Moyers, who is 75, had planned on ending his weekly news show at the end of the year, but PBS convinced him to stay on through April 30, 2010. This means, in O'Reilly's fantasy world, that Bill and Jesse totally embarrassed PBS into firing Moyers.

Bill ambushed Moyers again in 2008, but he didn't show that clip, because Moyers upstaged the second-string ambush producer that time.

On her show today, Martha Stewart apologized for remarks she made against her fellow daytime cooking queen during a recent Nightline segment.

I just want to take this opportunity just to address some comments that are circulating on the Internet regarding me and Rachael Ray. And just for the record there are no bad feeling between us nor have there ever been. I truly believe that Rachael has done a terrific job bringing people, many people who would of never of even stepped into the kitchen or made a dish to cook. I applaud Rachel for her enthusiastic approach to cooking and I really had a great time being a guest on her show and it was a lot of fun to have her on this show making pie with me to. Come on back Rachael, anytime you want and I hope you have a Yum-o Thanksgiving."

God, Martha. Where is the vitriol? Where is the cattiness? We don't want to see you being sweet and contrite—we want to see the fangs!

Anyway, this whole thing started when Martha said that Rachael Ray rewrites recipes from her old books and magazines for her new books, and said this isn't "good enough for me." She continued, "[Ray is] more of an entertainer, with her bubbly personality, than she is a teacher like me."

Ray pretty much agreed with her, making the whole spat a non-started. She told Cynthia McFadden in the same segment that Martha's claims are "true" and that she would "rather eat Martha's [meal] than mine." Way to make us like you by being honest, Rachael. We hate that.

Maybe the reason Martha wanted to sweep this whole thing under the carpet with an apology is because she engages in the same re-editing technique that she accused Ray of. A former editor in the Martha Stewart empire told us that a number of recipes from Stewart's recent books are reedited versions of things that appeared in her magazines, often only with new names and photographs. People in glass houses, no matter how finely appointed, shouldn't be throwing stones. Good thing for Martha that Rachael is way too much of a lady to go toe-to-toe with her in the jail yard.

According to quotes compiled by blogger Dan Lyons, Dodge used to say things like "Microsoft is a great company to work for" is "always putting employees first." But he's changed his tune, now that he works for Google. A new post on his personal blog starts with this dig at his old employer:

Laying off 5,000 people when you have $37B in cash and huge profits isnot cool. But hey, thanks for pushing me on to the Next Big Thing.

And suddenly, Dodge has a new viewpoint about Gmail. Before:

Even Microsoft's online version of Outlook called Outlook Web Access is far better than Gmail... Gmail... doesn't compare to Microsoft Outlook.

Now:

Outlook... was getting kind of tired. Gmail is new, fast, web based, and has all the features I need. I especially like the way it threads conversations making it easy to keep everything in context... One other subtle thing: no spam. I never realized how much corporate spam invaded my Microsoft inbox.

But he "realizes" now!

Thanks for all the "thanks," Don, but the "fuck you" is still implied. Not that we're complaining.

(Pic: Dodge, by Jay Goldman)

In an interview on Sunday, the pilot, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, said that the book, "Fly by Wire," by William Langewiesche, "greatly overstates how much it mattered" that the plane he landed in the river, an Airbus A320, featured an automated cockpit.

Put that in your rudder stick and jerk it, nerd! Just because William Langewiesche is a former professional airline pilot and a notably painstaking research-driven award-winning writer, he may think he "knows" things, such as the extent to which automated airline technology in the Airbus contributed to its safe crash landing in the icy Hudson.

Know this, Langewiesche: Character. It resides in the breast of a man by the name of Sully. And in his balls, which didn't fall off as his crippled plane plunged inexorably downward towards watery doom. Can you say the same? We didn't think so. You want to talk about books? Sully knows about books.

What a guy! (Sully).
[Pic: Getty]

Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are dropping suits against eBay, to whom they sold Skype in 2005, and against a consortium of private finance companies trying to buy Skype from eBay. The founders had accused both groups of intellectual property theft. They're dropping those lawsuits in exchange for 14 percent of Skype.

But former Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher reported last night on Dow Jones' All Things D website that the founders would get not 14 percent but up to 13 percent of the company — 10 percent outright and an option to buy another 3 percent. Sacrebleu! Rob Wauters of rival TechCrunch was quick to rub Swisher's face in the minor error, writing that the founders "are getting 14 percent of Skype back for rights to the... technology their company... controls... and not 10% like previously reported by other media" (emphasis from original). Meow!

