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Remember last week, when I expressed a belief that you were all doing much better? Well, this week, not so much. I've learned a valuable lesson: Don't count your chickens while the maniacs are throwing eggs at each other. Or, as a friend put it earlier in the week, "if some of them learned how to read it wouldn't be such a problem." I agree with this sentiment, and would add a request that those of you who cannot refrain from being boringly vicious at least be more funny. Oh well, on to the death and circuses. Executed: Public Relations Crime: This is like a Bill O'Reilly monologue as performed by a drunken Pollyanna. But worse. Executed:DushkuFan3000 Crime: If only you could have torn yourself away from Dollhouse promo interviews long enough to email Richard, you might have been saved. Executed: Dfkdave Crime: Dfkdave is a whiny whiny dorkface. That is the proper spelling of dorkface. Happy? Executed: Johnny_boy Crime: Sigh. Also sigh. Executed: JamieDemon Crime: Richard killed Jamie earlier this week, but I'd just like to request that any would be NTJ-impersonators simply not bother. If anyone is just actually like this then you're sort of just basically screwed when it comes to Gawker commenting, everyone will assume you are playing a part. Sorry. Have fun at the commenter meetup, nerds.

Have you been searching for just the right way to commemorate the 9/11 disaster? Are kitschy figurines and patriotic truck decals and screaming eagle t-shirts just not doing it for you? The solution has arrived: genuine non-circulated Liberian currency in the shape of a $20 bill—but made out of .999 pure silver, and picturing the once-mighty Twin Towers, and bearing a "9" and and "11" on one side which cleverly add up to $20, which is also the price of this unique and patriotic (USA) item. Here is an ad for this treasure that will simply make you say "wtf." Click to watch right now.

First it was young, elegant Carine Roitfeld, making Vogue publishing look slightly effortless and more-than-a-little spunky from her perch in Paris. Then there was Franco Sozzani, reminding everyone with her all-black issue that Italian Vogue "has gained a reputation for being more about art and ideas than commerce." Now, fashion blogger Bryanboy reminds us, Aliona Doletskaya is the latest editor of a baby Vogue to arguably upstage American editor Anna Wintour, having reached her 10th anniversary at the healm of the fashion title's Russian edition. "Month after month after month, she offers original content, she uses models for her covers and her editorials are very bold, strong and in your face," Bryanboy writes. Well, sure, but there's also the fact that she can fly helicopters! Also: In 10 years, she sees herself flying across continents on an airplane. Considered that fair warning, Anna. Click the video icon for excerpts of Russia Today's half-hour profile. [Byranboy]

Never let your coworkers or viewers know that deep down, you might actually be cool, Fox News lady!

Hello, this is Joshua David Stein. I am back briefly to talk about the fifth season of Bravo's Project Runway whose second episode aired last night. After the results of the next four elimination challenges were leaked on Wikipedia, I began to dread Wednesday's episode. As a pitiably cableless fuck and a people person I, like many others, spend my Wednesdays in the company of fellow Runway followers. We huddle around the television, wringing outrage and joy from the illumined rectangle like it was a hearth and we but cold laborers. But with spoilers in the ether, I feared perhaps one of my friends would feel compelled to announce the loser prematurely. I was in a bind. It would be insulting to preemptively warn against spoiling. What kind of animal would even consider it? It's like walking down the street with a friend, seeing an old man with shiny shoes and bits of stubble where he missed while shaving, and sternly warning your companion, "Hey man, I don't know if you were going to do it but don't kick that guy in the dick." Would you really want to be friends with someone for whom that warning is necessary? On the other hand, the stakes are pretty high. Not only could this episode's dramatic tension be lost, but the thread for the next three episodes would be cut short too. This season five isn't strong enough to endure that. So I watched and ate Indian food in dread. We watched models being interviewed. They had nothing to say. We wondered whether that cute designer from Portland named Leann Marshall is related to Cat Power aka Chan Marshall. She isn't. We saw Stella of the Junkie Lean create a horrible asymmetrical dress that looks like it came from Hot Topic. We watched Blayne say he loved Stella's leather face. We found it funny how she says "leather" the way Billy Joel says "fire" (and "danger") in The Stranger. We soaked up our Chicken Tikka Masala with naan, All the while, eying nervously the cable box like it was an atomic clock. Twenty minutes until the end. Ten. Five. Until the contestants were on the runway and it was clear either Chan Marshall's unsister was going home or the good looking but bland Wesley. Twenty seconds left. Heidi's face filled the screen, an expanse of Germanic skin and brilliant teeth. The elimination music started. We heaved a sigh of relief. And then... From out of the corner, a voice: "I read that Wesley is going home...." WHAT. THE. FUCK. whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck. Beetlejuice! Yes. It happened. I had stepped out of the prison gate and was struck down by a speeding truck. What is this urge to tell? "It's not like those five seconds were going to make a difference," the spoiler said. In his mind, he had euthanized the episode arguably a good call. He had done it for his own pride but he also killed it for the rest of us. I left that house fuming, full of ਚਿਕਨ ਟਿੱਕਾ ਮਸਾਲਾ and rage. As a coda, I'm talking to Richard Lawson now on Adium. He tells me the spoiler said Suede was headed home. Not Wesley. Suede won sooooooo.....I don't know. I'm still filled with anger whether the spoiler's spoil was a joke or a lie or mangled truth, the effect was the same. He kicked the old man in the nuts. It might not have been murder but it certainly was manslaughter.

