Elizabeth Spiers is doing a new thing! Spiers, the Gawker founding editor-turned-media mini-mogul and closely watched savant of the blog business, is already talking about her next project, which doesn't have financial backers yet. It's going to be an "online magazine" (translation: blog) aimed at women. Uh oh, does that mean she's taking on our sister Jezebel?

US News and World Report cites research showing—pleasingly for self-satisfied liberals—that followers of the posh magazines and radio stations are smarter than Joe Sixpack and the rest of America's dumb masses. The four "best-informed" news audiences are those of the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's and NPR, according to the news weekly. Um, except not really.

Allow me to construct a sports metaphor (UPDATE: Which I see the NYT also used in its lead sentence, DAMMIT. Oh well, forge ahead) that would sound stale to serious sports fans, but which I believe will sound fresh and insightful here, where we have only seven (7) total sports fan readers: Fox News is the New York Yankees. MSNBC is the Tampa Bay Rays. The Yankees throw huge contracts at aging veteran superstars, trading away their young players for big-name talent that tends to quickly prove to be over-the-hill. Tampa Bay had a string of bad years but stuck to its strategy of focusing on affordable young talent, nurturing them, and building from within. Now, Tampa Bay is in the World Series. The Yankees are sitting at home. My, this metaphor just gets more and more awesome: Fox just signed Bill O'Reilly, the most predictable shouting head on television, to a new four-year, $40 million contract. They just "lured" Glenn Beck from CNN (if you consider him a man who needs "luring") with a multimillion-dollar contract. Other Fox News names like Shep Smith and Sean Hannity get paid huge salaries to stay on. Meanwhile, MSNBC's new star Rachel Maddow came out of nowhere, in cable news terms. She was with Air America not too long ago, for fuck's sake, which is definitely the minor leagues. MSNBC took a chance on her, got her on air, saw how well she did, and then took the leap to giving her her own show. Which has paid off. The best part? They are probably paying her—in cable news terms, again—peanuts. Where are Fox News' Maddows? Where is the young talent that they nurture and build into a star while still paying them the wages of a rookie? These things are important. The economy is shit, advertising revenue is dicey, and homegrown stars are the wave of the future. I'm taking bets on Tampa Bay. Get at me, O'Reilly.

A lot of fighting happened in front of the cameras on today's heated installment of The View, but according to a tip we just received from a Defamer operative, it was nothing compared to what went on after the show was over. Our tipster says that Elisabeth Hasselbeck was upset that Joy Behar has been using The View to tout Behar's upcoming stand-up performance, and the conservative co-host demanded equal time in a confrontation that got ugly:

So the story of Sarah Palin spending $150,000 on clothes? Brother, it gets better. See, the RNC is required by law to list who exactly bought all the fancy clothes. And all the Sarah Palin fancy purchases—at Barney's, Bloomingdale's, and Saks Fifth Avenue—were made by one guy: Jeff Larson. Jeff Larson is one of the men behind FLS Connect, a Republican robocalling firm! They're famous this cycle for terrible robocalls about Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. And back in 2000, they made their name with robocalls smearing John McCain. It's funny because John McCain sold his soul and all it got him was a fancy new wardrobe for Sarah Palin. [Atlantic]

Much-vaunted "brocial networking" site BroBible has finally launched. The standard course to take would be to mock and tease, but we have decided that all is right and good with the bros. They have found a safe space where they cannot and should not be mocked by women and outsiders. Let men be men! And let bros be bros. Like! "Sure enough that selfish little slut decides that shes not so much as going to embark on a ski trip with your flesh pole..."Previously, we remarked that a site that aims to "share stories of weekend revelries and exchange tips on romantic endeavors" was basically all about "eHighFiving about Jaeger and pussy." Yep. But? Fine. As long as we don't hear about it! Do what you gotta do, guys. Do what you gotta do. This is the famous "Don't ask, don't tell" clasue in action. Um, like this. Again: we know what goes on, both in and outside of your minds, but we just don't want to have any evidence of it. (Guess that's why bros have to have a login name.) So our fake BroBible alias, "Brant," is gonna go ahead and log off... now.