The press release issued by Skype actually confirmed Swisher's reporting that the founders had to put in money to get some of their shares. Swisher later acknowledged that the figure was 14 percent, just one percent higher than she had written. But she also engaged in a lengthy Twitter fight with Wauters and his colleague Erick Schonfeld (see below) over their public nitpicking and fact-bending. Maybe everyone involved in this fracas needs to take the next couple of days off. Oh, look at the calendar!

(Top pic via)

Murdoch and his Fox News Channel monsters like Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly love to frame their fight with Olbermann and his network MSNBC as petty personal bickering. Of course they do; that creates a false equivalency between the two sides. Here's what Murdoch said on a conference call for Fox parent News Corp. the other day, according to the New York Times' Brian Stelter:

Mr. Murdoch pointed a finger at MSNBC, saying "we did not start this abuse." But he said the fighting became "personal" and "finally we had to allow people to retaliate... The moment they stop, we'll stop... We don't believe in it. We don't think it's good business."

So, let's review this supposedly "personal" fighting.

Olbermann has:

• Built a profitable career on taunting Fox News for various falsehoods spread by the right-leaning cable network, in statements made by Fox News staffers on actual television broadcasts;
• Sometimes, in the course of doing this, labeled people "The Worst Person in the World" on his show.

Fox and its corporate siblings have, as part of this feud:

• Suddenly accused the CEO of MSNBC parent GE of being personally at fault for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, since GE sold medical equipment to Iran (legally), and Iran later supplied Iraqi insurgents;
• Ambushed said CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, for an interview over this invented issue, in Fox's infamous, stalkery manner;
• Ran stale and obviously retaliatory gossip stories that Olbermann mistreats his colleagues and might leave his network;
• Gossiped that Olbermann disrespected his dead colleague's funeral;
• Wrote that people in gyms throughout New York City have complained that "TVs tuned to... Keith Olbemrann" are as disgusting as "pooping in the pool" and "sex in the showers."

Having responded to a debate about the quality of its television news broadcast with trumped up and/or utterly petty unrelated personal assertions, Fox News is now trying to make the narrative about how the whole fight is about petty personal bickering by TV anchors with overgrown egos. And it's actually succeeding, on days when said anchors don't carefully document, with pictures, that they have no personal beef. It doesn't help Olbermann's case that he does in fact, have a hugely overgrown ego, regularly put on display. So he might just end up getting muzzled by his GE overlords, for the terrible "personal" fight he started.

A redesign of MSN.com to contain "significantly less blue." Arrington, who loathes embargoed tech "news" (so do we), used to make an exception for Microsoft, and sat on this one until midnight last night. But a dastardly marketing blogger spoiled his exclusive by running the story an hour early, due to some kind of WordPress error. The startup information chieftan tells us:

They came in and briefed me, took an hour. Then I rearranged my evening to write the post, took more time. the embargo broke by at least 45 minutes and they [Waggener] didn't bother to let me know.

So now Google is the last big name in tech allowed to supply Arrington with embargoed news. Until one of their orchestrated PR news releases blows up in his face, too. And so Arrington's worthwhile, if ignoble, war on Valley flacks continues.

(Pic: Arrington, by Randy Stewart)

Skeet blogged last month about how his new-ish employer Google advised him not to accept his seventh consecutive "MVP" award from competitor Microsoft. Online outrage ensued, and Skeet now reports that he's reached an understanding with Google: Skeet won't sign the Microsoft nondisclosure agreement associated with the program — this just covers pre-release software MVPs get access to, another MVP told us — or accept any of the fringe benefits, like (we presume) the special tech support.

In return, Skeet can accept the award. In other words, you can look, but don't touch. And to think this is the same company accused of digital "promiscuity."

(Pic: Skeet, by Ade Oshineye)

The 32-year-old Sorkin, the paper's chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, is quickly becoming one of the paper's most visible personalities. In the Times' byzantine network of loyalties and alliances, this makes Sorkin a divisive figure: Some old-guard investigators regard him as a callow and inexperienced note-taker for powerful interests. "He's the classic definition of an access reporter who wouldn't know a document if it hit him in the face," says one Times staffer. "He goes to drinks with these guys, they give him tips, and he puts them in the paper. He's a deal junkie." For evidence of his coziness with the people he covers, look no further than the book party for Too Big to Fail—hosted by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter—which was attended by a seemingly endless roster of the Wall Street barons he's nominally charged with holding to account, from JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon to Morgan Stanley's John Mack.

He's also a rising star, and is said to be a favorite of business editor Larry Ingrassia's for his tireless reporting and excellent sources among Manhattan's privileged financial elite (cf. the aforementioned book party). With his assiduously maintained public profile—Sorkin is an easy booking on cable news shows—and role as editor of the Times' popular Dealbook blog, he is a face, for better or worse, of the future at a flagging and exhausted newspaper.

