" The magazine does not determine editorial content based on the demands of outside parties," People told the Times in a statement. So much wiggle room: The denial does not preclude making promises to sources like Jolie or outlining plans for them in advance.

Here's how Jolie gets what she wants from magazine editors while allowing the editors to pretend they have not sold their souls, judging from the template of People's 2006 coverage of Jolie's first child:

• A third party circulates a memo to editors outlining what Jolie wants to see in coverage, then asking about coverage plans. (In 2006, Jolie's "philanthropic adviser" said in a memo to editors the celebrity wanted coverage of her Cambodia charity work and "invited" information on their plans.)
• Magazines come back with an outline of their "plans," along with the all-important monetary photo bid.
• The "plans" (especially the successful ones) just happen to correspond closely to what the the celebrity wants.
  
• The magazines can claim their "plans" are based on their own prerogatives instead of Jolie's requirements. Happy coincidence, you see.
• The magazines can also claim they never promised anything, only outlined the plans as they stood at that moment.
• And yet Jolie's people can claim to have extracted editorial concessions: "Part of why we wrote that memo is that we wanted to use the interest in her personal life to influence people to pay attention to important issues," her 2006 philanthropic adviser told the Times.

People's coverage in 2006 was scandalously conformant to Jolie's wishes:

“While Angelina and Brad understand the interest in their family, they also expect that the publications who purchase these photos will use them in a way that also draws attention to the needs of the Cambodian people,” Mr. Neilson wrote in a December 2006 memo to editors...

Time Inc. won the photos, paying an estimated $750,000. In the Jan. 8 issue of People came an article headlined “Angelina Jolie: Mission to Cambodia.”

In its coverage of Jolie's latest birth, to twins, People never once used the term "Brangelina," a word the couple hates. It's not clear if the magazine acceded to Jolie's other demand that she get positive coverage "not merely in that instance but into the future," as the Times put it.

Celebrities like Jolie get admiration for such effective flacking, which in this case worked not only on People but Us Weekly and others. The publications, though, (especially People) look more and more like publicity brochures crafted by the celebrities they cover, and increasingly undifferentiated from the morass of celebrity coverage online.

• Anne Hathaway's new actor boyfriend "went after all the young heiresses" when he was at Brown University, which makes him as terrible for her as jailed fraudster Raffaello Follieri, according to Page Six's tipster. [P6]
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes spent their second wedding anniversary apart, on opposite coasts. Make of that what you will. [Mail]
• The longtime editor-in-chief of Gourmet, Ruth Reichl couldn't get into her own party because she wasn't on the press list. I would not want to be that event planner. [P6]
• Sumner Redstone, purportedly to his ex-girlfriend on his ex-wife, in a restaurant: "I'm finally rid of her." [P6]
• Angelina Jolie forced husband Brad Pritt to make an angry call to his ex Jennifer Aniston, in which Pitt "went off" in a "quivering" voice. This according to the tabloid that reported that Aniston was pregnant with twins by John Mayer. [Star]
• After returning from a summer of TV filming in Spain, Gwyneth Paltrow didn't visit her husband but instead spent some private time with a Miami billionaire, including a jaunt on his yacht with Kate Hudson. [P6]

This W photoset showed us what life is probably like in the Pitt-Jolie household, but we never got to be a fly on the wall in the early days. This month's Vogue cover story featuring Aniston takes us as far back as the beginnings of Brad's affair: "I felt those details were a little inappropriate to discuss. That stuff about how she couldn’t wait to get to work every day? That was really uncool." Amazingly in the same interview she relates her feelings about whining and complaining, with Vogue providing the emphasis:

"I don't…like…girls…whining…and complaining…about…wanting a man! I never liked Sex and the City, the kind of thing where women only feel empowered once they find the Man. It is just not up my alley. I don't believe in it. There is nothing you can control about love. Somebody once said, Everything you want in the world is just right outside your comfort zone. Everythingyoucouldpossiblywant!"

