the ones classified as Real Housewives. The muscles, hair, tans, sunglasses, and mating rituals all assemble to create these fights, which are greater than the sum of their parts. Much like Voltron, but with better hair and bigger sunglasses.

OK, you are now ready to watch the trailer. They should put this on The Discovery Channel, it's so beautiful.

Über-Programmer Ditches Yahoo Over 'Lame' Microsoft Deal [Exits]

Ryan Tate — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:29:16 -0500

No one likes Yahoo's search deal with Microsoft. Wall Street wanted more up front money; tech elites called it an abdication, a "shame" and "seppuku." Now Yahoo is losing a programming icon over the embarrassing arrangement.

Rasmus Lerdorf, inventor of the PHP programming language, confirms he is leaving the company. "It has only been a couple of days," he told us by email yesterday. "I really don't know what is next yet... I am enjoying having a bit more time to play with pet projects this week."

Lerdorf, whose widely-used programming and templating system has been especially popular among Web startups, declined to elaborate on why he left Yahoo. But he was blunt about the matter on Twitter this past summer, just moments after the Yahoo announced a pact in which Microsoft would power its search results — previously handled by in-house code — while Yahoo would continue to sell ads against the results:

If we had to guess where Lerdorf might end up, we'd lay our money on Facebook, a PHP shop and a fast-growing one at that. The massive social network has no doubt pushed Lerdorf's language to the edges of its performance envelope. More importantly, the young company shows no inclination to outsource software development to its largest competitor and turn itself into a second-tier advertising network.

(Pic by Aaron Hockley)

Outrage-Off: Bill O'Reilly vs. Bryan Fischer [Outrage]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:14:06 -0500

Nidal Hasan, a Muslim, killed a bunch of people at Ft. Hood. This is a challenge to the right wing to come up with the most outrageously crazy thing to say, about Muslims. Today: Bill O'Reilly vs. Bryan Fischer.

We could not help but to enter Bill O as a contender after his classic "Devil's advocate" bit last night:

Let me play Devil's advocate here: Barack Obama wants to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. Which is a good thing. And you know that, as a soldier, we can't kill all the Muslims. So we want to win as many hearts and minds of good, moderate Muslims as we can.

Not kill them all? Provocative! His competitor is Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" for the American Family Association:

It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military...
Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll welcome you back with open arms.
This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism.

The preposterousness of allowing Muslims to not be killed, or the Islamo-realism of banning them, just in case? Vote now!

[Pic via]

In Which Dan Baum Annoys Every Jew He Knows [Whoops]

Pareene — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:08:21 -0500

Any mass email with the subject line "Jews" is going to be trouble. That is an ironclad rule. So Dan Baum, the famously former New Yorker writer, should've maybe rethought this one.

Baum sent an email to every single Jew on his contacts list asking them to write letters to Senator Joe Lieberman asking him to support health care reform. This is funny and stupid in many ways. Like: Lieberman represents American Jews, as a whole? (No, he represents Connecticut insurance companies. And right-wing Jews.)

From: Dan Baum
Subject: Jews

I'm the last guy in the world to try to organize people by religion, but we Jews may be the only people to whom Senator Joseph Lieberman might listen. He is threatening to filibuster the health-care bill to remove the public option. He has been an obvious problem for years, but this time he can do genuine damage, and it's possible a deluge of calls and emails from Jews nationwide will give him pause. Please take a minute and either call his office — (fair warning, the mailbox was full) or (860) 549-8463, or send him an email... This is the text of the message I used, but you could compose your own:

"As a fellow Jew, I am appalled by your threat to filibuster the health care bill now working its way through the Senate. I appeal to your conscience. Do not block access to affordable health care for millions of Americans. Please support the bill." This will take only a minute to do. Once you've sent a message to Sen. Lieberman, please forward this email to all the Jews you know. We could make something happen.

Various poor wording choices and mistakes in tone—the sorts of things that are huge deals to Old East Coast Jews Who Work In Media, i.e. everyone the list he sent this to—displeased the recipients of this honestly well-intentioned missive. Like you are not supposed to say "as a Jew" because that means you are an annoying Jew, and you are not supposed to assume that other Jews think the same way as you do, even though as a whole America's Jews are almost uniformly liberal on matters of domestic policy, and have been since forever. Still: unacceptable! Which is why Jeffrey Goldberg, in order to embarrass and shame Baum, published his email along with a mocking response from another Jew who is not named!

And the second email, with its terrible strained Borscht Belt humor, is so much worse. So, Jews on Dan Baum's email list: please out this farbissener!

The Hills : Trolls, Ogres, and Scary Godmothers [Recaps]

Brian Moylan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:07:37 -0500

Heidi got some puppies for her birthday, but that's not enough. She has her prop neighbor child over to try to convince Spencer it's time to have kids. We know she's not ready, but she's already practicing by telling stories.

That's right, she's been weaving fairy tales for little Enzo next door, and entertaining him when she's not using him to manipulate others or completely ignoring him because she's fighting with her mess of a husband. Let's listen to what our little Snow White tells the kid while they're hanging out in her glass coffin.

"There was once a pretty, pretty princess who lived in a far away land called Realitytelevasia. She had long hair and was really thin and dreamed of having a recording contract. Her name was Heidi, and one day she met a magical traveling salesman, Spencer. He had blond hair and a bad attitude and he told Princess Heidi that he could make all her dreams come true. They got married and moved to the jungle with a bunch of other princes and princesses, but they hated it there, so they left and claimed that they were abused so that people wouldn't think they were stupid.

When they got back to Realitytelevaisa, Princess Heidi found out that Spencer had some magical juice and it would give her babies and take all her troubles away. But if he gave up the juice, then Spencer would be trapped with Princess Heidi for life and he would have to give up all the fun things he loved like drinking 40s, hanging with his bros, and hitting golf balls in the back yard. So, one day he snuck out of his glass castle in the sky and went to go see an evil ogre who he thought could turn the juice off. He said that he could, but it would be very painful and he would ruin Salesman Spencer's goods for life, and that he would never get his juice back again.

He thought about how mad Princess Heidi would be if he shut the juice off for good, because an ancient curse said that if she didn't have the juice by the time she was 30, then she would turn into an awful screaming wombat and would eat Salesman Spencer limb from limb. He left the ogre and went back to the glass castle and when he saw Princess Heidi she was with her favorite munchkin who had been following Salesman Spencer all along. The muchkin told the princess about the trip to the ogre and she got very upset. "What do you mean you want to your juice to dry up? I want the juice!" she screamed. "I want you to have the juice, and I would love to give it to you," Spencer said, "but not now." "Give me the juice! I must have it! I must spawn!" she screamed as her voice lowered an octave and she grabbed onto shirt shaking him. "No, you can't have the juice," he said.

