[Teen Vogue editor Amy] Astley recalled a recent job applicant who was clearly unqualified to work at her magazine.

"I interviewed someone who hadn't seen ‘Twilight,' " she said. "You can't work at Teen Vogue if you haven't seen ‘Twilight.'"

That cuts it down to 87 million people. Next, those of you not related to Conde Nast executives may also leave.

Fashion!

The NYT "Skin Deep" story on pheromones and how guys are suckered into paying for them quotes only one person who is not a scientist or a pheromone-seller: Michelle Hotaling, a 24 year-old who took part in an experiment where she was blindfolded and decided how attractive a fella was based solely on his smell. She chose a pheromone-wearer!

"In appearance and personality he was not someone I would otherwise be convinced to go out with," she said, once her blindfold came off. "But his scent was a factor that would push my decision to say, ‘Yes.' "

"I always thought my first mention in the Times would be more scandalous!" Michelle blogs. "Then again, I am photographed with a blindfold and a man in a robe." [Just so her NYT debut doesn't go to waste: Michelle is a self-published author and aspiring singer and big fan of Bette Midler and Stevie Nicks, read all about her here!]

Meanwhile all the scientists are like "Yea, who knows if this shit works really?" So guys, if you expect your Dial for Men Magnetic Attraction Enhancing Body Wash to get you a date, you might want to focus on Michelle.
[NYT]

Zariff cut Obama's hair for 17 years. He still does, about every two weeks, so the president has presumably flown him out from Chicago to DC. He's not going to start giving rogue interviews without permission.

So you have to wonder why the White House wants him in the Washington Post and on the front of the New York Times tomorrow (according to Drudge) talking about Obama's old man locks.

Best guess: The hair is supposed to underline how hard Obama is working to SAVE US ALL from global economic collapse while Drug Pastor Rush Limbaugh leads the Republicans in a prayer for the president to fail.

This hair thing will spread widely throughout the media and get talked about by readers because it isn't actually directly about the depressing depression at all, it's one step removed. It's about hair, something superficial and fun that everyone understands from extensive first hand experience, unlike say debt securitization or TALF.

The benefits of this narrative will definitely outweigh the inevitable counter "news" that mysterious "Zariff" is our Muslim president's Hezbollah handler (even though that's probably true!).

Critics in England and parts of the U.S. Los Angeles were none too kind to O'Neill's 2008 novel Netherland. The work was shut out of the National Book Awards and National Book Critics Circle awards.

But the New Yorker loved the novel, about a family's downtown life in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack, and now O'Neill gets the $15,000 PEN prize. A movie deal and national cricket surge can't be far behind; buy your sets now, hipsters.

The immediate political purpose of Obama's speech, given today at George Mason University, was to build the case for Congress to pass a stimulus package with virtually any price tag he asks. And the excerpts released to the media in advance were full of doom and gloom: "this recession could linger for years" ... “In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.”

You can read the whole speech over here, but in the clip above, Obama closes out on the hopeful, poetic note that he is known for, alluding to Langston Hughes ("more dreams will be deferred"), Winston Churchill ("And that is what we will do") and, of course, the last president to take over in such grim times, Franklin Roosevelt ("face down war, depression, and fear itself"), as well as his own contribution: "a new and hopeful beginning."

Headed by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies just issued a "special alert" promising hope-crushing carnage when Obama is sworn in Jan. 20. The thought of millions of their own constituents next to them in DC, drinking heavily, is clearly terrifying to senators and members of the House of Representatives. Everyone should just watch politics quietly on the TV!