This more aggressive approach sounds eerily like Jen's courtship of Alec Baldwin in the episode. Oprah's cameo last week probably helped the show avoid the usual second-week dropoff, and interest in Aniston's return to TV is likely to do the same. As for Jen, a starlet is best judged in small doses.

I can't conceive of how much I would pay to see this three-way:

Here's Jen with a "Happy Birthday Mr. President" reprise:

• Kanye West is astounded by the lack of sober judgement and integrity in the MTV Video Music Awards. He thinks they're fixed! The cable network is shocked he would question the ethics of the "MTV Academy." [Sun]
• Jennifer Aniston told Oprah Winfrey that her relationship with Brad Pitt feels like it was "100 years ago" and she's totally happy for him and his wife, even though she's uncool. [Us]
• Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson may get engaged in Paris. They've supposedly planned it and everything. Which would mean they're already engaged, effectively, so even if this rumor is true, it's false. [Mirror]
• You won't believe it: An older rich guy left his longtime wife for a much younger woman! He's 68, the Other Woman is 28 and they ran into each other in line at Starbucks in New York. She's from the Midwest. [P6]
• HBO isn't unduly concerned it just signed a deal with a rocker who slept with 14- and 15-year-old groupies and wrote about it in his book. That's now what Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Kiedis's show is going to be about, so who cares. [P6]
• Angelina Jolie is still not pregnant. [UPI]
• Howard Stern's sidekick is signed up for another book, one day after publication of his other book. [R&M]

• Jennifer Aniston has an "unbelievably warm and respectful" relationship with ex-husband Brad Pitt, but that skank new wife of his? Who recently told the Times she and Pitt fell in love on the Mr. & Miss Smith set, while he was still married to Aniston? She's a piece of work. "That stuff about how she couldn't wait to get to work every day? That was really uncool."
• This one ex-hooker may or may not have tape recorded her phone conversations with Ashley Dupre, call girl to Eliot Spitzer. On this basis, she's been deemed worthy of a pay-to-view porn site in her honor. Looking at naked pictures of a girl who maybe talked to Dupre a few times will set you back $5.99 . [P6]
• A Harlem church's applause for Hillary Clinton was merely "courteous." Scandal! [P6]
• Sarah Jessica Parker would like everyone to know that there is no Sex And The City movie sequel until she says there is a Sex And The City movie sequel. OK? Thanks. [Access Hollywood]
• Miley Cyrus and her boyfriend showed up at a Christian bookstore for Stephen Baldwin's book signing. Cyrus is friends with Baldwin's daughter; Baldwin has a a Hannah Montana tattoo on his arm, because Cyrus dared him to. [E!]
• Either Joe the Plumber was trashing John McCain, or a bunch of bar patrons decided to swarm some McCain-hater who looks like Joe the Plumber. [P6]

Suri Cruise in Out of This World
The daughter of Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, and a strange whirring machine kept in a corner of Tom's basement is but a mere babe right now. But in a few years, the curious patent leather-shoed Victorian tyke could be ready for showbiz. We see her going one of two ways. Either she stars as the spunky yet earthy and wise younger sister to the next tween sensation on a Disney Channel sitcom called Zaidee Zenkman's Zany Zoo or some crap. But more likely, she'll do a remake of Out of This World, a 1980's teen sitcom about a girl named Evie whose father is an alien who lives in a magic crystal pyramid she keeps in her bedroom. She can freeze time and shit. So it would be a reality series.

Lourdes Leon in Way Upper West Side Story
Lourdes is the daughter of a personal trainer named Carlos and a pop singer named Madonna. She's 12 years old and is becoming something of a fashion plate. So it would make sense if she, like her moms, dabbled a bit in filmmaking. Her big remake opportunity comes (everyone's gotta do a remake!) when she's asked, at age 16, to star in Way Upper West Side Story. She plays barrio princess Maria in this Latin and hip-hop infused update of the famous musical. Like current Broadway hit In The Heights, it's set in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood. The story is tragic as, in the end, she loses her one true love, the Upper West Side Jewish boy Tony Arnstein (played by Harvey Weinstein's kid). It's a huge Step Up 2: The Streets-style hit. She becomes a multi-culti music sensation, her mama is proud.

