New Yorker editor David Remnick is badgering his writers to blog more, and to be more vicious/cutesy while they're at it, just like real bloggers! It's absolutely adorable.

It was an awkward moment, topping even Barack Obama's meeting with the president he spent two years running against: Economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman, receiving congratulations for his Nobel Prize from the man he said built the "Party of Stupid," who "got rid of accountability," and who "was lying" about his "patently, shamelessly dishonest" budget, among many, many other brutal criticisms Krugman has leveled against the president over the past seven years. The photo, by Chip Somodevilla, says plenty, but hopefully Krugman will write something (for his blog?) on the words that actually came out of the president's mouth at the Oval Office meeting.

Larry King's interview with "pregnant man" Thomas Beatie, now expecting his second child, was a new landmark in uncomfortable television. The CNN host asked if Beatie (formerly a woman) "felt gay," if his wife "felt gay," if the pregnancy might violate the U.S. Constitution and then he gave this sort of dissatisfied grunt when wife Nancy tried to say she knew her husband was a man in his heart. Maybe King, having wed seven times, was just jealous that someone has had a more diverse marriage experience than he has. Click the video icon to watch.

CNN anchor and precious treasure Anderson Cooper was on the Tonight Show last night, and, in between digressions into world affairs, host Jay Leno asked about his well-documented love for the reality show Real Housewives of Atlanta, and specifically for star NeNe Leakes. Shrewd as ever, Leno then teased Cooper for clearly favoring Leakes for her ample bosom, at which point Cooper abruptly changed the subject. When asked at a different point in the conversation about the inevitability of holographic porn, Cooper abruptly brought up making holograms of wrestlers. Leno must have been wondering about that, because wrestlers tend to lack ample bosoms! Click the video icon to unlock the mystery for yourself.

You know, it would be a totally awesome Veteran's Day segment, says the bleary news producer, if we recreated that famous photo of the nurse kissing the sailor in Times Square. We think our ideas sound great when we're drunk, too. But soon, the painful truth sets in. This morning Fox & Friends decided to trot the actual nurse from the photo, Edith Shain, 90, in front of the cameras to kiss one of their interns wearing a paper sailor's cap. Witness the awkward Fox & Friends-intern-on-nanogenarian embrace after the jump.Shain's been through this before, however. Here she is with some actor-sailors from Broadway's South Pacific, recreating the kiss just a bit less awkwardly:

Barack Obama and his "good bride" Michelle are set to meet the First Family at the White House Monday. This will be unavoidably awkward, what with Obama having spent the last two years talking about how terrible the Bush Administration has been and all. It certainly doesn't take the edge off things that Bush seemed deathly afraid to touch That One at their first meeting four years ago. Fox News tracked down the relevant passage in Obama's second memoir, the Audacity of Hope:

What did one of the most despised outgoing presidents in history say to his replacement, who had just been smothered in superlatives and the warmth of a nation? George W. Bush said election night was "awesome," referred oddly to Barack Obama's "good bride" and invited the president elect to what will probably be one of the most awkward dinners in White House history. "Amazing you got so dang far on that 'change' platform, hopey," we imagine the president saying, before reaching for another pull on his non-alcoholic beer. At least the president promised a "smooth transition." Click the video icon for MSNBC's summary of the call.

Yeah, so, this happened. The real Sarah Palin and Mark Wahlberg opened last night's Saturday Night Live, with help from Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin. Stiff discomfort reigned. But at least Tina Fey was still her usual hysterical self, and was only exposed to the actual Palin in passing. That, plus Palin on Weekend Update, after the jump. Click to view

Here's a preview of John McCain on Late Show tonight. He told host David Letterman, "I screwed up," then laughed and did a little "gee whiz" shrug, and made an awkward joke about being tortured in Vietnam. "What can I say?!" the Republican presidential nominee asked. Um, maybe give a reason why you lied about having to fly back to DC when you bailed on Letterman's show last time? Apparently that wasn't in the cards. Letterman later hit McCain for paling around with Watergate burglar and would-be firebomber G. Gordon Liddy, even though McCain has slammed Barack Obama for an arguably more distant relationship with 1960s radical William Ayers. By the end of the segment McCain appeared to be in full retreat on the Ayers issue. Witness McCain statement at the end of the clip after the jump (along with more bizarre face-pulls).

New York magazine's daily online chats about the election are usually just mildly interesting, since the journalists involved tend to be overly polite to one another, because who knows who you're going to be sending a job application to someday? Even Gawker Media veterans and that Daily Kos maniac act all pleasant. But Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has never been one for such fraternal niceties, and when nymag.com threw him a sparring partner from National Review, the predictably caustic lefty went to work with his fangs, at one point typing, "tell me you're not ashamed." It was awesome and just really uncomfortable at the same time. Highlights:

David Letterman naturally wanted some dish last night on Anne Hathaway's train-wreck of a relationship with Rafaello Follieri, the Italian con-man doing time for fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. He had complimented her at length, agreed to show her clip and phrased his questions politely. But the starlet became exasperated only one-minute into the good stuff. "I'm just kind of promoting my movie," she said. Ha ha ha, um, no. You don't get to sweep the imprisoned swindler ex under the rug. And no one cares about the movie anyway. By getting testy — at one point Hathaway asked Letterman, "Do you want to know his shoe size, too?" — Hathaway is just keeping the issue hot and herself entangled in Follieri's scandal even longer. Cringe at her battle with reality in the attached video (click the thumbnail to watch).