So it's not entirely surprising that knives were drawn by some of Sorkin's more experienced and established competitors and colleagues in response to slights, real and perceived, in Too Big to Fail. CNBC's Charlie Gasparino got the ball rolling earlier this month by calling Sorkin "incredibly stupid and sloppy"—and having his lawyer write Sorkin's publisher an angry letter—after Sorkin quoted Goldman Sach's CEO Lloyd Blankfein calling Gasparino a "rumormonger." A Goldman representative later disputed that quote.

Too Big to Fail is expected to debut at No. 4 on the Times' best-seller list next week. The rancor it has caused within the Times newsroom is no doubt a function in part of Sorkin's success, favor with top editors, and visibility at a time when 100 editorial positions are in the process of being eliminated. It's also a reaction against the notion that an upstart reporter who has made his name by greasing wealthy sources for access is presenting himself as a hard-nosed investigator—especially because Sorkin asked his paper's more experienced reporters for copies of the "secret" documents that he's now holding up as key sources for his 600-page tome just two weeks before it went to press.

As Keith Kelly first reported in the New York Post on Tuesday, some of Sorkin's Times colleagues are incensed at Too Big to Fail, Sorkin's best-selling new bailout narrative, accusing Sorkin of piggybacking on the reporting of his Times colleagues Don Van Natta and Gretchen Morgenson without giving adequate credit.

The allegations are being taken seriously in the building: The Post's Kelly reported that "senior editors" are investigating the matter, and we've learned that those senior editors are none other than executive editor Bill Keller and managing editor Jill Abramson. We also hear that public editor Clark Hoyt is looking into examining the matter.

At issue are two documents that Sorkin posted on his web site as "source documents" for the book, cited prominently in his endnotes, and has repeatedly claimed as vital parts of his reporting during his publicity tour: A September 17, 2008 ethics waiver that Paulson received from the White House allowing him to work closely with Goldman Sachs in managing the financial crisis, and Paulson's call logs from 2008. Here's Sorkin on CNBC flogging them:

The Paulson waiver is described on his site as "Paulson's Secret Waiver," and Sorkin excitedly recounted how he discovered it to Charlie Rose last week: "I will always remember one of the sources for the book said to me, 'Do you know about the waiver?' And I said, 'What waiver? What are you talking about?' He said, 'The Paulson waiver on Wednesday.'"

That sort of "plugging" is inciting apoplexy among Sorkin's antagonists at the Times. "He's making these central to what the book supposedly discovered," one Times staffer says.

That's because both documents were central to an August 9, 2009 investigative story by the Times' Van Natta and Morgenson detailing Paulson's handling of the crisis and his entanglement with his former employer Goldman Sachs. Van Natta and Morgenson obtained them via the Freedom of Information Act in July. The idea of FOIAing call logs of a cabinet secretary isn't exactly a brainstorm—it's a routine way of figuring out what's going on inside the federal bureaucracy. And the existence of the waiver was revealed by Paulson himself in congressional testimony on July 16, 2009. Neither document was a state secret, but Van Natta and Morgenson got hold of them and were the first to write about them in the Times in August. Both documents figure prominently in Too Big to Fail and its publicity campaign, but Sorkin's book makes no mention of Van Natta and Morgenson's story.

Sorkin says he FOIA'd both documents on his own, independently of Van Natta and Morgenson's reporting, and that he will include an endnote crediting their story with revealing them first in the book's next printing. And there's a pretty good reason that the story wasn't credited in the book: By August 9, when the story appeared, Sorkin's book was in the very final stages of editing. Even if he could have inserted a credit to the Times for first unearthing the documents, it would have involved a last-minute change to a massive project. We can understand how it would slip by.

But the issue over credit is in part a proxy for what really has some Times staffers ticked off: Sorkin called Times Sunday business editor Tim O'Brien on July 27—after he'd filed his draft of the 600-page book and two weeks before it went to the printer—and asked him for copies of the Paulson call logs. In other words, Sorkin was asking the Times for help on his homework at the last possible minute. And sources at the Times say some in the newsroom, including Van Natta, suspect Sorkin learned about the Paulson waiver during that conversation—he was, Sorkin's detractors say, "pickpocketing" the Time's reporting for his book. O'Brien didn't give up the logs, and Sorkin says he obtained both the logs and the waiver via FOIA—with an extremely rapid turnaround—after that conversation with O'Brien. "We never spoke about any details of what story the paper was pursuing," Sorkin says, "nor did we discuss Paulson's waiver."

