And although its easy to sneer at the tabloid/celeb press as an acceptable target for the wrath of anyone, the fact is they are the last thriving arm of media in California, and through their dark corridors may lie the path to media's salvation.

The first major salvo came with that news that the LA Country Sheriff's Department, as part of their investigation into leaks around Mel Gibson's drunk driving arrest, had obtained the phone records of TMZ kingpin Harvey Levin.

Fighting back, Levin declared of the news while speaking to an audience in LA, "It breaks federal law, it breaks state law. "This is like Chinatown. It's disgusting they would do something like this. How do you protect sources? It goes to the core of freedom of the press."

That little completely obscene invasion of privacy is but one front in the war, however. As reported last week here on Defamer, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has all but shackled the paparazzi by passing limiting the ability of paparazzi to stalk at will across the state. The new law outlaws photographing celebrities involved in "personal or familial activity."

Celebrity journalists — the last minority in America acceptable to persecute.

And right now there is a bit of panic afoot in showbiz, that with a mere 138 days until showtime, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences still hasn't decided on a helmer for the trophy trot. Nikki Finke reported last week, that last year's host and producer, Hugh Jackman and Bill Condon, are planning not to return to the Kodak stage. The pair's up-market, olde-timey glamour version of the show, gave Oscar its first ratings uptick in seemingly forever; a dramatic break in its long slide into irrelevance. ("What an honor for the Aussie actor" grandma Nikki writes of the of the Academy's desire to bring Jackman back to the show.)

UPDATE: Since the writing of this item, the producers have been named...and they are...Hairspray director Adam Shankman and former Fox CEO Bill Mechanic.)

Every year, Hollywood debates the question of how to update an event that is inherently the stodgiest thing thing on Earth. For starters, the thing that Oscar was conceived to honor — big glitzy prestige films — don't exist anymore, so the show will from now until forever be torn between giving their statues to little independent films that no one saw (and hence, that no one wants to see an awards show celebrating) or trying to find ways to squeeze nods to Dark Knight into a show that will never actually honor such popular films.

And for that matter, what with the media attention span being half a second long these days, if you are talking about movies that came out last year, you might as well be giving a lesson in like, the Cold War or Vietnam or something.

Not to mention — three hours of people in tuxedoes getting trophies and making speeches?!? In the epoch of cat videos!? Is this some kinda of Twilight Zone episode? Is America being punk'd by Oscar?

So what the heck do you do with a still huge but dwindling monstrosity like Oscar? Basically you can embrace the future or deny it, and either route has its merits. Here's our suggestions for the roads Oscar could take:

EMBRACE THE KIWANIS WITHIN
Oscar is never, ever going to win over these kids today, so go with your strength. Lead with the stodgy; you'll play well to your base and once every decade and a half, catch a retro wave. These days the Hollywood establishment is the aging Baby Boom generation, who are bound to actually become cool one of these days.
Host: Billy Crystal
Producer: Jeffrey Katzenberg
Ideal Best Picture Winner: Braveheart
Opening Number: A Rockettes lead a musical tribute to the films of screenwriter Ron Bass, high-stepping to the greatest moments from Rain Man, Snow Falling on Cedars and Dangerous Minds.
Clips Reel: A complete recap of The Today Show reporting the weekend grosses every Monday morning of the past year.
Log Line: This IS your grandfather's Oscars.

DRINK THE GLOBES UNDER THE TABLE
The reason why the Golden Globes have held their own against the declining Oscars is liquor. The dinner setting of the Globes show has traditionally meant well-lubricated winners making some of the more free-wheeling, demented speeches of awards season. Well, two can play at that game. Mandatory tequilla shots and forced picks from the mystery wheel of amphetamines for all attendees.
Host: Jack Nicholson
Producer: Ben Silverman
Ideal Best Picture Winner: Couples Retreat
Opening Number: Stars careen to their seats on a giant Slip 'n Slide placed down the aisle.
Clips Reel: The best moments of buddy comedies, guys who love to laugh with each other.
Log Line: Come and Get It!

POST-MODERN OSCAR
Pander completely to Hoodie Nation with an all self-referential celebration of quirk.
Host: Michael Cera
Producer: Spike Jonze
Ideal Best Picture Winner: (500) Days of Summer
Opening Number: Michael Cera sits on the floor of the Kodak stage listening to the mix tape he has made for an impossibly cool girl featuring acoustic remixes of John Hughes soundtrack songs. As we watch, the audience travels inside a giant movie screen and from the perspective of the Oscar nominated films, we watch Cera go to the movies with the impossibly cool girl, but never get to first base.
Clips Reel: Great Moments in Mentioning Bands During Movies.
Log Line: Oscars? What?

