Gus and Sasha Spielberg's band performed under the name Sasha Lee Pemperton and the Huskies for "an audience of about 20 or so friends," writes a blogger for The Indy. "I managed to capture a bit of it on iPhone video," he explains. "The quality isn't the best. But don't complain-just enjoy the gritty ambiance." This is all we know; after that, all we've got is game tape.

The first one's a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers," which gets twangy, Gram Parsons-lite tweaks to it. Nothing epic, but the execution, while basic and completely derivative of She & Him-type nonsense, is there. Craftsmanship has been considered. David Fricke would give this two stars. Christgau would piss on it and then smell the wafting fumes and decide the quality of it is worth exactly 2.7 of his strange-ass wingding hieroglyphs. Rob Sheffield would give it 4, because Rob Sheffield's music reviews suck (he should've stuck with writing The Pop Life).

Next: a cover of "Me and Bobby McGee." Gus' attempts at getting quiet-angry with his guitar ends up producing a few sour notes, and Sasha takes a while to warm up. But! Sister Spielberg's got soul; she nails some of the song's more desperate notes, though slight inflections of melodrama kinda sully it at points. That said, girl's got voice! Gus' stoic silence is probably for the better, especially when Sasha brings it home at the end. And she does:

The last video's of their cover of Melanie Safka's "Brand New Key," a pretty interesting choice; even more interesting is that most of Sasha's friends all remember the words when she forgets them! Personally, "Brand New Key" never did much for me, but she closes in on the song's strange charms.

For a bunch of kids sittin' around a party, not bad. Every time people sit around other people in an intimate setting with acoustic guitars, it's spirit-crushingly bad, because you have to pretend to enjoy what's often a sad ploy to impress girls (or, inversely, boys). Also: singalongs are for Raffi, especially bad ones, which most of them are.

But they sounded decent! And picked some pretty great songs. Gus' guitar playing needs work, however. A little confidence (or moonshine) could give his sheepish strumming the appropriate level of edge that it doesn't quite have, here! Nerves, kid: get over 'em. Sasha shows promise, but we'll need better video to rate the charisma factor further. For a voice, though: not bad at all. All context considered:

3.5/5 for Sasha, 2/5 for Gus, 3/5 for the act.

The problems facing Rolling Stone's online presence is that, well, they haven't had one. Since the late 90s, they've spread coverage of celebrities, politics, and music too thin. A destination full of Matt Taibbis, David Frickes, or celebrity gossips is one thing. Trying to do them all in the same publication is another, and it resulted in the literal and figurative sizing down of the publication.

Wenner needed to do something, so he fired an editor and brought in Steve Schwartz from Reader's Digest—yes, that Reader's Digest—as his, uh, let's see here...Chief Digital Officer. Great, well then. When Schwartz isn't commandeering the bridge of the Enterprise, he's gonna be piloting a different kind of ship. The kind that sinks before it can even set sail. Ahoy!

"I think there was the concept of, let's partner with a company that had experience in this space early on," said Schwartz, who plans to relaunch the site in January with new community and customization features. "A lot of companies spent a lot of money in trial and error mode." That said, he conceded, "It hasn't evolved nearly as much as we'd like it to."

Since Schwartz's hiring and their Unemployment for Christmas layoffs, they've made great strides, kinda capitalizing on Matt Taibbi's audience, and...that's it.

Eight months later, their Twitter's mostly an RSS feed of articles, interspersed with the occasional pieces of news. Even JetBlue's got a better Twitter. They don't have a Tumblr, their Facebook presence is mediocre, and their big high tech strategy involves one of the most reviled dinosaurs of the internet. What rhymes with BUFFERING?

Rollingstone.com will have a chance to update its music-listening technology; Wenner is determining if it will continue its partnership with Web music player Rhapsody, a joint venture with RealNetworks, after its relationship with RealNetworks ends.

Hm. Considering I can listen to whatever I want on Spotify or Pandora, amongst others, I would say that giving users the chance to interact with a widely available music player they hate isn't the most salient strategy. But this is what Wenner's spending his time "determining."

Forget the fact that Rolling Stone's losing breaking news traffic now (thanks, Brooklyn Vegan). Or that their Five Stars mean nothing anymore (thanks, Pitchfork). Or that their music analysis is being overrun (MBV), their political rockstar's still blogging for a political site that has their own writers working their own ad sales, and their movie critic is still Peter "Quotemaster" Travers.

Remember: Wenner has sites with pretty solid traffic(US Weekly), and as Maura Johnston noted, it still one of the biggest music destinations out there on brand recognition alone. But nobody cares about music enough to generate the kind of traffic the best music sites out there need to be competitive. That's not to say they couldn't become competitive, but it'd require the kind of intense online and editorial shakeup of direction and purpose they've never been able to make. And then flash back to Schwartz, who clearly doesn't understand Wenner's reluctance:

Schwartz admitted that Rollingstone.com is light on user engagement, which will be a big priority of the site relaunch. "The site that's out there right now-that whole notion of getting our audience involved in a dialogue is lost," he said.