In light of his recent assault troubles (which, incidentally, he denies), our lovely video folks have put together a little compilation of Christian Bale at his most raging. Of course there's the infamous offing of Jared Leto in American Psycho oh and look! There he is as Batman, wailing on Heath Ledger's serpentine Joker. Click through to watch the (NSFW, probs) video, plus get a little bonus from me.

Barack Obama's advance staff confused everyone when they told journalists not to wear green during their trip to the Middle East. Obama's staff claimed green is the color of Hamas, which is actually isn't really. Though it is the color of Islam in general. So Obama is distancing himself from all the Muslims in the world, which should help dispel those rumors about him being a fist-bumping terrorist by seeming like he's trying way, way too hard, almost like a man with something to hide. Or maybe some staffer just did a shit job of research and thought that was a helpful and clever suggestion. Journos are also prohibited from wearing nail polish and tank tops and from actually asking the candidate any questions, as Andrea Mitchell bitches about in this attached Hardball clip. Chris Matthews is so thrilled that Barack Obama can shoot a basket (he is also shocked that there are so many black people in the military!), but Mitchell seems to think pretend interviews organized by the military are maybe a bad thing? She's not wearing green, though. Don't you hate how biased everyone is?

New York Times publisher and genial buffoon Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger is not worried about how his newspaper's circulation sucks and the share price is at a historic low. You know why? Because Craig Newmark, the guy who invented Cragslist and destroyed the newspaper revenue stream, just got a Times subscription! So hey, no worries, Times staffers. If there's one thing Pinch has learned since he took over as publisher 16 years ago, it's to always mention the moose in the room. But not to bring an actual moose with him anymore. The "moose in the room" is one of those unbearably stupid management book stories, in which a moose ends up at a dinner party or something and no one at the table has the nerves to ask why the moose is there. See, the moose represents big problems that no one wants to talk about. So you are always supposed to mention the moose in the room. Get it? The whole thing is asinine. Of course, Sulzberger is big into management fads and business book bullshit (as we said, buffoon). And back when the Jayson Blair scandal was rocking the Times newsroom, he did this (per Seth Mnookin's Hard News): Now, though, he thinks that was maybe a mistake. In an infamous incident, Mr. Sulzberger showed up at a company crisis meeting holding a toy stuffed moose. It was a gimmick meant to symbolize things that people were afraid to say, but nobody was in the mood for goofy shtick. He wouldn't repeat it. "Obviously not," he said. "The anger that came out of that meeting, it was so palpable that the moose wasn't a necessary tool, it became clear," he said. "It just wasn't. Now, it had proven necessary in other situations, but it wasn't in that one, so no. "But look, if that's the biggest mistake I make as leader of The New York Times Co., this is a good thing." Ha ha "the moose wasn't a necessary tool." And you should know about useless tools, Pinch! It's a testament to Pinch's unwavering ability to miss the point that he doesn't realize the Moose Incident wasn't one bad decision but rather a lovely symbol of how incredibly out of touch he is—with his own newsroom, with the state of media today, with the national mood. Former Times reporter John Darnton just published an entertaining murder mystery set at a newspaper that bears some resemblance to the Times. Here's how he paints the publisher of his fictional newspaper: The prizes and revenue poured in. it was like standing on the bridge of an aircraft carrier and believing that you, not the ocean were actually keeping the