This may be the most unnecessarily awkward Fox & Friends interview ever. That Doocy guy or whatever says it's probably the "most offensive" ever, and Brad Garrett, the interviewee, seems to think it's the most hilarious. Basically the 'Til Death (that's a television show, I'm told) star starts pontificating strangely about Barack Obama, then hurls some nouveau Borscht Belt zingers out at the crew, then sort of incoherently makes fun of the show's makeup girl. Meanwhile the Fox robots don't get any of the jokes and just sort of stutter strangely and repeatedly call him offensive. I had to pause it and close my eyes really tight a few times. Political discourse! Clip, via Videogum, is after the jump.

Barack Obama has a half-brother who lives in a shack and hasn't spoken to the candidate in years. Just like in The Onion the other day! Ha ha ha! Except this one lives in Kenya and lives on less than a dollar a month and is too embarrassed to admit to people that he's related to the American presidential candidate. Plus side for Obama: George is too far away to embarrass him like Roger Clinton or Billy Carter. Downside: His brother lives in a shanty town on Kenya. Barry Hussein met young George Hussein Obama back in 2006 for the first time since they were children. They haven't spoken since. "I am good with my fists," George Obama reports. All in all, we liked the wacky Onion story better! [Daily Telegraph]

It's a late-breaking story, and CNN's American Morning clearly thought it had a big "get" — a live interview with the brother of Bruce Ivins, a federal biodefense researcher who killed himself as the government prepared to charge him in the anthrax mailings of late 2001. Host John Roberts was prepared, no doubt, to delicately question a grieving sibling — not for the increasingly surly conversation that ensued. Of course, it's hard to fault him for not having a followup question ready for statements like, "I'm a paratrooper." The logical reply is a bit insensitive: "Are you entirely sober?" Click the video icon to watch a distinctly bitter sort of grieving.

Bill Clinton's labor secretary, Robert Reich, gave an interview for the Times magazine this weekend focused largely on economic and political issues. But he also recounted a college date he had with Hillary Clinton, apparently before she moved on from 4-foot-10 Reich to barbecue-fed, 6-foot-2 Bill. Reich, who publicly repudiated the Clintons starting in December, of course used his memory of the date as yet another chance to shiv the couple, by painting Hillary as a budget-busting glutton for grease:

Ouch: After starlet Scarlett Johnasson, clearly crushing hard, gushed to Politico earlier this month about her lengthy email dialog with Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate felt obliged to set the record straight about his connection with ScarJo. What's their status? In A Relationship? It's Complicated? Actually, they are JUST FRIENDS OMG WTF, Obama told reporters on his plane:

Anderson Cooper was talking last night about fundamentalist Christian attacks on Barack Obama with minister Al Sharpton, author Roland Martin and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. The talk turned toward religious tolerance, and suddenly Sharpton was outing CNN's prettiest anchor as, gosh, some kind of sinner? "I might think what you do, Anderson, is going to put you in hell, but I'm going to defend your right to get there," Sharpton said. Then everyone laughed, either because Sharpton made some kind of innocuous joke outing Cooper as a typical shouting-head TV news sinner, or because virulent, institutionalized homophobia is hilarious. Anderson blushed and managed to say something dignified, while maybe secretly wishing he was officially gay so he could let loose a verbal spanking that would make Keith Olbermann's "Special Comments" sound like bedtime stories The End. Clip after the jump. UPDATE: Changed a sentence to make it clear Sharpton might not have been alluding to Cooper's sexuality.

So. As we noted this morning, blog mistress Arianna Huffington didn't weigh in on the unexpected death of departed Meet the Press host Tim Russert until well after everyone else, and once she did, she didn't have much to say. Because of the old axiom about how much one should say when one doesn't have anything nice to say. (HuffPo's regular feature "Russert Watch" has gone blank—technical glitch or archive-scrubbing?) As anyone who's read Arianna's media writing over the last couple years knows, she never liked Tim. And we only just recently wandered into the fray, when we learned that Russert's unappreciated lapdog Chris Matthews hated Huffington for her years spent bashing his idol. And why did she hate Tim? This book excerpt might explain it all!

First Google Maps' "streetview" captured a drug deal. Now the accidental Big Brother has found something even funnier: A bike tumble in Australia. From all of us in New York, to whoever you are Down Under: Ha-ha. [via Kensington Victoria]