James Wilke Broderick in Were The World Mine
The son of actor Matthew Broderick and the Secretariat of lady business movies and TV, Sarah Jessica Parker, James will enter showbiz against his parents wishes. He'll mostly have small roles in TV shows at first, playing the shaggy and insecure friends of various tween girl stars. Does he have a crush on them? Will they ever date? Who's going to make the first move? The answer will come when, some day down the road, he stars in a remake of this movie. Then, amid a flurry of glitter, everyone will know. He'll end up quitting the biz, opening a restaurant in Hell's Kitchen with his roommate Gideon and spending most of his time out in Montauk, in his flower garden or on the phone with his "Mother dear."

Brooklyn Beckham in Ya Fucked, a Peter Pan "Update"
The eldest son of bedazzled pop singer and fashion designer Victoria and, well, equally bedazzled futbol player David, Brooklyn is as close to royalty as it gets in England (oh... wait.) When he hits 15, coming out of a painful awkward phase and blossoming into his genes-given good looks, he'll decide to take on a ludicrous white-boy rapping career. This will be like seven years in the future, so rapping will mostly involve computers and the sound of cash registers blinging. He'll follow that up with a couple action movies, eventually doing a Guy Ritchie-directed techno funk remake of Peter Pan simply and oddly titled Ya Fucked. It will perform poorly and be the running joke of the industry for about two years or so. After that embarrassment, he'll quit showbiz to go to Cambridge, where he'll excel at art history, eventually taking a teaching post at New Castle and living a quiet life. Until, inevitably every year, one of his students finds an old copy of Ya Fucked and makes him play it in class.

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt in Sweet Valley High School Musical
Shiloh, Brad and Angie's first biological child, will go heavy into showbiz. She'll get her own Nickelodeon sitcom at age 12 called Nipsy Nugget's Nine Nannies about a rich girl with a series of wacky nannies. At age 14 she'll release her debut album, called No More Secretz, featuring such confessional tracks as "U Didn't Kno Bout My Celly" and "Better Luck Text Time." Then will come her most infamous role, playing both Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield in a short-lived TV series called Sweet Valley High School Musical. By age 23 she'll have blown through her Nipsy money, and will be reeling from the relative failure of her two follow-up albums, What U Need From Me? and The Great Connecticut Sousaphone Experiment. After a mild meth problem, mama Angie will swoop in and save the day. At 30, Shiloh will release a searing memoir called Til Smith Do Us Part and will land a supporting role in the remake of the remake of 90210 as a sassy, if world-weary, English teacher.

There are so many more Jolie-Pitts to consider! Let's do a list! (A listicle WITHIN a listicle! Pareene's head just exploded)

• Maddox: This was the first one, right? Angelina Jolie adopted him from Cambodia before she married hooked up with actor Brad Pitt. He'll end up being kind of alterna and will go to Reed in Oregon. He won't do much showbiz, except for directing a few weirdo, trippy skateboarding shorts
• Zahara and Pax: Jolie's two other adopted chillens, they'll both attend Northwestern and graduate with honors. Zahara will become a scholar of feminist theatre, writing her dissertation on Suzan Lori-Parks. Pax and his life partner Ethan will move to Ethan's native Calgary, Alberta where Pax will work as a high school administrator and part-time saxophonist in a local jazz band.
• Vivienne and Knox: In the summer of 2024, the twins, vacationing in Borneo, will hop into a hot air balloon and float away, never to be seen again. Some people will claim to have spotted them doing drag performances of Gypsy at the Guthrie in Minneapolis under assumed names, but those reports will mostly be dismissed as rumor.