damn thing afloat. But now, with the Internet, the blogs, MSNBC, fifteen minute news cycles, giveaway papers in the subway—Christ, you turn around for a moment and the whole damn world is different. A cliché, maybe, but it's true. Just two days ago, he asked Rosen, one of his two sons, a computer geek, to introduce him to some sites; he read a smattering of them (superficial.com, gawker.com, defamer.com) and he was aghast. Where the hell did it come from, this abiding compulsion to read about breakups and breakdowns of third-rate celebrities? To pursue them into restaurants and nightclubs as they turned bulimic or cheated on their partners or adopted African babies? And written in a spirit of such spite (he didn't know the word schadenfreude). "That's the whole point, Dad," his son had said laughing condescendingly. "You've got to be snarky." But in this book is the seed of the actual good news for Times reporters. The paper is still a great springboard to actual media success. They've taken recently to building personalities out of their contributors. It's a break from Times tradition, and a welcome one. Does it matter whatever Warren St. John's actual salary and position at the Times are? No, not so much. What matters for Warren is how effective the paper is at promoting his book, and his brand. What is David Carr? A film vlogger...? And now addiction memoirist? He's whatever the hell he wants to be at the New York Times, which is good news for people who enjoy his writing, and good news for his Amazon ranking. Is it good news for the Times? Who the hell knows. Pinch sure doesn't.

After the New Yorker ran its controversial Barack Obama cover satirically mocking smears against the candidate, the presumptive Democratic nominee acted like it really didn't bother him all that much. "It's a cartoon," he told CNN. That seemed very reasonable! But it sounds like Obama was more angry than he let on. The New Yorker was shut out of much-coveted plane tickets for the senator's trip to the Middle East and Europe next week. Neither Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza nor, Politico's Mike Allen confirms via email, anyone else from the magazine is among the 40 journalists blessed with seats. Granted, some 200 people applied for tickets. But given the New Yorker's circulation, influence and often heroic coverage of not only politics but also the war in Iraq (George Packer), U.S. intelligence and covert military operations (Seymour Hersh, Steve Coll), American torture (Jane Mayer) and the inner workings of the Bush administration, it's hard to see the snub as anything other than payback. Of course the Obama campaign will say the decision was made strictly for space reasons it already has but given the publicity surrounding the New Yorker cover and around Lizza's story on Obama's early poltical career, his people had to know what signal it would send to exclude the magazine so soon after the cover flap: That the candidate of change is not above trying to manipulate the press like any other politician. Which, as the New Yorker's luck would have it, not only reinforces the central message of its cover story (that Obama is a politician much like any other) but also smoothes its potentially awkward transition from self-described "extremely favorable" coverage of candidate Obama to the inevitably more critical coverage of nominee and president Obama. Sometimes it's worthwhile to buy your own damn plane ticket! For Obama, there is at least some risk of blowback from the decision. As Daily Show host Jon Stewart pointed out on his show last week, getting upset about magazine illustrations is not the best way to swat down rumors one is an intolerant extremist: [Politico]

Today on Fox News' morning show Fox then heterosexual cohost Steve Doocy looks at him with an expression that says, "Sure, flamer." Then Kilmeade runs off the set in embarassment—probably to go masturbate to a picture of David Beckham. Click to watch this stunning example of News Corp.'s homosexuality exposed.

