Citigroup is a pathetic loser of a corporation having needed three bailouts in as many decades. "Another large exposure for uncertain benefits," the corporate apologists at the Wall Street Journal editorial page declared of the latest Citi rescue. But the global banking giant is one of the largest tenants of Mort Zuckerman, the owner of Citigroup's world headquarters and of the nearby 59-story Citigroup Center, which Citi partly occupies. Why is NBC News allowing Zuckerman to pimp a rescue for Citi?

Nicole Kidman's cringe-inducing appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman last night is continuing to serve up some aftershocks, and during the star's appearance on Regis and Kelly today, Regis treated Kidman as though she were promoting her late-night trainwreck, not Australia.To be fair, Kidman (made up to look like an insane cross between a pilgrim and the Baroness from The Sound of Music) attempted to be diplomatic about the appearance, but Regis refused to have it, placing the blame for the encounter squarely on Letterman. Careful, Regis — a war with Dave is one that few walk away from as the victor. Just look what happened to John McCain! [Live with Regis and Kelly]

Here is Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, the man who won the election for John McCain, doing a bizarre ad of some kind for some sort of outfit that will charge your grandma money to hook up her digital tv converter. Listen, we gave you some easy advice on how to leverage your ever-diminishing fame: get to plumbing! So why this? Because of national security.

In an era of TiVo and dying print media, advertisers are desperate for honest-to-God focused attention. Sometimes this results in creepy Minority Report-style ads or cell-phone spying, but now it's produced an essential miracle of modern science: A guy flying across a thousand-foot-deep gorge in a jet pack. (Video after the jump.)

Now that footage of Daniel Radcliffe's nude performance in Equus has hit the interwebs, audiences everywhere have discovered that what the young wizard lacks in wand, he certainly makes up for in sheer balls. It's for precisely that reason that while appearing on Inside the Actor's Studio this week, Radcliffe gave James Lipton a surprising answer to the self-posed question, "Are you ever worried about getting an erection onstage?"Quite the opposite, said Radcliffe, who explained that it would at least add some inches to his much-scrutinized manhood. Take heart, Dan — at least that shrinkage brings you ever closer to your long-held dream of playing Hermione!

Though Barbara Walters has a long, enviable list of powerful men she's interviewed, she has an even longer, even enviable-r list of men she's conquered in the boudoir. Alan Greenspan! Roy Cohn! That one married senator guy! Why, it's a black book that could make even Angelina Jolie weep into her Hot Pocket. Lately, though, Walters has become something of a chicken hawk, and after lasciviously asking Michael Phelps about his endowments last month, she turned it up a notch on today's edition of The View.This morning's guest was Simon Baker, star of the only real network success story this season, The Mentalist. Baker's already proved his lady-killing bona fides as the non-Adrian Grenier love interest in The Devil Wears Prada, and his new designation as "Sexiest Blond" in People magazine (combined with his natural Australian accent) caused the ladies on the View couch to spontaneously ovulate. The 79-year-old Walters led the charge, turning Baker's innocent ice cream cone anecdote into an uncomfortable, cunnilingus-inspiring sex fantasy. Is that image more hideous than Whoopi Goldberg's Ugg Boots? You be the judge!

Barack Obama totally wanted to give the auto makers billions of dollars, but, you know, when they showed up in DC and stepped off their fancy private jets and addressed congress, the representatives of the Big Three forgot to bring any sort of plan. How much money did they need and what were they going to do with it and how would they become solvent and restructure to become competitive again? They dont know! The president-elect knows he should probably not let the nation lose 2 million jobs in one fell swoop (unlike the sitting president) but, you know, they're not giving him much to work with here. Leading the Free World is already like one of those SNL sketches that doesn't need to be ten whole minutes long. Now we totally feel bad we made him be president.