• Madonna and Alex Rodriguez helicoptered to the Hamptons, spent four hours in a house with Jerry Seinfeld and possibly Seinfeld's wife, then helicoptered back home. Must have been quite a dinner party. [Post, Sun]
• It is not clear if Madonna was at the Seinfeld's when she text-messaged ex Guy Ritchie "You're going down."
• Tracy Morgan, a true romantic, on the joys of quitting strip clubs: "I'll tell my [next] wife to get on the bed and put big [underwear] on and throw $400 at her — then take the money back and go food shopping." Awww. [R&M]
• Isiah Thomas was not breathing when found by police, before he was rushed to the hospital earlier this month. The former NBA star had downed 10 sleeping pills. [Post]
• The National Enquirer is either adding celerity-themed fiction or producing an off Halloween issue. "A hideous scream erupted, waking Angelina [Jolie] from slumber... she knew she must do - alone - in the dead of night." It goes on like that. [National Enquirer]
• Jennifer Aniston is all in a one-way feud with singer Pink just because Pink told John Mayer a woman would "have to be" stupid to date him. Aniston is not so concerned that this was prompted by Mayer's remark that "I only shag really stupid women." [Showbiz Spy]

• Shiksa Ivanka Trump and Observer-owning Jewish beau Jared Kushner have the rabbi for her conversion all picked out. It was important to both of them that he hate the Times. [P6]
• OK, so Madonna has reportedly been calling soon-to-be-ex husband Guy Ritchie a gold digger, but she's the one who made him sign a contract to "enrich" his wife and "devote time to our sexual expressiveness." [Sun]
• The View denied that Elizabeth Hasselbeck gets into screaming matches with Joy Behar, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported. But she does get the lion's share of death threats from people outside the show, according to Whoopi Goldberg.
• Under a new court order, a medical team will monitor Britney Spears' career at all times to make sure it does not drive her insane. That's an actual fact. [TMZ]
• Do not speak to the Olsen twins at their book signing, do not photograph the Olsen twins at their book signing and do not ask the Olsen twins to read anything at their book signing. Why are you even at their book signing? [P6]
• Girls Gone Wild scuz Joe Francis claimed Lindsay Lohan isn't really lesbian and trashed the actress' girlfriend Samantha Ronson as a "wretched" manipulator. Because if you're going to manipulate women, you have to do it with class. Joe Francis class. [P6]
• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie require the services of six nannies. They tried to cut down to four but that was just overwhelming. The dinner table seats 16. [Scoop]

KarenUhOh's new line beats the original, During A Commercial Break, Interviewer Recommends A Three-Star Hotel.

Forbes did an actual pseudoscientific study of a year's worth of celebrity mags and found that Angelina and Jennifer are the two most successful coverpersons. Britney Spears: nobody cares any more.

These conclusions could have also been obtained simply by sitting quietly with your thoughts.

In any case, the real question is: Is People in the tank? Feel free to email us if you're an employee who thinks so. Though we would remind you of this:

Michelle Obama Reveals How Barack Won Her Over

By Rennie Dyball...

Cuteness Factor
He did, however, "melt" her with a special treat on one of their first dates – chocolate ice cream – and ultimately won her over with "his overall personality," she said. "And he’s cute!"

• Three months after giving birth, 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears is said to be pregnant. Everyone's freaking out, "pals are begging her to abort." If only there was a national political leader, preferably experienced with teen pregnancy, who could guide the celebrity family in these trying times. [National Enquirer]
• The boyfriend of 15-year-old Miley Cyrus might be 20 years old, but he's "a good kid," according to Cyrus' dad. He's "searching for the dream," whatever that might be. [People]
• Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel are hoping groping each other in public will lead to a more meaningful reconciliation. Apparently "taking it slow" includes ass grabbing. Fair enough. [People]
• Is it really surprising to hear Angelna Jolie had a tummy tuck after giving birth to twins? The real question is whether she got the French government to pay for it. [Star]

