Poor Harvey Weinstein just can't catch a break for The Reader! So far, his pushy campaign to ready the film for awards glory has resulted in the loss of both Scott Rudin and a million-dollar bet, and now his efforts have resulted in further ignominy: Kate Winslet's very naked performance was denied a spot on Mr. Skin's Top Celebrity Nude Scenes of 2008. Could this be an Oscar precursor? Let's hope not, considering who came in first:

Did you know the Observer is subsidized by an illicit slush fund? It shamefully is, according to a lawsuit filed by the former president of one of the Kushner Companies. When developer Charles Kushner bought a $1.8 billion office tower, he routed $18 million back to himself as commission on the mortgage, then allegedly siphoned $5 million off that for son Jared's cash-bleeding weekly newspaper.

We'll admit that when Joaquin Phoenix first announced (in an incoherent mumble) that he would be quitting acting, we weren't quite sure whether it was all just an elaborate stunt. Then, we remembered the tale of Greenbo, Phoenix's brain-eating frog, and thought it was simply par for the course with the erratic actor. Still, since the announcement, Phoenix's weird behavior has felt increasingly staged for the cameras — and, in fact, he has his own cameras following him around, "recording his transition from film to music." The final straw came when we found an incriminating set of pictures from Phoenix's first performance, along with this explanation:

Though Natalie Portman earned an Oscar nomination for refusing to part with her pasties as a stripper in the film Closer, she's been on a genuinely NSFW tear as of late. First, she stunt doubled for a lithe greyhound and went nude for the Wes Anderson short Hotel Chevalier (pictured), then she dated the frequently penis-nosed troubadour Devendra Banhart, whose liner notes revealed a radical new theory that clothes simply get in the way of a man's natural, patchouli-infused musk. Now, Doubt director John Patrick Shanley reveals that Portman wanted the role in his film that eventually went to Amy Adams, but there was one sexless impediment:

If you have a romantic view of the ad industry from watching Mad Men, this may end it forever. Yesterday Agency Spy broke the news that the ad industry had ground to a halt (not just because of the recession) as everyone spent their time forwarding a video showing two ad agency people having sex in an office. We speculated that it would eventually come out. And, well, it did. The video is amateurish, and the sex isn't sexy at all. Think more Pete Campbell and less Don Draper. Use discretion, one and all. We've semi-censored it, but it's still probably NSFW.

How convenient that former $2,000 an hour girl Natalie McLennan's escorting memoir is being released tomorrow, hot on the heels of Spitzer escort Ashley Dupre's tearful Dianne Sawyer interview! Sometimes, it's just synergy, sometimes it's just luck. Kind of like the time a website sprung up "accusing" her of ratting out her former friend/call girl comrade Ashley Dupre to law enforcement officials, which resulted in a nice Page Six item. (The guest column a few days later was gravy.) For someone who's in a line of work that makes publicity dangerous, McLennan has always known how to work the press; she made the cover of New York magazine in 2005. Now that her book is finally out pretty much the only thing anyone cares about is the Ashley Dupre stuff. So, what does it say? Well. Frankly, it's mostly pornographic! So if you're offended by hottt XXX lesbian action, please do not click here.

You'll recall that The Box owner Simon Hammerstein was accused of pressuring burlesque performers into three-ways, stashing them in dog-feces-strewn dressing rooms, pushing drugs on them and leaving welts on their assess. He denied most of the charges, and denies them again in this week's New York, backed up this time by some employees. But the magazine also dug up fresh information on the boozing, degenerate performances and sexual favor-trading that allegedly goes on at the nightspot:

We'll admit that we stopped paying attention to the new 90210 after they demoted Lucille Bluth, but it appears from these on-set photos that producers have figured out an exciting new guest star for their reboot: the Nip Slip! Our old friend N.S. shared scenes with show lioness AnnaLynne McCord, who we remember fondly for her work on Nip/Tuck (and who probably should have kept her nip tucked here, hey-o). Let this serve as a lesson to McCord: when filming a running scene, a bra (and the occasional hamburger) can provide invaluable support. Click through for the full, uncensored photo.

In the United States, an uncomfortable talk show interview usually involves an uncommunicative Twilight star or a vaguely gross suggestion of backseat nookie from Jay Leno. Across, the pond, however, restrictions are looser — or at least they were, until Russell Brand mucked things up in the ribald BBC voicemail scandal that we still don't fully understand (we think it involved Fawlty Towers, Satanists, and a giant bird's nest of hair). Now, British chat show host Jonathan Ross is being investigated for another example of bad language (shown in the above clip), in which he asks A-list actress Gwyneth Paltrow about her kids and then announces that he would like to fuck her and that she's clearly "gagging for it." Someone's been taking interview tips from The Advocate!

Have you heard the wacky news? Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters are "at it again"! No, they're not having creepy lesbian eldersex, they're a'feudin' and a'fightin' all over again. They haven't had a public dust up recently, not since Rosie was fresh off Walters' ladychat Hindenburg The View. Lots of folks seem to be buying into the latest war of words (I'm looking at you, Fox News)—which arose when comedienne Rosie said something about how the camaraderie on the show is false and celebrity interviewer Babs snapped back—but we think it's, well, a hoax. And a pretty obvious one at that. Hell, they have the same publicist, Cindy Berger from PMK/HBH. She probably got them on some sweaty, wheezy conference call and told them that since RoRo needed to promote her new Ed Sullivan-esque variety hour and Babs needed some View coverage since the election ended and lil' squeakers Elisabeth Hasselbeck no longer has Issues to spew her poison candy about, they should have a fake fight and get some attention. This whole thing just reeks of PR stuntery. Like the whole supposedly nasty Madonna/Guy Ritchie divorce, which ended quickly now that she's got just three US dates left on her tour and his RockNRolla has already opened in theaters. Or Andy Samberg and Mark Wahlberg, who had a staged animosity to get some sweet ass SNL ratings. And it doesn't really hurt anyone at this point, because neither of them, especially Walters, really has any credibility left to debase. Which makes the whole thing just a bit sad. Ah well.

• Michael Jackson is a secret Muslim who is actually called Mikaeel, meaning angel of Allah, after the pop star rejected the name "Mustafa," which means chosen one. In a few days Jackson will appear in London court, where an Arab sheikh is suing him for seriously breaching a multi-million-dollar contract. Related? Who knows. The headline? "The Way You Mecca Me Feel." [Sun]

Well, there it is. Prince William's crotchal region. While he's in mid-pee. NSFW, obviously. [GayDailyHot] Update: The site's down, but we got a screen grab. It's blurry, but there's... something there. After the jump.

You knew the engagement of hip-hop artist M.I.A. and musician Benjamin Brewer — son of mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr. — would yield plenty of hilarity, but this? Since her 2007 album Kala launched her from rising star into actual pop songstress (we blame Pineapple Express for introducing her to Judd Apatow fans), M.I.A. has been trying to emphasize that she doesn't just sip wine at fancy parties, as when she dissed New York for its lack of gun violence compared to her war-torn childhood in Sri Lanka. Maya, we urge you, just let the music speak for itself. Quotes from a recent Spin interview in this morning's New York Post suggest she should have quit while she was ahead.When it comes to her inner turmoil between her anti-establishment roots and the decadent wealth of her her new in-laws-to-be, M.I.A. explains how exactly she reconciles the two: "I've always had that [bleep]-the-system mentality, and his dad is so 'the system.' But then, they're the most liberal family - they bootlegged alcohol, for God's sake. They're rich because they threw big, illegal parties, so I don't mind." She's referring, of course, to the Bronfman's old old family business, liquor company Seagram. So basically the system is awesome when it's netting her $100,000 to play MTV after parties, but otherwise, she's still an iconoclast. Oy. We love the music, but does she know she's making herself harder to like?

Your Gmail sponsored link that will make you hate Democrats of the day: "Mama Voted For Obama." It's precisely the idiotic indoctrinating garbage you think it is, except for this awesome scene of cartoon Obama reenacting the My Pet Goat incident as, presumably, the nation burns. Good work, Mama. The terrorists won. [Little Democrats]

It's rare that a stage-managed pop star can break free of her chains, but all of America bore witness to a time in Britney Spears's life when a gum-smacking "Y'all!" became a Klonopin-chomping "Y'allllllll." Now, Spears appears to be back on the wagon and of sound mind, body, and hair, but she confesses in the new documentary Britney: For the Record that she almost prefers the bald ol' days:

In theory, pro journalists can climb to the top of their fields without sacrificing their built-in urge to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In practice, even the loosest cannons find themselves battened to the hatch, or whatever the right sailing metaphor is. One of my role models, former Fake Steve Jobs blogger Dan Lyons, seems to have been forced by his new employer to undo his own writing. Here's what happened.Dan Lyons is a cruelly funny man. He's been a journalist and fiction writer for decades, but Lyons is best known for the anonymous Fake Steve Jobs blog he launched in 2006. Writing from home at night, Dan vented his frustrations as a Forbes writer by inventing a fictional Steve Jobs character. Fake Steve said everything about the tech industry's titans that Dan wasn't allowed to print in Forbes. (Check out "I love to fuck with car salesmen" and "Eric Schmidt's Serenity Prayer.") Today, it seems Dan has taken down a post, for the first time any of us can remember. From most reporters, I'd consider this typical pointy-haired management, what can ya do, etc. But seeing Dan Lyons self-censor his own honest work makes me wonder if I'll be able to stay true to my own after I leave Valleywag's free-fire zone next month. What's changed for Lyons? Simple: This past summer, Newsweek hired him away from Forbes. After a long series of talks with both old and new editors, Lyons shut down Fake Steve Jobs and started a new blog, Real Dan Lyons. Yesterday he blogged a potty-mouthed, Fake-Steve-style rant about Yahoo's PR people yanking his chain in his official Newsweek reporter role. Today that post is gone. Dan's not answering his cellphone or email today, so I have to presume it was his Newsweek editor who made him take it down. Certainly, I've never seen Lyons wake up in the morning and rush to undo his previous night's typing. Here's the timeline:

• Nearly three years ago, Lindsay Lohan scrawled "Scarlett [Johansson] is a bloody cunt" on a bathroom wall at the Dark Room on the Lower East Side. Allure finally asked Johansson about the incident: "I don't know what the motivation was behind that. I remember it was something really vulgar—I mean, shockingly so, like 'Whoa, what, who are you?'"

Dan Lyons is shocked, shocked that Yahoo's PR team lied to him about how long CEO Jerry Yang would stay in the job. PR people routinely lie; it's part of the job description. But the good ones don't get caught. Lyons, Newsweek's tech columnist, interviewed Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock less than a month before Monday's announcement that Yang would step down, and Bostock loudly declared Yang was here to stay. One would think no one would be more cynical about the world of tech PR than the man who savaged Apple's spinmeister when he impersonated CEO Steve Jobs in a satirical blog. Lyons is no longer writing as Fake Steve Jobs, but as the real Dan Lyons, he occasionally summons up the old savagery. Here's what he says about the flacks who deceived him about Yang's employment status, as well as a now-scotched advertising deal with Google:

Just because Treasury Dept. Bailout wonderboy Neel Kashkari gets to play with $750 billion in taxpayer money doesn't mean he actually has a good job. He came in looking peppy enough to bore holes in a taxpayer's forehead with only the power of his laser eyebeams; now, he's haggard. His eyes are dazed, plaintive even, and he's putting on classic stress-related weight under his chin. Congressmen yell at him. Old high school teachers talk shit about him. Internet jerks mock his awesome senior yearbook page. And he's really just a front man, taking all the heat for Hank Paulson's decisions and the mistakes of a million greedy Wall Street traders before him. We feel more sympathy for him than any other Ferrari-loving overconfident Republican ski bum Wharton grad in America. Keep on truckin, Neel.

Henry Blodget, the Wall Street analyst returned to journalism, wrote that Michael Lewis' (last?) Portfolio article on short-seller Steve Eisman and the collapse of Wall Street generally is "pure pleasure from start to finish." It's true; it's the sort of piece that will keep you up late, assuming you're remotely interested in the ongoing collapse of the modern financial system. But the article's most compelling section deals not so much with finance as with the eternal tension between writer and subject, i.e. fucking over your sources. '