Allow us to introduce to you our Inverse Baldwin Theory, which goes a little something like this: whenever one Baldwin rises in the public's estimation, another Baldwin must descend to heretofore unknown levels of douchebaggery to balance out the universe. Thus, it is so that as Alec Baldwin enjoys near-universal acclaim and awards for his role on 30 Rock, baby brother Stephen has been reduced to stunts like becoming a right-wing Republican, Celebrity Apprentice, and now... this.Appearing today on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet (the daytime chatfest hosted by Spaghetti Cat), Baldwin showed off the tattoo of Hannah Montana's initials that he had inked in a bid to appear on the Miley Cyrus-toplined show. Sadly, this misguided attempt to book an acting gig produced nothing but some strong guffaws from Cyrus, a round of boos from the confused Mike and Juliet audience, and Baldwin's preliminary placement on the Megan's Law registry. [The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet]

So much has gone down on The View since Rosie O'Donnell quit that it feels like ancient history when O'Donnell reopens those old wounds for some extra publicity, but we made an exception yesterday because her reaction video to Barbara Walters's smackdown was succinct and cute. Sadly, if O'Donnell's appearance on Conan last night is any indication, the View-Bashing Express in her head is running on a circular track.Instead of coming up with some new jokes (as we've heard comedians are wont to do), O'Donnell did an almost verbatim reprise of her shtick from the rosie.com video. Intern Stacey Fitzgerald put together a comparison clip above; let's hope that by the time O'Donnell relates this story to Ne-Yo and Liza Minnelli on Rosie Live, she can at least work in a pirate shirt joke or two.

In the United States, an uncomfortable talk show interview usually involves an uncommunicative Twilight star or a vaguely gross suggestion of backseat nookie from Jay Leno. Across, the pond, however, restrictions are looser — or at least they were, until Russell Brand mucked things up in the ribald BBC voicemail scandal that we still don't fully understand (we think it involved Fawlty Towers, Satanists, and a giant bird's nest of hair). Now, British chat show host Jonathan Ross is being investigated for another example of bad language (shown in the above clip), in which he asks A-list actress Gwyneth Paltrow about her kids and then announces that he would like to fuck her and that she's clearly "gagging for it." Someone's been taking interview tips from The Advocate!

Starlets, you never learn, probably because you're not paying attention, probably because you're always as strung out as Twilight star Kristen Stewart looked last night on the Late Show: You must come on David Letterman's program caffeinated and at least attempt to say several interesting things. Mary-Kate Olsen's "so tired" complaint bombed; Lauren Conrad got entertainingly insulted for being otherwise boring. This is the price from promoting (usually vapid) movies from the Late Show couch. Stewart's appearance is one for the protocelebrity textbooks; an epic trainwreck progressing (in the clip after the jump) from severe awkwardness into mild nastiness and, at the very end, a devastating cut spun from precious, precious terrible awful comedy gold.

Alberto Gonzalez's replacement at the Justice Department, Michael Mukasey, stuttered and slurred his words before collapsing during a speech at the conservative Federalist Society Thursday night. The attorney general soon regained consciousness and is said to be "in good spirits," though Justice declined to comment on fears he suffered a stroke. The dramatic footage, caught by several different cameras, will no doubt be replayed frequently Friday — and given far more airtime than the thorny but tough-to-dramatize questions on surveillance, interrogation, political patronage and corporate fraud that Justice regularly grapples with. Video after the jump.

Like any other governor/aspiring president, Sarah Palin had to pardon a Turkey right before Thanksgiving. But then, because she's a moosehuntin' MAVERICK snow eskimo, the former Republican vice presidential nominee had to do something fun 'n differ'nt, like give a TV interview in front of a guy chopping off animal heads, and then call the activity "neat... levity." We'd hate to see what a rip-roaring good time looks like for the Alaska governor, but points to her for drumming up some free national TV exposure that reinforces her frontierswoman image without doing her any real harm. Video after the jump (keep an eye on MSNBC's leftist subtitles!).

Katie Couric is on the Late Show again tonight, to try and convince David Letterman that she didn't purposely steal John McCain for her CBS Evening News that night the Republican presidential nominee infamously flaked on Letterman. Of course this is a lie, assuming Couric is as ruthlessly competitive as any network news anchor must be in order to succeed. But her exchange with Letterman is worth watching if only for all the fun bashing of Keith Olbermann, the MSNBC shouting head who filled in for McCain. Click the video icon to watch.

