Victoria Floethe is the young writer who had a lengthy affair with Vanity Fair contributor and author Michael Wolff, according to our sources. But Wolff isn't the only prominent man the self-described "femme fatale" has been connected to in recent years: Gawker.com just published some additional info on Floethe's rather prolific past here, if you're keeping score at home. In the meantime, you'll find a few more photos of the young writer who has captured the attention of so many older men after the jump.

Author and Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff has been inescapable on the airwaves in recent days, ripping the Post, News Corp. and its chairman Rupert Murdoch to shreds for the Post's tasteless cartoon last week. Of course, Wolff has good reason to seek out the attention. His biography on Murdoch, which was published in December, has been a stunning failure: According to Bookscan, which tracks roughly 75% of the books sold in the U.S., The Man Who Owns the News has sold just over 15,000 copies since it was published in December, a far cry from what publisher Doubleday was expecting given he reportedly took home a $1 million advance and Doubleday indicated it would "start off" with a 100,000 print run. But while it's no surprise to see Wolff carry on about News Corp. (and his other pet obsession, the New York Times), it is a bit surprising to see Wolff invoking ethics and morals. Why, you ask? Perhaps because it's always a bit difficult to take an ethics lesson from a married man who carried on an affair with a woman nearly three decades his junior who also happened to be an intern at the magazine he writes for.

Here's something for conspiracy theorists: earlier this month, news emerged that the wife of financier Steven Rattner got a DUI last year, which was conveniently not reported upon. Now Rattner's Obama administration job has disappeared.

Did you know that financier Steven Rattner's wife Maureen White, the former national finance chair of the Democratic Party, had a hilarious drunk driving arrest last October? Nope, because no one reported on it!

Steve Rattner is the very prominent financier, the man who manages Michael Bloomberg's money, and a leading candidate to fill the post of "car czar" in the Obama administration. The nomination process, however, has stalled in recent weeks, according to today's Journal, and now there's a possible explanation for the delay: Rattner's wife, Maureen White, was arrested for drunk driving in October. Ironic, yes, and probably most unwelcome news for President Obama considering how many controversies have already been stirred up by his nominations over the past few days. But there's another layer of mystery to the story.

In your frostbitten Wednesday media column: Time Warner burns billions, the Daily Beast loses luster, alt-weeklies miraculously manage, and more!

Jon Stewart humiliated pundit Tucker Carlson with a public deconstruction years ago. But his disassembling of media villain Rupert Murdoch last night was, in a way, more damning.

In today's NYT Book Review, media critic David Carr kinda savaged Michael Wolff's Rupert Murdoch bio. After the jump, see Wolff's vicious response via Facebook status line. Aren't media nerds cute when they fight?

Woo, the feud between Conrad Black and Michael Wolff—an incarcerated media mogul fraudster and a self-absorbed media gossip—is heating up! Which of these two ridiculous men is more deserving of your scorn? Let's see:

Former newspaper mogul and current jailed columnist Conrad Black says that Michael Wolff's book about Rupert Murdoch was all wrong, and furthermore, that Conrad Black is a heroic innocent man:

Judith Regan, the crazy, Bernard Kerik-fucking former star publisher fired by News Corp. last year, is now locked in a public feud with self-regarding media argument starter Michael Wolff. They deserve each other.

"If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor." [Michael Wolff]

Media critic Michael Wolff's new book, The Man Who Owns the News, is excerpted in the London Guardian today. But it glosses over the details of a joke in particularly poor taste that the reptilian Newscorp billionaire told his Sun tabloid editor Rebekah Wade—who was was arrested a few years back for assaulting her supposed "hard man" British actor husband—after "a few drinks in a posh London restaurant," about gay sex. "Seeing [Wall Street Journal publisher Robert] Thomson arrive, Murdoch whispered: "For God's sake, don't tell Robert what I said. He's a gentrified man ... very clever," it reads. The actual joke, as it appears in the book, comes after the jump.