Recently, we explained how to make fun of Barack Obama. We thought that would be the end of it! But no, you people—you animals—have more questions, so many more questions. Questions we're obligated to answer. Don't thank us, we're just doing our job. Below: snappy answers to stupid questions about Barack Obama. Q: How should you draw Barack Obama? A. With a prominent chin, and oversized ears that stick out. Toothy. He can be brown. He shouldn't look like Howard Dean. He doesn't have a mustache. [The Root] Q. What should Barack Obama wear on his lapel? A. Something hope-y. Or something funny. Or: "If he was honest, Obama would wear a turban and be done with it." [NYT] Q. If we elect Barack Obama will there be no more racism? A. Come on. [The Root] Q. How many times a day does Barack Obama go to the gym? A. 3. [ABC] Q. Does Barack Obama sweat, like the humans? A. No. [AP] Q. Which Will Smith film performance best provides an unintentional and quite insulting gloss on the early life of Barack Obama? A. His part as a gay hustler pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier in John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation. Either that or his part in I, Robot as a cop who doesn't play by the rules and hates robots. Q. Why won't Barack Obama cuddle with me? A. He needs his space. [Slate]

Keith Olbermann and Rupert Murdoch's media empire keep adding to their illustrious history of mutual hatred. Last month, the Murdoch-owned Post's Page Six accused the broadcaster of valuing ketchup more than the memory of the newly dead Tim Russert. Earlier this week, Page Six ran a particularly provocative item accusing Olbermann of being, uh, too nice to the departed Tony Snow. And last night, Olbermann had his revenge for that; he was forced to call Page Six "sick, sick people" and big liars for all their lying lies. Click to watch his righteous thunder. We report and you decide, ha ha!

Hello, this is Joshua David Stein. I am back briefly to talk about the fifth season of Bravo's Project Runway whose first episode aired last night. Last night marked the beginning of the end of Project Runway as we know it. At the end of this season the program will make its much ballyhooed jump to Lifetime so when we first hear the shleeooop sound marking the beginning of the episode at the crazy hour of 9 pm, it was a bittersweet moment. Soon however joy spread over us like some sort of munificent eczema. Season 5 is made up entirely of cute girls and crazy people. Of the sixteen contestants, three really standout as people you'd cross the street to avoid but also who you might want to follow at a discreet distance to better observe them. Are they really born of woman? Can the same crimson blood that course through their veins course through ours? Yes! Or, yes if your blood is made of Kool Aid, Heroin and Suede. Blayne Walsh, 23: Tweaked-out Norfin Blayne says he's been a designer for six years. He's from Seattle, WA. He's tiny and will be played by Mary-Kate Olsen in the movie adaptation to the sequel to his life. He's also I hate to say it god awfully annoying. No 23 year old Seattle elf should bandy about the phrase, "Holla at your Boy." That is a bad thing to do. On the other hand, he is obsessed OBSESSED with tanning which explains a little bit why he looks like an orange alien. Blayne also says Girlicious a lot and even went so far as writing Girlicious on the poor girl who became his model. She's like chattel but dressed in a goofy diaper. Fun Fact: Blayne's real name is Richard and he's a barista! Also, he might be the most annoying person on planet earth. Stella, 42: Woah! It's like a Ramone is on the show. Stella looks like Cher but every time Cher turned right to get Botox injections, Stella turned left onto the Bowery to score. She seems permanently stuck in the junkie lean and has the monotone intonation that accompanies central nervous system damage. I don't know about you all, but watching her makes me really nervous. She almost went home but Lloyd from Entourage went home instead. This is a good thing since watching her is exhilarating albeit in a bum fights kind of way. Fun Fact: Her middle name is Barbarella and her Myspace page is AWESOME! Suede, 37: I suppose no reality television show is complete without someone who refers to themselves in the third person. Like, "Suede gotta do what Suede gotta do!" The first thing faux-hawked maybe-future-Dale Suede had to do, apparently, is change his name from Stephen Whitney Baum which he did! Now Suede's Suede (let's call a Suede a Suede) and he moved from Seven HIlls, OH to the city. Is he the Chris March of the season? Who knows but I do find that he addresses himself not only in the first but also second and third persons to be a good sign of things to come. Fun Fact: Suede is loaded. According to this article, he owns an apartment in Chelsea, a 30-acre hideaway in the Catskills and he set up an endowment at his alma mater, Kent State. Assorted Notes: 9 pm is a horrible new time. It means dinner at 6 which is just embarrassing. Probably has something to do with the fact that Lifetime viewers are all old women who are eating their television meals alone at home anyway on one of those seats that also is a toilet. The guy from Detroit is like Kevin from last season but even straighter and cooler. He's from Detroit. He has no use for this noise. I didn't realize how much I had missed Michael Kors until I saw his large incredulous puppy face.

