What is Hayden Christensen, an actor who's had to bat away rumors about his sexuality, doing on a magazine quite as gay as Details? Last week, the Jumper star wandered the streets of Manhattan with his co-star, Rachel Bilson, providing heterosexual photo opportunities. All that hard paparazzi-enticing work, thrown away for one lousy magazine cover. Unless this is all part of his handlers' plan: encourage speculation in the celebrity weeklies of a relationship between the prettyboy actor and his female co-star; but leave enough coded language and imagery for the gays to believe there's still hope. In the business of celebrity image-making, this is the equivalent of the evangelical dog-whistle, or Mike Huckabee's floating cross commercial, an appeal designed only to be picked up by the target demographic. If so, it's working: despite awful reviews, Jumper was the weekend's highest grossing new release. (After the jump, the reason why the Jumper star keeps the audience guessing: his fans, who have filled Youtube with dreamy tribute videos, can't handle the truth.)

Ease the bitterness of having to work on President's Day with the knowledge that 1) Grover Cleveland always made his first and second assistants roll calls on Washington's birthday, and 2) the names Roscoe Jenkins, Hanna Montana, and Juno appear nowhere in the weekend box office numbers:

Feminist icon Jane Fonda used the word "cunt" on the Today Show, rather than Oprah-approved vajayjay, and the moral guardians shuddered, but with less conviction than they once summoned. Swearwords found safety in numbers: John Edwards thinks Barack Obama is a "pussy"; and the likely Republican nominee, who survived years in a prisoner-of-war camp, is a "sissy", according to Salon. In preparation for a limp-wristed political future, 24 dumped its torture-loving creator. Sissy: not something one could say about Hayden Christensen, star of Doug Liman's new science-fiction movie, Jumper: he manfully squired co-star Rachel Bilson round Manhattan to establish his heterosexual credentials, but not so conclusively that female or gay fans would think him unavailable. (Amazingly, Madonna's new movie got better reviews.) Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman took the opposite tack, playing to male sapphic fantasies on the cover of W to promote their new movie, The Other Boleyn Sister. (We thought Scarjo looked more like a Slovak model.) Talking of pseudo-siblings, Julia Allison's 17-year-old "adopted" little sister, with whom the Star magazine talking head enjoyed posing, hooked up with Men's Vogue cad, Hud Morgan. There's a diagram. Even more complicated: the relationship between fashion designer Marc Jacobs, his boyfriend, and the gay porn star they've adopted. The New York Times adapted to these shallow times by splashing a game show, Deal or No Deal, across the front of its Arts section. But this belated populist appeal wasn't enough to staunch the loss of readers, and advertising: the Gray Lady is joining the Los Angeles Times and most every other newspaper in the US in cutting newsroom jobs. For these stories, and more, here's one page with the week's top stories. (Or just click on any of the names listed, above.)

The gays can be particularly tedious when they question the sexuality of every boyish actor. Which is why one has some sympathy for Hayden Christensen, who's been fending off rumors of a relationship with Trevor Blumas, a fellow Canadian actor, for years. (Here was one effort: "To me, masculinity is the ability to flirt with the effeminate.") Whatever. But the fevered yearning of gay Hayden fans is sweet and innocent beside the promotion by the marketers of Jumper of an official rumor: that the delicate boy-actor is again, just in time for the movie's release, heterosexually dating Rachel Bilson. His cute co-star wears a bracelet engraved with an H; coyly avoids confirmation or denial of a relationship; and the two of them wandered romantically around Downtown Manhattan locations, like paparazzi bait, for Valentine's Day. "To all the ladies who I'm sure would like to know," Rachel told one of the morning shows. "He was a good kisser!" Blech! Anyway, aside from such cynical efforts to draw female fans, and what critics say is a thin plot, Doug Liman's camerawork looks typically stylish, and Christensen's ability to teleport is a special power every teenager has yearned for. Jumper opens today. The trailer, after the jump.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you spotted Jeff Garlin at an "Up With Kirk!" rally.

From the MySpace event listing featuring the above invite:

If the only chill you felt when the Darth Vader mask was lowered onto Hayden Christensen's head at the end of Episode III was the pleasurable tingling of knowing the credits couldn't be far behind, you are not alone. But according to Page Six, some Star Wars fans would go so far as to accuse Christensen of single-handedly ruining the franchise, to his face:

Hayden Christensen might need a little coaching. If his publicists went through the trouble of sending him to the Playboy Mansion last week for its legendary Midsummer Night's Dream party in the hopes that he'd be photographed grabassing with some Playmates, he could've at least acted like he was having a good time. Merely looking shitfaced while standing in the vicinity of the nice ladies with no clothes on isn't going to get the job done.