Fans of Celebrity Rehab's first season will recall it featured several breakout recoveries, including those of failed hip-hop superduo Vikki & Kenickie, as well as the addictionless Joanie "Chyna" Laurer, who right up until CR commencement exercises refused to reveal the enigmatic circumstances that led her into the program. Tomorrow night, the second season premieres on VH1, but a preview already posted online suggests that Gary Busey—who's made it clear his involvement is strictly as mystical, recovering-coke-fiend mahatma to the other patients—could wind up contributing more story-editor-nip drama to the proceedings than spiritual guidance.In the following video, the actor describes his ongoing struggles with Bolivian marching powder, reaching near Marcia Brady-levels of desperation and interspecies-sexual-favor-trading in order to get his hands on the stimulant. When time comes for check-in, rehab tech Shelly finds an agitated and uncooperative Busey unwilling to part with essentials like mouthwash, mobile phones, and large bags of weed, while minutes later a concerned Dr. Drew listens compassionately as a broken Busey relays the time he snorted blow off his own dog's back. Helluvuh drug.

Look, yet another good fact has emerged about Rachel Maddow, already the favorite news anchor of elitist coastal liberals simply by virtue of being a normal person (funny how that works!). Whereas most television news personalities are only "engaged" in the internet in the sense that they occasionally glance over their ghost-written blog posts before an underling posts them, Maddow actually made the following statement: "I care about Nielsen ratings, but I also care about Technorati searches.” Is she the future of news media people? Yes she is, and we'll tell you why. Could it be that part of the reason that the online world has so much love for Maddow is that she loves the online world back? It's crazy, but it just might be true! For example, she Tweets. Presumably with her own hands! And you have to figure that her 6,000 Twitter followers include at least several thousand bloggers, some of whom run blogs that are actually influential. Since internet memes often grow out of groupthink, her mere twitterings may have had an outrageously large impact on her positive reputation in the blogosphere, which is now equally influential, in ideas at least, to the mainstream media. Crazy! Further:

If you believe what you read in the papers, Sarah Silverman's first full-length performance in the U.K. last night was a disaster unbefitting the Matt Damon-Fucking Jewess Queen of Hollywood. The BBC reports the crowd of 3600 at London's Hammersmith Apollo—who had paid somewhere in the vicinity of $70-$100 a seat for the privilege of hearing Silverman's fishy-smelling-gym-shorts stories—"slow hand clapped and shouted they wanted their money back" at the end of a 40-minute mini-set, then heckled "you're over-hyped Sarah" and "I've seen longer clips on YouTube" until she came back out for an encore. Appropriately enough, we have YouTube video of said encore, and it suggests Silverman wasn't quite as reviled by the inquisitive Limeys as the reviews said. It's after the jump.

Justine Ezarik is a pretty blond girl who calls herself "iJustine" and gets hundreds of thousands of hits on her YouTube videos of her doing completely irrelevant bullshit like shopping or telling boring stories to the camera, because of the fact that young men will generally watch pretty blond girls do anything, which then makes said girl popular, which then attracts young female viewers, who will watch popular girls do anything. Mindless lemmings drawn to reflections of our own vapid selves, we all are. For a more thoughtful exploration of this issue, let's see what former Gawker ed. Emily Gould has to say:

The Gossip Girl kids are ever transacting, aren't they? Bartering their bodies for desired outcomes, weighing and counting the merits of friendships, making cost benefit analyses, finally going ahead with the sale or not. It begins to get exhausting to keep track of—who's making out like a bandit, who's penniless, who's anti-capitalist, etc. Last night's episode especially, with its flurry of goods, services, and statuses being exchanged back and forth, willy nilly. A whirlwind! But anyway, let's dispense with this hackneyed metaphor and just get on to the "good" stuff after the jump. We began, as I hope we do more often, with a sunshine-yellow (those shirts!) breakfast at the Bass-van der Woodsen household, where Bart was finally making an appearance. He and Lily were going to be parents, you see and decided to lay down the law. Chuckles! None of your gallivanting. Boring girl! None of your whatever it is you do. Gay one! No more gaying! Serena reacted brattily and bitchily to the news, because well, why not. Her character has never shown any of those qualities before, making it completely inconsistent with whatever meager bit of personality that the writers had cobbled together up to that point, but whatever. She got to wear a hot orange dress and piss off her elders. Meanwhile, Enrique was struggling with his gayness after being kicked out of his house, but luckily his teacher Mr. Katimski was there to help him ou— Oh, wait a second. Sorry. I just had a My So-Called Life flashback. No, hah hah, on Gossip Girl the gay character, Erik, meets floppy haired boyfriends and brings them to brunch with his gorgeous sister and her gorgeouser friend, who are both chipper and curious. Yes, Erik has a boyfriend! His name is Floppy and he is floppy and a gay person. That is fun! Other gay people include: Dan Humphrey, who after being hilariously defensive about his lack of bromances, called up Nate Archibald for a little game of one-on-one ball play. Soccer! I mean soccer. In Latin America, they call it futbol. But here we call it soccer. Well, Dan forgot where he was supposed to meet young Nathaniel, so he went to Archibald manor. Which—holy Christmas!—had been SEIZED (it said so in large letters). Using his Nancy Drew-like woman's intuition, Dan went down to the garden level apartment, broke through the chain, and found inside a sad little scene. A tiny bed, a mess of clothes (Brooks Brothers, Dan cattily points out later), and probably some open cans of half-eaten cold Chef Boyardee. Poor broke ass Nate is squatting while his moms holes up in the Hamptons. Dan feels bad. Also feeling bad was Blair, who was being blackmailed with really old and who-the-f-cares info about the Duke and the Cougar (or whatever) by, um, Vanessa? Really? Again with the major character inconsistency. (Also despairingly inconsistent is V's hair, which last night looked like Gene Simmons' wig had been put in the dryer too long.) Vanessa wanted to save —ha ha ha ha—The Brooklyn Inn from wicked gentrifiers, even though... um. That place? Is pretty yuppie at this point. But in Gossip Girl land it's a soulful dive that's owned by a music-loving Magical Negro. And it must be protected! So Blair was forced to get petition signatures and she decided to get really Dangereuses about it and will Chuckles into a sex pact. If he destroyed Vanessa—humped, stripped of her favorite bar, one enormous dangly bling bling overdone earring missing—increasingly pathetic Blair would let him sample her new and improved Panini Hot Pocket. The game was afoot! Serena kept acting out, pissed at her moms for being all "I've been married 142 times, and now you will obey" about the whole sitch. Then she found out that Floppy had been disinvited from the big party—oh, yeah, there was some sort of party goin' awn at van der Bass acres—and she was all "oh, hellllll no" and decided to be a bitch to some reporters. "My mom's husbands have done cocaine and kept her away from us!" Lily was embarrassed, Bart's face tightened a little more (he's looking a little peaked these days, isn't he?). Eventually though, everyone realized that love was all they needed and Erik made the worst "our ringtone for you was 'Since U Been Gone'" joke that made me keen loudly for the Old World in which people who wrote lines like that didn't get hired to write for network teleivision shows, so they ate cake together and were, finally, a family. Except, um. Chuckles wasn't there. He was busy actually acting nice to Veronica or whoseits about her little Lafitte's Blacksmith. You see, he actually wanted to rescue the place with his oodles of money. Plus he got to be the good guy to this struggling Chicana. Yeah, a fella could get used to that. Too bad Bart had other plans for him. At the party, Bart said "no! no!" to Chuckles' plans and he felt sad. Then Blair acted the bitch with V, telling her about the wicked bet. Chuck was all pissed off and ended up back at the crumbling old aqueduct of a watering hole and told Bagger Vance that he would, by gum or by golly (if necessary), save this important booze parlor. Vanessa lurked in the shadows, vaguely impressed. Or something. Then Chuck, lying essentially, went to get a stiff Waldorfing, which Blair meeped and pouted for in her little red gymnastics outfit. They got almost there, but then Chuck—bizarrely! seriously, what's going on with all these characters these days?—asked B to say those three magic words. Those eight easy letters. And she couldn't. So he left to scour riverbeds like the catfish he is, telling Blair it was time she pursued him. Which just... didn't fit with anything. Oh well! Lest I forget, Dan and Nate fell more and more in love. At first Nate was angry that Dan knew about the pauperdom, but then he came over for chili and Dan took him in his big strong arms and petted his soft, Leeza Gibbons-y highlighted hair, and all was right with the world. Little Jenny fluttered around like a bird in a Disney movie and Pa Humphrey, kindly old King Triton that he is, sang a low song while the boys danced together, fumbling—like fawns, or Lt. Dan, on new legs—ever closer toward ecstasy. And so we close another chapter of our sordid tale of the way New York City was once, when a rich lady named Cecily fell down some stairs and during her unconsciousness dreamt of a place where Floppy exists, where boys will be boys and sometimes more, where home schooled Latina goddesses champion the noble cause of Carroll Gardens bars, and where a Valmont and a Merteuil are forever circling one another; each feint and bow and jab more piercing than the last, more urgent than the desert's need for rain. It's a silly world, but I sort of love it. Oh! And I should mention. There will be another Gossip Girl Summit! It is being organized by the hilarious comedienne Sara Benincasa (she of the outstanding Sarah Palin impersonation) and will feature an esteemed panel of funny and informed guests, plus shambly old yours truly. It's on Saturday, November 15th and more info is here. Hope to see you there!

