Have we mentioned that Ivanka Trump is converting to Judaism, presumably so she will be a better marriage match for Jared Kushner, the equally young owner of the New York Observer? We have. Ivanka is only 27, but she recently auctioned off an internship with her for Chabad, the Hasidic organization her boyfriend supports. This donation and the visibility that comes with sounds like a good way to get in with Kushner's family, because we hear that they don't like the idea of Jared marrying outside the tribe. But Ivanka just made another move in the chess game to ingratiate herself with the Kushner family. Oh, UPDATE: apparently nobody wanted to bid on the "internship," and the person who finally did won't be sending the kid to the internship anyway.Park Avenue Peerage reported that she auctioned off for the Habad charity fundraiser "a one-month internship with Ivanka in New York, with the highest bidder choosing between working with her in the acquisitions arm of the Trump Organization or at the Ivanka Trump Collection, her diamond jewelry line." Looks like she has learned a few "how to win friends and influence people" business tricks from Dad! The Kushners have long been good friends with Chabad groups. Jared was the head of the Chabad House at Harvard. And dad Charles got a rabbi from Chabad's Living Legacy organization to write a letter on his behalf when he got into all that prostitute-blackmail trouble. Donating to a Chabad effort, a favored charity of the Kushner family, was the kind of smart move she might want to mention in her upcoming "motivational" book. Update:"I have a friend that went last night and from what I hear no one wanted to buy that internship with her. It eventually sold for $9,000 but the person supposedly felt bad BUT won't be sending their kids to intern with her."

If you have a romantic view of the ad industry from watching Mad Men, this may end it forever. Yesterday Agency Spy broke the news that the ad industry had ground to a halt (not just because of the recession) as everyone spent their time forwarding a video showing two ad agency people having sex in an office. We speculated that it would eventually come out. And, well, it did. The video is amateurish, and the sex isn't sexy at all. Think more Pete Campbell and less Don Draper. Use discretion, one and all. We've semi-censored it, but it's still probably NSFW.

[Update: Below, the bride-to-be tells us how he proposed... aww.] Remember Washingtonienne Jessica Cutler? She was the young oversharing blogger who got fired from Capitol Hill because she blogged up a storm about her after-work sexual exploits—much of it with older, well-known politicos, some of it paid. Sample blog excerpts: "W = a sugar daddy who wants nothing but anal. Keep trying to end it with him, but the money is too good." She got famous on Wonkette and outed. She turned the debacle into a respectable-selling novel, The Washingtonienne, posed for Playboy, went broke, and inked an HBO deal. Then there were a bunch of rumors that she was working as an escort—or at the very least, was buddies with a madam who provided girls to Eliot Spitzer. But love is to make an honest woman out of her—she's engaged now, reports Wonkette via Reliable Source, to a dude named Charles Rubio. He's a lawyer! Let's learn more about him.

Last week, what our sister site Jezebel described as a "strange, in-depth essay" on Michelle Obama's ethnically-proportioned butt, "First Lady Got Back," ran on Salon. Obviously, this was provocative enough in some circles to draw a storm of Internet criticism, which, of course, is exactly what Salon wanted. Everybody won: they got the attention and blogs got some content. But! The author of the piece, Erin Aubry Kaplan (who is African-American, has previously written about Jennifer Lopez's rather more sizable ass, and is an op-ed columnist at the L.A. Times) felt the need to earnestly respond to the disproportionate freakout her essay created.As she responded on the blog 3 Brothers and a Sister:

Remember when Sex and the City came along and started dictating to women what their hopes and dreams should be? It was a fun, heady time! The two main lessons were: shopping and fucking. That's what ladies do. And, when looking at Sexism's disciples, one can see a clear path where these two roads diverged in the yellow wood of a Barney's spring sale. One group of people, those (including Candace Bushnell!) behind the regrettable NBC women's seminar Lipstick Jungle bumbled off toward the shopping, and a young queen of New Jersey named Ashley Alexandra Dupre trotted off toward the fucking (specifically as a hooker with the Governor of New York!) Finally, one has emerged the victor. And it should come as no surprise that, in the end, the fucking won out. We mean to say that in a ratings battle that was historially waged on Friday night, Dupre's much ballyhooed Diane Sawyer 20/20 interview handily trounced Lipstick Jungle (which aired, on a Friday for some reason, in the same slot as the interview) with a 8.2 million to 3.3 million point spread. So, though series star Brooke Shields might deny it, Jungle is ding-dong diddily dead. And Ashley Dupre is famous(ish) again! Jungle has plenty of sex, sure, but it's mostly about the clothes (there's a character named Victory who is a fashionz dezinerz!) and the Baudelaire lifestyles the garments imply. Dupre was all about where the sexing will get you—money! in New York! fleeting, squirrely third-hand fame! Both gluttony and lust are strong ass sins, to be sure, but I guess in the end the carnality, unlike the consumerism, is free. Well, not free. But... Oh, you know what I mean.