"You will give me the juice!" Princess Heidi ordered, waving her magic want at Spencer's crotch. From it grew an enormous vine that went all the way up into the clouds. Princess Heidi climbed all the way up to the top of the vine hoping to find a pot of magical baby juice for her to drink, but it wasn't there.

Instead, she found a poor washerwoman named Kristin, who told Princess Heidi that she was dating a prince, but he got turned into a frog by his ex-girlfriend the Awful Audrina. Now Washerwoman Kristin was lonely. But she found a new prince named Brody. They had danced at a ball a few times, and the prince had been held captive for many years by a tranny troll named the Jayde Dragon. Prince Brody had finally escaped the dragon's clutches and had run for the washerwoman.

Kristin loved the prince more than she loved separating whites from darks and wanted very much to marry the Prince so she's never have to wash again. She demanded to go visit with the Queen, the prince's mother. The queen has been placed under a magic spell that permanently made her skin brown, her lips plump, her hair blonde, and her waist thin. To make the spell work, she had sold all of her brains personality. But the spell did work, but when Kristin tried to talk to her, all she did was giggle and drool on herself from inside her hollow plastic shell. But the Queen gave her consent to the Prince's union with the washerwoman, even though the Prince still had to agree.

They left her palace and went to a ball in a magical land where woman hang from hoops in the sky and there are tiny little jugs of ale that make all the men and women beautiful and make them misbehave spectacularly. Just as the Prince and WW Kristin were starting to get close, the Jayde Dragon flew in with her minions. "How dare you get close to my man," she bellowed as fire came out of her mouth. "Get the fuck out of here with your minions," the washerwoman said. But the Jayde Dragon has the shape of a woman and the strength of a man, so she did not listen. She just shoved her tiny talons at the Washerwoman and tried to pluck her eyes out.

But suddenly the Prince got on his steed and rode away. It seems that, even though he lives in the great kingdom of Realitytelevasia he is deathly allergic to drama. His eyes start to puff up and his throat starts to close when he was exposed to it. When the epic battle between the Jayde Dragon and poor washerwoman Kristin broke out, it sent him into a life-threatening attack. The next morning, he realized how weak he looked and went to get his knickers cleaned at Kristin's house. He told her that he was done with the Jayde Dragon and her evil clutches for good, but he had to be with someone who could keep him free from the evil stench of dangerous drama for the rest of his life. Kristin thought that might be a problem, especially since Frog Justin Bobby was about to be ribbiting in her doorway again.

As this was happening, Frog Justin Bobby was sharing a meal with the Awful Sorceress Audrina, who derives all her strength from her tiny little eyes. They used to be a couple, but the sorceress tired of his well-coiffed beauty and cast him back into the world for other women to claim. But once they had him, she wanted him back. It's always the way with those magical sorceresses. Glinda was the same way! So, to keep him from dating washerwoman Kristin, she put a curse on Prince Justin and turned him into a frog. Kristin sent him back to the sorceress to be fixed, and she turned him back into a man, and gave him a shave and a haircut for good measure.

But now that he was returned to his true shape, he didn't want to stay with Awful Audrina anymore. He wanted to be back with Kristin, because he would much rather be with someone crazy who lives by the sea than someone who is crazy and lives not by the sea. He's a surfing prince, and he needs to be close to the waves. So he tells Awful Audrina that her hexes will not work on him anymore, and, even if he is still a frog, he is going to hop back to the ocean to be with Kristin.

She slams down her magic wand and says, "Fine!" and then hops on her broom to fly off into the sunset. All the way she cries tears, beautiful magical tears that Princess Heidi collects in a bucket. They are even more powerful than the juice of any traveling salesman, and she will use those tears to create a life of happiness for herself and all the creatures of Realitytelevasia.

Frank D. LoMonte — [Pullquote]

Gabriel Snyder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:05:49 -0500

the head of the Student Press Law Center, defending the right of Dalton seniors to publish an article about Anthony Kennedy's visit with students without the Supreme Court Justice's approval, to the New York Times.

James Franco's Not Done Sleeping in Class [Higher Education]

Brian Moylan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:48:01 -0500

The Yale Daily News that came out on Friday (we know, we're late) is decorated like a retro teen mag for their interview with James Franco. Oh, and Hollywood's gayest actor is considering moving to New Haven for his PhD!

It wasn't enough for Franco to sleep in class at both Columbia and NYU, where he is currently getting his MFA in creative writing (we have one too, James!), now he's going to go to Yale to get his doctorate in English. At least that's what a close reading of the subtext of this article told us. Let's just hope he doesn't get anxiety of influence from Harold Bloom, whom Franco seems to have an inappropriate man crush on.

Speaking of influence, the Yale newspaper has no problem at all ripping off Bop! (the article is below, or you can read it here). Is this supposed to be ironic? Because there is nothing that seems tongue in cheek about the big sloppy kiss of an interview where Esther Zuckerman does everything but lay down and ask Franco to father her children. She loves Freaks and Geeks! She's seen all his movies! She writes Esther Zuckerman-Franco in little hearts on the cover of her binder for Post-Colonial Structuralism and the Poems of Elizabeth Bishop seminar!

We shouldn't be too mean to her, because we love him just as much, especially now that he's trying to bridge high and low culture with a role on General Hospital. The first promo for his stint on the show came out yesterday, and it looks amazing. He plays an "artist whose canvas is murder." So he's a highbrow artist on a lowbrow soap. He's an A-list actor in a D-list genre. He he plays a character named Franco. META! Harold Bloom just let Franco into his PhD program just based on this stunt alone. PS—9 days and counting until it starts!

How New York Times Trend Stories Get Made: Glee Edition [Journalismism]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:38:28 -0500

All you do is take some element of popular culture, like a popular television show, and then ask, provocatively: Is society itself changing in response to this pop culture thing? Today: Glee makes chorus groups "cool" again.

A New York Times Style section freelancer sent out this query today to Help A Reporter Out, the email service that connects flacks to reporters in need of sources. RESPONSES ABOUT THE COOLNESS OF HIGH SCHOOL CHORAL GROUPS ONLY.

Summary: Sing along with "Glee"
Media Outlet: New York Times
Region: United States
Deadline: 01:11pm EASTERN - 17 November
Query:

Story is for Styles section of the NYT. The topic: how is the hit show
"Glee" affecting kids' participation in school choral groups or choruses
Are they joning in droves? Are they, in fact, startang their own such
groups. Is the show suddently making it, yes, COOL, to be part of a school
chorale Would like to hear from high school students, high school teachers
and music educators. NO OFF TOPIC RESPONSES PLEASE

The Spitzer Files: How TV Talking Heads Get Their Cues from Flacks [Spitzer Files]

John Cook — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:20:23 -0500

In our third installment from the Spitzer Files—our collection of e-mails between Eliot Spitzer's flack and reporters at the height of his hooker scandal—we congratulate the reporters who actually try to learn things before they go on TV.

On March 10, 2008, the New York Times broke the story of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's hooker habit, and cable news went insane. One of the gratifying things we found in the 1,300 pages of e-mail correspondence between Spitzer's flacks and reporters (which we obtained under New York's public records law) was that some reporters who were booked as talking heads actually made an effort to know what they were talking about before they went on TV. Of course, it's hard to get too much information at the last minute — which is one reason no one on cable television knows what they are talking about — and often the natural impulse of reporters is to check in with a flack for guidance.

The day after the Spitzer news broke, as speculation over his future was at a fever pitch, Financial Times reporter Brooke Masters, who wrote a book in 2006 about Spitzer's rise to power, was booked to appear on CNN. She sent a frantic e-mail to Spitzer's communications director Christine Anderson ten minutes before she was scheduled to go on, asking, "what tone should I take when asked if he will resign?" She signed off with, "Help."

Anderson responded that no announcement would be coming that day, but that Masters' "tone should probably be that the options aren't good." On CNN that night, in a taped segment for Anderson Cooper 360, Masters said, "Unless he can completely reinvent himself, his old method of dealing with the world and his old attraction as a politician is gone."

When we let Masters know that we were publishing the exchange, she wrote in an e-mail that "I knew I was going to be asked what Mr Spitzer would do, and I am a reporter not a pundit so I was trying to gather the facts." Which we commend her for. Still, it's worth remembering the next time you see a reporter analyzing a story on cable somewhere, that — at least for the ones who did their homework — the facts, and the tone, sometimes come unattributed and off the record from people who are paid to manage reporters.

Another reporter who checked in with Anderson before going on TV was them-Time magazine deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius, who now edits the Harvard Business Review. Oddly, Ignatius — who had covered and profiled Spitzer for Time — was booked on ABC News and NBC News as a supporter of Spitzer's, to balance out the detractors offering gleeful quotes on his self-immolation.

On March 10, a few hours after the story broke, Ignatius e-mailed Spitzer's chief of staff Marlene Turner asking if he could speak to Spitzer or anyone else in his office about the governor's state of mind before going on ABC News's World News Tonight. Turner referred him to Anderson. World News didn't use any of Ignatius' tape, but the next day, NBC Nightly News invited him to speak as "someone who knows and likes Eliot," and he asked Anderson for access to Spitzer or anybody else who might know his thinking. Anderson responded that she'd be happy to talk to him.

That night, Ignatius was identified on a Nightly News segment as a Spitzer "supporter," and he told correspondent Mike Taibbi that "it's going to be very, very, very difficult for him to stay in office."

Ignatius and Masters were right to find out as much as they could before being presented to television audiences as informed analysts (or in Ignatius' case, a partisan). But it's interesting, to us at least, to see laid bare the role that flacks can play behind the scenes in managing the tone and direction of talking-head coverage during a PR disaster.

The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard Sold to Who's Who Publisher [Trade Round Up]

Richard Rushfield — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:03:05 -0500

Changing the ownership of two of show biz's major trade journals will either change everything, or change nothing at all. In Hollywood, you're always safe betting on the latter

• These late days of print media bring some strange potential owners out of the woods to poke around at the fire sale and see what kind of bargains they can land on unmatched, only-slightly-singed argyle socks. The Wrap reports that the venerable journals, the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard have been sold by their parent company Nielsen to James Finkelstein's News Communications Inc. publisher of Who's Who and The Hill. Also included in the sale, The Wrap reports, Backstage, Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek and Editor & Publisher. [The Wrap]

• After a strong debut, the ratings for ABC's V took a tumble last night with 29 percent drop-off. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Carrie Underwood's hold on the music charts has not let up. "Play On", the former Idol star's third album easily took the top slot on Billboard's Hot 200, selling 318,000 copies in its first week out, knocking the soundtrack to Michael Jackson's This Is It down to #2. [Billboard]

• There was an actual bidding war over content in Hollywood yesterday and in the end, Peter Chernin's New Regency walked away with the prize. Chernin beat out Universal and Warner Brothers to snatch up the rights for My Name is Memory, the first book of a trilogy about a college couple whose souls have been intertwined for hundreds of years. [Variety]

• Simon Cowell has topped primetime TV's top-earners list. According to Forbes, the Idol judge/America's Got Talent creator rakes in $75 million a year, soaring past Donald Trump in the #2 slot at $50 miilion. [Forbes]

• To promote its new film Nine, the Weinstein Company has signed a deal to annoy ABC viewers in unprecedented ways. According to the deal with the network, the film will be written into the plotlines of a variety of ABC shows including its daytime soap operas, will be featured on Dancing With the Stars. [Variety]

• And if you're keeping score, it hasn't been a great week to be Nikki Finke. Not only does she inform blog readers that she is down with the flu, but she gets beaten by Sharon Waxman on the Hollywood Reporter story (assuming it pans out) and her biggest scoop of the year, the news about Oprah's departure from her syndicated show, still has yet to be confirmed by anyone else, with all sources still, a week later, publicly saying that no decision has been made. It may yet turn out that Oprah will end up making the leap, but some are wondering is it possible Nikki jumped the gun claiming the deal was done?

No, That Is Not Anthrax [Rants]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:55:03 -0500

So far this week, the UN missions of six separate countries have been temporarily shut down and decontaminated because they received envelopes full of flour in the mail. This whole "anthrax" thing is overrated.

What are the chances that any particular envelope full of unknown white powder is, in fact, full of deadly weaponized anthrax? Quite small! Exceedingly small. Vanishingly small. The original 2001 anthrax attacks were so spectacular precisely because it is so fucking hard to pull off something like that. Much easier to send bombs, really! Said bioweapons expert Richard Spertzel, "In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them." Also: "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."

Here's what that means, in practical terms: The envelope full of white powder that you just opened in your Congressional office or governmental office or media outlet office or UN office is full of flour or baking soda or maybe even cocaine, but it is almost surely not full of anthrax. So stop evacuating place and shutting everything down. For chrissake. Some nut in Texas knew he could force the UN one-world foreigners to run in fear with less flour than it takes to make a cookie, and that's exactly what he did, and now it's worldwide news. Contrast that with what these places could have done when they got that envelope: Nothing. Set it aside, let the cops come test it, and keep working in the meantime. There's at least a 99% chance that you'll be fine.