Some highlights from the "advisory:"

• "Please think carefully about whether you can stand outside in cold weather in a large crowd for up to six hours, and whether you are ready for long delays getting home afterwards. "
• "D.C.’s subway system... is expecting 'crush-level' crowds. Be prepared to wait for space on a train for long periods of time, during which you will have to stand in close proximity to several thousand people."
• "The weather in Washington in January is usually quite cold and often rainy or snowy."
• "Persons in wheelchairs or utilizing walkers should be aware that they will need to move across bumpy surfaces, grassy areas, and possible icy areas (depending on the weather)." (That means you, John McCain!)
• "Getting to the swearing-in ceremonies that morning will be very difficult because of the large crowds."
• " Many Metro escalators will be closed due to crowding and individuals will need to climb Metro stairs or wait to utilize the small number of elevators at Metro stations. "
• "Public transportation is expected to be running at 'crush capacity.'"
• "We... recommend developing back-up plans."

See you at the Porta-Potties!

(Image via Library of Congress)

In a CNN interview to air Sunday, Powell first said the GOP should reach out to minorities (WTF??) without using "dogma" (GONE ROGUE!). Then he told Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity (implicitly) and Rush Limbaugh (directly!) to just please stop talking:

I think the party has to stop shouting at the world and at the country. I think that the party has to take a hard look at itself, and I've talked to a number of leaders in recent weeks and they understand that."
"Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh? Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?"

Honestly, the future of the Republican party is easily one of the most interesting topics in politics right now, and not just because (from the sound of things) Colin Powell is positioning himself as one of its key future leaders. The conservative movement is near the end of an epic crack-up, its fiscal conservatives alienated from Wall Street business Republicans over the bail out; social conservatives still bitter over the victory of Barack Obama and trying to hold down growing dissent within their own party over issues like gay marriage and immigration (even the hated outgoing evangelical president is against them on the latter).

Destruction like this is followed by a reformation. While the victorious Democratic Party has its key leaders more firmly in place by the day, the Republicans are searching for new blood and, through that, a new message. Party reformulations like that come maybe once every 15 years; conservatives haven't faced this sort of change since the movement solidified its core principles in the 1950s.

This was emergency legislation, because otherwise how would the massive mobs of people coming to DC to mill around and smell the hope get properly lubricated? The current DC bar close is a pathetic 2 a.m., forcing people to continue drinking at their homes (or on the national mall and at various monuments) at a criminally early point in the evening. But from January 17 through the morning after Hopey's Inaugural bars will serve until the sun comes up, and then they'll continue serving again, a few hours later. Thanks, Obama!

(The trains will run until 2 a.m. the night after the inaugural, which is still 2 hours better than usual. God that town sucks.)

Nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed's account of three generations of a slave family owned by Thomas Jefferson, "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.”

Fiction: Peter Matthiessen took the Fiction Award for "Shadow Country," about a sugarcane farmer and outlaw suspected serial killer.

Poetry: Mark Doty's "Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems."

Young People's Literature Award: "What I Saw and How I Lied," Judy Blundell.

2008 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters: Maxine Hong Kingston.

2008 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community: Barney Rosset, publisher, Grove Press and The Evergreen Review.

An entertaining little video from GalleyCat:

International tensions erupted after Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi joked that Obama had an admirable suntan. Ha... ha?

Then the French first lady, Carla Bruni, went after Berlusconi. She used to be Italian and was frankly embarrassed:

When I hear Silvio Berlusconi ... joke about the fact that Obama is ’always tanned’, that makes me feel funny,” she told le Journal du Dimanche newspaper. “That will be put down to humour. But often, I am very happy that I have become French,” she said.

This makes Bruni's husband Nicolas Sarkozy uncomfortable, because he wants Berlusconi to go along with his European economic bailout plan.

But also Bruni is getting all mouthy, backing a French affirmative action measure and talking about how the French are horrible racists.

The petition, titled “Yes We Can” - Mr Obama’s campaign slogan - said that his “election illustrated by a cruel contrast the failings of the French Republic.” It added: “By neglecting its own diversity, France has driven to despair a whole swathe of its youth and has prevented it from being proud of its country.”

Embarrassing! OK Germans, now it's your turn to get all wrapped up in this mess. We promise to pay attention, for once, to whatever you say, since we want to revel in your inevitable regret, at least until our current president also says something awful and we remember the last eight years and just hide until the end of January.

