Sagging man-tits? Declining interest in sex? Times when you feel "down and discouraged?" Congratulations, old dudes: you've now got your very own treatable medical condition. That's right: women don't get to have all the 'medicalization of aging' fun anymore, because the pharmaceutical industry has invented "manopause." Here's how those hilarious wits at Newsweek summed it up:
A couple of items of bad news today for various imprints of Simon and Schuster. The more important one is that Valerie Plame's book probably won't contain much of anything interesting after the CIA Publication Review Board gets through with it; possibly endangering her big fat book deal, which had already fallen through once elsewhere before S&S scooped it up. And Galleycat reports that at Touchstone, another S&S imprint, the Sobol Awards book will be scuttled after bad word of mouth (like ours, for example) soured everyone on the idea of the pay-to-play literary contest. S&S, we know that recent publishing firings have left some big cloven hooves to fill. But let's let this stuff be a lesson, shall we? Okay, now we're getting down off our high horse and going back to scouring the internet for celebrity crotch shots.
Writer's Block: Valerie Plame Vs. The CIA [Newsweek]
Bad Word of Mouth Kills Sobol Prize [Galleycat]
Earlier: Literary Contest Winners to Be Published, Screwed
• Dick Parsons to GooTube: "Good luck. Also, we're going to sue your socks right off your ass." [Guardian]
• LBO speculation sends Times stock soaring. [NYP]
• Jon Friedman discovers David Remnick, an obscure editor who toils in the service of a literary New York magazine one rarely hears about. [Marketwatch]
• Newsweek knows your ignorant American ass doesn't want to deal with complexity. [Wonkette]
• The blood will continue to spill at Time; Jon Meacham shakes things up at Newsweek. [NYP]
• In another attempt to emulate Esquire, Radar looks to move into their old space. Up next: A piece on how sexy Scarlett Johansson is. [NYO]
• Jon Friedman met Jimmy Carter once! Also, Jon hates the media. We feel ya, bro. [Marketwatch]
• Are we the only ones getting a little tired of hearing about Roger Ailes? [Romenesko]
• Jes s D az Jr. resigned as publisher of the Miami Herald after a power struggle with columnist Carl Hiaasen. How come no one resigned back when Dave Barry made his 5,000th booger joke? [Miami Herald]
• Newsweek stands resolute against Gawker's jeers that "while [its recent Annie Leibovitz] story tells of Leibovitz's life and her long-term friendship with the late Susan Sontag, it skips around the question of Leibovitz's sexual orientation." As long as we're jeering, how come there was no mention of Annie running off with the nanny? [NYP]
• No uncomfortable questions were asked at the Bill Keller/Patricia Dunn dinner. Thank God, that would be so tactless. [NYO]
• For those of you who find Rachael Ray insufferably cloying, which should be all of you, maybe Gourmet's Ruth Reichl will be an improvement. RELATED: We get it, Bill Buford, you like cooking. [WWD]
Says Newsweek editor Jon Meacham:
This week's edition of Newsweek features a cover story on famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, whose new collection, A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005, features many of Leibovitz's personal photos, both of her extended family and "the person she was closest to for that decade and a half—the late writer and critic Susan Sontag." The article then goes on to devote a decent amount of inches to Leibovitz's relationship with Sontag, telling us how close they were, how much Sontag mattered to Leibovitz, how they never lived together but had apartments facing each other's, how they would make sweet, sweet love on the floor of West Village pleasure dome. Wait, no — not that last part. In fact, Newsweek so carefully avoids any such mention to the point of absurdity:
Breaking News! During a deep investigation, we found Google's most media-saturating executive hiding in plain sight on the cover of Newsweek that's been out for days. Marissa Mayer's anti-biometric face-morphing technique ensured that millions of web programmers would stream right past her in the checkout line. God she's advanced.
• New editor of Newsweek still believes in relevance of newsweeklies. Poor, deluded sap. [WP]
• Writer Lee Siegel "suspended" from TNR, ostensibly for misrepresenting himself on the web. Our theory: No one gets away with being more pretentious than Leon Wieseltier at the mag. No one. [NYO]
• Phillipe Dauman, newest recipient of Sumner Redstone's puppet-string implant surgery, wants Viacom to identify opportunities like YouTube before other organizations can. Seeing as Tom Freston got canned for failing to do that, it's probably a good idea. [Reuters]
• The stench in the CNBC newsroom isn't just that of failure. Well, at least not yesterday. [NYDN]
The reason for venture capitalist Tom Perkins's resignation from the HP board of directors became clear today when Newsweek reported that chairwoman Patricia Dunn sniffed out directors' home phone records using possibly illegal methods of "pretexting" (obtaining personal info under false pretenses).
• The animal kingdom embraces the death penalty, celebrates the demise of Steve Irwin. [Daily Gut]
• OMG KATIE COURIC TONIGHT OMG CBS OMG LEGS.
• John Travolta: gaygaygaygay. [National Post]
• Did Jessica Simpson lip-sync on today's episode of The View? Is that why we were kind of digging it? [BWE]
• Preteen Observer publisher Jared Kushner knows when to pull punches: when advertisers are involved, obviously. Go ahead, son, you can admit it. [The Real Deal]
• The New Yorker gets polybagged, and nary a sideboob to show for it. [Living With Legends]
• The Lower East Side and East Village become sprinkled with random instances of public art. One man projected his video art onto Ludlow Street, where a dickbag might conveniently vomit on said artistic efforts. [Metro]
• After being charged with five counts of posession of just about everything, junkie Brit rocker Pete Doherty dodges the slammer after a judge admits to liking one of his songs. You know, here in the States, at least our justices pretend to be impartial to Snoop Dogg lyrics... [Daily Mail]
• Starbucks: terribly indie, boho. [Copyranter]
• Steely Dan turns towards indier-than-thou director Wes Anderson. Only classic rock can help him. [Steely Dan]
• Meachem, Newsweek, official, newsweeklies, yawn, dentures, blahblahblah. [Reuters]
• Fake hipsters hate on fake hipsters behind web show The Burg. It's the circle of post-post-life. [The Burg]
• R.I.P. Willi Ninja. [Keith Boykin]
• Ed Kosner tones down criticism of Mort Zuckerman in memoir about Daily News. The actions of a man worried about his future employability or brilliant meta-commentary on how the News is essentially a softer version of the Post? We prefer to think the latter. [WWD]
• ESPN Mobile will start offering full-length college football games to the nine people who subscribe to the service. [WaPo]
• John Meacham to take reins at Newsweek from Mark Whitaker, Earth continues to revolve around the sun. [WSJ]
• "Must we really need to enumerate all the ways here in which Michael Wolff has proven himself once again to be a total asshat?" No. [NYO]
• Time needs Newsweek like Slate needs Salon: as a measuring stick for comparative suckitude. [Slate]
• MTV needs videos like Time needs Newsweek: as a differentiator for younger, hungrier competitors. [BW]
• BusinessWeek needs Brandchannel the way MTV needs videos: to run the same thing you saw last week into the ground. [BW]
• Tony Kornheiser needs to be put down. Seriously. This is not a joke. Nice job, though, Weingarten. [WP]
In some bizarre meta-commentary on the whole Mel Gibson controversy, Newsweek has created a parody column by a character they're calling "Rabbi Marc Gellman." The character is apparently supposed to display every negative stereotype associated with Jews. After the jump, we introduce you to this edgy new satirist.
And continuing to stay abreast of which celebrity spawn are answering whose phones, we ought to point out that a Newsweek intern this summer is a certain daughter of a certain Arizona senator. No doubt she's excited to be there, but we wonder just how excited Newsweek is to have her. No one likes a maverick and outspoken intern.
Newsweek's cover this week is its first-ever "Giving Back Awards," a sort of honor of 15 people who "devote themselves to helping others." Naturally at least one or two members of such a list must have Katrina connections. One Katrina-connected award winner, as you might expect, was a certain CNN anchor who channeled the publics' anger at government officials and was ultimately transformed by the experience. By which we mean Soledad O'Brien, of course.
Love Foreign Policy but wish it were published with more frequency? Good news! The folks at Washingtonpost. Newsweek Interactive have plans for a new "collaborative blog" called PostGlobal, where twice weekly, according to Editor & Publisher:
