By Nick Denton, 3:22 PM on Mon Feb 18 2008, 8,136 views (Edit, to draft, Top, Slurp)

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What is Hayden Christensen, an actor who's had to bat away rumors about his sexuality, doing on a magazine quite as gay as Details? Last week, the Jumper star wandered the streets of Manhattan with his co-star, Rachel Bilson, providing heterosexual photo opportunities. All that hard paparazzi-enticing work, thrown away for one lousy magazine cover. Unless this is all part of his handlers' plan: encourage speculation in the celebrity weeklies of a relationship between the prettyboy actor and his female co-star; but leave enough coded language and imagery for the gays to believe there's still hope. In the business of celebrity image-making, this is the equivalent of the evangelical dog-whistle, or Mike Huckabee's floating cross commercial, an appeal designed only to be picked up by the target demographic. If so, it's working: despite awful reviews, Jumper was the weekend's highest grossing new release. (After the jump, the reason why the Jumper star keeps the audience guessing: his fans, who have filled Youtube with dreamy tribute videos, can't handle the truth.)