We've said this before. Anthrax! It's a ridiculous thing. Just forget it. Do you smell that? No? That's because we had our operatives fill the room you're in with sarin, a colorless, odorless nerve agent 500 times more toxic than cyanide. You better evacuate now, because it kills in less than one minute.

Kidding! But sending you an envelope full of white powder would have been only marginally more difficult than that. So, seriously. Until further notice, just put it in the trash can. At least make the crazies come get you in person.

Re-Tweet Redesign Helps the Rich Get Richer on Twitter [Loser-generated Content]

Ryan Tate — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:25:52 -0500

Twitter is offering a new way to quote other people's tweets. The new "re-tweet" feature is both less useful and more confusing than the ad-hoc system that preceded it. But that's OK, because it bolsters rich celebrities and dot-com millionaires.

Under the old rules of Twitter tradition, you "re-tweeted" another user by placing the letters "RT" before the quote and after any commentary you yourself added, like so:

If you use the new built-in re-tweet system, the original tweet would be copied into your stream under the byline of the original tweeter, like so:

The obvious problem: You lose the ability to actually say anything about what you're quoting if you use the new system. Also, all your followers are going to get a strange and potentially confusing avatar of someone they're not subscribed to in their stream.

On the bright side, this system is great for Twitter Inc. "Retweets potentially reveal very interesting data," Twitter CEO Evan Williams writes in a blog post about the new re-tweeting feature. Indeed, the feature offers a metric with which to rank tweets and thereby the results of Twitter searches and Twitter users themselves. Twitter could sell this data, provided free by its users, to the richest and most favored bidders, just like the microblogging startup did with the actual content of tweets.

The feature also helps Twitter's celebrity power users. Writes Williams:

RTs can actually be easily faked, which has become a form of spam, wherein well-known people are shown to be promoting something they never twittered about.

But, hey, if you don't like this new re-tweet thing that is so awesome for celebrities and Twitter Inc., you can always opt out. As Williams writes (emphasis from original), "you can turn off Retweets for everyone you follow (individually)." So just click "OFF" 200 times? Sounds super-easy!

(Top pic: Twitter co-founders Williams and Biz Stone, by Mathieu Thouvenin.)

Fox News Is Ready for Your ( Update: Birther ) Protest [Internal Memos]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:18:47 -0500

This memo went out to News Corp employees today, advising them of a protest that should be going on right now. [UPDATE: It's birther queen Orly Taitz and her Birther Brigade!] Please send us dramatic action photos immediately. (Some below!)

Please be advised that a demonstration, directed at FOX News and consisting of approximately 150 people, is expected in front of 1211 today (Wednesday, November 11) from 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm. The NYPD will be present to monitor the demonstration along with News Corporation security.

Although no disruptions are expected, you may wish to contact any visitors or appointments you are expecting this afternoon and suggest they allow additional time for processing. If you are booking car service this afternoon, request pick up on 48th Street.

We also encourage employees to use the alternate entrances at the back of the building and on the C-1 level if the main entrance becomes congested. As a reminder, it is always recommended that you NOT display your building ID card once outside of 1211. This is particularly important when arriving and departing the building during the demonstration.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Corporate Security Manager Lee Boody through the Security Operations Center at [redacted].

Karl Solterer
Vice President, Corporate Security
News Corporation

[Pic via]

That's them in the tiny pen in the middle.

"The dude is a very anti-birther friend who could not resist the opportunity."

The City : Buffoons Over Miami [Recaps]

Brian Moylan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:13:01 -0500

Due to an unfortunate incident involving talking shit about Ingrid Casares, we were unable to watch last night's episode of The City. Thankfully we were able to piece together the action with some dispatches from our favorite roving social reporter.

No Room and an In
By Betsey Morgenstern
944 Magazine Assistant Contributing Society Editor

Miami International Fashion Week is in full swing, so there are even more parties than usual. Last night Whitney Port and Roxy Carmichael Olin descended on The Florida Room in the Delano Hotel for a pre-party for a fashion show. The party was so excellent, no one quite knew which brand they were celebrating, and the band was so bad that no one quite knew who they were.

That didn't stop Roxy Carmichael Olin from dancing on the banquette like a low-class Paris Hilton and dragging Nick Soandso up there with her. As soon as they found out they both went to Harvard, it was a deep and animal lust that attracted them. As soon as Whitney took a minute out to powder her nose (wink wink) he asked Roxy to leave. Without a second thought of her friend, she was out the door in search of the next party. In fact, Roxy had been complaining ever since they got to Miami about being put on a budget by People's Revolution boss Kelly Cutrone. All she wanted to do was lie out and eat room service and party. Luckily her cohort Whitney has her head about her and didn't let this happen.

But that didn't stop Roxy from leaving Whintey all alone and defenseless in the club. A reporter tailed Roxy and Nick as they left. First it was more drinks at Mynt Lounge, but Roxy was way too antsy for the sedate crowd. Nick took her over to SET to dance the night away and after they bumped into well known man-about-town Pookie "Candyman" Collins, they were bumping all night long (wink wink take two). They caused quite a scene, especially when Roxy popped a bottle of Cristal and poured it all over her body like she was living in a rap video fantasy world. Nick got down on his knees and wrung out her champagne-drenched skirt and drank the nectar as some of it oozed down his neck. He then started kissing up her thigh, his head disappearing underneath the soggy seam of her drenched dress. Roxy let her head fall back as her eyes closed and her mouth opened. It looked like she was moaning, but the new remix of Shakira's "She Wolf" was so loud, no one could hear a thing. After pushing his head out from underneath her skirt she grabbed his arm and ran for the exit.

They gave me—I mean, a reporter—the slip but it sounds like they were headed back to Nick's to continue the party. No wonder poor Roxy was late to work the next day!

Bathing Beauties at Mara Hoffman
by Betsey Morgenstern
944 Magazine Assistant Contributing Fashion Editor

Miami International Fashion Week isn't just about world-famous designers like Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, Munib Nawaz, and Amato Couture but it's really all about the fashion shows. Today it was time for the biggest bash of them all: The Mara Hoffman collection was presented at Soho Studios. Everything was glorious.

Show director Kelly Cutrone, the head boss at New York's trendy fashion PR firm People's Revolution said she had a hard time at the casting, but what do you expect from a pasty New Yorker who wears all black to the beach! After making fun of the model's faces and walks, she had a nice stable of hoofers to walk Hoffman's swimwear down the catwalk.

Before the show started, we saw Erin Kaplan and Olivia Palermo of Elle Magazine giving each other a chilly reception in the front row. After sauntering back to her seat from behind the stage, Kaplan peppered Palermo with questions: "Why aren't you taking notes? Are you going to the trade shows? Why don't you like me? God gave me brains, but why didn't he make me as pretty and rich as you? Is that fair?" Olivia just stared blankly at her shoes, moving her toes ever so slightly to watch the way the light reflected on her pedicure. It was as if she could just ignore the questions away.