Now that we have a glorious, hopey new president, it's time for the assholes to come out. Idiot L.E.S. designer Apollo Braun—famous for being the idiot who makes sweatshirts saying "Who Killed Obama?"— has issued a mumbly press release declaring that he will not stop making his idiot sweatshirts, despite alleged pressure from the FBI, which may or may not be a likely fabrication like the rest of the idiot's stories. He also gives an appropriately amusing quote!:

The aptly named "Our Country Deserves Better PAC" has basically ruined Thanksgiving. They bought airtime, nationally, for some ads they produced about Sarah Palin. Why? Why did they do this? Don't they know it's November and we're all done with her forever? They just don't care. They hate America. "Palin inspires such passion among Americans," the PAC's chief strategist explains, "because she speaks to them in a straightforward and sincere way without the parsed statements and duplicity of typical Washington insider and bureaucrats." She speaks without those "parsed statements" because it is usually impossible to parse her statements. Watch the inexplicable ad thanking that terrible woman after the jump!

Hey, you know what will be nice? Whoever the hell Barack Obama appoints to the FCC can't possibly be as incredibly asinine as the current crew. Back in 2004, popular singer Janet Jackson's nipple destroyed America's innocence forever. The FCC fined CBS stations $550,000 for allowing the nipple to terrorize the children. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the fine, because the FCC has for decades not punished fleeting, incidental nudity on television, and also because come on get over it. But the FCC is now appealing to the Supreme Court, which may find in their favor! The Supreme Court is already dealing with the FCC's fight with Fox. Fox's crime? Allowing Bono to swear on television. We want Bono off our televisions as much as the next guy, but the new FCC policy of allowing incidental, fleeting profanities in some instances, like news programs or in Supreme Court oral arguments regarding profanity, while handing fines out for random cursing during live award shows is maybe a bit arbitrary and capricious, right? Still, the FCC is liking its chances in the Fox case, and so they are going to fight the nipple thing to the bitter end. Because the founding fathers always intended us to be a nation of prudish vulgarians. (It's in the Constitution's special Unrated edition.)

Are you a horrible camera flash-stained, fraying-at-the-edges tabloid media darling who mourns the loss of the recent American rococo decade? Is everyone being poor and complaining all the time just too much for you? Well worry not, dear inexplicably financed friend, because Dubai is waiting for you! Oh you know about crazy Dubai, don't you? Unlike this ailing and needy nation, the Arab Emirate is flush with sandy money and crazy man-made islands and, ooo, brand-new gaudy hotels! Like a beacon or a lighthouse calling to them out of the icky dark, American celebrities who had it better when the world was gold showed up in droves for the huge, $20 million dollar opening gala for the new Atlantis Palms megaresort in Dubai this week. Look who was there partying while we back here in the home country hopped boxcars and ate cold soup thickened with sawdust: Cocaine-snazzled actress Lindsay Lohan, who is now a gay person dating a gay woman who deejayed at the bash. Odious "actress" and model Mischa Barton (who, OK, was born in England, but she made her money here). Tax-dodging half-vampire Wesley Snipes. Too-bored-to-ever-know-where-she-is fashion plate Mary Kate Olsen. I guess things here in the patriotic old US of A got a bit too messy for them, a bit too elbow-greasy. So they flit on over to some twirling, towering desert city of steel and glass where the champagne still flows and the hotels are tacky and people still have the energy to celebrate it all. Fair-weather Americans if you ask me. While the country burns—literally and figuratively—these folks spent how much on dresses (and, um, banana-yellow suits in the case of Mr. Snipes), to go fete it up in the Middle East and had the audacity to smile?? Well I hope they like it over there in Terrorist Disney World, because they aren't allowed back here. All images via Getty