The inter-host squabbling has become so heated on The View that there's little a celebrity guest can do to keep up (short of revealing dramatic, semi-incestuous childhood memories), so it's no surprise that producers have been scheduling more and more all-"Hot Topic" editions, as they did this morning. Also no surprise? Things got absolutely bananas today, as Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar reached heretofore-unglimpsed levels of annoyance with Elisabeth Hasselbeck while arguing about a weekend full of juicy political news.

Sad news that catty style assessor Mr. Blackwell passed away this weekend. Though, maybe not so sad for the decades' worth of celebrities that he slammed as his Worst Dressed picks of the year. If you're curious about who Mr. B selected as his top (bottom?) choice each year since 1960, you can find a list here. We've also compiled a photo gallery of the most recent 20, after the jump.

It's just eleven Sarah Palin-glasses-shopping-days 'til Halloween, and in honor of the spookiest night of the year (besides the ones in which Holly Madison attempted to conceive at the *THUNDER CRASH!!!* Playboy mansion), we thought we'd pull together ten of the greatest Halloween-themed TV specials to haunt and delight our distant youths. We think you'll find that all the essentials are there—your Great Pumpkins, your Roseannes, but sifting through the YouTube stacks, we were reminded of some long-forgotten gems:

Once again Howard Stern is fulfilling his mission of delving deeply into the sex lives of our childhood-and more recent-crushes. On the hot seat for tonight's installment of Stern's On Demand show is none other than Marsha Brady, nee Maureen McCormick. As one of the top five teen idols of the late 60's and early 70's, there is one crucial thing the world needs to know about McCormick: Has she had anal? She has! But does she like it? Folks on both sides of the issue are going to have to rework their Marsha Brady fantasies. Clip after the jump. Click to view Also? 34 years after The Brady Bunch went off the air and she is still so amazingly hot! And that's not just nostalgia talking.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain finally made a much-belated appearance on Late Night with David Letterman last night, and he doddered his way through with his "legendary" sense of humor. He's like a grampa making silly jokes at your miserable family birthday party! And it's not just what comes out of his mouth that's funny, it's what he makes his face do—intentionally or not. Our videographer Richard Blakeley has sifted through dozens of photographs and video stills and found the best of McCain's crazy facial expressions. Some say he's on Adderall, others that he's just a weird, bemusing old dude who isn't quite spring chicken enough for the highest office in the land. We just think he makes funny faces. Take a look at the photos after the jump and decide for yourself.

David Letterman may be unable to follow up last night's John McCain appearance with one from his vice presidential running mate, but at least he's got the next best thing: Tina Fey! The 30 Rock actress has already taped her guest spot on tonight's Late Show, and we have this clip where she breaks down her Sarah Palin impression. So what exactly are her influences?Turns out, it's "a little bit Fargo, a little bit Reese Witherspoon in Election," with just a soupçon of her friend Paula's grandma from Joliet, Illinois. Fey downplays her frightening accuracy by claiming it's the easiest impression to do since Billy Bob Thornton mmm-hmmed his way through Sling Blade, but we have to give credit where credit is due. Now, Tina, where the hell is 30 Rock? Can't you pull some strings and get Palin to fire Ben Silverman? [CBS]

Well Kanye West, we've got to give it to you. In the past we've mocked you for your blog, your anti-hippie rants, your comical self-importance, and your muppet show. But that was before you filled a room with dozens of nude women as a backdrop for your record release party. Critics who enjoy nude women loved it! Here's how these creative, out-of-the-box tactics worked for Kanye and his media friends—Nakedness below:

Hey, this Sunday's Times Magazine features an awesome "Domains" interview with everyone in the world's favorite tee vee pundit Rachel Maddow! We read an advance copy and can officially break the news that Rachel Maddow is totally cool. She lives way out in western Massachussetts with her partner Susan (pictured). She is seemingly the most normal and charming and totally well-adjusted cable news host in America. Seriously! Totally without the crippling ego of everyone else on every other cable network! She still has no television of her own, she is annoyed at having to dress like "an assistant principal" in order to be allowed on tv, she identifies with Wally Cleaver, and after learning her favorite hobby we decided conclusively that we want to be her friend:

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).