The scene: last night, around midnight, at the Beatrice Inn, the low-ceilinged West Village bar and nightclub. The characters: Hud Morgan from Men's Vogue, pictured left, and his friend and rival, Spencer Morgan of the once-elite New York Observer. Off-camera: 17-year-old blonde starlet, Leven Rambin, who, incidentally, plays a troubled starlet in tonight's Lipstick Jungle. There's the sound of a slap.

It's not the first time the Men's Vogue writer lost his temper after a long night at the Beatrice. Earlier this month, he berated Julia Allison because the Star magazine talking bosom posted up a picture of herself with a red-scarfed Hud, which ended up on Gawker. He blamed her for pulling him in to her vortex of bad publicity.

But Hud has a vortex all of his own. The bullying of Allison provided a perfect excuse for gossip blogs like this to reveal Hud was dating the "little sister" whom Allison adopted until the 17-year-old actress, Leven Rambin from All My Children, stole her then-boyfriend, libertarian geek Jakob Lodwick. (Confused? There's a diagram).

And about a week ago, we hear, Hud and Spencer had a big argument on the phone. The two Morgans are friends and, yes, they are often mistaken for eachother, because they're in a similar line of work and share the same surname. Spencer Morgan, who recently acquired a fiancee after years as a man-about-town, was in Los Angeles last week for the Oscars. "Did you know that Hud Morgan got engaged?" he was asked. But the two differ in one crucial respect: Hud, for a former gossip columnist for the New York Daily News, has an extremely thin skin.

In the phone conversation, Hud asked Spencer how the engagement was working out. Spencer, having heard about Hud's new girlfriend, 17-year-old Leven Rambin of All My Children, ribbed him about her age. "How old did you say she was?" he asked, or words to that effect. You'd have thought that the polo-player-worshipping fruitini drinker would embrace the proof of his rampant heterosexuality. But no: Hud, embarrassed by the earlier Gawker item on his jailbait girlfriend, said he wanted a timeout on their friendship.

And last night? In a group with Radar's recently liberated Chris Tennant and other journalists, the argument resumed. According to witnesses, the conversation went something like this.

Spencer: "Dude, why didn't you respond to my email?" (He had apologized for the insult to Hud's teen girlfriend.)

Hud: "Do you want me to drop you?"

Spencer: "Yeah, sure. That's a good idea."

Hud walks down the stairs. Spencer follows, bitchslaps him, later telling friends: "He needed a dose of reality."

Hud, to the bouncers: "He punched me! He assaulted me! I want him removed!"

Spencer, explaining the slap: "He wasn't worth a punch."

Bouncers escort Spencer to the side room to the right of the entrance, with the couches. The red handprint on Hud's face gradually fades. Consensus verdict: Spencer's game. Close scene.

• Manhattan media clusterfuck map

Hud Morgan, who is trying to establish himself as a serious journalist after an apprenticeship under Lloyd Grove at the New York Daily News, was particularly offended by a photograph of him, standing awkwardly in a red scarf, beside Allison in her hand-on-hip pose. (This trademark look was so important to Allison that she campaigned to have the photo on her Wikipedia page changed.) The image, which was first posted to Allison's personal blog, was highlighted on Gawker, and mocked by commenters, to the irritation of Morgan's boss. Not the image that a Men's Vogue writer should be conveying.

But spare the sympathy for Morgan. It's not as if the louche writer is a naive victim of Allison's publicity machine. Morgan put himself front-and-center in Tabloid Wars, the 2006 documentary series on the Daily News, in which he agonized on screen about the shallow life of a gossip columnist's gofer, and then drowned his sorrows in free booze. Best line: "Can you get me a beer, because I'm such a man? I want to order a fruit-ini, but I'm on camera." And he's embarrassed Allison in public, before. At a party for Arianna Huffington in 2007, Morgan stole Allison's cellphone, and drunkenly read out text exchanges between the dating columnist and her magazine editor boyfriend of the time, Dave Zinczenko, paying particular attention to mentions of blow jobs and Allison's post-sex bruises. The Men's Health editor soon broke off the relationship.

That's all history; there is a statute of limitations on the offenses committed by drunken gossip columnists. But Morgan's rehabilitation, since moving to Men's Vogue, is superficial. Put aside yesterday's drunken rant at Beatrice Inn. (Allison can inspire rage in even the most sober of people.) Guess whom he's currently dating? It's almost too lurid to be true: Leven Rambin, the 17-year-old star of daytime soap, All My Children. The same Rambin whom Allison called her "adopted little sister", until the barely legal actress lured the dating columnist's geek boyfriend, Jakob Lodwick. (Incidentally, Hud Morgan was one of Allison's first friends in New York, introduced by Grove, whom she knew from Washington, D.C.) Rambin's guilt, now compounded by her latest fling, doesn't trump ambition: the teenaged actress avoids photographs with Allison, on her publicist's advice. "I'm like media kryptonite," Allison tells friends.

Conclusion: they all deserve eachother.