It's pretty evident: Wenner's golden goose of ideals and ideology and influence on pop culture has to dignify—and even worse, compete with—the kinds of ragtag operations Rolling Stone once was back when Wenner first started it. Wenner's main man Hunter S. Thompson once wrote that "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Looks like Rolling Stone was too mainstream and stodgy to get going, and for the most part, still are. As Huey Lewis once sang: it's hip to be square.

Wenner sent out this memo to his staff late yesterday afternoon. It seems designed to quash the gossip and speculation about whether Steele is, in fact, Janice Min's replacement, or just a placeholder until Wenner can find someone he likes better. Though as with all Wenner employees, he's only one Jann mood swing away from doom at any given time.

Dear Us Staff:

I want you to join me in congratulating Mike Steele in his promotion to acting editor in chief.

As you know, Mike has been an integral part of making Us Weekly successful, working side-by-side with Janice for more than five years. He is a quiet and steady presence who has proven adept at both editing and managing, and certainly by this point he's more than used to having the reins turned over to him when Janice is away. Contrary to any speculation out there, Mike is my one and only choice. He has my full vote of confidence.

More important, rest assured, this magazine works, and there are no plans for radical change: We will be reporting newsstand numbers the same as last year's for this half to ABC (a huge accomplishment when all our competitors are down double-digits); additionally, Us Weekly has maintained a very strong ad position in the marketplace. The growth of our website is extraordinary - 6.6 million unique visitors for the month of May. All in all, everything is humming, I have full confidence things will continue on course, and I ask you to join me and Mike in making that happen.

Thanks for all your continued hard work, and I'm looking forward to even more success.

Jann

[Pic: Getty]

An indeterminate number of people were let go in "big layoffs" in production, sales and marketing, a tipster tells us. Most of the recent cuts are said to be recent hires, at the Us Weekly and Rolling Stone publisher for less than a year. (More info? Shoot us an email.)

Let's review the history:

• "Big layoffs" across titles (sounds like) on Jan. 8.
• At least three editorial staff let go from Rolling Stone Dec. 19, just before head honcho Jann Wenner heads off for his annual long winter break.
• Four or more Rolling Stone staff, including the online editor, let go in early December.
• "Several online people, several marketing people, an assistant, a sales rep and three unnamed people from Men's Journal" in early November.

Rolling Stone

Now he can take his annual long vacation in Sun Valley without that "to do" hanging over his head. Asshole.

Wenner's Us Weekly alone throws off $75 million a year in profit. Wenner Media revenue is around $400 million annually. The company couldn't wait 10 days to fire some more people?

It doesn't matter how much severance the ex-employee sare getting. That's not the point. The point is that Wenner would rather enjoy a less stressful vacation, or save a few days vacation pay, than do the right thing and suck it up for another week and a half so these people can enjoy the holidays. The Dec. 10 round? Fine. But Dec. 19? You terrible jerk.

One of the layoffs was a writer Wenner hired away from Newsweek in October. Another layoff, an editor, came from GQ in March. Maybe you can ask for your old jobs back, guys! (Ha ha, just kidding, they're taken, forever.)

"It was heartbreaking, but we just had to make some tough choices," Rolling Stone Managing Director Will Dana told Keith Kelly of the Post.

Well, you guys certainly made some choices. The dick choices.

May yours gifts turn to coal, every last one of them.

(Picture via Scrooged)

MediaWorks: Why not try to turn RollingStone.com into something that has a much larger reach online that reaches tons of people who don't touch the print edition?
Jann Wenner: Why undercut the print edition? You're just going to undercut the print edition. There's a finite audience for reading about music. And they like the print edition. They find it valuable and on and on and on.

Wenner is, once again, not even pretending that the Rolling Stone brand is intended to appeal to young people, who tend to do their reading online. This is like that time he called Facebook "kind of a teen thing" — unlike RollingStone.com.

But presumably his strategy is based on a careful study of revenue flows, demographic surveys, competitors that sort of thing. Right?

MediaWorks: No favorite blogs or other sources of news?
Jann Wenner: You know what the problem is? Finding enough time to read and raise children is just like, whoof.
...MediaWorks: How much of Wenner Media's ad revenue comes from digital operations?
Jann Wenner: Honestly, I don't know.

Jann Wenner should be fired. Too bad there's no one who can actually do that.

Page Six first reported on Boulton and Wenner last year — that they were running around town together and making out in front of the Time Warner Center. But Wenner denied, and we heard the gossp was all manufactured by Boulton himself — a "weird press play by Neal." Which no one at the time understood. "What motivation would Boulton actually have for this?" a commenter asked.

Someone whispered to New York that Wenner and Boulton were still dating, but the magazine's website didn't see fit to stand behind that story. It's the story that just won't stick.

