I'm not saying gaming news should become as mature a genre of journalism as politics, business, and world news. It's still a new field and will always be as subjective as covering music or film, with the accompanying celebrity culture. But now that women outnumber men in online gaming, party games like Rock Band appeal to both sexes, and casual games (popular among women and adults) are the fastest-growing segment of the gaming industry, gaming journalism should be an all-inclusive genre. Why does it still pander to a core audience of straight young males with outdated misogynistic material, to the boredom and frustration of all of us who can get laid outside of World of Warcraft?

You have to watch this video. It shows Tom Cruise, with all the wide-eyed fervor that he brings to the promotion of a movie, making the argument for Scientology, the bizarre 20th-century religion. Making the argument is an understatement. The Hollywood actor, star of movies such as Mission Impossible, is a complete fanatic. "When you're a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one who can really help... We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures." There's much much more. Let me put it this way: if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10.

Everywhere we turn we see another network news anchorwoman sporting the exact same long-layered take on the post-Rachel Green do. Does Fox News have only the one style consultant? If you looked at the cable network's anchors (from l-r) Lis Wiehl, Dagen McDowell and Cheryl Casone, you might think so. Alycia Lane may not have abided by the CBS code of conduct, but she certainly toed the coiffure line. CNN Headline News anchor Linda Stouffer and colleague Carol Costello flaunt the style, along with CBS News' Hannah Storm and MSNBC's Contessa Brewer. Longer hair can make you look younger (what woman in TV news couldn't get behind that concept) and both focus groups and the men in them tend to appreciate lengthy locks (Case-in-point: Felicity's post-shearage ratings nosedive. What? You know you watched it once.) Still, when we flip on the tube, it's getting harder and harder to shake the feeling that we're catching the tail end of a Central Perk coffee klatch.

Dateline NBC traded in their spy cams normally used for busting Predators (not the ones from space, mind you, the ones that live next door to you) for the Vaseline-gauzed lenses required to shoot Hollywood's biggest and brightest in a two-hour Golden Globe special that aired last night after that pathetically boring Globes presser. During an interview with the universally adored Amy Adams, The Today Show's resident vixen Natalie Morales made an uncomfortable shift from friendly fluffery to attack dog journo mode when she grilled Amy Adams about her, *gasp*, former career as a waitress at Hooters. We haven't seen two girls go at it like this since Wild Things.

Andrew Morton's biography of Tom Cruise, though it's brought threats of a $100m lawsuit, has emboldened other critics of the increasingly rabid Hollywood star. Mark Ebner, the investigative reporter, just emailed us links to some Scientology promotional videos. Morton's central claim is that Cruise, star of movies from Risky Business to Mission Impossible, is the effective number two of the Church of Scientology, the cultish religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard, and subscribed to by other eccentric Hollywood actors such as John Travolta. The videos bear out, at the very least, that Cruise is central to the organization's marketing efforts. In this amazing clip, to a background track of theme from Mission Impossible, Cruise explains how Scientologists are "the authorities on the mind", the only people who can bring peace and unite cultures. Watch it, after the jump, before the scary Scientologists silence us all.

Our hopes that VH1's Celebrity Rehab would be a Surreal Life-style romp documenting the antics of hilariously mismatched, semifamous roommates as they argue over neglected chores while soaking in the Pasadena Recovery Center's ten-person hot tub was, as it turns out, profoundly misguided. Other than brief moments of comic relief provided by the confiscation of porn star Mary Carey's penetrative toys and a staffer's attempts at keeping the Guy From Crazytown safely outside of Carey's radius of copulation, last night's premiere was mostly an oppressively bleak look at former Taxi and Grease star Jeff Conaway's debilitating addictions. (Click the above image to play a clip of his arrival at the clinic, accompanied by a freshly drained bottle of Dom Perignon and his enabling girlfriend.)

There is no Hot Topic more sizzlingly appealing to the ladies of The View than the ongoing turmoil within the Spears family, who generously provide the show's debate-loving co-hosts with a fresh, pregnancy- or insanity-related misadventure crying out for their disapprobation on an almost daily basis.

Divorced magazine publisher Jack Kliger got engaged to his longtime girlfriend, speaking coach Amy Griggs, according to Jeff Bercovici at Mixed Media. Here's the 60-year-old Hachette Filipacchi boss, who runs a stable of magazines including 'Elle' and 'Premiere', between Griggs and his daughter, at a party in 2006. Apropos of nothing, after the jump, a blind item from Page Six, from three years ago.

Everyone in the magazine world is getting very excited about the new year's massacre at Conde Nast, the publisher of titles such as Vanity Fair and Vogue. Conde is tightly controlled by the Newhouse family, and its office politics have all the transparency of the Brezhnev-era Politburo. But we're told by one insider that Lou Cona, formerly the publisher of the New Yorker, is stepping up by moving to group ad sales, even if the role sounds less glamorous. Anyway, business: boring! There's one amusing tidbit. Gina Sanders, promoted to publisher of Lucky magazine, presided over the huge success of Teen Vogue. We're sure her continued ascension has nothing to do with her marriage to (pictured left) Steve Newhouse, heir-apparent to the Conde Nast empire.