LOGANS RUN
The tweens have taken over entertainment; how long does Oscar think it can hold out anyway? Show Oscar's commitment to staying relevant by terminating the careers of any actor over 35 on live TV.
Host: Vanessa Hudgins
Producer: The Kardashians
Ideal Best Picture Winner: New Moon
Opening Number: 50's style sockhop dance number as George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and all the old people in the audience are loaded onto the original Sputnik rocket and blasted into outer space.
Clips Reel: The progression of Taylor Lautner's abs, from flaccid to six pack.
Log Line: This is on, bitch.

GANGSTA OSCAH
When you get down to it, the Academy is the original original gangsta.
Host: 50 Cent
Producer: P Diddy
Ideal Best Picture Winner: Final Destination 3D
Opening Number: The Kodak Theater is transformed with gold plated chandeliers and stripper pole while a car chase screeches through the lobby, ending in a cataclysmic explosion on stage.
Clips Reel: The history of on-screen bling.
Log Line: Don't Forget Who Brung You.

THE REALITY ACADEMY
Turn the show into a real time competition with bug eating contests, relay races and back stage confessionals.
Host: Ryan Seacrest
Producer: Nigel Lythgoe
Ideal Best Picture Winner: Step Up 2: The Streets
Opening Number: Nominees forced to perform a Polish mazurka, with one catch; one mis-step and the plummet into a tub of a million centipedes — and lose their shot at taking home Oscar.
Clips Reel: Night vision cameras placed in the hotel rooms of the stars while on set reveal secret celebrity hook ups — and a few drunken nights with a key grip or two.
Log Line: Oscar Wild!

THE TMZ OSCARS
Why fight it anymore? Throw down the barricades; let the paparazzi hordes loot and sack the kingdom, enjoy the rush of attention that the train wreck will bring. And whomever is still alive after showbiz has been reduced to smoldering ruins — let them figure out what to do next.
Host: Perez Hilton
Producer: Harvey Levin
Ideal Best Picture Winner: One Night in Paris
Opening Number: Celebrities are vivisected before the audience's eyes, the last remnants of their souls are ripped out and and then eaten, buffet style by the nation as a whole.
Clips Reel: A million Tweets are simultaneously projected directly into viewers' frontal lobes.
Log Line: We're Here.

After TMZ's Harvey Levin busted Maria Shriver for talking on a cell phone while driving, her husband Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to give her a firm spanking. Possibly in a metaphorical sense. Possibly not.

Slashfilm's David Chen praised a fellow Asian American for her dogged fight against racial misconceptions.

Joel Madden, of the band Good Charlotte, knows you're secretly obsessed with him, Rolling Stone "girl."

Gotham-to-San-Francisco transplant Caroline McCarthy can start worrying about the pool of men in her new hometown.... NOW.

Please no one tell Twitter co-founder Biz Stone that this particular Seinfeld episode never aired, and never will air. It's made him so very happy.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

They say journalism school gives you connections. In the recession-wracked media world of 2009 that apparently means having a sitdown with one of the most powerful forces in the celebrity industrial complex-Harvey Levin founder and captain of TMZ.com.

Yesterday, Levin stopped by the Columbia School of Journalism to take resumes and crow about the success of his popular celebrity gossip site. With his open-collared polo shirt and impressively orange tan, Levin looked like he arrived on 116th Street straight from a lunch meeting at the Ivy.

Early in his remarks, Levin issued the blunt proclamation that "newspapers are seeing their last hurrah as are, I think, magazines." He told the j-schoolers that we "are learning about a media that… has stagnated for decades and it's basically the same media that it was thirty years ago." Levin is hardly troubled by the demise of print media. He said the traditional news powerhouses didn't take TMZ seriously when the site originally launched in 2005. Since then, Levin says they have been forced to recognize him as a legitimate competitor. He gleefully recounted his various Michael Jackson death "scoops" as an example of this phenomenon.

There's no denying that Levin runs an impressive newsroom at TMZ. You basically can't check into a hospital anywhere in Southern California without him finding out about it. As Levin put it, "Anna Nicole Smith, we just dominated the coverage of that... we pretty much own the space in our little world just because this is a very vibrant news operation. We treat Britney Spears the way Fox News treats Obama."

According to Levin, Britney's various meltdowns have been a huge part of TMZ's growth in recent years. He said that, in terms of traffic, "over time nobody touches Britney Spears." This formula has been hugely succesful for TMZ. Paidcontent estimates the site's revenues for last year as being "in the $15 million range."

