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Dependable E! gossip-geyser Ted Casablanca—whose many closet-case and cokehead-centric blind items have provided Defamer readers with the foundation for countless hours of Guessing Game fun—has found himself embroiled in an ongoing controversy at his host network, which he dubs "CasablancaGate" in an unabashed airing of dirty-laundry in today's Awful Truth column. After posting several e-mails demanding some explanation as to his recent absence from E! News broadcasts, Ted offers this sketchily detailed response:

Dear Boob-Tube Babes: Dunno the score, girlfriends. But—irony of de-lish ironies—I'm starting to know how Star Jones Reynolds felt.

Let's play Hollywood detective for a moment. Here's what we know: E!'s last high-profile, on-air-personality firing involved red carpet correspondent Kathy Griffin, who has been quite vocal about the fact that E!'s $21 million golden boy hire Ryan Seacrest insisted her shitcanning be a negotiation point. We also know that several of Ted's more recent, vitriolic blind items, such as the one fingering "Jiggly Wiggle-Poof, [the] queen America is so busy watching be outwardly hetero but inwardly so 'show tunes and smart cocktails' it's pathetic," have resulted in landslide Guessing Game ballot results nominating Seacrest as the Wiggle-Poof in question. Could Ted be the victim of a Griffin-style, Wiggle-Poof-ordered snuffing? Or does his reference to knowing "how Star Jones Reynolds felt" mean he too was pulled aside by producers and coldly told that focus testing data indicated audiences had fallen deeply out of love with him? We implore any high-ranking Deep Throats to come forward, anonymity assured.