If the Spears Meltdown was looking to be missing any one thing, it was probably crossover appeal, an oversight quickly remedied when Dr. Phil's Tough Love Intervention Tour '08 made a surprise stop at her Cedars-Sinai hospital room. Little could he have known the outrage that such a selfless endeavor would elicit from the press (and admiration from Dr. Joyce Brothers), and after two straight days of pummeling, it turns out the Very Special Episode to Save Britney is being scrapped. Sadly, we'll never know for sure what transpired during that 15 minute conversation, but thanks to Defamer videographer Molly McAleer now you can watch how the butting of the famously bald heads might have gone down after the jump.

"Cougars." Ladies "of a certain age" cruising for young men. Often used on obnoxious television comedies, by fratty assholes, and on the internets. And Time Out NY would like to know where, exactly, to find them!

Bolting upright in bed after being tormented by nightmares induced by having to watch as much breaking news footage of last night's Unfortunate Britney Spears Incident as her tragedy-addled mind could handle, Defamer videographer Molly McAleer finally gave up on an unavoidably fitful sleep, deciding that the best way to deal with this difficult time was to retreat to the safety of her flickering computer screen. The above mash-up represents poor Molly's attempt at exorcising her demons by sharing with the world the series of dream-despoiling images—featuring Spears in potentially life-threatening situations both fanciful and all too real (where, may we ask, was "Everytime" hero Stephen Dorff when Britney needed him most?)—that may still haunt her the rest of her days.

Here's a riveting turn of events in the ongoing Spears-Federline custody saga that's all but certain to push the name Jamie Lynn to the tabloid sidelines for a minimum of two publishing cycles: The "Gimme More" singer's stubborn refusal to hand over her two children to K-Fed's custody led to a four-hour police showdown at her home tonight, requiring the presence of several squad cars, firetrucks, a helicopter and an ambulance—the last of which carted her off on a gurney to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. (Footage courtesy of myfoxla.com, accompanied by running commentary from a cameraman whose gripes of having to "follow this frickin' thing to the hospital" suggest he may not have been entirely aware his audio was being broadcast throughout the internets.)

When news broke yesterday that the moviegoers of this great nation of ours had voted Lindsay Lohan's dead-stripper turn in "I Know Who Killed (My Career)" as the single worst performance of Anno Domini 2007, our reaction was laced with both sadness and shock. Sadness because we all long for days when the frecklecrotched wonder's biggest problem was her slightly jiggly thighs, shock because we could think of no fewer than six and no greater than seven performances that were CLEARLY worse than Lindsay's. What follows, dear friends, is that list (in descending order, no less)!

Megan Wallent, the newly female executive at Microsoft who formerly went by the name "Michael," reports that her return to the office yesterday was mostly uneventful. The women's restrooms have pink tile, she discovered. (No "trannie restrooms" for her.) "Microsoft Pink," she says, as opposed to the usual Microsoft-logo blue one encounters so much on the Redmond campus. Telling her story to Valleywag and then starting her own blog helped, she believes: "I thought just about everyone who would interact with me knew. Surprising people with a cool new set of 38Cs — not a good idea."

Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz are not engaged, Us Weekly reports in a confessional apology for getting the story wrong (twice). They're getting good at confirming stories, especially when the stories are denials. But then they follow up with a reader poll: "Should Simpson and Wentz get married?" So at least they're focus-grouping the lies now. [RM]

Do you have a problem? Blogger and author Tionna Tee Smalls might have a solution. There's only one way to find out: By asking! Today, Tionna fields a question from a lady who is "hopelessly in love with a rock star." Oooh.

It was with heavy heart that we learned of Benazir Bhutto's assassination today in Rawalpindi, Pakistan at the hands of a suicide bomber firing a gun while riding a motorbike into a crowded political rally (sheesh—they don't fool around there, do they?), and while we acknowledge such a monumentally tragic event has no place amongst the frivolous goings on at Defamer, we still feel compelled, as is our custom, to offer some casting suggestions for the inevitable CBS Movie of the Week depicting the events.

Yahoo career-advice columnist Penelope Trunk took on a familiar topic today: "How to deal with getting fired (from Yahoo.)" Her boss, she said, told her the column didn't pull in a high enough CPM — the rate advertisers pay. Stock talk draws pricier ads than job advice. So far, all business. But then came the gratuitous insult: When Trunk asked if there were any other opportunities at Yahoo for her, the Yahoos recommended she try Lifestyles, a Yahoo division for food, horoscopes, and the like.

I had been meaning to read 'The Female Thing' ever since it got enthusiastic but skeptical lady-peer reviews. Recentlyish, it came out in paperback and I bought it and put it into my carry-on! I don't know about you, but I read books like this as a sort of booster shot, a quick medicinal jolt that reactivates my feminist—um—consciousness. So when they're not actually painful to wade through I find myself recommending them overenthusiastically, the way you would a good doctor with a short waiting-room line. Read it, it's good for you!