It was then that we heard the sound of an argument coming from backstage, and it sounded like People's Revolution PR girls Roxy Carmichael Olin and Whitney Port (who just broke up with my boyfriend Freddie Fackelmayer, full disclosure!).
"Where were you last night?" Whitney shouted.
"I thought you left," Roxy slurred back.
"No, I didn't leave, I said I'd be right back."
"But you didn't come back, so I didn't think you were coming back. Nick and I left. That place was boring."
"Yeah, it was real boring without you. And you're late. And why do you smell like stale champagne?"
That's when Kelly Cutrone walked by, slammed their heads together and just kept walking.

Her intervention must have worked, because the show went off without a hitch. There were lots of one-piece suits and futuristic cuts (as Olivia noted). Our favorite was a silver metallic, square bikini with a flowing printed caftan over it. There were lots of geometric prints, that would fit right in with the international stoner set that loves to litter Miami's beaches. The models did walk a little slow and didn't smile much. What is up with that?

One Elle of an Afterparty
by Betsey Morgenstern
944 Magazine Assistant Contributing Fashion and Social Editor

With models in pink wigs and swimsuits lounging on boxes by the pool, Elle Magazine and Lycra's afterparty for Mara Hoffman's fashion show was the hit of Miami International fashion week. The W Hotel pool was transformed by the staff of the magazine and ace PR girl Erin Kaplan, who picked out the wigs herself. She said she was inspired by the time she and her girlfriends went as a pack of slutty flight attendants for Halloween and she saw the same raunchy joy in Hoffman's designs and wanted to channel that for the party's living decorations.

Loving the wigs was host Brooklyn Decker, who stole one off a model's head and was parading around with it half-cocked on her head for most of the evening. Kaplan was seen chatting with Elle's executive fashion editor Judi Sanders at the party, and it seems like she was carrying on about her favorite subject Olivia Palermo. She was bitching about how her socialite coworker didn't go to the crumby trade shows during fashion week (neither did I, because they sound too much like swap meets and that sounds like something that poor people would go to). She was also complaining that Olivia didn't take notes at the fashion show and how was she going to remember the very, very important and groundbreaking fashions they just witnessed without notes.

Olivia was off talking to designer Red Carter, who is not at all related to Red Buttons, but he does look a little bit like him. She then approached Saunders who told Palermo that bitch Erin Kaplan had been talking shit about her. No she said, and I quote, "That bitch Erin has been talking shit about you." Olivia didn't know what to do. She couldn't stare at her toes like she usually does, so she asked Saunders for advice. This is what the wise old editor had to say:

"Here's how it's going to go down. You're going to be in a meeting with Joe Z and he's going to ask about the trade shows. Say you didn't know anything about them. That's definitely going to piss Erin off and she's going to say she told you about them. Make it look like it's her fault that you didn't go. She'll hate that and take the offensive. Joe just wants everyone to get along because he's a pussy. Just agree with everything Joe says about being a team player and wanting to work with Erin while she sits there making her sour face. You don't even have to seem sincere. Being nice is Erin's kryptonite. It will render her silent. You'll look like the winner and she'll look like the mean lady who doesn't want to help out. This is the only way you can save yourself in Joe's eyes."

Olivia was nodding furiously, so we hope she took her advice. We'll know next time we check the masthead at Elle if it's missing an accessories editor! But then we just grabbed another glass of free champagne and did another lap of the party. Conspicuously absent were the People's Revolution crew. We heard that after a hard night of partying Whitney Port and Roxy Carmichael Olin ordered up $200 worth of room service! Who do they think is going to pay for that? When Kelly Cutrone gets that bill they're going to wish they ate Taco Bell instead.

Well, we're going to be paying for all the champagne we drank for about a week. But what a glorious time we had. Why can't every week be Miami International Fashion Week? We'll never know.

Dudes With Fancy Water Bottles Have the Hardest Penii [Science]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:54:15 -0500

Hippie yupsters have always been like, "I don't use plastic water bottles cause their chemicals cause cancer," or whatever, and we just laugh at them, but it turns out those people are the ones with the best erections.

BPA, a chemical found in like every plastic thing ever made and which you guzzle in your body every time you eat or drink from a plastic container, has been found to make men much exposed to high amounts of it much more likely to suffer erectile dysfunction.

So all those people with their fancy Sigg water bottles were right! Except Sigg water bottles were also full of BPA up until a year ago. Still, look for a dude driving a Volvo with an attached bike rack if you want a good, hard penis.
[Pic: Flickr]

AMA Sorry About Fighting Health Care, Offers America A Toke [Health Care]

Pareene — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:53:34 -0500

The American Medical Association—the doctor lobby—has fought health care reform tooth and nail throughout its entire existence. Until like last week! Maybe this explains their change of heart: they are all high on mary jane.

About 15% of actual working physicians are members of the AMA, which means they're not terribly representative of doctor opinions, but it's all they got, and it has generally not been a fan of government health care. In the '60s, the AMA warned that Medicare would destroy the fabric of American society and kill all the olds. (Now they oppose any cuts to Medicare of any kind, of course.) But then they endorsed the House health care reform bill! And then, apparently drunk on liberal praise, they went on to endorse gay marriage and the abolition of Don't Ask Don't Tell and medical marijuana.

The AMA noted that bans on gay marriage lead to health coverage disparities. Then, in a counterintuitive bit of logic, they said DADT was also hazardous to the health of the LGBT population (you'd think banning them from the military would, on the whole, do a lot to keep gays and lesbians alive, but there is an issue with doctor-patient confidentiality and military doctors being forced to report the sexual orientation of personnel who go to see them).

Finally, they reversed their 12-year position on the demon weed. The AMA used to say marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, which is insane what is wrong with this country, but now they say that if it is going to be used medicinally that there should probably be some controlled clinical trials involving it, which is impossible under its current classification as "a substance that will get your daughter raped by a colored jazz musician."

So aside from that whole "arranging a doctor shortage" thing the AMA is looking pretty good these days!

Aerosmith Defy Own Predictions and Un-Break Up [Break Ups]

Richard Rushfield — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:34:24 -0500

You can't believe everything you read on the internet, even when you are the one saying it. Just a few days ago, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry declared the band through after reading of Steven Tyler's break up plans online.