Prepare to die, entitled Conde Nasties! Conde has always had a well-deserved reputation as the most opulent and self-important of all magazine publishing companies. Those days are coming to an end. The (gender-neutral!) diva culture that spawned The Devil Wears Prada and a million young aspiring media people who thought that a magazine employee could live the lifestyle of an investment banker—it's all on the way out. We come to bury you, Conde Nast culture, not to mourn you. Contemplate this, special ones: you may soon be forced to travel in (and pay for) common taxi cabs, like the poors! And it gets worse:

This year's edition of People magazine's hugely popular "Sexiest Man Alive" issue (Hugh Jackman takes top honors) will feature... um... scratch 'n sniff photos of famous dudes, like Gossip Girl actress Chace Crawford, TV show kryptonite Taye Diggs, Law & Order: SVU brute Chris Meloni, and young god swain of the oceans Michael Phelps. Each of the guys chose a scent that makes them feel sexiest, from fresh cut grass (Mr. Crawford) to L’Homme YSL parfum for Mr. Phelps. We'll take a look at each fellow's preferred odor and analyze what it's supposed to say about them and what it really says, after the jump.

Clare Boothe Luce, the witty and charming author and congresswoman, was also the wife of fantastically wealthy, terribly influential far-right crackpot Time and Life publisher Henry Luce. Back in 1936 Clare Boothe Luce wrote The Women, a wonderful play about how women are all undermining backstabby gossipy bitches, because Luce hated women. So naturally the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute exists now to promote and support leading conservative women in politics. Anyway! Their annual pinup calendar is out! Would you like to see perpetually enraged blogger Michelle Malkin and predictably enraging author Ann Coulter decked out like extras in a dinner theater production of Dinner at Eight? Sure you would. Click through.

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]

President Bush went to the G20 Summit and no one wanted to shake his hand. :( [Videogum]

Last week's SNL had no less than eight sketches featuring gay themes or gay content. The comedy in these sketches, without exception, derived from one of three premises: 1. Men kissing or otherwise enjoying each other's bodies. 2. Men acting effeminately. 3. Men describing the sex they've had with other men. And then there was that part where Seth Meyers silenced the anti-Prop 8 audience by telling then, "OK. Vote's over." All this led us to describe the proceedings as a gay minstrel show. The Advocate approached Meyers to defend the episode. Unfortunately, the one question we really wanted the head SNL writer to answer—what was up with that "Vote's over" thing?—is never addressed. He did have lots of defensive things to say about the rest of the show. Here are the greatest hits, in no particular order.

After we went to all the trouble of offering Spitzer hooker Ashley Dupre seven—seven!—different career choices yesterday, what does she do? She goes and tells Diane Sawyer, "I want to go after my music and do what I love. And not lose track of who I am on the way. I'm trying to pursue my music. I'm still living for it. I'm not gonna give up my dream. I'm not going to change. I'm not going to let this change who I am. And what I love." All of those short declarative sentences do not change the fact that your song "All We Want" is just the sort of generic R&B bullshit blathering that has already largely destroyed our nation's airwaves. We say this as a friend! Regrettably, Ashley is listening to her other friends: her MySpace friends. Like Whitney Houston, and "Fin" from Williamsburg:

Ashley Dupre appears to be at the forefront of a media blitz: In addition to sitting down with Diane Sawyer for a 20/20 segment set to air Friday, the call girl who brought down former Gov. Eliot Spitzer granted an interview to People magazine, which in turn has been excerpted in today's Post. Dizzy yet? Here's the money quote: "If she could say anything to Silda Wall Spitzer, it would be, 'I'm sorry for your pain.'" Other highlights:

Today on The View, Whoopi Goldberg (dressed as a Navajo jewelry saleswoman from Tuba City, Arizona) continued to press the topic that has quickly proved to be the show's brand-new, post-election argument starter: same-sex marriage.Very little has changed in the hosts' positions (and Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd continue to advance the idea that gay marriage means that churches will be sued, dismantled, and rebuilt into Abercrombie & Fitch superstores), but at least Goldberg was kind enough to start things off on a new level of inanity by confessing that this "suffrage" thing that people have wanted throughout history? She's not really sure what that is! Maybe it's about suffering? Kinda sounds like it! "I guess it's when black people had to, you know, they didn't want to die for being black," Shepherd offers. Yeah, it's either that or the right to vote. You know, whichevs!