Whether he came up with the idea of getting the waiver and the logs on his own, or tried to grab them from the Times once he learned about them—and there's no evidence for the latter accusation—it's clear that Sorkin didn't lay hands on what he calls the "source documents" for Too Big to Fail until he was in the process of fact-checking the book that he'd already written. In the introduction to his endnotes, Sorkin writes that "I tried to rely as often as possible on the written record" and that "Henry Paulson's...calendars helped provide key dates and times." How can that be if he didn't actually have that written record until after he finished the book?

Sorkin says he had the information in Paulson's call logs, he just didn't have the actual logs themselves. He'd been allowed to view them and take notes, he says, over the course of 10 months he spent reporting on the book. "My sources made me privy to various documents and information in people's calenders, including Hank Paulson's," he says. Same thing with the waiver. He first learned of it from a source in June of 2009, he says—before Paulson referred to it in congressional testimony—and had been shown a copy in the course of his reporting. He just wasn't allowed to take it home. So his last-minute rush to get them, he says, was a good-faith effort to fact-check the information he'd already reported.

Sorkin says he had previously filed FOIA requests for the logs and the waiver, but they had been denied. When he heard through his reporting that Treasury was releasing the logs, he called to ask for them. The Treasury said they'd already given them to the Times, and that he could either get them from the paper or file a new request. So he called Ingrassia, who told him to ask O'Brien. "When I reached Tim," Sorkin says, "he said there was no way for me to get them given my time constraint to have the fact-checking complete within days." So Sorkin filed his own last-minute request and got the documents in time to check some facts in the book against them, insert a photograph of Paulson's waiver, and put them up on the book's web site.

Sorkin, however, says everything has been smoothed over. "This has all been resolved," he says. He also provided a statement from Ingrassia praising his book as a "reporting tour de force":

We're all very proud of Andrew Ross Sorkin and his new book, Too Big To Fail. Throughout the financial crisis, Andrew worked closely and tirelessly with the Times team of colleagues to provide the paper's readers with exclusive news and insight about this historic event. His book is a reporting tour de force about the financial meltdown and contains a wealth of original material and undisclosed details about what transpired. As attested by 40 pages of end notes and acknowledgments, it also generously credits Times colleagues and journalists at other publications for things they reported about the crisis. And as Andrew has already said, he intends to include yet another citation in future editions to an article about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson by his colleagues Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta.

The grand irony of this flap is that much of it would have been rendered moot had the Times simply done what Sorkin did so effortlessly: Put the documents at issue online. Had Van Natta and Morgenson's story been accompanied by images of Paulson's call logs and waiver, it probably never would have occurred to Sorkin to claim ownership over them in his publicity campaign for the book. But that's another Timesworld disconnect between the youthful web-focused culture and the old-school diggers—after Van Natta and Morgenson spent months working to get access to the documents, they apparently didn't think to push their editors to share the originals with their readers. Others did: Talking Points Memo got hold of the waiver on August 10, the day after the Times story, and put it up in their document collection without much fanfare. And you can read Paulson's call logs—"actually see inside what Treasury was doing," as Sorkin put it on CNBC—on the Department of Treasury's web site.

The background noise of all Times politics these days is no doubt are the apprehensions in the newsroom and the resentments a 32-year-old star reporter might spawn with a book deal, fancy Vanity Fair-hosted parties and frequent TV gigs while others contemplate whether to take the latest buyout offer or risk getting killed in the next round of massive layoffs at the tanking newspaper. But these sort of feuds pre-date the implosion of the news business and the crux of the issue is this:

Part of Sorkin's book focuses on an ethics waiver that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson received allowing him to work closely with Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein to bail the investment bank out. Sorkin posted a copy of the waiver, which he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, to his web site.

According to Kelly, some Timespersons are exercised because Sorkin failed to credit his colleagues Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta, Jr., with breaking the story of the waiver in August, long before the book came out—and "some wondered if Sorkin used his star reporter status to get a peek at work compiled by his colleagues."

The peeking allegation seems to be based on the fact that Sorkin finished the book around the time that Morgenson and Van Natta broke the story of the waiver, so Sorkin must have somehow gotten a look at it ahead of time, right? It's apparently serious enough, Kelly says, that senior editors at the Times are investigating the matter.

Not necessarily. Paulson referred to the waiver in testimony before Congress in mid-July, so its existence was no secret prior to the Times story on it. Sorkin told Kelly that he'd gotten a copy of the waiver through FOIA by "late July," when he filed the chapters of his book that dealt with it. Sorkin could conceivably have learned of the waiver from Paulson's testimony and gotten it via FOIA within two weeks, though that would be an extraordinarily fast turnaround. Or perhaps he learned of it earlier through his own reporting and FOIA'd it then. In any case, Sorkin says he got the waiver through his own FOIA request, and that he had it before the Times story came out.

