Many in Hollywood media wondered how Nikki Finke would play up or ignore yesterday's much heralded release of "The Brown List" of Most and Least Liked Execs compiled by the Hollywood Temp Diaries.

The problems for Finke being, that as much as the Old Nikki might have liked to put together a list like this herself:

(a) The Least Liked List no doubt features many of her most favored sources.
(b) The thought of any other website getting attention probably makes her head explode slightly more than its normal exploded state
(c) The Temp Diaries site is a noted Finke taunter which has already incurred her rage.

Luckily, Nikki eventually found a way to cover the story about the story without covering the story. Her path, after a long day of sitting out The Brown List news, was to make it a story about the state of journalism, upbraiding the LA Times for, like everyone on the internet except her, linking to the Brown List in a fairly thoughtful post by Patrick Goldstein.

Under the grandma-throwing-her-bathroom-slippers-at-the-TV-set headline "Just How Pathetic Is LA Times Coverage Of Hollywood? Well, THIS Pathetic!" Nikki's response however, reveals more about where her loyalties and friends are than anything else she could write. Once the self-anointed guardian of the lowly and down-trodden of Show Biz, Finke dismisses the Brown List and the site which compiled it, calling it derisively a "temp website." She continues, "I'm not kidding so it bears repeating: the author of "The Brown List" runs a website for temporary workers and is self admittedly neither a Hollywood insider nor responsible journalist."

She also criticizes the methodology of the poll which, say what you will about it, was completely explained and transparent when the list was posted.

So just to make it clear, Nikki, to what level do people have to ascend in Hollywood before they are allowed to have opinions? Shall we say, VP and above? Hopefully the world will soon invent a sub-internet so all these little dayshift workers can have a cellar to hide in while Nikki and her fellow insiders and responsible journalists can practice real Big Time Interneting.