When dreamboat CNN anchor Anderson Cooper found footage of an adorable younger bear for his show in April, he couldn't get enough of the "cute" and "cuddly" creature. But tonight, after AC360 co-host Erica Hill narrated footage of an older, larger bear, Cooper seemed to get a little grizzly, asking "What is with this program and bears?" Why, only your bread and butter and honey, Anderson! The bedrock of your credibility! What happened to being the "most trusted name in bears?" It's summertime, these guys will be out in force, and there's no going back now. Besides, Hill has a killer merchandising idea, click the thumbnail at left for details. It's only a few more months, that shouldn't be too much to... well, ya, you get the idea.

In light of Andy Dick's recent unfortunate legal news, we thought we'd take a further look into the mind of the troubled comedian, then watch him get dragged off of a live television show after groping heiress/sorta business lady Ivanka Trump. In the first clip, Dick is talking about comedian Michael Richards' racially-charged on-stage freakout, delving into the thorny and busy psyche of a clown. In the second clip, well, he gets dragged off of the Jimmy Kimmel show after groping Ivanka Trump. Watch, sigh wearily, and, just maybe, learn a little something.

Often times men in the public eye, particularly those who dress snappy or act "strangely" or marry, um, different women, are accused of being wicked sodomites. Nine times out of 10 they vehemently deny it, often ending up looking more gay than they did before. The latest example is Al Reynolds, that fey fellow who was married to regrettable former The View yakker Star Jones. I guess people thought he was gay because he wore nice-ish clothes and, um, married Star Jones. Now, because no one has talked about him for at least a year, he recently felt compelled to record an interview with a fake journalist in which—at poorly edited and protest-too-much length—he tries to refute the scuttlebutt(sex). He slapped the thing up on YouTube, and, blargh, it's a mess. The video of that sad act stands above, as the number one example of what not to do when denying gay rumors. A few other tips lie after the jump. You also probably shouldn't: Jump on couches, duh.Act on a show called Gossip Girl or get apartments with your sexy male costars.Marry Liza Minnelli. For the love of God that should seem extremely obvious, but apparently it's not.Or, you know, don't actually (or sort of) come out. That'll really make you seem gay.

The co-editors of Ivygate published an LA Times op-ed yesterday arguing that kids today are embarrassing and otherwise undermining themselves by oversharing online, but also arguing that social judgements about these gaffes are softening. Perhaps they spoke too soon: One of the editors, Jacob Savage found his appearance on the show America's Election Headquarters had been cancelled after allowing Fox News Channel producer Virginia Grace to "friend" him, thus unlocking a profile that listed him as "very liberal." He wasn't cancelled because the topic was no longer of interest his op-ed coauthor still got to go on air but because suddenly there was only room for one person. It could be because Savage is a lefty, and lefties are detested on Fox, but after seeing the segment, I'm going with Radar's theory that the co-author, Maureen O'Connor, was selected for being kind of hot. Fox tends to know its audience like that. The Girls Gone Wild footage chosen to accompany the on-air chat would tend to reinforce that notion. Excepts of the Fox chat and Savage's Facebook profile, after the jump. [Radar] (Video via RedLasso, Facebook image via Huffington Post)

Comedian Todd Barry makes jokes about Gawker! Specifically, every uppity celebrity's favorite fantasy feature, the Gawker Stalker map. The joke is something about Ethan Hawke and bananas but I got distracted and don't remember it exactly (luckily the audio is above). He also recounts how he asked some fans to inundate our Stalker line, George Clooney style, with hundreds of Barry sightings. He asked that the phrase "easy on the eyes" be used. Unfortunately, it didn't happen.