Well, apparently try as we might to get on with our lives, the world just can't live without just a little more Aerosmith, not even for a week. Last night the band ended their six day old divorce. During a Perry show at New York's Filmore, Tyler suddenly appeared on stage and announced, according to NME, in a specimen of authentic aging rocker gibberish, so rarely heard in this day and age:

I just want New York to know, I am not leaving Aerosmith," he said, before turning to Perry and stating: "And Joe Perry, you are a man of many colours but I, motherfucker, am the rainbow!"

Tyler then instructed Perry's drummer to play, and the band launched into Aerosmith's 1975 hit 'Walk This Way'. Tyler ended the song with his arm around Perry.

[Via Vulture]

American Apparel in Mortifying Nipple-Reveal [Advertising]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:18:04 -0500

American Apparel has had difficulty properly styling its models before, but now a photo of a young lady with her nipples showing slips past everyone? Twice? Embarrassing. It's that sheer fabric, Dov. Check and double check again, always. [Copyranter]

The New Yorker , by the Numbers [Magazines]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:51:53 -0500

For the second time this decade, the New York Observer's cobbled together the TOP SECRET masthead of The New Yorker. It sure has a lot of people working for it! A numerical summary, below.

The NYO's full masthead listing, with every name and title, is here. An awesome piece of work. Keep in mind that Si Newhouse, keeper of a crumbling empire, is still so in love with The New Yorker he wants to marry it and will cut every other magazine to pieces before he makes David Remnick fire anyone.

Total Number of "Critics": 11
Total Number of Staff Writers: 66(!)
Total Number of "Editors" of One Sort or Another: 31
Total Copy Staff, Fact Checkers, and Editorial Assistants: 40
Total Art, Photo, Layout, and Cartoon Staffers: 43
Total Number of Staffers with "Makeup" in Their Titles: 6

That does not even cover all the miscellaneous positions! It makes the New York Times Book Review look positively anorexic. Ah well. The best magazine in America can hire whoever it wants, *HINT*.

[John Koblin's full NYer masthead]

It's a Good Thing, You Wouldn't Understand [Open Caption]

Brian Moylan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:33:22 -0500

[Martha Stewart deals with Tina Brown's tantrum when she tries to drag the editor into the kitchen to make some rum balls at the Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Medical Center Gala last night. Image via Getty]

The Shake, Rattle, Decline and Fall of American Empire [Charts & Graphs]

Pareene — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:17:01 -0500

This graph is the key to everything and it will soon be a book from HarperCollins. ("Everything" means Jann Wenner, Baby Boomers, mass culture, and the death of liberal consensus and middle class stability.) [Overthinking It via Colin via Maura.]

Martin Scorsese — [Pullquote]

Gabriel Snyder — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:03:58 -0500

explaining why he doesn't read newspapers at the book party for Harry Evans' My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times, to Daily Intel. (For what it's worth, he doesn't like computers or BlackBerrys either.)

Guest at Horny Sex Hotel Assumes Rape Included in Price [Scandals]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:03:36 -0500

The tabloids love the sexy nude people parading in front of the windows of the Standard Hotel overlooking the High Line (an 8.5 on the Post Shamelessness Scale, btw). Now, the guests are trying to rape the housekeepers. Evolution.

One might say the hotel's guests are really getting into the spirit of the place! The Standard did everything it could to encourage its reputation as a $400 a night orgy den. Let's look back at this nice NY Post story from September 2:

Even hotel staffers and managers get in on the act, workers said, stripping down and posing provocatively in front of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows to draw attention to the hotel, which straddles the city's new High Line Park.

"We don't discourage it. In actual fact, we encourage it," a friendly bellhop told a pair of reporters as they checked in yesterday at The Standard, where randy guests cavort with abandon to the dismay — or delight — of parkgoers below.

Fucking in front of the assembled crowds below was actually the basis of the hotel's marketing policy, in a very thinly veiled way. Well, now we can officially dub that a "miscalculation;" last weekend, a hotel guest decided to help himself to the cleaning lady. She came in his room; he started chatting her up, asked if she had a boyfriend, asked if she thought he was handsome, then went ahead and jumped on her. (He was unsuccessful).

Could have happened anywhere, of course. But it's probably a much smaller mental leap for a horny hotel guest to decide that the cleaning lady must be interested in a quick fuck if he's staying in a place that's already been all over the tabloids for running ads saying "We'll put up with your banging if you'll put up with ours." Orgies are included with the room rate, right?

Hard to believe that not one marketing person, at any point, said, "These ads are edgy and all, but it sure would suck for us if any sex crimes happened in this place. Ya know?" Anyhow, expect the Standard Hotel to come up with some new taglines soon. It is very convenient to transportation!
[Pic: Ed Yourdon]

Which Gay Actor Only Sleeps with Boys Who Look Like His Wife? [Blind Items]

Brian Moylan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:50:15 -0500

Let's hear it for the boys. Today they are traveling so they can have DL affairs with men, sleeping with a retinue of women, and turning down work they're too "good" for. Let's give these boys a hand.

1. "He's a movie star, he is married, and he is gay. Out of respect for his wife, though, he only allows a boy in his bed when either one of the couple is traveling. Thoughtful, right? Well, it's rather creepy, because the last couple of guys he has been with bear a strange resemblance to his wife. So is he picking the boys because they resemble his wife, or did he pick his wife because she resembles the kind of boy he likes? Hard to say, but in either case, he has no intention of coming out of the closet any time soon. Oh, and yes, they are practically boys. He likes them young, but is pretty careful about them being of legal age." [Blind Gossip]

2. "This married A list television reality producer has always had a revolving door policy when it comes to the women with whom he has sex. However it seems that he has finally found just one woman he wants to have as his mistress and has cast the others aside. He wants to remain faithful to this mistress who also happens to be a B list reality star who seems to never have a boyfriend that sticks. Now you know why." [CDaN]

3. "This TV actor has been out of work for some time now, occasionally picking up spots here or there. (You might have even seen him in a commercial or two). He recently had a huge movie deal offer where he could play the supporting role of a very big name, but he turned it down because he felt it was beneath him. Not John Lehr." [BuzzFoto]

Chicago Cops Cripple Preteen Food Fight Ring [Crime]

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:16:08 -0500

They say when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Likewise, when you call the cops to a middle school cafeteria food fight, they will take 25 kids to jail. It's what they do!

Who's to say that flying milk carton is not full of kerosene? Go, NYT:

Diana Shulla-Cose, president and co-founder of Perspectives Charter Schools, said that an on-campus police officer had called for backup as the food fight escalated and that the resulting heavy police presence had led in turn to the large number of arrests.

Any time you're in need of assistance, call the police, and they will arrest somebody, for something, or, failing that, arrest you.
[Pic via]

Warning Signs of the Fort Hood Killer Were Missed, Still Not Clear [Front Pages]

Ravi Somaiya — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:01:51 -0500

Select from the following: the army a) did know the Fort Hood shooter was radicalized, b) didn't know he was radicalized or c) kind of knew, through a third agency. Alternatively, ignore the whole intelligence mess and read about fishing.

