Mickey Kaus takes a break from his endless agitation against the immigration bill to examine the case of L.A.'s reporter-fucking mayor. While Kaus suggests that this is only the tip of the iceberg, we offer Mayor Villaraigosa this bit of encouragement: Rudy Giuliani's second wife was also a member of the media. You're only one wife away from being a viable presidential candidate! [Kausfiles]
Huffington Post/Radarite Peter Hyman takes a look at how the Joe Dolce-out-at-Star story played out:
Eat the Press gets a valuable Radar exclusive: The cover of the new mag (coming February 13th) and an excerpt from Maer Roshan's editor's letter. Maer reflects on the perceived folly of re-entering a market that is generally assumed to be dying - a market in which he has failed twice previously - and offers a passionate defense of what seems to be an incredibly quixotic venture, considering the earlier editions of Radar, both of which, you might remember, folded. Maer's thoughts follow:
The following angry missive dropped into our inbox this morning, questioning the qualifications of HuffPo cutie (and Eat the Press curator) Rachel Sklar to engage in debate over the great issues of the day:
"Because when the breakup's this big, no less than giant yellow coverlines will do," says Eat The Press. Well, yeah, totally . . . except, if you look really closely, each of those covers trumpets the earthshattering demise of an entirely different celebrity couple (or, in the case of Us, "couple.") Could Us have sort of pulled the Kate and Owen thing out of its ass to compete with Star, which hit newsstands first? We guess we'll never know.
By now you've probably read enough about the Judith Regan firing to make you wish that O.J. were actually innocent. But there's been one important issue we've yet to see addressed: How did the blogs cover the coverage of the firing? Let's take a quick look back to this morning:
In addition to "shedding her Barbie hair" and never asking anyone in the cast a single personal question that didn't have to do with Maya Rudolph's mysterious non-white skintone, Paris Hilton proved herself to be a "piece of shit" host quite literally, Eat the Press reports.
Apparently, Neil Strauss's Rolling Stone interview with Sasha Baron Cohen — the first that Borat's creator has shucked his moustache and fictitious persona for — isn't half bad. But the lessons he learned from the interview — and promptly shared with his mailing list of desperate ugly wannabe Pick Up Artists — show us why he's so beloved of Judith "OJ Profiteer" Regan.
In the email, he tells of adopting an alter ego who sounds very familiar:
• The Nation takes on the Washington Times: "The vast majority of people who read it don't realize that this paper is in bed with bigots and white supremacists." Funny, we thought that the vast majority of people who read it were bigots and white supremacists. [Nation]
• Michael Massing thinks financial pressures are affecting the press' ability to do its job. [ETP]
• Tony Judt thinks it's because liberals are pussies these days. [LRB]
• Either way, things aren't going well financially for the liberal pussies at the Times. [AP]
The HuffPo's virgin media blog Eat the Press has an entertaining new time-waster: the People Ranker, which charts the levels of buzz in the blogosphere. Just enter a string of names, and the fun little gizmo spits out popularity contest-style results. We love it — it's so much easier to be snotty and judgmental when you have concrete data.