Wired posted its profile of Julia Allison, the Time Out New York dating columnist and onetime protocelebrity (now in the process of crossing over into the real thing). Yes, the cover story (preceded by the cover itself) retreads much that Gawker readers already know about Allison, and many of you will, no doubt, find the piece altogether too friendly, a celebratory, rather than judgmental, distillation of her techniques for self-promotion and attention whoring. But there is news. Confirmation, for one, of Allison's long-rumored reality TV show for Bravo, IT Girls. Wired said the deal was signed in June, though it's clearly been in the works for much longer. Then there's a terrifying new wrinkle to Allison's new "lifecasting" Web venture, Non Society: She signed up [reality show partners Mary] Rambin and [Megan] Asha to act as cofounders of the site — nonsociety.com — and began developing content: lip-sync videos, a talk-show series modeled after The View, and the collected musings that the trio were already posting on their own blogs. (Emphasis added.) There's no doubt that after four years of fameballing her way around the New York media and Web startup scene, Allison will be able to drum up some decent guests for her talk show. But will she and her co-hosts be able to host any conversations worth listening to? Allison's hardly had occasion to develop interview skills, what with her decidedly non-journalistic work as a sometime society chronicler, dating columnist and stint as Star's official talking head for television. Talk show aside, between the Wired cover, Bravo show and deepening roots in the tech/media investment community, Allison is clearly revving up to take her act national, a point the Wired profile neatly crystallizes. Here's how it recasts her West Coast forays, which have seemed like nothing so much as shopping excursions for geek talent and VC money, as part of a national expansion of the Allison machine: In July 2007, having conquered — and perhaps oversaturated — the Manhattan media market, Allison set her sights on a new target: the Silicon Valley startup world. In a flashback to her Gawker breakthrough, she flew to the Bay Area to attend the annual TechCrunch party thrown by influential blogger Michael Arrington. Dressed in a flattering Diane von Furstenberg dress, Allison made an immediate impression among the blue-shirt-and-khaki-wearing attendees. The next day, Arrington posted a video on his site of Allison cooing for the camera, telling her audience that she had a thing for geeks, and urging them to call her. Soon Allison had become a Valleywag staple, befriended the likes of CNET's Caroline McCarthy and Sequoia Capital's Mark Kvamme, and — like Jack in the Box opening a new crosstown franchise — introduced her brand of ignore-me-if-you-dare provocation to the Web 2.0 startup world. Other noteworthy points from the story: Former Gawker managing editor Choire Sicha says Allison's fame happened "in a way that seemed seamless and kind magical." While an undergraduate at Georgetown University, Allison wanted to date med students, so she got a job in the medical school library and did, well, did her thing. She became known as the "Medstitute" and a fixture at med school parties, even shown in a slideshow at med school graduation. Allison debuted on Gawker when Nick Denton "demanded" Chris Mohney write about her. Gawker writers, "facing an unrelenting 12-posts-a-day workload, couldn't resist the easy productivity of a quick Allison item." True! Allison had a "burgeoning relationship" with Digg founder Kevin Rose, but it was "killed" by Valleywag's very early coverage. Allison talks to Rambin like "a mother comforting a child after a deflating T-ball game:" "I thought that Gawker post about you today was very nice." Non Society in a nutshell: "Two C-list starlets can get together and make one B-list couple." Finally, a tipster notes that Platon Atoniou's photo of Allison for Wired's cover (assuming he shot it he is credited with the inside shots) borrows heavily from his earlier shot of Italian actress and model Monica Bellucci (on the left): Is there a suggestion here that Julia Allison is anything less than a total original?? Heaven forbid. [Wired]

Savvy media watchers are beginning to note that the birth of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's twins July 12 indicates they probably were not born in May, as Entertainment Tonight reported at the time. Amid intense scrutiny, the showbiz show in June yanked the story from its website, but its executive producer insisted "we are waiting to see how this plays out" before issuing a retraction. And now that everything has played out as expected, with ET looking stupid, the show has buried its admission of error on some blog, and will not issue a retraction or say anything on broadcast TV. “We have moved on and so have our viewers,” a show spokesman told the Times. Well, sure, but will any of us really trust ET for crucial celebrity baby news again? Not celebrity blogger (and Daily Show host) Jon Stewart, whose June 5 wrapup of the whole scandal is after the jump. [TV Decoder, Comedy Central]