The impression one gets going through the intelligence coverage today is that no-one — the agencies included — know what happened. The agencies seem to be furiously leaking in their own favour, and the papers are lapping it up. Really, all that is revealed is that it's incredibly complex and entirely understandable that Hasan wasn't apprehended for sending a few emails. But that's not a story. An intelligence failure that led to the deaths of 13 soldiers however, is. So we're in the strange position of one piece of evidence being interpreted two different ways and definitive reports in either direction. It is notable that the New York Times does not run anything on the topic today. Maybe they're taking the sensible route and waiting until the dust settles instead of peering blindly through it.

Disclosure: I freelance write and report for newspapers that are included in this roundup. Where there is a direct conflict of interest I will make it clear.

The New York Times: has a nice mix today. Mark Mazzetti has frankly been killing it of late. The latest investigation to feature his byline reveals that private army Blackwater, now rebranded as 'Xe' and its worst-person-in-the-world boss Erik Prince paid bribes to shut people up after they massacred 17 Iraqi civilians. Quadruple sourced no less! There's the shoo-in emotional tale and picture from the Fort Hood service yesterday, to which the paper sent big-gun political reporter Peter Baker. The picture is outstanding - and as everyone takes amazing photography in the Times for granted I'd like to commend Nicole Bengiveno by name. The story that two Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers, accused of fraud for their part in the financial crisis, here, gets some analysis for its potential implications for other nefarious banker-types, and runs above a story about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's growing political skills. Meanwhile Supreme Court Justice, and first amendment protector, Anthony M. Kennedy forced a New York school to give him copy approval on an article the newspaper wrote about a talk he gave, and the New Museum faces a potential conflict of interest.

The Washington Post: the series leading up to the execution of the DC sniper reached its inevitable end when John Allen Muhammad was executed. The paper uses the closure to analyze the impact of the shootings too. They also use the Fort Hood service as a hook to look at the intelligence failures surrounding the shootings. Ben Bernanke is going to have to use the political skills the Times says he's developed - Chris Dodd wants to strip his institution of many powers, something no-one else picked up on the front page. There's been an interesting fragmenting of financial crisis coverage of late - as more and better stories emerge each paper is picking its own angle. The Post didn't want to get left without with an intelligence exclusive either - they report that a weakened Al-Qaeda now relies on the Taliban for protection. Frankly the war is so murky out there, and stories conflict so often, that I now take any reports from the region with a pinch of salt. And finally: Americans learning to live without cars.

The LA Times: uses a Reuters picture of the Fort Hood service, unlike the Times and Post who sent their own cameras. It is either very smart as most pictures will be pretty similar anyway, or a missed opportunity to showcase a fine LA Times photojournalist. They also look at the intelligence failures. There's a slightly old story about a hand-written note British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent to the mother of a fallen soldier. He either misspelled the family's name, or has bad handwriting, depending who you believe. The real story, reported well here, is how the media and public turn on a beleaguered politician. The feature today looks at a couple in Iran over several years, some prison inmates prefer the more-comfortable death row and a panel approves fishing restrictions to help stocks recover.

The Wall Street Journal: leads with the news of the Bear Stearns acquittal and looks at the rebuilding of GM. Job seekers are trying to erase their criminal records, which is a nice counterpoint to yesterday's story about people living on severance. The paper also uses the word 'sextet' to subtly imply that six women did naughty things in a van in the 70s. (At least in my eyes.) They also take a wire picture of the Fort Hood service and dutifully run it on the front.

The New York Post: quotes directly from Obama's speech, which kind of sums up their straight-ahead coverage of the service. There's an interesting comparison here - the Post says a third government agency ignored warnings about Hasan, and cites the Wall Street Journal for this "stunning evidence" that adds to the storyline that Hasan could, should, have been stopped. The Journal takes that evidence for a more measured piece on intelligence infighting - the claim that I think the Post is referring to isn't mentioned until the fourth paragraph. Although it's all such a confusing mess of not-quite scoops about procedures that I have a headache trying to unravel it.

The Daily News: reports the same intelligence failures story in a slightly different way, adding to the confusion.

The Naples Daily News: I will buy and eat a hat if this story, about an eccentric Floridian who sent flowers to the Fort Hood shooter because he wanted to be a good Christian and love his enemy, is not picked up in the tabloids tomorrow. Unless he's too crazy to report on - which is a surprisingly fine line sometimes.

Asahi Shimbun: All I can tell you about this Tokyo paper's front page is that it doesn't cover Fort Hood, it looks cool and the columnist in the top left corner resembles a bearded Mr. Miyagi.

Scientology Seeks Investigative Journalists for a Potential Media Fight-Back [Revenge]

Ravi Somaiya — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:23:59 -0500

Freedom magazine, the church's official reporting arm, wants "experienced investigative reporters" in the Tampa Bay area - precisely where the St. Petersburg Times, a newspaper which recently published a critical series on the church, is based.

Here's Freedom's response to that excellent series. (Yes, I'm linking it twice - it seems like an expensive project and they might as well get some clicks out of it.)

And here's an excerpt from the ad on journalismjobs.com, via Romenesko via True/Slant:

Freedom, published by the Church of Scientology since 1968, covers human rights and social betterment issues and does investigative reporting in the public interest. Projects for this particular assignment are in the Tampa Bay, Florida area for the most part, but investigation can be conducted by phone and through Internet research.

Part of the ad reveals Freedom's motto: "investigative reporting in the public interest." Which is firmly in the tradition of Fox News and various dictatorships (the 'Democratic Republic' always means 'the hideous dictatorship'). The church are not afraid to get personal when they feel they've been slighted, which is all the time, and I've emailed the address listed on the job listing to ask precisely which 'human rights and social betterment issues" they want reporters in the Tampa Bay area to look into.

This Is What $11,716 Funeral Invitations Look Like [This Is It]

Ravi Somaiya — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:43:46 -0500

Michael Jackson's death continues to form effortless metaphors for his life. At his private family funeral the remaining Jacksons were charged $35,000 for 'burial garments', $21,455 for food and $3682 for a framed picture, among other ludicrous inflations.

The Associated Press reports that the funeral cost $1m in total and the family were also charged $1,975 for wardrobe, $2,000 for usher costumes, "$959 for embroidery; $11,716 for invitations and programs; $16,000 for flowers; $30,000 for cars and security; and $15,000 for a funeral designer."