But Boulton, not at all shy about emailing bloggers, or being quoted, somehow stayed in the news. An "irate lady source" in February sent Queerty two remarkably well-photographed and posed shots of Boulton nuzzled up to her model-perfect body (including the one at top). Boulton protested, probably a bit too much, without actually denying he had sexed the vixen. Did he send, or arrange to have sent, the tell-all email from his statuesque "lover?"

As time went on, Boulton started making direct appeals. In July he sent us a bizarre letter advising women not to flatter themselves that he might be hitting on them in bars, because he's just being friendly. Then we got seemingly random emails from supposed women admirers trying to get in touch with Boulton, and from people claiming to see him leaving MTV's offices (that was him, he merrily confirmed for us, in talks about a pilot, which we never heard about again).

And now, with the book agent deal and the purported reality show, we finally see (duh) what motivation the Genre editor might have for whipping up interest in his WILD and CRAZY "pansexual" lifestyle, "pansexual" being a pointless synonym for "bisexual," presumably plastered on Boulton's website because it sounds sexier and more marketable than the latter.

The endgame is familiar to any fameball, straight out of the Julia Allison playbook: Reality show, book, internet startup. A pedestrian play rooted in already-pedestrian notions of sexual decadence and roleplaying. Neal Boulton, you're boring us.

BETWEEN BONG HITS AND BEER, Philip Gale brooded over ending his young life. Outside his apartment, marrow-chilling March winds scoured the streets of Cambridge's seedy Central Square. Inside the cramped walk-up, the air was hazy from the Camel Filters he'd been chain-smoking. Gale, a 19-year-old computer prodigy and MIT junior, had loaded his CD player with enough angst tunes to make anyone a little suicidal: the electronic frigidity of Kraftwerk and the pseudo-industrial hair-pulling of Filter. The last disc Gale's CD changer spun that night was Steel Pole Bathtub's musical mindfuck, "Scars from Falling Down." He zipped a windbreaker over his T-shirt, adjusted his trademark neon-orange watch cap atop almost matching carrot-colored hair, and strode out of his room, the music still blaring behind him. He walked over to Massachusetts Avenue, nearly gridlocked by Friday-night partyers, and headed for the MIT campus. Climbing a massive staircase at the main gate, Gale headed down MIT's main pedestrian thoroughfare, "The Infinite Corridor." He carried an expensive, new digital sound recorder. It was Friday the 13th — the birthday of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Scientology had played a big role in Gale's life, although he had by then broken with the church. Both his parents were committed Scientologists; his mother was the national spokesman for a Scientology front group that seeks to ban the practice of psychiatry. Born in L.A., Gale had been sent to a Scientology boarding school in Oregon, where he'd honed his extraordinary gifts as a computer geek. As a 16-year-old MIT freshman, he'd written a key computer program for EarthLink, the Pasadena-based Internet provider created by Sky Dayton, another Scientologist. Â

For weeks, Gale had been asking classmates how to get to the roof of MIT's tallest structure, the Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences building, more commonly known as Building 54 or the Green Building. His friends thought nothing of it, recalling the annual ritual of dumping pumpkins off the roof, to watch them splatter 18 floors below. In a more recent stunt, MIT students had arranged the Green Building's classroom lights in the shape of an Oscar statuette in tribute to the movie Good Will Hunting. But Gale didn't have a prank in mind. Apparently unable to get to the roof, he entered an empty classroom on the 15th floor. Inside, Gale switched on his digital recorder and began scribbling on the blackboard. In his bold hand, he wrote out Newton's famous equation for how an object accelerates as it falls. Next to it he sketched a stick figure of a man throwing a chair and signed his work, "Phil was here." Then he picked up a wooden chair and flung it through a large plate-glass window. He calmly wiped glass shards off the sill, stepped onto it, and heaved his six-foot-two-inch frame into the wintry night.

The recorder didn't pick up any screaming. Moments after Gale's body hit the concrete of the East Campus quad, an eerie, real-time 911 alert blazed among the computers of MIT dorm rats in nearby rooms. The messages would stretch into a six-day online discussion:

Time: 19:28:08 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... What is CP [campus police] number fast?

Time: 19:28:23 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... 253-1212?

Time: 19:28:25 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... 100 for emergencies

Time: 19:28:31 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... got it, never mind. jumper off of 54.

Time: 19:28:35 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... Seriously?

Time: 19:28:39 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... threatening?

Time: 19:29:40 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... true. cps there. apparently dead.

Time: 19:30:01 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... right outside my window. dear God...

Time: 19:30:39 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... cpr being performed.

Time: 19:30:41 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... threatening to jump or has jumped? oh, that answers

Time: 19:30:58 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... I was going to ask how you knew it wasn't a legit person on the roof. now I know

Time: 19:34:05 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... ambulance here.