Remember how the New Yorker's Barack Obama cover was supposedly going to confuse a certain class of voter over whether Barack Obama is a legitimate, Democratic candidate for U.S. president or flag-burning muslim terrorist? Everyone sort of pictured these gullible souls as poor, uneducated whites, but the joke's on us, because the caricature has pushed no less a political sophisticate than MSNBC's Chris Matthews into a pit of stuttering confusion. Talking about the cover on Hardball tonight, Matthews suffered a severe relapse of his notorious Obama/Osama condition. Symptoms include calling Obama by the name of terrorist Osama bin Laden; referring to bin Laden as "Obama" and flashing on-screen pictures of one dude when talking about the other. Click the thumb to see which one happened tonight. HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY NEW YORKER FASCISTS. [Huffington Post]

New Yorker editor David Remnick went on The Situation Room today to answer to Wolf Blitzer about his magazine's ridiculous Obama cover. "There are gonna be a lot of people who aren't going to be sophisticated New Yorker readers," Wolf asserted, "who are going to look at this cover" and assume it is an accurate portrayal of reality. Remnick—typical hate-monger!—says this is condescending. In the attached clip, watch Wolf claim that the cover could've appeared on "a neo-Nazi magazine." Context is meaningless! No one gets anything anymore! Remnick says some crazy thing about being Colbert in Print, but no one gets jokes without studio audiences to explain what is supposed to be funny. (After the jump, in a calmer setting, New Yorker political writer Hendrick Hertzberg holds up the cover and grins. He almost giggles!)

A TV reporter in LA went out to cover the wacky goings-on at the line of people waiting to buy a new iPhone 3G. He approached a guy in line with much goofiness; the guy in line responded by (accurately) calling the reporter a "Jackass" on live TV. It's truly a landmark moment in the history of gadget nerds asserting themselves against media mockery. Click to watch the verbal smackdown—complete with a whole crowd of Apple fans simultaneously crying, "Ooooooooo!!" [via BoingBoing]

Joel McHale, host of E!'s talkie blog The Soup, is a courageous fellow. After making fun of Kathie Lee Gifford on this past Friday's show, he nobly appeared during her Today Show segment to talk shop and further shame the irascible Kathie Lee. Watch the video above to see our hero, dreamy as ever, gently refuse to back down in the face of such unmitigated wickedness. Also, what's being discussed here? Crabs or craps? I can't quite tell. Though, I'm not sure it makes any lick of a difference anyway.

Gawker videographer Richard Blakeley noticed that if you re-mix the embarassingly bad Nonsociety video (dating columnist/publicity whore Julia Allison we're trying to fix it!) In Sunday's Page Six Magazine, Julia Allison debates Rachel Sklar (who writes for the Huffington Post, the world's personal blog) about whether or not it is pointless to defend your online reputation. Allison predictably and correctly says no. "There is no justice on the Web." (She would know.) Rachel Sklar suggests to "fight the hell back" if someone lies about you online. Perhaps through long, long, longlonglong essays on the HuffPo?

Recently, a famous person said things he shouldn't have said while not realizing that his microphone was turned on. We honestly can't believe people still do this! They've been doing it since the inventions of microphones though, basically. And since the invention of Interet Video, we can watch and rewatch these fuckups over and over again! Video guru Nick McGlynn put a couple of the more choice live-mic mistakes together into one great clip. Remember when Kyra Phillips bitched about her brother-in-law in the bathroom and somehow the audio interrupted a Bush speech? Remember when President Reagan rambled about nuking Russia? Remember when Jesse Jackson said he would tear Barack Obama's nuts off? Now you don't have to "remember" any of those things because they are all right here in this post.