Which is presumably why he didn't see fit to credit his newspaper for the story. But he's being very magnanimous about that, and offering to revise it in future editions. "I have spoken to Don and told him I'd be happy to include a citation in the 40 pages of end notes as a courtesy in the next printing," Sorkin told Kelly. Which we think is Timesspeak for "fuck you, Don."

The threat from Microsoft's Bing search engine has even lit a fire under Google's icy, hypercompetitive search chief Marissa Mayer, according to the Wall Street Journal:

In recent months, Ms. Mayer has repeatedly pushed her team to better understand and compete with Bing, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mayer is hardly alone in her obsession. In June, the New York Post reported that Google co-founder Sergey Brin was "rattled" by Bing and personally led a "team of search-engine specialists... to determine how Bing's... search algorithm differs from" Google's. The bloated and insular company should focus that fanatically on its users and customers; Bing's market share is stalled at 9 percent, and Google's biggest threat will probably end up being a startup no one has yet heard of.

(Pic: Adam Tinworth)

For all his bluster, Gasparino can be a bit thin-skinned. His primary beef with Sorkin is over this passage from Too Big to Fail, in which Sorkin quotes Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein's thoughts on Gasparino's reporting:

While the 53-year-old Goldman C.E.O. kept a television in his office, he was so disgusted with what he believed was CNBC's Charlie Gasparino's "rumor-mongering" that he had turned it off in protest. "That's not my thing," he told [Morgan Stanley CEO John] Mack. "I don't do TV."

Do not call Charlie Gasparino a rumor-monger, or quote someone else doing so. He doesn't like it! Especially when it appears not to be true: According to Business Insider, a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman confirmed the anecdote about Blankfein turning off CNBC, but said "'rumor-mongering' is not a direct quote."

Gasparino was so broken up about the alleged misquote that he had his lawyer send letters to Sorkin's publisher Viking and to Vanity Fair, which reprinted the anecdote in an excerpt this month, demanding corrections. When we heard that Sorkin was going to be on Gasparino's turf twice today, we gave him a call to see what he thought about that.

"I don't own the network," he said. "But if he repeats what he said about me in his book on the air, there's going to be a big problem. Blankfein didn't say it. I like Andrew a lot, but I did tell him that I thought he was incredibly stupid and sloppy. He never even called me. I said, 'Why didn't you mention this rumor-mongering thing?'" On top of Blankfein's apparent walk-back on the quote, Gasparino is angry that Sorkin didn't depart from the book's narrative to investigate precisely what rumors Blankfein was allegedly accusing him of mongering: "What did I say that merits that description?"

"When I first saw that quote, I doubted it was real," Gasparino says. "It makes me wonder if the rest of the book is real."

And wonder he does: Gasparino is also keyed about this passage, in which Mack calls GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt at the height of the meltdown last year to complain about CNBC:

Mack believed negative speculation was purposely being spread by his rivals and repeated uncritically on CNBC. He was so furious with what he believed was "bullshit coverage" that he called to complain to Jeff Immelt.

For some reason, Gasparino thinks Sorkin is implying that the "bullshit coverage" remark was directed at him. "It made it sound like Mack was complaining about me," Gasparino says. "Mack himself point blank told me he wasn't talking about me—it was someone else at CNBC." OK then.

Thirdly, Gasparino disputes a quote that Sorkin attributes to hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller in response to a request from Goldman Sachs's Gary Cohn that Druckenmiller re-invest some of his money in the firm to help keep up appearances:

Druckenmiller, however, was unmoved. "I don't really give a shit-it's my money!" he shot back. Unlike most hedge funds, Druckenmiller's consisted primarily of his own money. "It's my livelihood," he said. "I've got to protect myself, and I don't really give a shit what you have to say."

"I got the same quote," Gasparino says. "I didn't use it in my book. Druckenmiller told me that he didn't say it. 'What he said I said—I didn't say.' He said that Sorkin called him and asked him if he had a conversation with Gary Cohn, but that he didn't run the quote by him."

The "my book" Gasparino is referring to is The Sellout, a book that, like Sorkin's, tells the story of the crash and the bailout. And, like Sorkin's, it has been heavily promoted on CNBC—Gasparino's hits on the network have lately been preceded by the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey to herald the tome's arrival. Unlike Sorkin's book, however, The Sellout won't hit stands until November 3. Sorkin's book came out today, and is already ranked No. 13 on Amazon. So we can understand why Gasparino might be a little bit peeved.