Time: 19:34:49 Date: Fri Mar 13 1998 Host... there has been something decidedly unhealthy about being an MIT student this year

"Is this my 15 minutes of fame?" joked Bob Randolph, MIT's bearded, avuncular dean of students in his office off the Infinite Corridor. Among other duties, Randolph is the fall guy for tragedy at MIT. And at the time of Philip Gale's suicide in March 1998, Randolph had his work cut out for him. Â A graduate student, Mark Sitton, had recently shot himself to death and a Boston grand jury was investigating the death of 18-year-old freshman Scott Kreuger after a night of binge drinking at an MIT frat party. Â Randolph patiently listed the resources available to students in distress: faculty advisers, peer counseling, a 24-hour hot line, a campus psychiatric department. But in Gale's case, he acknowledged, "the system didn't work."

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among Americans aged 15 to 24 (after accidents and homicide). But despite MIT's reputation as an intellectual pressure cooker, its suicide rate is about the national norm for universities. For reasons no one can explain, campus suicides often occur in bunches. Cornell, for example, had five suicides in 1995; in 1997, it had none.

Time: 13:40:11 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... If there's no note or anything, I tend to believe it was not to get attention or send a statement. In fact, it sounds more likely to be unpremeditated and spur of the moment...

Time: 13:41:12 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... One does not climb to the 15th floor of a building "on the spur of the moment."

Philip Gale's suicide marked the second death in his family in less than two and a half years. His father, David, an itinerant computer-software maven, had died of a heart attack in October 1995 at the age of 47. Yet Philip's mother, Marie Gale, recently bounded from a pickup truck in a small Oregon coastal town with the exuberance of a teenager to discuss her son's short life.

A tall woman in jeans and a work shirt, Marie lives on a timber ranch not far away from the Coos Bay café where she was interviewed. She agreed to talk about Philip on condition that his story not be used to attack Scientology. "First, foremost, and above all else — I am a Scientologist," she said. She has been a practicing Scientologist since she was 12. Her parents and grandparents are Scientologists, as was her husband. Her 15-year-old daughter is also a member.

In the church hierarchy, Marie is rated OT [Operating Thetan] VIII, which supposedly gives her not only complete psychic control over matter, energy, space, and time, but also makes her privy to all the Scientology trade secrets subject to endless copyright-infringement lawsuits triggered by legions of critics who post the material on the Internet. As chief spokesman for the church's Citizens Commission on Human Rights, she has for years preached the ostensible evils of psychiatry in speeches, radio interviews, and newspaper articles. Scientology wants to ban psychiatry as part of its goal of "clearing the planet" and eliminating emotional trauma from the lives of all humans.

Philip was born in 1978 as his mother struggled to adhere to L. Ron Hubbard's directive for silence during childbirth. "I would like to think [it was silent], but I don't think it was completely silent," she said, laughing. His dad had a job in software at the time, but the couple agreed that L.A. was not a good place for kids and moved to rural northern New Hampshire. Philip had an early aptitude for numbers and machines.

One day just before he turned two, he toddled into Marie's room while she was arranging some math flash cards. As she put them in sequence — 67, 68, 69, etc. — she said, "Hand me 70." He picked up the correct card and gave it to her. "Oh, God, I was in absolute shock," said Marie. By age four, the boy was tooling around the back roads of New Hampshire aboard his father's Yamaha three-wheeler. "Here was Philip, driving it down the driveway, and his little legs weren't long enough to reach the brake and gearshift," his mother said. "I mean, he could drive that thing better than most adults."

Marie taught her son at home until he was about four and a half and then set up a homeschool, joining with another mother to teach their kids. "Basically, I had this kid who was doing second and third grade math and reading at the second and third grade level," recalled Marie. "He was a brilliant student, and I couldn't see putting him in a local public school."

At six, Philip decided he wanted a job. He cooked up a plan to be a messenger at his dad's office, mapping out where everyone's desks were in relation to where messages were received at the reception area. But child labor laws got in his way. "That was devastating to him," said Marie. "He was like, 'What do you mean? I can do this job.' I think that was the first time he got hit by society saying you're too young. And it became a real issue for him. It made him rant and cry." The boy, with his rapidly growing intelligence, was particularly upset because "it was something he couldn't fight back against," his mother remembered. The experience, she said, left him with an undying resentment and cynicism toward "the establishment."

Despite his outburst over the messenger job, Philip was more analytical than emotional and often puzzled for hours over things he'd seen. When a friend of his parents seemingly pulled a piece of gum out of the child's ear, Philip wouldn't let it go as a simple magic trick. "He thought about it and thought about it," said Marie, before finally asking, "'How does my body put the wrapper back on?' He constantly thought things through like that until he got to a point where the logic broke down."

In 1986, the nomadic Gales moved to Clearwater, Florida, to be near Scientology's worldwide headquarters. David Gale started a computer company, and Philip was enrolled in a private school that used a Scientology learning system. But Philip's mind had already soared into realms that neither his teachers nor parents could follow. "He asked too many questions," said Marie with a sigh. "I had to go to the library and get books and talk to people in order to answer him. I couldn't do it...I think homeschooling is a cool alternative, but there I am and I couldn't do it."