• Sean Penn kissed a man for a movie, and for some reason sent an excited, rhyming text message to Madonna about it. [Fametastic]
• David Spade also sent a text message to his ex-girlfriend, Heather Locklear, because he wanted to make sure she's OK after her drunk driving arrest, and nothing says "I care" like a "U OK? LOL!" [Us]
• Jude Law told everyone he was in London vacationing with his kids, but really he was holed up in his New York hotel room with a dancer for days on end. Like he can't do that anywhere. [P6]
• Angelina Jolie confirms she is demanding more babies. Brad Pitt just looks so exhausted. [Mail]
• Do not offer Tom Arnold a Diet Coke, unless you're some sort of undermining monster. The man's in recovery. [Daily Star]
• Paul McCartney wrote a very special song for Heather Mills. [P6]
• The Philadelphia woman hired by Oprah to run her South African girls' school is suing the talk-show host for defamation. Oprah is accused of saying on TV that the woman covered up abuse at the school. [People]
• Courtney Love supposedly had "gastric band surgery" because she thought she was fat. [Hollyscoop]

• People snagged those Clay Aiken baby pictures for $500,000 after newly-frugal OK! dropped out of the bidding. [P6]
• Janet Jackson was hospitalized after getting sick right before a concert. [AP]
• Cindy Adams had Republican operative Ed Rollins walk through how Sarah Palin would be prepped for the debates, if the purely hypothetical case she were anything like a normal vice presidential candidate. [Post]
• When she was a beauty pageant contestant,Palin used to stick plaster over her nipples to keep her nipples from showing,one of her fellow contestants said. [R&M]
• Some whiny West Village busybody actually thought Page Six would care that Blake Lively lets her poodle run around the sidewalk off-leash, because that's against the rules. And that busybody was correct! [P6]
• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are considering adopting a seventh child, this time for the benefit of the continent of South America. [Daily Mail]
• A rich guy is giving $25,000 for Howard Stern's fiancee to run a marathon. [P6]
• Britney Spears re-denied the recurring rumor that she made a sex tape with Adnan Ghalib. The singer did say she plans a world tour next year. And yet Spears' lawyers said she's too crazy to stand trial for driving without a license.
• Katie Holmes has switched from her baggy, trendsetting "boyfriend jeans" to bell bottoms. She's just cycling through the fashion trends (and nostalgic outbreaks) of the last 20 years at her own pace. [Sun]
• Paul Newman has already been cremated and his funeral convened. [P6]
• George Michael is going on an African safari to deal with his drug and public-bathroom sex issues. [Fametastic]

• Angelina Jolie supposedly threatened to leave Brad Pitt because he was never home at their filthy French chateau with the six kids. God knows why. [Sun]
• Tina Fey got her purse back! Sarah Palin had it. [Showbiz Spy]
• Lindsay Lohan responded to her publicity-seeking father saying Lohan's girlfriend Samantha Ronson was "dark, hideous and... disgusting." Lohan said her dad "obviously needs to be on medication." [P6]
• Sad Hugh Hefner is losing two out of his three "girlfriends." He's still got the married one. [P6]
• Boy George to George Michael: "Get yourself clean." By George, he's right! [Mirror]
• Beverly Hills is too noisy and dense for Britney Spears, and that's just from the Ed McMahon visits. HEY-OH! [E!]
• Sharon Stone lost her adopted son to her ex-husband Phil Bronstein, the newspaper editor. [Sun]

• Jennifer Aniston was photographed holding hands on a Mexican beach with a MYSTERY MAN. He's OLDER. Also, she's just friends (third item) with actor Gerard Butler even though he was totally TOUCHING HER THIGH.
• Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and their six kids live in $85,000-per-month French chateau that is a "pigsty," a "warzone" and that has a "completely fly-infested" kitchen. Also there's blue dye everywhere. [Star]
• Diablo Cody: "I’m sorry that while you were shooting your failed opus at Tisch, I was jamming toxic silicon toys up my ass for money." [Slashfilm]
• Animal-hating liar Paris Hilton is claiming 300,000 people applied to be on her show even though one of her auditions in midtown New York drew less than 40 people. She also claims she's going to "be in a lot" of real estate and hotels some day, unlike today when she lives in cardboard boxes or something.
• Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond is dating nothing but trouble. Hire-a-private-eye trouble. [P6]
• Meghan McCain has a "tiny blue star" tattoo near her foot. After the election, she's going to go even more crazy with some other tattoo. Wild. [P6]
• Jennifer Lopez is throwing her husband an $800,000 birthday party. [Scoop]

