• Respectable but not a bona fide hit is the verdict on sales for The Beatles: Rock Band video game. The release lifted the music game category out of the sales cellar, but failed to turn the world on its head. [USA Today]

• Sony has called in its biggest stationary guns for the premiere of its Michael Jackson film. The Wrap has pictures of the very fancy, engraved metal plate invitation. (Ours is no doubt in the mail.) [The Wrap]

• Hairspray director and So You Think You Can Dance judge Adam Shankman has signed a deal to bring the Broadway musical Rock of Ages to the big screen. [Variety]

• As the search begins for a replacement for Dan Glickman as head of the MPAA, some are saying the organization is due for an overhaul, that the ancient lobbying arm of the industry is due to be for a overhaul turn it into a spiffy modern lobbying firm. [Variety]

• Former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford meanwhile has emerged as an early front-runner to succeed Gickman. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Hollywood is eating itself up over the just leaked news that former Fox chief Peter Chernin is advising Comcast in their bid to buy GE/Universal. Implications abound. Defamer's fuller speculation to follow shortly. [The Hot Blog]

• Actor Seymour Cassel has been suspended from SAG's Board of Directors for allegedly sexually harassing three union staffers. Cassel will have to give up the board seat he has occupied for the past eight years. [The Wrap]

"They could use someone with a serious understanding of social media *and* some political / campaign experience," wrote a former government technology adviser in my inbox. "To my knowledge, they don't have that person."

The role would be pretty simple: Keep President Obama's message out front and ahead of his detractors on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Boing Boing and every other breaking-news feed used by Internet addicts who don't trust CNN. Because as this week's fumbled VP announcement demonstrated, if you aren't on message 24/7, you'll be claim-jumped by opponents jamming the channel with misinformation. Obama will need someone to lead the troops. Someone to be available as go-to person for the mainstream media reporters who'll write trend articles based on three status updates.

The position doesn't need a pontificating "thought leader." It needs someone who knows how to own the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee? Marc Andreessen? Caterina Fake from Flickr? Are you serious? There's only one person on Earth with a proven ability to stay on top of Web 2.0 regardless of her message — or lack thereof.

That's our always-on mascot Julia Allison. Unlike any of the proposed nominees, she's dated a congressman. Oh, and she worked on Capitol Hill as a "legislative correspondent." Not much, but that's more exposure to Beltway mores than most of the old goats currently being Twittered for the job. And more than any other member of the Web 2.0 mafia, Julia Allison has a proven track record of getting people to show up for parties — er, meetings. (Photo by Brian Solis)

So, Radar wants to know why Rielle couldn't keep her freaking jaw in place about boning John Edwards. She would be so much better off if she'd just had a little discretion! Hey, did you ever think on how a widely-used synonym for "affair" is "indiscretion"? No, it's not so much that they go together like peanut butter and jelly; more like they're the exact same thing.

What sort of patently talentless dilettante chats up a politician in a bar and manages to secure a lucrative contract with his campaign and either his or his close confidante's participation in unprotected sex? Answer: someone who shares the personality traits of a Donna Rice or Monica Lewinsky — the kind of woman who to enters beauty pageants, shares her innermost secrets with Linda Tripp or in this case blabs about married John from North Carolina to her web developer and anybody else who'll listen.

Why do you think that whenever politicians from Bill Clinton to John Edwards stray, you always hear about the extensive efforts made by their staffers and confidantes to keep them away from their accomplices to infidelity? Because people like Rielle Hunter are not generally subtle; people like Rielle Hunter would equate "subtle" with a gentle snap of one's thong!

In my years as a chronic oversharing discretion lacker I have found we often attract the same type. It's no accident Monica gave that exclusive interview to someone who just told the world how she used to screw Alan Greenspan! Which brings us to Rielle's ex Jay McInerney. He says he wrote about Rielle because he was "intrigued and appalled" by her behavior. I bet that in Rielle's case he would switch the verb to "bored" at this point. Which is what is so exceptionally unboring about Rielle Hunter! She changed her name, but unlike anti-pornography activist conservawife Donna Rice Hughes she never changed her ability to summon the energy to hit on powerful men and babble incessantly about it to all her blabbermouth friends. She would probably claim it was because she and John shared True Love. You might claim she is simply an incurable narcissist. I would say you're both right!

I was sort of annoyed that the New York Times didn't interview me ... I'm sort of surprised no news producers have called me yet.

When we ran a party photo of Allison earlier in the week, we immediately received the following in the tipline:

Ew, please, do not give that attention-seeking girl any more of the coverage she so desperately seeks. We (Georgetown journalism students) were thrilled when she was suspended from the Hoya and given an F in our journalism course for plagiarizing one of her columns. Haaaate that she's screwed her way up here as well.

Baugher soldiered on, and it was in April 2003 that Lloyd Grove (then still at the Washington Post) wrote her up as sharing a table with Harold Ford. Mini-media celebrity began to accumulate almost immediately, with sex- or politics-commentary (or both) in various national outlets. In July 2003, Baugher (according to Post reporter Frank Ahrens) attempted to get out of paying for grapefruit at a hotel by throwing the Post's name around, claiming she worked for them. Confronted, Baugher said she was actually (and inscrutably) name-dropping the Hoya. In reality, Baugher had some early discussion about contributing to the Post's free Express tabloid, but nothing was set up yet. Regardless, after a few more laps around the media appearance track, Baugher quit the Hoya as of January 2004, supposedly because her sex column (in a Jesuit university's paper) couldn't be graphic enough to suit her tastes. Not long after, Julia Baugher became Julia Allison, decamped to New York, and began writing another sex column for another free paper.

And she's been riding the grapefruit train ever since. (Though it hasn't helped her get recognized by event photographer Patrick McMullan, who couldn't ID her for the pic at right.) In New York, Allison has a whole ecosystem of media industry horny toads to romp among, as opposed to those charming but rather conflicted political types. Eligible men are her favorite playtoy — and eligibility is very generously interpreted. Her habit of purring and flirting with taken or married men frequently brings the claws out from those menfolk's significant others. For a time, she even enjoyed a public companionship and rumored private dalliance with none other than Lloyd Grove. If you happen to be one of the few people who doesn't know about her affair with Harold Ford, she'll certainly fill you in — all the while wondering aloud if she really should go on Fox News again. And don't even get her started about when she dumped a guy in a Jamba Juice, after supposedly stealing him from away from his wife.

Allison's easy to spot at most any media party of consequence — she's everywhere, it seems — and she's famous for laying it on thicker than a toddler spreading peanut butter. She's so excited to see everyone she meets, she just loves you, you're so great, she really wants to be best friends, and so forth. All this is delivered along with self-deprecating complaints about her own bad habit of relentless self-promotion, but no matter how unsubtle the hint, she's not getting the message that she herself is sending. Who knows, perhaps dialing it down a bit might make that longed-for threesome happen sooner, or make that Silver Bullet finally obsolete.

Harold Ford's Ex Finds Fame on the Web [Radar]
[Photo: Nikola Tamindzic]