So, at age eight, Philip was shipped off to Scientology's Delphian School in Sheridan, Oregon. Located on 700 acres of hills, forests, and meadows in the lush Willamette Valley, the boarding school is part of a network of church-run schools that includes six other day campuses in the U.S. By the time he was 12, Philip had completed Scientology "auditing sessions" involving the use of a device called an E-meter, which Scientologists claim detects harmful emotional reactions called engrams. Through auditing, Scientologists believe, the negative "charge" of engrams can be eliminated, hastening achievement of the state of "clear," when a person functions purely on the "analytical mind" rather than the emotional, trauma-plagued "reactive mind."

Time: 15:28:48 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... What's interesting, to me, is his Scientology connection. he was educated at the Delphi Academy, a pro-Scientology high school, and his mother is the director of a Scientology front organization (according to Web pages). that organization has been known to really mess up people's lives.

Time: 15:31:24 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... oh, God, not Scientology...

Time: 10:33:57 Date: Thu Mar 19 1998 Host... I have friends who went to Catholic school. That didn't necessarily mean they were Catholic.

It was at Delphian that Philip's gifts as a computer programmer began to emerge. One of his friends at the school was Colby Africa, who met Philip when he was 14. Africa, then 16, began to hang out with the younger boy, shooting hoops, playing video games, and taking physics classes. At first, there was a competitive electricity between them, until Africa began to realize Philip "was an order of magnitude smarter than I could ever hope to be."

Africa had hacked together a computer application, which he showed to his friend. But Philip quickly improved it "by 500 times," said Africa. Soon Philip was teaching his older friend all about software, putting Africa on the path toward a career with Microsoft, where he now works in marketing.

It was also at Delphian that Philip began to make frequent use of that time-honored social weapon of smart adolescents: the clever put-down. "He was heavily sarcastic," said Africa, now 23. "You know, heavily." And Philip suffered no fools. "If he believed you were lesser than he was intellectually, then you might as well just shut up," recalled Africa.

Unlike Philip, Africa was not a Scientologist when he enrolled at Delphian. In trouble with the law, he got a hold of some Delphian literature at a library and decided he wanted to go there. He became a Scientologist while at the school, which is staffed entirely by Scientologists. "You're a teenager. You want to be accepted. So what do you do? Well, you start acting like them, and talking like them, and then pretty soon — poof! — you are one of them," he said.

Philip, on the other hand, began edging away from Scientology while attending Delphian, according to Africa, who also later broke with the church. "He was approaching adulthood before the rest of us were, and he was younger than us," explained Africa. "It was kind of weird. It was almost like his intellect offset the fact that he hadn't spent a lot of time on this planet in order to really understand life without having religion there. He backed out of Scientology, and at that point was forced to look at the universe without that tool kit."

As he had promised his parents, Philip graduated from Delphian at 14. His family had since moved to Utah, and the boy soon landed a job as a computer programmer at the Salt Lake City marketing firm where his dad worked. But the precocious kid ran circles around the adult programmers, including his dad. The job, Philip told his mother, was hard on him because he was "faster and smarter and a better programmer than some of the guys who had been there and been programming, you know, forever."

But again, the boy couldn't contain his tendency to dismiss people he considered less intelligent than him — a trait that rubbed a lot of his older colleagues the wrong way. "His personal public relations were really bad," said Marie, laughing. "I mean, his tolerance for stupid adults was really bad." Although he was making serious money at his computer job, he quoted Plato and invoked Marxist theories of class warfare in order to cadge more money off his parents. "I never found any system that would work with that kid," said Marie. "Because he could outlogic any system that I ever tried. I finally just quit, 'cause I couldn't win."

In the fall of 1994, as his mother railed against psychiatry through articles in Utah newspapers and his father went off to his computer job each day, Philip entered MIT as a 15-year-old freshman. The move to Cambridge virtually cut him off from his parents, but Marie said her son rarely paid much attention to familial bonds anyway. Throughout his life he insisted on addressing his parents by their first names. "He didn't have a strong sense of family," Marie said. "I didn't know what the deal was. Grandparents and aunts and uncles, all that....It wasn't like he wasn't around family. He just never, I don't know....It's weird." In hindsight, she said, she should have been more concerned about her son going so far away to college at such a young age. But Philip had looked forward to MIT as a great adventure and she saw no reason to stand in his way. In fact, Marie never visited Cambridge until she came to identify her son's body.

The MIT campus is divided geographically into two halves — East Campus and West Campus — which sometimes seem as different as East and West Berlin before the wall came down. The East Campus dorms house adventure-loving freaks who amuse themselves with hacking games and late-night excursions to pick locks in the campus' alluring network of underground steam tunnels. West Campus is a more vanilla living environment, a haven for the serious student.

Then there's the school's large Greek system, which handles the overflow from the dorms. For some reason, Philip passed up East Campus to bunk at the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. But he didn't stay long at MIT. Over Christmas break that year, he got a job with EarthLink Network Inc., then a fledgling Internet service provider founded by 23-year-old Sky Dayton, a Scientologist and fellow Delphian alumnus.