• Madonna probably helped John McCain a bit by showing a video of him alongside images of Hitler, Robert Mugabe, starving children and global warming. Obama was depicted as Gandhi and John Lennon. Luckily for Obama this video has not yet been shown in the U.S. [Times]
• The creator of Gossip Girl hates how the CW is advertising Gossip Girl. [New York]
• After breaking up with fellow billion-heiress Courtenay Semel, Casey Johnson took a "really hot brunette" named Lisa to a party in honor of Kathie Lee Gifford. Both women wore skimpy S&M-themed outfits, which were deemed "inappropriate" because they were more edgy than what Regis Philbin was wearing. Well then! [P6]
• Lindsay Lohan and her girlfriend Samantha Ronson went baby clothes shopping. [R&M]
• Due to her 8,000 children, Angelina Jolie can get more free money from the French government than many Americans earn through actual physical labor. Or so says an English tabloid. [Sun]
• Jennifer Aniston's ex is maybe engaged to Cameron Diaz, who used to date Aniston's ex, John Mayer. Mayer, meanwhile, can't get any attention from the paparazzi now that he's not attached to Aniston.
• Heidi Montag is dressing up as Olivia Newton John to sell her terrible music. [Hot Or Not]
• TV chef Jamie Oliver, whose books include a recipe for a bacon sandwich just perfect after a long night at the pub, slammed the Brits as people who would rather get drunk than eat well. [Mail]

• Paris Hilton either added implants to "her A-cup" breasts or wants to spread gossip that she did so she can sell her stupid "push-up" bra. (Yes, you can click the thumb if you need a closer look. Yes, you will feel dirty. But don't you kinda feel that way already?) [P6]
• Graydon Carter's wife Anna gave birth to a baby girl, Isabella Rose Carter, who can already get better reservations and invitations than you. [P6]
• Oppressive Hollywood people will not let Danny Glover make a movie funded by beacon of tolerance Hugo Chavez. [P6]
• Heath Ledger's daughter Matilda will receive money otherwise destined to the actors who completed Heath Ledger's turn in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell are all donating their proceeds from the movie. [Fox]
• Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt plan to marry on live TV and also wrest the Hills from Lauren Conrad.

Jon Voight: "is a frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu, who acts like Obama just wandered in from the rain forest with a bone thru his nose and a communist pamphlet in his loincloth. The neocons who own jon voight and make him dance on the chabad telethons are the worst most elitist people on earth. glen beck and jon voight are their bitches... both of them are used tampons who must be flushed down the toilet immediately!"

Bush/Edwards/Hunter: "john edwards is an asshole but bush stole all of our money and killed innocent babies and children and women with it...there's a frickin scandal for ya! and he doesn't even have to answer for it one one hundredth as much as edwards is being assailed for fucking one slutty coke whore. The media cares more about sneaky sex than about torture death and holocaust." [RoseanneWorld via OhNoTheyDidn't]

1. Content repurposers and echo chambers be damned, exclusive content actually does pay off over the long term! You think I like scanning this shit? Hell no. But People, for all this "intellectual property copyright" babble, digs it. Because even though I am not really driving much traffic to their site, I am reminding you that People exists, exists with tons of cash to throw around on the right baby pictures. Same goes for the Olympics: more people than ever are watching them online, which has actually been good for television ratings, which are better than we've they held the Olympics in our timezone.