It's admirable that Levin has found a way to make a profitable newsroom, but it's beyond depressing that one of the few viable futures for professional journalism involves obsessive coverage of drugged-out starlets and endless Octomom updates.

After he spoke, Levin was mobbed by perky j-school students eager to give him their resumes. The stereotype of j-school students is that we all enroll with visions of writing ponderous Pulitzer-bait features and breaking Watergate-sized scoops, but in today's job market, it seems like a lot of us would be content writing about reality TV stars. Welcome to the future of journalism.

Obviously, you're about to embark into some mildly NSFW territory, though there's no actual "action" in these teaser clips, and the most vulgar thing about these are the language in them. The TMSleaze (website NSFW) tributes are, quite frankly, very well played, maybe with the exception of Tono Romo's jersey reading HOMO, but hey, that's porn for you. Maybe TMSleaze isn't Pulitzer-worthy, but this could at least be considered for a Peabody, or something. It's one of the more intelligent, current satires out there, and yes, it's a porn and mostly alludes to sex. But we should all feel upstaged: they took their position as a specific commodity on a moral battleground, and leveraged it into post-modernism. The porn industry calling TMZ sleazy is, whatever you think of the porn industry, an interesting statement. I await their parody of Gawker Media with baited breath. Do enjoy, and thank you Gawker Video Deity Richard Blakeley for the tip.

Meet Messica Simpleton and Boney Homo. I think the TMSleaze reporters call them the Texas Poboys. There's also an allusion to Terrell Owens, who's not given a name. There's also fried chicken involved.

In our second video, there's Lamey Swinehouse. She's drunk and bouncing a ball on the floor and screaming about fish and chips. The paparazzi decide to leave her to her own device, deciding that "this is just sad."

In clip three, you'll meet Spender and Hiney, from "that show...that bullshit show," and as everyone knows "they've got a sex tape, or they're going to put out a sex tape," or something. Photogs ask Spender and Hiney if they can take shots of them, and Spender asks them if they're going to "be on the cover" (get it, they're not in print?). The photog says "sure," and they allow the TMSleaze paps to snap away. After letting them know that two other "characters" have made a sex tape - LC and Bony - Spender and Hiney decide that they need to make a sex tape, too, there and on the spot. Note TMSleaze's accurate depiction of Spencer Pratt's creepy flesh-colored beard.

"Somewhere in America," shouts Ron Jeremy, "there's a really exciting story. But I doubt if anyone in this room's gonna find it!" This Joseph Campbell-esque insight leads to Slimin' - whose bad faux-British accent is reminiscent of Simon Cowell's - and a studio executive arguing. "Shut up you prattling little ninny, or I will retain your ass as a black man and and shine my Tony Lamas in your rectum." Cut to some woman writhing about a couch, licking Slimin's jeans. This is, presumably, Paula Abdul. Her handler walks in the room, and begins arguing about their differences in pay. Honestly, who is writing these? Maybe we do need to ring up Sig Gissler right fucking now.

Finally, meet Feminem and Linda Blowhand, who is with child. She's under the assumption that Feminem is the father of her child. Feminem is rapping in the studio, and uses the word "illin" in one of his raps. He's with an African American co-worker - possibly his producer, possibly someone resembling Dr. Dre - who lets Feminem know that "illin" is outdated nomenclature. "You keep spittin' that weak, people gonna know you whitebred," he warns him. He gets assaulted by Linda Blowhand, who asks him why he hasn't called. "Are you high? Are you tweakin' right now?" Feminem asks her. "What do you think I am? You think I'm your little diamond oven whore?" she screams back. She then reminds him that the "lady" - presumably a reference to Samantha Ronson - "isn't cuttin' it in the orgasm department." Feminem then inquires if it'd be okay for him to "come in you since you're already pregnant," which upsets her. "Hell no, I don't want fuckin' twins!" she assaults him.

The release of the photo, taken in the course of a police investigation into Rihanna's alleged battering at the hands of boyfriend and fellow R&B star Chris Brown, set off a media-ethics firestorm and an internal LAPD investigation.

TMZ, like the National Enquirer, is known for engaging in checkbook journalism, a controversial practice where publications pay sources for information. Levin's site paid $165,000 for a tape of O.J. Simpson — a figure that TheMediaBuffet.com says was leaked by the same TMZ insider.