I suppose it was naive to even hope that people would stop seeing Jackson as a kind of weird, frail piggy-bank after his death. Cursory investigations reveal that this woman designed the invitations to the ceremony - the ones that cost $11,716. She says the following on her website:

My experience in defining and executing the mood of your special day is my area of expertise. Because of my unique personalized service, you will have the experience you have always dreamed about. In short, I can connect with your desires & satisfy your budget at the same time.

She's definitely good at writing fancy, but define 'satisfy your budget'. I know nothing about the world of high-end calligraphy so I've emailed to ask whether this is a typical price for pieces of paper with nice handwriting on them.

Playgirl Turned Down by High-End Hotel for the Levi Johnston Shoot [Levi's Johnston Watch]

Ravi Somaiya — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:18:51 -0500

The magazine wanted the Hotel on Rivington penthouse, but only offered $4.83 and some gum wrappers. "Their offer was well below the current rental rate. They were politely declined," said an anonymous rep for the hotel, according to Page Six.

It seems plausible - how much spare cash can a quarterly online-only magazine have lying around? (UPDATE: Playgirl point out that they're relaunching and are back in print on December 2 with the Levi issue.) And Neel Shah of p6 knows Matt Levine of the Hotel on Rivington pretty well. Perhaps they'll find an accommodating Howard Johnson instead. They want to keep the shoot "elegant", after all.

Update: Playgirl spokesman Daniel Nardicio has issued a statement firing back at the Rivington for trying to drum up press:

The reason we offered them below market is because i saw the space and it was banged up looking. They wanted an outrageous amount of money for a space that I thought would be nice but was, during daylight hours when we planned on using it, looking pretty used.

So i figured we could photoshop out the smudged windows and scuffed floors and make it look nice. But i'm not paying top dollar for it.

As per usual, Page Six was wrong and The Rivington was trying to get a little press out of it.

Heath and Lindsay Were Totally Boning When He Died [Gossip Roundup]

Azaria Jagger — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:46:56 -0500

Dina Lohan says Lindsay and Heath were dating at the time of his death, Jacko's funeral cost $1 million, Fergie didn't know what "cheating" meant until her therapist told her. Come, drink the sweet nectars of Wednesday gossip.

Radar has a WORLD WIDE EXCLUSIVE that Lindsay Lohan was dating the Heath Ledger when he died. The evidence comes from the umpteenth phone conversation that Michael Lohan secretly recorded with family members, then sold to the tabloid site, because he's just that nice of a guy. In it, Dina says, "She was dating Heath when he died.... I would drop her off and they were friends, very, very close, ok?" Leaving aside the very peculiar decision to drop one's chemically- and emotionally-troubled daughter off at a strange older man's home, does that even necessarily sound like dating? But then the conversation gets sad when Dina says she fears Lindsay will "do something like Heath Ledger did" some day. [Radar]
Dina fires back: Michael's betrayal of his family with the phone conversation sales is "unforgivable." Dina, who also regularly sells candid recordings of her children (albeit through lawyer-vetted contracts to reality TV producers) concluded: "My heart is breaking for my children." [E!]
Finally! Definitive evidence that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are wildly in love: A photograph of them holding hands on their way to the airport in Paris! But wait—what if they're just messing with us? There was an entire Gossip Girl plotline about a situation just like this, I think the lesson was something along the liens of "believe everything you see on TV," in which case: Confirmed! Edward and Bella are making babies. [PopSugar]
Even in death, Jacko knew how to spend. Court documents show Michael Jackson blew a milli on his burial, the L.A. Times reports, including $35,000 for the burial outfit (burned during his cremation) and $16,000 on flowers. Janet, the only Jackson with two pennies to rub together, fronted $49,000, a sum that is paltry only in comparison. [LAT]
[TMZ]
Kate Gosselin respectfully objects to Jon's characterization, on their reality television show, that she must "pull the stick out" of her butt. Looking back, Kate now sees their relationship's doomed fate foretold in that single, sodomitic exhortation: "Perhaps [that] was a sign of things to come." I like to imagine she said it with a sigh. [Us]
Surprise of the year: America's Next Top Model judge and Tyra Banks' gay best friend Miss J. has a seven-year-old son. The mother is a "French lesbian" who had Miss J. and ex-boyfriend Alex jiz in a test tube. [Us]
Halloween star Danielle Harris' stalker is following her again, on Twitter, leading to an interesting quandary: Does that count? Creepster Christopher Small has a restraining order against him until 2012, but now were sort of curious, does following count as making contact? What about retweets? Christopher tweets things he likes about Danielle as "Stalkr-approved :)" which proves that 140 characters is enough to make an innocent female puke on the spot, and also that emoticon smileys can be really sinister in certain contexts. [TMZ]
This might explains why Josh Duhamel thought he could get away with cheating on Fergie: Apparently she didn't know the meaning of "cheating" until a licensed professional explained it her. "I learned through talking with my therapist that it is still cheating even if it's with girls," she explains in the same breath that she admits that she "also love[s] a well-endowed man." [P6]
Shanna Moakler called Khloe Kardashian a "donkey" on Wendy Williams' show, prompting one of Khloe's friends to call Shanna a "dirty whore." Khloe delivered the ultimate insult: "I have no idea who this girl is." If only we could say the same about both of them. [TMZ]

Supreme Court Justice Censors High School Newspaper's Puff Piece About Him [Pissing Match]

Azaria Jagger — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:29:34 -0500

Cherry on the cake? It was famed defender of the First Amendment Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and fancy-pants Manhattan prep school Dalton's class rag.

It all began with a mysterious note from the editors of The Daltonian, The New York Times explains:

"We are not able to cover the recent visit by a Supreme Court justice due to numerous publication constraints," the note said. It promised "an explanation of the regrettable delay" in the next issue.

Apparently Justice Kennedy spoke at a Dalton assembly, and his office insisted that school give Kennedy final approval on any article the little rugrats put together on him—then sent back a revision with "a couple of minor tweaks" and "tidied up" quotations. Enraged, Dalton's student civil liberties union took to the streets, smashing the windows of nearby Bentleys and littering the streets of the Upper East Side with Molotov cocktails, until their sassy schoolgirl uniforms were rended from their sweaty, heaving chests and their ranks swelled into a wildly fevered, anarchic orgy!

Just kidding. They're college-obsessed teenagers with parents who would totally ground them if they screwed up their chance at Harvard over some silly SCOTUS spat. (Besides! Maybe your censor from Justice Kennedy's office can give you some pointers about summer internships.) They're doing whatever their school's PR department tells them to do, which is apparently to go with "no comment" when NYT comes calling, and to let the responsible adults in the room issue gracious statements about the pedagogical value of factchecking. Besides, the ability to keep your publication friendly with the powers that be is a skill that comes in handy in journalism these days!