As the Telegraph reports:

He went on to conclude: "My name is Adam Smith, also known as Steve Zacharanda, who has just resigned from the Birmingham Mail, the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Sunday Mercury, to set up my own magazine. F—- you, I'm doing what I want."

Steve Dyson, the editor of the Birmingham Mail, declined to comment on the video, saying: "This is an internal matter".

This man is a hero to journalists everywhere.

[Stewart:] "I know Florida.. Many of my people go there to retire…You might want to hold the rally early. They don’t like to miss their shows at night or the early bird special at the diner.
"No comment on that Jon. I’m trying to win Florida," Obama responded.
Stewart asked "If you do win, is that a mandate for socialism?" and asked about a range of other, mostly outlandish, negative claims about Obama had had an impact.
“It just hasn’t. I think that there’s a certain segment of hardcore Sean Hannity fans that probably wouldn’t want to go have a beer with me," Obama said.

The temper was a longstanding problem. Hockey is a raw sport, but Mr. Palin pushed the limits and often got kicked out of games in Wasilla and at least once in Michigan... on the ice, he was an animal...

“Track has a temper so sometimes you’d only see him half the game,” [longtime family friend Curt] Menard said. “Get there late and he’d already be out.”

...The dream for Track Palin unraveled... starting when he separated his shoulder in Michigan. By March 2007, he was back with his family and that spring graduated from Wasilla High School. He had shoulder surgery, and the Avalanche offered him a playing slot, said the team’s general manager, Jamie Smith.

But that summer, Mr. Smith said, Track Palin called him and said that his shoulder was not better and that he was going to enlist in the Army instead.

Plot twist: The coach thought the shoulder was fine. So maybe there's still more to the story than meets the eye, and it's too soon to rule out any of the rumors.

It seems the Times' Alaskan foodie agent will have to keep fishing!

[Times]

Under its editor, Franca Sozzani, Italian Vogue has gained a reputation for being more about art and ideas than commerce. Ms. Sozzani also doesn’t mind controversy.

She said that, as an Italian, she has been intrigued by the American presidential race and Mr. Obama, which was one source of inspiration when she and Mr. Meisel began discussing, in February, the idea of an all-black issue. Also, she was aware of the lack of diversity on the runways in recent years and the debate it fueled last fall in New York, where Bethann Hardison, a former model who ran a successful agency, held two panel discussions on the topic.

Ms. Sozzani said the issue was not a response to criticism that she, too, has under-represented blacks or portrayed them as stereotypes.

It all sounds very progressive, and is enough to make one long for the days when America was known for its optimism, and the Western Europeans, all too often, for xenophobic fear of immigrants, relative religious intolerance, and for being too cynically stuck in their ways to engage in genuine, constructive racial dialog. How the tables have turned.

[Times]

(Steven Meisel photo via Times)

As the Thatcher era drew to a close in England, Murdoch switched his allegiance from John Major's Tories to the Labour party. Specifically to its rising star Tony Blair, a Clintonian centrist liberal who promised to remake and modernize (or modernise) his stagnant party. Murdoch's papers endorsed Blair in 1997, because Murdoch generally prefers backing winners to ideological purity. This tends to help with things like encouraging the government to let one crazy Australian own as many forms of media as possible. Of course, Blair spent some time courting Murdoch's support personally, surely flattering for the would-be kingmaker.

Murdoch even rewarded the former Prime Minister with a job offer! It was the least he could do for the despised Blair, who dragged his nation into Bush's war against everyone's will and consulted with Murdoch multiple times a year (often in secret) on government policy. Murdoch won important victories, getting Blair to reverse his opinion on the Euro and more. Though the BBC was not, sadly, destroyed.

In other words, Obama should watch out for Australians bearing gifts. Though Murdoch isn't yet as powerful in the US as he'd like to be, a couple years worth of regulatory changes could fix that. And maybe Rupe will finally get his long-overdue invitation to the White House.

(Also, Murdoch on Keith Olbermann, virilant critic of Fox: "I fired him 5 years ago," when he was on FoxSports. "He was crazy.")

[Via Politico]