Or a serial-killing Jackie Rogers Junior? To be honest, we have no idea what he was doing. But it was pretty awful—and in that sense, fit right in with this terrible CBS crime show we had no idea existed! Still, we're happy to see Ray Romano working. Or Joe Mantegna? We're so confused. Video after the jump. (Thanks to Lisanti Quarterly for the tip!)Click to view
[Criminal Minds]

We admit to having been somewhat flabbergasted to learn that holiday-album-pimping anti-Christ Kathie Lee Gifford had scored a plum gig hosting the new, completely essential fourth hour of The Today Show alongside Hoda Kotb. Credit where it's due, however—Gifford provides near-constant entertainment, mostly because she is vocally and visibly miserable 98% of the time. There was a classic moment on this year's Halloween episode, when she came out in a Big Bad Wolf costume that must have taken hours to put on. Noticing the younger, prettier Today girls were dressed as princesses, she launched into an angry tirade right in 30 Rock plaza, pointing to her and Meredith Vieira's horrifying Pinocchio costumes as proof that the show was "ageist and sexist." It was loud, awkward...and kind of spot-on.Today's hour provided so many awesome grumpy Kathie Lee moments, we were inspired to compile them into one misanthropic montage—edited by our video intern Daniel Caron. Within the span of one hour, she implies that the show is going to suck, complains about having to be PC about the holidays, suggests her husband is deaf, catches Cheyenne Jackson calling her a bitch, and makes a reference to "drying out" that suggests alcoholism or something much more gross. This is so awesome. We're firmly Team Kathie Lee. [Today]

Greta Van Susteren and Matt Lauer were first out of the gate with lengthy Sarah Palin interviews after the election. The chats were slammed as softball jobs by some critics, and you can now add Katie Couric to that group, at least in one regard: She wishes someone had asked the former Republican vice presidential nominee why she didn't answer Couric's simple and ultimately devastating question about what newspapers and magazines Palin reads. Hopefully Lauer, who hosted Today with Couric for nine years, doesn't take the critique personally, particularly since Couric may very well end up back at NBC. Click the video icon to watch Couric explain her thoughts on David Letterman's Late Show.

· In fact, he says so in this clip. Oh, and Leary defends his theory that most autistic kids are in actuality "stupid. Or lazy. Or both." Apparently that quote from his book was taken entirely out of context. Correction appended! · Kevin Spacey takes a pretty unequivocal stand on Prop 8. · Do you have Obama Cabinet Fever? We do! And we can get right behind Health and Human Services appointee Sally Jesse Raphael. Wait—what? · Ooh—the claws are really coming out in the ongoing Project Runway fracas. Lifetime is filing a countersuit against Bravo, NBC Universal, and the Weinsteins. Models, this is also a litigious competition for you, as well. · Hey—squirrels dancing to Michael Jackson!

A man as famous as Brad Pitt is accustomed to enjoying a comfortable buffer between himself and any Jane Q. Psychotic with a Skype account. So when Oprah Winfrey ambushed him on today's broadcast with—delight of delights!—highly specific questions regarding his various Brangelina tribal markings from a flesh-curious fan on internet video phone, it's not entirely surprising that his reaction involved sweaty palms, fidgety body language, and lateral pupil vibration. Watch him squirm as he politely defers at first, then finally cuts Creepalina off as she launches into her description of the part of his body she probably thinks would make the best handbag. [Oprah]

Old-school journo Pete Hamill and Bill Kristol got together for a little argument, filmed by IFC's new Gideon Yago-hosted thing The IFC Media Project. As Bill Kristol is a sad joke and Pete Hamill is a legend, it was not really a fair fight. The topic, thankfully, allowed Bill to shill for his miserable lost war instead of having to defend Sarah Palin again. Hamill still schooled him. Kristol doesn't really think Americans need to see the "blood" and "coffins" that war creates, that way we can all feel much better about ourselves.