Beating up a Playboy Playmate at a popular Hollywood nightclub, would seem a mountain too high to climb, even for a cretin of Francis' caliber. But this week, he is accused of pulling a bunny out of the proverbial hat in the Loathsome Olympics and doing just that.

The fun started on Friday night when reality tv hero/Paris-posse-clinger Brody Jenner twittered the following:

Joe Francis needs to be in jail!!!...
How can you call yourself a man when you beat up a girl?? Joe Francis is a piece of shit
Joe Francis beat up my lady this morning for no reason! Pulled her to the ground, punched & kicked her..what does that say about him?

In an interview that night with TMZ, Jenner claimed that he and his girlfriend, former Playmate Jayde Nicole, had been watching the Girls Gone Wild kingpin hitting persistently on a woman at Hollywood's Guys and Dolls nightclub. When the pair felt his attentions had gone overboard, Nicole apparently threw a drink in Francis' face. According to Jenner, Francis then "pulled Jayde's hair, punched her in the face and threw her to the ground and began kicking her."

Francis disputed the account in an interview with MTV News saying, "I would never hit a girl in my life." He continued:

This was an unprovoked attack," Francis said. "The security-camera footage pretty much confirms my account of the events entirely. ... I was talking with a friend of mine. I got punched in the back and then all of a sudden, [Jayde] poured a drink, and then a glass hits me in the head. I turned around. I reached over. I see it's a girl, the head of the girl. I wanted to turn her head around. I grabbed her hair, and the next thing I know, my shirt's being ripped. I'm punched in the face. I go into the submissive ball until the whole thing gets settled down."

Today, Nicole has fired, issuing a statement basically saying, you did too beat me up. Her spokesman - and yes, all Playmates do have spokesmen - reiterated, "On Friday August 28 at approximately 1:20 A.M., Jayde Nicole was the victim of a violent assault when she was attacked from behind, thrown down to the ground by her hair, and beaten in the face and body in front of multiple witnesses by a person identified as Joe Francis."

Nicole is refraining from further comment as she claims to be cooperating with the police investigation of the incident.

Dov Charney has used a photographic approach that might be characterized as underage retro porn as American Apparel's branding theme. Charney, who often takes the pictures himself, recently approached my daughter in Union Square Park in New York and gave her his business card in case she ever wanted to model for him.

Wolff's daughter Elizabeth is roughly 25 years old, according to this 2005 interview, so she's old enough to know better and hopefully didn't follow up with Charney. But if Wolff wants to keep her away from New York's seedier side, he might want to stop taking her to blogger parties.

UPDATE: A tipster tells us Charney approached Susanna Wolff, not Elizabeth. Susanna appears to be a student at Columbia and a College Humor intern. We should have known that at 25, Elizabeth Wolff is too old for Charney. Gawker regrets the error.

[Via Mondoweiss.]

He's especially angry that his political views have been caricatured. He says he's conservative fiscally but is a social moderate ("I support civil unions").

Unrelated: Stam's hero is fellow Horace Mann alum Roy Cohn.

Basically the whole show it was an orgiastic nightmare of discomfiting misogyny. Like most daytime TV!

Note: Janka clip moved to separate post not only to gin up views but also because our magic video thumbnailing machine doesn't seem to work when you put two clips in one post. Whee!

"Why would she change into pajamas?" asked Mr. Richards. "Why didn't she leave when she sees there's no bed for her? Why didn't she punch him in the face?" He noted that there were no signs of physical trauma. "My client is 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds. He's a thin Gandhi-type guy. He can't overpower anybody. Any girl would kick his butt."

from "The Designer Who Liked Models":

Friends warned him: Take it easy. Keep cool. Don't be alone with a woman you don't know. If he listened, it didn't seem to change his basic promiscuity. Part of the problem, friends explained, was financial. Mr. Jon could not afford high-fee supermodels and was always looking for young models to work free or in exchange for clothing. But they were inexperienced and perhaps na ve. And, no matter their inexperience, friends and others said, he seemed to expect sex.

The Rich must live more simply so that the Poor may simply live.

from "The Designer Who Liked Models":

But Mr. Jon was a child of his time, savvy in self-promotion and not consumed with the minutiae of fashion design.... His simple Indian-influenced designs — typically, a floor-length silk skirt paired with a muscle T — didn't impress the critics or fashion insiders. "I don't think he was taken too seriously," said Sam Bolton, a night life photographer, who met him around town. "From my perspective he was just one of those people who was always doing events in nightclubs. The focus was on the after party, not the fashion show."

The truest test of civilization, culture, and dignity is character, not clothing.

from "The Designer Who Liked Models":

Mr. Jon told the girl's parents, the father said, "I treasure the feminine being. I got all this spirituality from my grandmother and my mom." But a few hours later, he forced the teenager to have oral sex at the hotel where he was staying, the father said. "I drove him to the hotel, where he raped my daughter," he said ruefully.

To call women the weaker sex is a libel: it is man's injustice to woman. ... If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be.

The Designer Who Liked Models [NYT]