♦ Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch goes on sale tomorrow, as you probably know thanks to the torrent of coverage over the past couple of days. Among the juiciest bits: Murdoch despises Bill O'Reilly, his wife Wendi Deng occasionally reads his email, and he's fond of sleeping pills. [NYT, Gawker, Politico, NYO, Portfolio]
♦ The third quarter of 2008 was a punishing one for newspapers. Ad revenue plunged 18.11 percent, the steepest decline in four decades. [E&P]
♦ Tina Brown's pick for host of Meet the Press: Rachel Maddow. [TDB]
♦ Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, racking up an estimated $31.7 million in ticket sales. [THR]

For the most part, Rupert Murdoch courts controversy. "He likes to set the house on fire and watch all the fire engines drive maniacally down the road," Michael Wolff writes in a biography of the News Corporation chairman. But he's touchy about his third wife, Wendi Deng, nearly 40 years his junior. He was upset when the Wall Street Journal decided to profile her in 2000. And he is suspected to be behind the spiking of a Fortune contributor's Deng profile for an Australian newspaper chain he partly owned at the time, and the subsequent sanitization of Deng's Wikipedia entry. So Murdoch can't be tickled that Wolff says Deng has him by the short wires, according to the Times' new review of Wolff's Murdoch bio:

The recurrent bitchiness between Michael Wolff and NBC's Ben Silverman usually lapsed back into polite chatter at the Monaco Media Summit, judging from the lengthy YouTube video of a panel discussion at the Monte Carlo event. But one can't help but wonder if would-be internet mogul Wolff was more personally invested in his reference to television networks as the scapegoated "trash heap of everybody's expectations" than he let on. And calling Silverman "functionally digitally illerate" was just plain mean, as was using a vulgar expletive to refer to old media. But then sublimated envy and resentment are kind of Wolff's calling cards, so no harm, no foul! Click the video icon to watch the fireworks.

Michael Wolff is Vanity Fair's media columnist and the author of a brand new book about Rupert Murdoch. He's also a man with inside info and impeccable sources. "My 83-year-old mother (today is her birthday) in New Jersey has just called me to say that she has just heard through sources who must remain anonymous, though she hinted at friends who have children who might or might not know people in the State Department, that George Bush is back on the sauce and Laura is getting ready to leave him." [Newser.com]

Has Rupert Murdoch made a terrible miscalculation? Michael Wolff thinks so! Wolff, Murdoch's newest biographer, says that the New York Post's uncharacteristically fawning Obama-centric cover today is Murdoch's way of apologizing to the future president (Obama) for the Post's endorsement of McCain. In fact, it's been widely rumored for months that Murdoch wanted the Post to endorse Obama. So what's going on here? Rupert Murdoch has always been canny about getting in good with those in power, even if they're from the party he opposes. He made nice with Tony Blair in the UK. And the Post did in fact endorse Obama over Hillary Clinton, once it was clear Obama would win. Besides that, Murdoch's pet paper the Sun in the UK pretty much deified Obama. And even Fox News managed to work out an Obama interview with Bill O'Reilly, when they weren't calling him "Osama" and such. So why didn't Rupert just get the Post to go ahead and endorse Obama in the general election? Two reason. One of those reasons is named "Sarah Palin." Murdoch flirted with her coyly, and ended up tentatively supporting her convoluted policy proposals in public. It may be that he fell in love with her personality (the same mistake McCain made), or just came to the conclusion that, dumb as she is, at least she wasn't likely to push for any more regulation of his business if she came into office when McCain keeled over. The second reason is more basic: a Post endorsement of Obama just wasn't practical. It would defeat the paper's very reason for existence, which is to be a rabid conservative voice in the midst of the liberal NYC media. So Rupert Murdoch just allowed them to endorse McCain, then set about sending every possible signal that he's willing to be friendly with Obama after he wins. Not that dumb after all.

Vanity Fair has a new excerpt from professional media beef-starter Michael Wolff's upcoming biography of News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch already said publicly that the book is flawed, but his problems with it seemed to center on how some of his business relationships are portrayed. The excerpt today, disappointingly, focuses on Murdoch's family life, and some of it is predictable. Friction between the new wife and the old wife and the kids from the old wife! Drama about succession! The only real interesting parts come when Wolff starts riffing on Murdoch's greedy ambitious kids and their Oedipal tendencies: Prue, Murdoch's eldest daughter, is a weirdo, says Wolff. But at least she didn't want to marry her mom, yuck!:

♦ What does Bravo have in the works to replace Project Runway if it moves to Lifetime? There's a Runway ripoff called The Fashion Show. There's also Celebrity Sew-Off, in which "celebrities" will compete in a competition for their own clothing label, which should be totally awesome because we've always wanted to buy jeans designed by Jill Zarin. [THR]
♦ The sponsors for Bravo's fifth season of Top Chef? Campbell's Soup, Diet Dr. Pepper, and Quaker. [AdAge]
♦ Because you haven't heard enough about Bravo today, the NYT magazine profile of Bravo boss Lauren Zalaznick (left) is now online. [NYT]
♦ More details on the cuts and layoffs at Condé Nast. [NYP]
♦ Condé Nast's glitzy Fashion Rocks show is no more. [AdAge]