"The only thing I can think of is that he was jamming to get the book done," Gasparino says, "and he didn't dot all his I's and cross his T's." Well, that's one way to describe a competitor getting his book into stores two weeks before yours. "My advice to Andrew next time is, quote them right. Especially when it comes to quoting them about me." UPDATE: Gasparino called to make the fair point that he didn't get beaten in a footrace—the books' respective publication schedules were laid out long ago.

Sorkin didn't return e-mails seeking comment. Druckenmiller did not immediately return a phone call.

In an interview with Wired's Steven Levy, Williams lashed back at two traditional media fogeys who pooh-poohed his company's potential at the Sun Valley schmoozefest in July. Barry Diller, of IAC, and John Malone, the satellite TV mogul, said the microblogging service would never make much cash.

"I didn't argue my case," Williams says. "But all the Internet guys there were laughing at those media guys. Are you kidding? Do you understand how money flows to the Internet? When you know that Twitter is a vehicle for directing information and traffic to large audiences, you realize there's obviously a huge business."

And, hey, that's coming from a guy who made four whole million dollars last year, old media people, so you better listen up. These guys have spreadsheets that would blow your minds.

• It's hard keeping track of Jennifer Aniston's alleged love life. One day she's screwing Gerard Butler, the next it's secret meetings with Brad. Now she's apparently staying in close contact with her "ex" John Mayer, on whom she's "hooked" and "can't let go." Yes, it can all get confusing, but at least she only has three in the rotation. For now. [NYDN]
  
  
• Jon and Kate Gosselin's former babysitter claims Jon hacked into Kate's emails and now Kate's saying she may talk to her lawyers because she's "disturbed" by it all. Yeah, so are we. [Us]
  
  
• Oh, haha! Professional actor Jesse Metcalfe joked that he got erections while making out with Eva Longoria. No wonder this guy doesn't get more acting jobs. [TMZ]
  
  
• Donald Trump continues his war of words on Tilda Swinton, who opposes his plans to construct a golf course on a Scottish coast. She compared it to poor people's forceful evictions during the Highland Clearance's gentrification, which led Trump to say of the world-famous actress: "It's a shame that she would disgrace the thousands of Scots who suffered for her own personal gain and in order to get some easy publicity for herself." [Page Six]
  
  
• Tao will pay Kim Kardashian $50,000 to "celebrate" her birthday at their Las Vegas location. Life's truly unfair. [Page Six]
  
  
• Paul McCartney's son, James, was trying to quietly start a music career. Now the papers are on to him, so that bubble's burst. [The Sun]
  
  
• California claims Patti LuPone owes nearly $10,000 in back taxes, but her people say it just isn't so, because the actress is "meticulous" about paying the tax man. So there! [Page Six]
  
  
• Ahhh! We've seen scary skinny models, and Miranda Kerr definitely deserves honorary mention. Well done! [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Melissa Rycroft, who's a "celebrity" for being on The Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars, has swine flu... [NYDN]
  
  
• ...And MSNBC's think Rycroft's announcing her swine flu for publicity. [MSNBC]
  
  
• Poor Fred Durst! Married three months and it's already over. [People]
  
  
• Just when you thought the Kanye/Taylor Swift scandal had gone to tabloid heaven, Taylor Swift hints that she may make fun of it when she hosts Saturday Night Live. Sounds like too easy a set-up. [Star]
  
  
• Sources say GQ photo-shopped January Jones' boobs to make them bigger, but photo editor Dora Samo insists Jones just uses what her mama gave her: "Yes, they're real. And they're spectacular." [Page Six]
  
  
• A second autopsy reveals that cocaine did not contribute to Billy Mays' death. Now, let's let the poor man's family rest. [NYDN]

There was chatter in recent months the bi-coastal Dorsey (pictured) might plant his forthcoming venture in his second home base, New York, or even in his childhood home of St. Louis ("St. Louis will play a very large part in its story," he said of the startup last month).

But we hear Dorsey's been hunting for office space in San Francisco, Twitter's stomping grounds. He's hinted at as much on his Twitter stream: "I think we just found awesome office space," he wrote, just a couple of hours before he was "standing outside the... office" of SF-based Zendesk.

Dorsey's new startup is in "stealth mode." Since that's just Valleyspeak for being coy, we still know plenty about the company: it would enable person-to-person electronic payments via iPhone, MG Siegler wrote in TechCrunch this past spring, and the company has been awaiting regulatory approval, according to the St. Louis Business Journal.



It's a good idea; in fact programmer Max Levchin created the same capability for the Palm Pilot, the iPhone's old ancestor, before he and his co-founders expanded the idea into the financially successful internet-wide payment system PayPal.

So why is Dorsey framing his payments company as a new iteration of his old microblogging startup Twitter, of which he remains chairman? Dorsey told a St. Louis audience his company would have "similar ideas" as Twitter but "in a completely different industry," according to Nick Lucchesi of the Riverfront Times alt weekly. Is Dorsey hinting at additional publishing capabilities no one knows about yet?

