Oh professional media beef-starter Michael Wolff, is there any power to which you will not speak the truth, or at least some tough-sounding simulacrum thereof? No, there is not. News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch preemptively slammed Vanity Fair writer Wolff's upcoming biography of him, in a tone of indeterminate sincerity. Now Wolff has responded, telling the Observer that Rupert's just "a little embarrassed" about what he let slip, and what he calls are errors are really just "an internal political thing." That's much nicer than what he had to say about former New Yorker editor Tina Brown's new Daily Beast:

"She's not a news aggregator, although that is her pretense for doing something Web-like," he said. "In fact, she's just an old magazine hack. So I've taken a look at it, sure, but Jesus, who wants to read all those old guys? It's like she's been on ice for ten years and suddenly she's been thawed out again."

Your move, Tina Brown. [also from the NY Observer]