While still in Cambridge, Philip designed a user-friendly software package called Total Access, which allowed the firm to connect far more customers to the Internet. The program, for which he was paid $10,000, was a crucial technical breakthrough that helped propel Dayton's tiny company into the ranks of the country's biggest Internet providers; today it has more than one million customers and a market worth of $2 billion.

So impressed was Dayton that he offered Philip a full-time job at his Pasadena headquarters: director of programming and development, complete with a $75,000-a-year salary, stock options, and a car, according to Marie Gale. Philip accepted and moved West in the spring of 1995; he had recently turned 16.

Philip's best friend at EarthLink was Web designer Brian Ladner, then 30. In between programming projects, he and Philip started hitting L.A. rock clubs and concerts together. Though still a minor, Philip lived like a wild and crazy twentysomething, at one point heading for Las Vegas with Ladner and Sky Dayton. There they attended the annual Comdex technology conference during the day; at night, they hit the poker tables, gambling and drinking until 4 or 5 in the morning.

In Vegas, Philip stood out even more than he did in L.A. Pale, skinny, and gangly, with his red hair severely shorn, he found himself being asked by a dealer if he was from another planet. Philip responded "by giving the dealer a quarter tip," said Ladner with a chuckle.

Back at EarthLink, Philip and Ladner were asked to do what Ladner described as "some side business." Since both were proficient in Web design, they were hired out to another Internet firm to create Super Nudes, a pornographic Web site hosted by EarthLink.

Besides drinking, gambling, and helping sell dirty pictures online, Philip was smoking dope and getting into alternative rock with an angry edge, like Nine Inch Nails and Garbage. He had also discovered sex. "We actually talked a fair amount about that," said Marie Gale. "He told me when he got laid." In fact, he showed her the very spot. "When I went to see him in his [L.A.] apartment, he showed me his bedroom. He has this new bed, and the mattress is on the floor. I said, 'What happened?' He goes, 'My bed broke.' " As she told this story, Marie doubled over with laughter.

According to Ladner, Philip had abandoned his Scientology beliefs while he was at EarthLink. He had instead become enamored with the self-parodying Church of Sub Genius, which specializes in debunking cults and which has its own cult following among Gen-Xers. Ladner gave Philip the group's tongue-in-cheek bible, Revelation X: The Church of Sub Genius, and they watched its "recruitment video" together. "It was hilarious," recalled Ladner recently at a Venice café. "There were certain things that really struck Philip. Both religions [Sub Genius and Scientology] sort of draw upon similar ideas. One has humor, one doesn't."

"Sub Genii" worship a pipe-smoking cartoon character named Bob Dobbs. Philip loved a line in the video about how Dobbs "once told L. Ron Hubbard, 'They may be pink, but their money's green,' " recalled Ladner. Philip even hung a Bob Dobbs poster on his office door at EarthLink.

Although distancing himself from Scientology, Philip still worked for a key Scientologist, Dayton, at a company that was run according to Scientology management principles. Philip also briefly dated a 17-year-old girl who was an active church member. But her faith irritated the boy, prompting him to ask Ladner: "Why can't she see through [Scientology]?"

Philip wasn't exactly a model EarthLink executive, said Ladner. "Sky would come running into the office, and Phil would be playing a video game," he said. "And Sky would be saying, 'We need so many thousand discs with Netscape pointing to X's home page, and we need to get them out right away!' Phil wouldn't break his stride, man. He'd be playing that video game, and Sky would be going, 'We need this, we need this!' and Philip would go, 'OK,' and keep playing his video game. And Sky would go, 'Well, when do you think you can get it done?' And Philip would just say, 'When I'm done with this.' Which might have been six, eight hours later."

The EarthLink offices did hold one major attraction for Philip: Susie Wu, a slender, pretty coworker who was a few years older. She became not only his girlfriend but his soul mate.

"I was the only person that he could speak to honestly about, you know, substantial matters like love, life, death, hope — whatever," said Wu, now 25. But even amid the young computer whizzes at EarthLink, the boy's intellectual arrogance continued to surface. "He was young, he'd act out and have an attitude," said Wu. "Because he was, like, much smarter than they were." He continued to use his cynical wit, she said, as a barrier between himself and "anything that generate[d] emotion." Ironically, his wunderkind cachet seemed to backfire, as his grateful EarthLink superiors placed too many expectations on him, according to Wu. "If he wanted to take time off and figure things out, no one would understand that," she said. "No one would give him the latitude to explore himself as an individual."

In October 1995, Philip's father died. About six months later, Philip signed documents to become an emancipated minor, allowing him to exercise his stock options at EarthLink, which was about to go public. That summer, he joined his mother in North Carolina, got his braces off, and dyed his hair blue. In the fall of 1996, still shy of his 18th birthday, Philip returned to MIT.

Time: 01:20:18 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... did he bounce, or was the impact sufficiently inelastic to kill all the kinetic energy?

Time: 01:20:49 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... Well, you could approximate the horizontal speed when he launched from the building...