More likely, the man who has said he would "never leave Twitter" is just extracting some free hype from a brand that clearly remains his baby, as far as Dorsey is concerned. In this regard, the prototype Twitterer thus remains the quintessential Twitterer: always self promoting.

(Pic by Esther Dyson)

• So, what does Lindsay Lohan have to say about her disastrous Ungaro show in Paris? She just didn't have time to make a collection that didn't totally suck. And those pasties? She didn't even know about them! "I wasn't aware of the nipple tassels on the girls until they were walking out..." Don't worry, though, because the actress says she's "still learning," which gives us an iota of hope her next effort won't fall so flat. [People]
  
  
• A crazed "in love" fan waited in line five hours so that he could punch singer Leona Lewis at a book signing. She cried a bit, but has made a full recovery. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Neither side will admit it, but Fox Business and MSNBC are both working double time to make sure their respective morning hosts — rivals Don Imus and Joe Scarborough — beat one another at the ratings game. Scarborough's winning, but newcomer Imus could still come up from behind. [Page Six]
  
  
• Here's something none of us could have ever predicted. Britney Spears, who once lost custody of her two tots, has been named "best celebrity mom" in a completely scientific poll put out by a Christmas savings company, the most important source on Earth. [Mirror]
  
  
• Hillary Swank will stop at nothing to have children — someday. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• We're really sorry to be the ones to tell you this, but we're sure you've predicted it, so here it goes: Jon Gosselin vowed to continue a career in television. [NYDN]
  
  
• All wait staff should be on high alert: Miley Cyrus does not tip well. You've been warned. [Splash News]
  
  
• A former bodyguard claimed Howard K. Stern helped Anna Nicole Smith shoot valium. Because, at that point, why not? [NYDN]
  
  
• The late Stephen Gately's Boyzone bandmates will sleep in the chapel with his body the night before his funeral because he wasn't fond of being alone. [Mirror]
  
  
• Eminem must be quite the diva: he refused to work with Madonna. Chump. [NYDN]
  
  
• Because domestic life no longer appeals to viewers, the fifth season of Tori Spelling and family's reality show will be a cross-country trip. Next season? Ultimate fighting. [ET]
  
  
• Rather than simply pleading insanity, one of the men accused of extorting John Travolta after the actor's son's death claims that Travolta's lawyer offered him the $15 million as "hush money." [NYDN]
  
  
• Former Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein will appear at Baruch Barnard College today to discuss the trials and tribulations of Iranian... hair. [Page Six]
  
  
• It's officially official: Avril Lavigne has filed for divorce from Sum 41 singer Deryck Jason Whibley. Now perhaps we'll never have to hear those names again. [AP]
  
  
• Joe Francis recently boasted that if he saw rival Brody Jenner, Jenner was "dead." Then he ran into Brody and his friends and did nothing. What a cock. And a tease. [Page Six]

In his show today, O'Reilly declared that the realistic discussion of Limbaugh's racist past amounts to nothing more than the "thought police" crushing the radio host's free speech: "This is 1984-type stuff, ladies and gentlemen. Thought police posture," he declared. All this because O'Reilly's research staff can't find a specific NAACP-related quote attributed to Limbaugh. He also specifically names NBC as a perpetrator.

There's also hubbub over a comment Limbaugh allegedly made about James Earl Ray, the man who shot Martin Luther King, Jr: "You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed."

But Limbaugh's not one to let someone else fight his battles, so he's using his lawyers to fight against those who claim he praised James Earl Ray. So, someone, please find proof...

• Pamela Anderson should be investigated for breaking child labor laws after having a 9-year old girl hold her dress train and sit at her feet at this week's Hollywood Style Awards. Or that's what a Child Labor Coalition spokesman thinks: "I would want to speak to the child to ask her if it is something she willingly did. Nine is very young, and an awards ceremony is a long time for a child to be out holding a dress." This could be bigger than the Triangle Factory Fire. [Page Six]
  
  
• Do people really have to ask why Rush Limbaugh's still a member of the infamously racist Everglades Club in Palm Beach? [Page Six]
  
  
• Oh no! Katy Perry better watch out: Russell Brand's ex-girlfriend says he's incapable of monogamy. Their breakup would be the death of love forever. [Page Six]
  
  
• Jon Gosselin has been ordered to return $180,000 he took from a joint account he and wife Kate share. So now maybe that money can go toward, you know, his gaggle of children. [Star]
  