It was Turkey Day yesterday on Gossip Girl, and sort of turkey night for us, as a series of flightless bird storylines gobble-gobbled and feather ruffled uselessly before us. No murders, no sex, no drugs, no drinking (well not really), no gay stuff (again, not really). Just old pumpkin pie in a can family dramz, from Jenny the quite literally mop-topped rebellious fashion designer to Natalie Archibald, a young girl whose daddy did some mean things and now everyone is sad and yelly all the time. Put on your buckle shoes, buckle hat, and pantaloons, grab your musket, and come a'huntin' with me after the jump. Where we started: Jenny was mostly a hobo who was staying with gravelly-voiced Erik; Blair was mad still about her mom's new main squeeze, Wallace Shawn; Serena was still inexplicably drawn to little Fievel the mouse; and Nate was poor and having the-police-are-after-papa problems. Luckily EVERYTHING was resolved by the end of the episode (well, almost everything) because that is the way that Thanksgiving ends: with everyone happy and loving each other and not sitting alone in a darkened room of the house, gulping wine, still reeling from when your brother-in-law smacked your nephew right at the dinner table and your mom threw the fucking turkey out the window and your father yelled "all right! all right! all right!" as he banged the dinner table, which made your nephew cry more, and your sister wouldn't stop shrieking and shrieking and shrieking and somewhere in all of this your younger brother disappeared and for some reason you feel like he might be gone for good this time, I mean he took his guitar, and fuck your flight is going to be delayed if it snows and you can't believe you'd rather be at that miserable shitpile you call work than be here right now. That's never how Thanksgiving ends. Anyway! Jenny was trying to get legally divorced from her parents, because her crusty old rockstar dad just didn't understand her love of fashions and irresponsibly stupid haircuts. Erik was at the meeting with her because I guess they are best friends now and Jenny was shocked—shocked!—to hear that she'd have to, you know, like tell her parents that she was dibborcin' them and not just like mewp off into the fashionz sunset with nobody's feelings hurt. Well eventually Pa Humphrey found out that Jennifer had been staying at van der Bass Acres and he and Lily hatched a plan to get her back into the comfortable fold of warehouse Brooklyn where she belongs. Erik got dinged by the 'rents for harboring a fugitive, but not before Bart Bass ominously (and cattily, meow Miss Thang!) said that Erik best to check up on his mans, who may or may not have been jeepin' with the captain of the swim team. Were I a high school geigh, I'd probably have to stick with the captain of the swim team rather than a little Christmas elf who consistently scores highly in the Overly Earnest Voice Olympics. But that's just me! Erik was sad and curious as to how/why Bart knew such bitchy info, so of course he gushingly went to stepbro Chuckles, who showed him Bart's safe, which was full of gold bullion and richly embroidered hats and strange potions and elixirs and eye of newt and the lost Shakespeare play and Snow White's heart in a little wooden box and a single red apple and, most importantly, secret files. Ever the curious kitten, Erik read his and was shocked. "I'm gay???" he bellowed. On the other side of the same side of town, or somewhere downtown who the eff knows, Serena was feeding bits of cheese to her mousy little friend Aaron Rose. He had big news for her. He had decided to make it exclusive. This was good news for women everywhere, because previously Serena had been spouting some seriously messed up stuff about how she couldn't win him if she wasn't in the fight and all this stuff and you just wondered why this particular creature was so worth it and then you found out why: because he's a boring, super judgmental, Sober prick! Whee! Yeah, he doesn't drink because it really helps his "work," because, oh yeah Aaron. Because it must be completely impossible to put random shit in a pile and then play a movie on it when you're canned. Good on you. So Serena decided that she would lie and say she was a teetotaler when she is, in fact, anything but. So, awkward! Luckily for no one involved, Dan ran into Aaron at a little gourmandy Brooklyn greengrocer's, and like the big-mouthed idiot his character has never been on the show until this episode, he started gabbing about how Serena is a total drunk and probably killed a dude and how Aaron's mama was like a hardware store, three cents a sc— Whoa whoa whoa! It was all to much