Time: 01:20:52 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... the wood pieces and glass were also not directly below the window... at least 10 ft east or so I'd guess

Time: 01:21:46 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... from what I've heard, at that height there is definitely a bounce. yet the wood was not quite as far out - probably less wind to catch it. I've heard that at least one person actually saw it happen... (shudder)

Time: 01:22:43 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... I wonder how long it will take to replace the glass.

Eric Hu, ponytailed and handsome, slumped so far down in a booth at a Cambridge restaurant that he almost disappeared. He acted as if he didn't want to be seen but answered questions freely and frankly about his late friend.

Hu met Philip when both were members of the Phi Sigma Kappa frat, where they bonded over their mutual taste for cool music and ganja. Hu believes Philip made his final break from Scientology between the time he joined EarthLink and his return to MIT about a year and a half later. Although Philip had denounced his parents' religion, he still seemed to be struggling for something to believe in. "It was sort of a trying experience for him as far as I could tell," said Hu.

After coming back to Cambridge, Philip also suddenly began to grieve for his father, who'd been dead a year by then. "The way he had seen his father was that he had sort of become this sort of corporate, pretentious guy," recalled Hu. "But then his mom showed Philip this picture of his father back in the day, when he was this sort of free and fun-loving sort of person. That moved him, moved him to start feeling his father's death."

Jason Politi, who was also a frat brother of Philip's and later a housemate, confirmed that David Gale's death hit Philip hard, if belatedly. "I think the most memorable image that I have of Phil is [that] when he smiled he really meant it," said Politi at a campus memorial service following Philip's suicide. "But he didn't show a lot of emotion other than that. This one time, at a [frat] house meeting after he got back from California, when the house members passed around the gavel — he just started crying. And it was because of the loss of his father. And that's something that I'll never forget about Phil."

Marie Gale said Philip and his dad had an open and communicative relationship. "They were friends and had a lot of mutual respect in many subjects, including computers," she wrote by e-mail, answering questions after an initial interview. "They went fishing and skiing together." Although she talked to Philip many times about his dad's passing, she was "quite surprised" at hearing of her son's emotional reaction afterward.

By the fall of 1997, Philip was sick of most of his fraternity brothers, not to mention frat-house food. With a couple of other undergrads, he moved into an apartment on Brookline Street in Central Square. He also made a big change in school, switching his major to music from physics and engineering. "It's pretty unusual for students to do the full move [from a science major to humanities]," noted Hu. "But Philip didn't see anything to relieve the boredom. He said 'Why fight the pain?' "

Philip also joined Professor Tod Machover's elite group of students at MIT's famed Media Lab, where they worked to create new musical instruments and environments for children.

"Inventing the future" is the catchphrase for the work and much of the play at the Media Lab, an artificial-intelligence think tank cum technological amusement park that draws fans like Robin Williams and Penn & Teller.

Philip worked on a project with two other students but walked away before it was finished. "He basically ended up thinking that they were too dumb to work with, and he went off on his own," said Machover, who's known as a pioneer of electronic music.

But Philip's interest in music continued to grow. He participated in the campus Concert Choir as well as with a group of students who played Balinese percussion instruments. He also formed a rock band with his pal Michael Tarkanian, a materials science major from blue-collar Brockton, Massachusetts. Tarkanian played bass, Philip was on drums, and a third undergrad played guitar.

Philip eventually returned to the Media Lab bearing a prototype for a musical game that was "just hot," recalled Machover. By using a computer keyboard to make brightly colored balls pop in and out of tubes on the screen, Philip's device not only synthesized music but could also change its tone. "I've seen hundreds of these things, but with Philip, you could just see it right away and say, 'OK, this kid's got it,' " said the long-haired, boyish Machover, 45. "A lot of toy companies we're working with would have loved it."

The professor tried to encourage his innovative student. Before leaving on a post-Christmas sabbatical to Big Sur, he sent Philip an e-mail: Look, Phil, this is the start of something great...It would be great to work on this with you, it would be fun to have you around. Philip didn't respond.

His brilliance and creativity notwithstanding, Philip Gale seldom felt satisfied with his achievements. He'd become fascinated by something for a spell, master it ("Faster than anyone else," remarks Eric Hu), and then just as quickly lose interest. Take his brief enthrallment with chess. "I had been playing chess for a while, and Phil really wanted to learn how to play," said Hu. "Within a month or two, he was beating me. And, you know, I had been playing for years. But then, after another month, he stopped playing. [He had] a sense of satisfaction when he beat me in chess and whatever his minigoals along the way were, but I guess the longer things would take, the less interested he was."

Hu gave an example related to Philip's new major. The first thing you learn when studying music at MIT is how to write a Bach chorale. But Philip didn't want to spend time at that. "He was sort of upset that he had to do those things," said Hu.