  
• Jeffrey Tambor, who plays the Bluth family patriarch on Arrested Development, recently gave birth to a pair of twin boys. Well, his wife Kasia did the actual birthing, but let's not parse here, okay? [People]
  
  
• Christie Brinkley and ex-husband Peter Cook have finally signed their divorce settlement. Does this mean their tabloid war will die down? Doubtful: Cook's lawyers yesterday described Brinkley as a "bitter, vindictive, angry woman," while Brinkley reminded us all that Cook's been called an "extreme narcissist." [NYDN]
  
  
• Paris Hilton adopted a ridiculous pet — a pig — and animal activists are mad as hell. This all seems so familiar. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• Very important news: Peaches Geldof is now blonde again. All those hunger strikes paid off. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Swoon: Jordan Catalano himself, Jared Leto, has joined the fight for gay marriage. [E!]
  
  
• Ashton Kutcher once told then-girlfriend January Jones that she wouldn't be good at acting. And now she's proving him wrong on Mad Men. Well, she's famous because of Mad Men. Whether she's a good actress remains open to debate. [NYDN]

It's one of the ironies of Morgan's career that he's found bigger stardom as the star of a parody of Saturday Night Live than he ever did on the real thing. And in his upcoming book, I Am the New Black, he mentions who treated him like shit, namely then stars Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri. Morgan writes, "All I have to say about that is, where's Chris Kattan now? Where's Cheri Oteri now? That bitch can't even get arrested."

But the grudge apparently runs even deeper, because when Morgan sat down to record the audio version (in the clip above) of that passage, he started ad-libbing, expanding on his earlier points: Morgan says he still counts Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon and Colin Quinn as friends, but as for Oteri and Kattan: "Fuck 'em."

Amazing. It's not everyday you hear Tracy Morgan acting like a demanding, slightly unhinged television star who feels underappreciated by his co-workers. It's more like every week.

We're told Mogan will be at the Union Square Barnes & Noble Thursday Oct. 22 at 7pm if you want to see if he'll curse more old colleagues.

• Oh, it's on: Tilda Swinton has joined a fight against Donald Trump's latest golf course, which would be built on the Scottish coast and would displace residents. Trump's people responded by calling Swinton and other protesters "extremists." We imagine Swinton can get a bit more extreme than a petition. She looks sweet, but we see some crazy in those eyes. [AP]
  
  
• The ever-fecund Heidi Klum gave birth to her and husband Seal's fourth child, a girl named Lou. Klum's probably too exhausted to speak, so Seal released a statement wondering — and explaining — how he found even more love in his heart for the new tot. We could try to be cynical about this, but good golly, Seal and Klum just too darn adorable. [People]
  
  
• Carrie Underwood will host a two-hour holiday special that will feature Dolly Parton and David Cook. Because, you know, all the other recent variety shows have done so well. [Reuters]
  
  
• Remember when Tyra Banks told us all to kiss her fat ass and stop discussing her weight because she loved herself and all that? Well, now she's dropped four dress sizes. Body confidence must be out this season. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• In other weight-related "news:" Star magazine had an expert say that Tori Spelling's only 95 pounds, so Spelling tweeted that she's 107 pounds and the tabloid can weigh her if they want. The aforementioned expert, meanwhile, says that 5'5" Tori's still 13 pounds shy of "remotely healthy." These weight wars sure can be ugly, huh? [Star]
  
  
• Madonna's former trainer, Tracy Anderson, will have to defend herself against a $1 million lawsuit filed by an ex-boyfriend who swears she used her feminine wiles to put a curse on him and make him spend his money on her business. He also claims she made up big, fat whopping lies, like that she had been in Cats and was a Power Ranger, all easily verifiable facts. [Page Six]
  
  
• Paul Anka will receive 50% of the publishing rights from Michael Jackson's new track, "This is It," because he helped write it. [TMZ]
  
  
• Joe Francis participated in last weekend's gay rights march in DC not because he wants to get good press, but because knows the pain of being dogged by the religious right and can therefore empathize with the same-sex crew. Um, really? [Page Six]
  
  
• Some say gay writer Gore Vidal's an anti-Semite, which explains why people such as former NYC mayor Ed Koch are furious he'll speak at the famously Jewish 92nd Street Y next week. Koch, who some say remains closeted, remarked, "Those who invited him are, as Jews, either most forgiving, or schmucks. The latter word is intended to cover masochists." [Page Six]
  
  
• Are you an Elvis fan with cash to burn? Well, you can bid on a lock of the singer's hair at an auction. It's expected to sell for at least $8,000. [Reuters]
  
  
• Can you believe it? A Los Angeles doorman didn't recognize Whitney Port and she had to wait in line for a half-hour until someone set him straight. Oh, the indignity! [Page Six]