2. Not everything is the Super Bowl. There was no feasible scenario in which People, with its average weekly circulation of 3.8 million circulation, could have earned back its $14 million in newsstand sales — not even close. But People has been on a little tear lately, having grown 1.72% in the first half of the year, according to numbers out today from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, including s a 5.3% increase in higher-margin newsstand sales. The thing is, People also makes money off its subscribers, a model that allows them to do readers services and favors and devote extra funds to National Historic Events here and there without worrying about the immediate payoff, a model I favor since it tends to approach readers as readers and not just receptors for marketing messages whose worth to the magazine is directly proportional to their ability to be sucked in by cover lines like "Erotic Sex!" From the NBC standpoint, the thousands of hours of Olympics coverage is too massive a project and too important a contribution to cheapen with immediate cost-benefit analysis. Which is to say, yeah, there were cuter pictures they could have used for the cover, but this was a little gift to the people who read People.

3. America wants to feel like a responsible global citizen again. Thanks to China, we totally can! I mean, sure, there are 10,000 families in this country worth more than a hundred million dollars, many of whom would have never accumulated such wealth without China, and I personally think that should be illegal, but as long as we are going to be American wouldn't you rather we tried to, you know, direct those appropriations towards the types of people attractive enough to fund a whole shadow of economy of photographers who keep tabs on them? Brangelina are opening a tuberculosis clinic in Africa; they're reading the New Yorker.

4. The best bets are on stories where anything can happen. Take Pax's hair: a year ago, who of you thought the shy Vietnamese kid would be the cool one? None of you, I actually bothered to run a poll on this one. Anyway, ditto the 33-year-old gymnast and South Korea making it to the 2002 World Cup finals, and a whole bunch of other nationalism-stoking stuff I could reference if I had been actually watching this thing with the other 90% of my countrymen.

5. In the immortal words of Brad Pitt upon being posed the question "When it comes to discipline, how often do you sound like your parents?" on page 70. "Using the phrase 'Because I said so' is extremely satisfying." Also as a philosophy of governance, I've heard! Zai Jian folks.

NBC Pulls Super Bowl-Like Ratings [SF Gate]
Cover Awards
NBC Winning Big In The Games

• Madonna did not show up to her alleged lover/disciple Alex Rodriguez's All-Star party, nor did his bitter teammates, so he hung out alone in the club with his mom and two "kabbalah buddies," including a woman spotted leaving his house the next day.
• Page Six detailed all the lies noted liar (and animal-hating monster) Paris Hilton has told them, although you never with the Post, really. One of the more bizarre ones is that Hilton smoked marijuana in front of Page Six staff and then promised to take a drug test, but never did. [P6]
• CNN's Washington, DC assignment editor is on the cover of Muscular Development, a magazine featuring guys with obscenely large muscles, and with a website hawking all kinds of, uh, "supplements." Fox News Channel's buddies at the Post think this makes him a "CABLE BULLY." [P6]
• A cat named Anderson Pooper was just named "Best In Show" on Daily Paws. And he's silver! [OMG]
• Lauren Conrad fails to bring dog to bitchfest, ends up crying and somehow flaking. [Emily Brill]
• It's not so much that Jesse Jackson thinks Barack Obama is "talking down to black people" when the presidential candidate tells black men to take responsibility for their children. It's that he thinks Obama is talking down to him, says the mother of Jackson's love child. [Enquirer]
• Cityfile, which profiles Gotham's rich and famous, is trying to take pictures of wealthy people coming in and out of their fancy apartment towers, and is getting harassed by goons and hangers-on. Genius. [P6]
• NBC Universal is eyeing new offices at 7 World Trade Center and 11 Times Square, a total of roughly 500,000 square feet. [Observer]
• Tatum O'Neal's crack dealer feels abandoned. And that's a bad thing? [Enquirer]
• Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were maybe going to name their baby boy Rex Leon? But didn't? And an embroidered play matt somehow proves that? Something like that. [R&M]
• Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson probably just bought a Tribeca duplex fo $17 million. [Observer]
• OK! magazine is finally showing those Jessica Alba pictures it paid so much for! Actually, $1.5 million is a bargain these days. [Sun]
• Michael J. Fox will return to TV for four episodes of Rescue Me. [Us]