for Aaron. He looked puzzled in a "sometimes TV writers think that acceptable relationship obstacles are when someone thinks that their lover has done something bad in the past and they would completely break up with them if that was in fact true and that's supposed to be totally OK when it is in fact shitty and judgy and like, you should never date someone who is that condescending and boringly principled" kind of way. But whatevs, Dan took the blame for lying to save Serena's narrow, blonde little behind but then she felt bad. So—after Lily confronted Bass about the secret files (she was in a mental institution!! why??? we don't know!!) and the van der Woodsens left the manor—S took her secret file to Aaron because it is never weird when your girlfriend hands you a dossier of her life and says "read." In the end they had a talk and everything was OK. Much like the other two plot points that involved Blair being upset about her moms shutting her out of the whole I'm-dating-a-Sicilian plotline of her life. So she dragged dutiful Dorota (who is so sweet and pretty in real life, I met her this weekend, she's fab!) around town when all poor Dorota wanted to do was go feed the ducks. She understands simple pleasures, ones that don't involve oyster stuffing (ick, oysters) and fancy fancy gay dudes from Paris who just happen to be your dad. Anywayyyyyyy, Blair's mom ended up caring in the end and her dad made a surprise visit and new, happy, awkward family traditions were formed and everyone was so happy for these mind bogglingly wealthy people. Nate's dad came back and Nate was going to run away with him to a magical island where no one arrests you and the Archibald family has money and maybe, just maybe there is a SCUBA instructor from Australia with a nice toned, tawny physique and crinkly blue eyes and hair the color of hay and maybe his name is like Legolas or something and maybe he and Nate could be, uh, friends. But no! All was a lie! The Captain was going to hold Nate and his weak, dimwitted moms for ransom money! Which is the silliest thing I've ever heard! What was he going to do? Hold them at gunpoint? Tie them up? Bah. So instead Nate ended up asking dad to turn himself in, watched wistfully as he was carted off , and thought about how lucky his dad was to be going to a place where men to do each other what they do. Then he made up with Vanessa and had fun limo drinks with Chuck and he was happy again! Jenny came home!!! Storyline over!!! She was tired and poor and didn't want to divorce her parents because divorce means having to say you're sorry and that your parents were negligent when, in fact!, they were the opposite. So the Humphs and the van der Snitsens (minus artist-boning Serena) all had dinner at the Brooklyn brokedown palace and were joined by sad minority orphan Vanessa, who made up with Jenny... but then found an unread letter that Nate had sent that said "Jenny, I totes love you! What should we do, omigod!!" that had hearts over the i's and a picture of a bumblebee doodled in the corner. She stole the letter! Wicked Vanessa! Meanwhile Bart lurked outside and said "yes, bring me the head of Lily van der Woodsen." Or, rather, just the history of her head. He wanted to know why she was in that asylum. Um, because, yes, oftentimes it makes sense to ask a PI "give me only half of the information. I want the what, but ohhh mercy no, I don't want the why." Sure. So there this week's tale ends. Happy disjointed families eating meals and entertaining and feeling warmly dulled by wine and the crisp air whipping its way around the corners of the buildings all here in this big twirling glittering city, so brimming with love and mystery and all the other pearls that form the rich adornments of their lives, and meanwhile the rest of us will be choking down dry turkey somewhere cold and unpleasant while the steady whine of family members fighting in kitchens and living rooms and porches and guest bedrooms fills our ears and drowns out what we're saying to ourselves over and over again in our heads to make us forget: "xo, xo, xo, xo, xo, x....."

Before Devil Wears Prada was filmed, before Project Runway made its reality television debut, before fashion grew beyond even the prominent role she had envisioned for it, Anna Wintour was compared in the Times to George W. Bush. It was one of Maureen Dowd's absurdly tortured analogies, but one of the rare ones that today sounds less ridiculous: If Page Six's source is to be believed, the Vogue editor is, like Bush, about to step away from the monster she's created, leaving to a more glamorous successor the job of revival. There is plenty to be done: