It's so disappointing that Emily Brill and Kristian Laliberte (second from right and second from left, respectively) won't be appearing together after all in the planned Manhattan version of The Hills: the two empty socialites are already stabbing each other in the back like reality television pros. Brill, the publishing heiress, says she dropped out of Stick Figure Production's show because she wanted respect. "My writing is my priority. Not fame, not parties, not glamour. No short cuts. I'm going to earn respect through good, err, excellent writing." That's an option unavailable to her supposed friend, language-mangling fashion publicist Laliberte, who remains involved with the horrific reality show, according to Brill. But that's not the end of the story.

Brill began hanging out with shallow socialites like Laliberte, as well as Devorah Rose and Annabel Vartanian, when she launched her newly svelte body onto Facebook and the Manhattan social scene. The Brill family misfit, daughter of the founder of American Lawyer and Brill's Content, wrote on her new blog about the "substance" of her new friends, and catalogued the parties and fashion shows at which she met them. "Kristian and I were having a pretty good heart-to-heart, not to mention the fact that he was giving me pretty good business advice and even contacts (for all of that non-existent work I do during the day)," she wrote on her site, Essentially Emily.

By exposing Laliberte's participation in a project that she's too good for, Brill may have their budding friendship. Laliberte responds to Brill's post in a chilly email to Gawker: "I know Emily socially, I have never spent any one on one time with her. Half the time I am not sure what she is saying, she speaks very quietly... I am not involved in a reality TV project in ANY capacity with Emily Brill. I have no idea what Emily is referring to, nor am I involved in any project with her. I would suggest that she employs a fact checker in the future."

So, whom to believe? Well, Emily Brill wrote us, when we ran an item on the reality show: "I don't know what you're hearing. I'm not part of any show." So she's not a reliable witness. But nor, on past performance, is Laliberte. Our working hypothesis: they were both involved in the show; they're both panicking; they're both lying; and they're both equally awful. This would have made fabulous television. (Oh, and by the way, does anybody still maintain that Emily Brill is a private individual off-limits for this website?)

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