• Jay Leno, on an erroneous magazine cutline reading "Host of The Tonight Show on ABC:" "It's like a headline from the future." [Deadline Hollywood]
• The bidding between People and OK! for exclusive pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's twins now stands at $11 million to $12 million. Couldn't this have been taken care of previously? Or did everyone need to see how cute they were before bidding? [R&M]
• Pitt and Jolie decided the nice folks at their local newspaper in France, the 280,000-circulation Nice-Matin, should get the first news about their twins, including name, weight and gender and Pitt's first words after the birth. The paper created a special magazine insert for the occasion. [AP]
• Either Madonna has a five-point plan for saving her marriage to Guy Ritchie (including that Madonna can only work out three hours a day instead of four), or she's exploiting her rumored dalliance with Alex Rodriguez to drum up publicity for her upcoming concert tour, including by cheering the Yankees slugger at an All-Star game today. Or both!
• As reported previously, actor Josh Brolin took his role in the Bush biopic W a bit too seriously and got into a bar fight. Not reported previously: It might have been because someone used a racial slur against his co-star, who plays Colin Powell. [R&M]

[TV Decoder, Comedy Central]

I mean sure, some outlets could claim to have guessed the sexes of the babies, but they had a 25% 33% chance of getting that right if their "inside source" was a goat. Otherwise they were just taking blind and dramatic stabs, each so desperate to report the news of the holiest birth first. Jolie and Pitt and their myriad "people" played the thing pretty smartly (if sadly), as Jossip assesses, deciding to birth in France where the privacy laws are stricter and placing some kind of covering on the hospital window. They're just like sexed-up and better-as-a-pair-than-alone super spies Mr. & Mrs. Smith! Except doing, you know, the opposite of killing people. Whether they'll go the new, trendy route and hawk off Babies' First Photo Op to the highest tabloid bidder remains to be seen. But you can bet it's likely. They might, actually, need the money.

• According to the Daily Mail, Banksy is a 34-year-old Bristol native named Robin Gunningham. The paper started with the one known photo of Banksy, taken in Jamaica several years ago (pictured above), and worked its way back through his hometown and beyond in a year-long investigation.
• A neighbor in the Bristol neighborhood where Gunningham grew up ID'd the Banksy photo as him.
• Friends at Gunningham's private school in Bristol described him as a talented artist. The neighbor said he lived a "nomadic" existence that upset his parents.
• Gunningham's roommate in Bristol in 1998 was a man named Luke Egan, who went on to exhibit art with Banksy. When questioned, Egan mumbled a lot and denied knowing anything.
• The landlady of the house that Gunningham and Egan shared says Gunningham was Banksy—because when he moved out he left a bunch of graffiti work in the house, which she threw out. Earlier published accounts of Banksy's life confirm he shared a house in the neighborhood at the time.
• "Banksy moved to London around the turn of the millennium, once again at the same time as a certain Robin Gunningham. Robin lived in a flat in Kingsland Road, Hackney, East London, with Jamie Eastman, who worked for Bristol's Hombre record label. Banksy drew a number of the record company's album covers."
• Banksy's first major London show in 2003 was in a warehouse "just yards" away from where Gunningham lived.
• When the Daily Mail went to see Gunningham's parents, both denied everything, including recognizing the picture, having a son, and being themselves.

We hazarded a guess in May that Banksy could be the alter ego of Nick Walker, another already-famous street artist. In the months since, various bits of information have led me to believe that that's not true—although the possibility certainly still exists that Banksy is actually a collective of artists, or has other artists helping him with his pieces.

The evidence here is pretty strong. Strangely, the paper couldn't track down Gunningham himself. But it's only a matter of time now. The Daily Mail tries to make an issue of the fact that Banksy grew up as a suburban schoolboy, but I don't think that's surprising at all; his art is pretty obviously a reaction against middle class mores.

Banksy, you'll always be cool to me. Even if your name is "Robin."

[Daily Mail]