You'd think that after 12 Years a Slave won all those Oscars, slaves are over. But you'd be thinking wrong, says actress and lifestyle guru Blake Lively, whose dogged pursuit of the joie de vivre associated with slavery is such that she chose to be married on a Southern plantation. According to a Lively-styled fashion spread on her lifestyle website Preserve, the hottest lifestyle for fall is the lifestyle of owning human beings without government interference.

If you are lucky enough to have financial means and plenty of leisure time and a lack of more pressing responsibilities, you may be able to focus all of your energies on designing your "lifestyle" to your own utmost satisfaction. Congratulations on your good fortune. This does not qualify as a "job."

In the constantly-contradicting world of tabloid journalism, is anyone reliable? We analyzed 20 months of reported break-ups, marriages, and pregnancies to tabulate our first-ever Tabloid Reality Index, batting averages for America's five major celebrity glossies and the rumors they monger.

This week, Khloe and Kim Kardashian repeat a cover and weight loss interview almost verbatim for Life & Style magazine. Last month, Kourtney Kardashian did three weight loss-themed Life & Style bikini covers in a row. What gives?

After repeatedly denying she was, as Andy Cohen put it, swimming in the lady pond, Kim Zolciak opened up to Life & Style magazine about her relationship with gay circuit DJ Tracy Young. Does Big Poppa like threeways? [Getty]

In your rainy Monday media column: God tries to kill celebrity news using the weather, the New York Times is a totally great newspaper!, and USA Today arrives in Starbucks.

Angelina "Trash Bags" left Jersey Shore after three episodes. Even that short stint in the house has ruined her life, though: Three of her former cast mates have threatened her life and DJ Paulie D blew her off. Tragedy!

Tiger Woods may have apologized to his wife and family for running all around town with a succession of women, but that doesn't mean the ladies don't exist. Just like Tiger's wife, we all want to know who they are.

Thanks to our sexy sister Jezebel, we were shown the most ridiculous sidebar doodad to ever run in a gossip glossy in their Midweek Madness magazine roundup. Life&Style is now judging how stars look based on their courtroom drawings.

Bonnie Fuller finally re-launched HollywoodLife.com as a celebrity gossip site in her own image, and it's as nauseating as we feared: In Touch and Life & Style have indeed vomited all over a ridiculously loooong Web page.

All the tabloids threw something together on deadline after our tape of Eric Dane, Rebecca Gayheart, and Kari Ann Peniche went up. So many questions: Will their marriage survive? Who is the other woman? And just who wore it better?

Jude Law has knocked up an unnamed lady-friend, Mel Gibson attacks someone in a club, George Clooney has an Italian "lapdance model" by his side, Mischa Barton's friends are worried about her and Amy Winehouse's dad fakes a heart attack.

We hear Bauer Publishing just summoned its entire staff to the office in a frantic effort to get ahead of the coming New York snowstorm. Bad weather + Media depression = panic!

We're starting a new, daily media column for all the media news items we can't get to individually. It may also feature pithy remarks and totally exclusive scoops. Read it today, and forevermore:

We're told Bauer Publishing chief Hubert Boehle has grown tired of the never-ending stream of outside editors atop his celebrity fashion title Life & Style. He finds them hapless. The solution: Boehle will bring in Dan Wakeford, executive editor of another Bauer celebrity mag, In Touch, as top editor. "He wasn't given any choice in the matter," our tipster said. With both the fashion industry and celebrity magazines socked by the economy, he's got his work cut out for him.

Famously, Al Capone was brought down, not by charges of racketeering or murder, but by a mundane prosecution for tax evasion. Could it be that's what finally crimps corruption at the celebrity weeklies? According to Complex magazine, federal investigators have tapped phones at In Touch, the also-ran gossip magazine put out by Bauer Publishing. The focus of the FBI probe: payments to at least one editor in exchange for prominent placement of certain B-list celebrities. (For more desirable stories, and baby pictures, the money flows the other way, from magazine to source.) Accepting bribes, while a sackable offense, is not illegal. However, if an editor failed to declare the income, he could be hauled up for tax evasion. News of the investigation has leaked because agents have called in former staffers for interviews over the last few days. In Touch: want to respond? Email and we'll publish. (After the jump, Robert De Niro as Al Capone, slamming the Untouchables for "doctoring up" some income tax violation.)

Do you hate your job? Are you also not so crazy about "money?" Former Life&Style editor Mark Paretsky is staffing up his new "lifestyle-based gossip Web site" via Craigslist ad and Facebook note, offering entry-level staffers $10 an hour. Or, you know, you could work at Banana Republic, get a discount on sweaters, and not have to stare at a screen all day. [Page Six]

In an attempt to eliminate their competition, Bauer may be folding Life&Style into InTouch. "L&S would be dunzo come November- all of the L&S newstand pockets would be turned over to InTouch, thus instantly increasing InTouch's presence," a tipster informs us. Genius plan! Except one detail: "InTouch doesn't want anyone from L&S." Well, of course they don't! Those people work at freaking Life&Style.

• Read all about Hassan Elmasry, the Morgan Stanley portfolio manager who's trying to take the Times out of Sulzberger family hands, and the man responsible for tearing Pinch Sulzberger a new one at the late February board meeting. (In PowerPoint, no less!) [WSJ]
  

• Will Smith gets mistaken for Barack Obama, resists the urge to call out the old couple who think they all look the same. [TMZ]