Bill O'Reilly just aired the much-hyped but apparently very brief video Fox News has of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson saying he wants to "cut [Barack Obama's] nuts off." It sounds like Jackson is upset over the Democratic presidential candidate's position on faith-based federal initiatives. But that's beside the point. First off, what left-wing political activist worth his salt whispers sensitive, private thoughts like these while fully mic-ed at a Fox News affiliate? More to the point, did Jackson learn absolutely nothing from the "Hymietown" fiasco in 1984, when he tried to make off-the-record remarks about Jews in New York to reporters on a campaign airplane flight? Anyway, Jackson has already apologized, and the two guests brought on by O'Reilly didn't think it was a big deal (one because Jackson already apologized, and one because he argues Jackson's not taken seriously anymore anyway) . Video of Jackson's comments and text of his apology are after the jump. UPDATE: O'Reilly also said Fox News has audio of Jackson that is "more damaging that what you heard" but won't air it because it's not relevant and the sensitive network is not out to get Jesse Jackson. Video after the jump. UPDATE 2: Also, Michelle Obama used to babysit Jesse Jackson's son when he was a teenager. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, etc. Video of Jackson's comments, either above or via this YouTube: Apology: For any harm or hurt that this hot-mic conversation may have caused, I apologize. My support for Sen. Obama's campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal. In case there was any doubt Fox News will be repeating this thing incessantly, O'Reilly played it three times in the first four minutes of his show. Video of O'Reilly saying Fox is holding back footage of Jackson saying even worse things, and speculating that Jackson is scared of Obama winning because if he becomes president that will mean racism is over and Jackson will be out of a job: These guys are such pros at the art of the smear. You just have to watch and learn: First the gossip and insinuation (as with the non-existent Michelle Obama "whitey" video), THEN the goods, which are totally optional since you can do plenty of damage with just the insinuation part.

For some reason we are strangely obsessed with actress and reformed party girl Lindsay Lohan's totes heroic lesbian relationship. Maybe it's because we never saw it coming. Gay rumors just don't seem to affix themselves to female celebrities as much as they do to their hunky, becoiffed male counterparts (yoohooooo Chacey!) and she seemed to enjoy dating mens. Though maybe we should have detected some early signs. Look at the hungry gleam in the young actress's eyes as costar Rachel McAdams (where'd she go?) tells her a tale of Sapphistry in the 2004 film Mean Girls. Really, look at it! The video is above. If you need a more direct lesbian reading of the scene, you can read a revised transcript here. (Yes we realize that this is totally silly.)

In response to a Times column about Fox News uglifying a picture of reporter Jacques Steinberg and viciously smearing Tim Arango and other journalists, the cable network's chief rageaholic, Bill O'Reilly, is pretending to be pissed at the Times for caricaturing him in the illustration for a 2007 book review. The caricature, he said during his Fox show last night, even included some kind of devil horn (clip after the jump). But O'Reilly's screaming on-air hatefest is the worst sort of act, because if you actually examine the illustration, reproduced after the jump, you notice two things. 1. There is no "horn" attached to O'Reilly. The illustration includes little dialog bubbles, like in comic books, with pointy parts of the bubbles aimed at O'Reilly's mouth. Maybe the host missed that when his producer or whoever briefed him on his outrage during a break. 2. The illustration is by no stretch a caricature, defined by Merriam-Webster as "exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics." It is a series of straightforward renderings of O'Reilly as he looks on camera. A variety of unnatural colors are used, but not in the service of exaggerating anything about O'Reilly or making him look bad. O'Reilly's ginned up outrage comes from Roger Ailes' mudslinging, dirty-politics playbook. The idea is to attack the critic, as the network did with our own Hamilton Nolan yesterday and as it has been doing with journalists and other targets for years now. But some of O'Reilly's emotion may very well be real: emerging evidence, as reported by Arango and Steinberg, that this old routine is getting boring and driving away viewers is apparently causing some very real panic over at Fox. [TVNewser] (Ward Sutton illustration via Times)

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has always resented the fact that peers made more money than him with what he deemed to be inferior films. These days, he's obviously overcome this problem by milking reality shows for millions to prop up his more artsy products; but he couldn't always be so sanguine. Here we have a priceless and EXCLUSIVE classic from the archives: a recording of a phone call between Weinstein and Disney exec Joe Roth, taped shortly after Michael Ovitz—a spectacular failure as head of Disney—was paid more than $100 million to leave the company in 1996. Weinstein is galled beyond belief (and perhaps a bit envious). "Let's quit today!" he jokes. Why, he works his ass off and what does he get? A fucking lecture. "Joe, you're a success, so therefore you're a failure in this business," Weinstein complains. Then he insults his fellow moguls: "Between Peter Guber and Mike Ovitz and everybody who fucked up...Everybody got wealthy on failure." Weinstein just cares too much about the films, you see; "We have character flaws that must be overcome," he sighs. Thanks to Project Runway, he's done so. Click to listen to the titan of Hollywood in all his expletive-spitting glory.