Let's be honest: The TMZ leaker is the only hero of this piece. The attack on Rihanna was horrific. But knowing the price of the leaked photo? In an age where everyone is demanding more and more transparency, the fact that we have arrived at a market price on Rihanna's tragic injuries tells us more than we may want to know about ourselves.

(Photoillustration via TheMediaBuffet.com)

“I won’t do stolen documents, I won’t do medical records if someone hands it.” He tossed someone out of his office for trying to shop Michael Jackson documents because he was sure they were stolen from a law firm...

Even Levin can still be shocked: “When Britney Spears was in the hospital, it was shocking to me but we were contacted by medical personnel. ... You really have to draw the line.” They don’t skip medical stories—TMZ broke the Dennis Quaid story about his newborn twins being overdosed and might report on how Spears is doing anecdotally during a hospital stay. The hardest decision Levin’s had to make: publishing Alec Baldwin’s voice-mail tirade aimed at his daughter.

He lost some sleep over that one.

[Paid Content. Watch a clip of the interview here]

On a post this morning about Martin Luther King of all people, TMZ claimed an "Exclusive" (though, once they poached the documents, they changed it simply to "Breaking News"):

Note the time stamp. And then look at the post time on this story, with documents, from CN. It's almost a full three hours earlier:

If you look, you find examples like this over and over again. In fact it just happened again while I was writing this! (As our tipster ominously said it would...)

I mean, look, stealing things from other websites is nothing new. It happens allll the time. But this is just embarrassingly egregious. Putting the watermark on the public documents is really the kicker. We'd wager a guess that the TMZers aren't really doing the, you know, reporting of getting those on their own. I mean, they're not exactly The Smoking Gun.

Keep on rockin', Harvey.

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Instead of simply saying "that was dumb, we're sorry," they ran another post that included a poll. If 51% of readers said the line should go, they'd pull it. Almost 100,000 people voted and a resounding 78% wanted it gone. So, they got rid of the offending bit and continued on their merry way. Without ever issuing a measly apology. The woman died two days ago for chrissake. I'm all for an off-color joke, but a little human decency never hurt anyone. [Tabloid Baby]

You know what's funny about TMZ? No, I'm... uh, I'm actually asking. The site is so screechy and repugnant that I always have to click away before I can remember to look for anything remotely amusing. The way they eagerly roll around in pop shit and gleefully smear it everywhere, because it's so campy and naughty, reminds me of the dumb queens from high school and their haggish friends who would shriek and think they were hysterical because they said "cum dumpster." I can find nothing entertaining or redeeming in any of the site's content. It's all just base and poorly written and arbitrarily amoral. I'm just as complicit in the whole awful celebrity-industrial complex as they are, but good god let's try to have a little style while we ruin people's lives, eh? Shut this thing down, please. Oh, and the wretched TV show too. There is no reason to see and hear Harvey Levin and his army of smug little shits every goddamn day.

• "Monday, 7:30 p.m. — Levin calls one of the Spears family's countless court dates 'maybe the biggest hearing ever.' Take that, Roe v. Wade!"
• "Monday, 7:52 p.m. — Sharon Stone, Marcia Cross, Juliette Lewis and, I swear to God, Cheech Marin are asked what they think of Britney."
• "Thursday, 7:37 p.m. — Amy Winehouse is 'crack-tabulous.' Zing! Drug addiction is a hoot."
• "Thursday; 7:43 p.m. — Donald Trump is asked what he thinks of Britney."
• "Friday, 7:39 p.m. — The Rolling Stones look like Mount Rushmore. Get it? They're old. Like Larry King."

• "It's a huge issue, especially with Britney Spears. Her parents are seriously worried that they're going to have to call the coroner soon. And those aren't my words. She has multiple personalities.... It's outrageous that they [U.C.L.A.] would let her go. The paparazzi haven't helped her. We give our cameramen explicit instructions. They're not allowed to chase, break the law, or go on private property."
• "I said, 'we're gonna cover Britney Spears the way David Gregory [NBC News Chief White House Correspondent) covers President Bush.'"
• "I just read a book about Einstein."

[Radar]

And just what liquid is contained within? We like to imagine it's scalding black coffee, refilled upon the half-hour by a neophyte staffer to ensure it never dips below 175 degrees, and ingested via straw so as to hasten the caffeine-high while avoiding staining expensive bridgework. Then again, if it was just water, it wouldn't render Defamer videologist Molly McAleer's stunningly crafted urban ode to Levin and his cup any less effective, capturing the greatest love between a man and his beverage receptacle the world has ever known. Enjoy. [Lyrics NSFW.]

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