Another of Philip's housemates, Jesse Koontz, a senior, said Philip seemed angry much of the time in the months preceding his death. He was bothered in particular at not being able to get into Boston-area rock clubs, which tend to be strict about enforcing Massachusetts' drinking age of 21. "I think he had a lot of trouble getting into certain clubs because he wasn't 21," Koontz said. "I think he made a fake ID at the Media Lab, but he...hated that. He'd say, 'This is ridiculous. I want to go here.' He didn't really care about drinking there, but he was so pissed off that he couldn't go for the music because they would give him shit about his age."

Despite his frustrations, he had no problem meeting girls. His romance with Susie Wu had ended, although they stayed in touch. But at a frat party that fall he connected with a young woman who was nearly his emotional mirror-image: Christine Hrul, 21, a student at nearby Wellesley. Tall and blond, Christine empathized with Philip's depression. In fact, she didn't feel that good herself, and had recently begun taking antidepressants. While Philip self-medicated with booze and pot throughout their tempestuous relationship, Christine's drug of necessity was Zoloft. Although Christine allowed that she and Philip "didn't have that much in common to talk about," she could see what he was going through. She told him how much better she felt on prescription drugs but rebuffed his requests for some of her Zoloft. "He was like, 'Whaddya think?'" Christine remembered. "And I was like, 'No. That's not a good idea.' You know, 'What if it's not the right thing?' And so I didn't do that. I probably should have. But then I wouldn't have my own prescription."

Hu said Philip smoked pot daily and placed an order for LSD with a campus dealer, although he apparently never received any of the hallucinogenic. "That was sort of the first thing I asked [after his suicide]," said Hu. "Did he get anything in the mail or anything? Everyone I had talked to said no."

Finally, at the behest of his faculty adviser, Philip paid a visit to the campus shrink. But, according to Hu, he had an ulterior motive. "What he told me was just like, 'I wanna try and get drugs from them and see what they do to me.' That was his primary motivation." Philip came away from the session declaring that the psychiatrist — who prescribed no drugs for him — was "a dipshit."

Between going to parties and plays, Philip and Christine shared many of those long, intense, soul-baring conversations that are a staple of college affairs. One such exchange, held on the Phi Sigma Kappa roof, stands out in Christine's mind even now. "He asked me if I had ever thought about jumping off a building," she said. "But he didn't really ask me in the context of suicide. He asked me in the context of, 'Wouldn't it be cool to jump off and see what it was like?'" The frat roof probably wasn't high enough to kill, but the conversation alarmed Christine. "I've taken peer courses where they say that even if you're really good friends with a person and they mention suicide, you're supposed to take it seriously and ask them how they'd do it," she said. "So even though we were just joking around, I asked him. He was just like, 'Uh...I'd jump.' And I was just like, 'That would be kind of messy.' And then we moved on in the conversation."

The couple parted ways in February 1998, with Philip sending Christine a few final e-mails. "He talked about sloth and boredom, and how he didn't like being with me because he was too comfortable with me," she recounted sadly. When he made a final phone call to her on February 23, she sensed he was going to be a jerk. She asked him to come over, but he refused, saying that wasn't a good idea. When she said OK and prepared to hang up, he begged her not to. Someone finally broke the connection, and she never heard from him again.

The next day, Susie Wu received the following e-mail from Philip at her new workplace near Washington, D.C.:

i liked our relationship. i liked its abnormality. i was so attracted to you and your stubborn idealism. after my dad died, i would sit in me [sic] bed late at night, crying and crying. but the absurd selfishness of it all is that i was crying about you, not him. i have done so little yet; i do not want to slow down. but yet i feel no motion now. my life has been about growing...but i never truly realized that includes, more than anything else, people and experiences. earthlink's money has merely removed a nuisance. i have no material goals. and in the intellectual realm, well in truth i am not cut out for it—i am more a doer. my interest in computers—the time sink for all my other voids—has fragments into a rare amusement. a sophisticated tv. and music, well i chose music for the combination of technical, intellectual, and social aspects. but until recently i failed to see that people, other people, drive the machine. in other words, for all i enjoy these activities, they can no longer fill the holes in my life. i fear the settling down: buying a house, having kids. becuz i postulate (the real meaning, not the elron one :>) ['elron' is an apparent reference to L. Ron Hubbard] that i spend my time wishing i had done different things or my life were different. becuz i am so bored by the layman's life. and what i find an interesting life seems only for the priveleged few. and above all, i dont think i will ever be in love again. im not sure how to deal with these problems. i suppose i may float through life in the same semi-sedated state i have for a while now. my advisor (without me saying anything personal) told me he thot i should see a counsellor. get some drugs and tell my mind things are different? i dont know. i hope i am not imposing by saying these things. i feel bad about it sometimes, this spewing forth of depression. most people wouldnt stand for it and their hearing it would be meaningless to me. i say this looking for no sympathy: i have been thinking about committing suicide. it is so surreal; i laugh to myself when i read the alt.suicide faq [an online suicide-related newsgroup]. if i were to do it, i would probably jump off mit's green building. but im not shur i have the guts (its not the heights, its deth itself). and i am afraid of the impact it would have on my family. they would be hurt very badly, much worse than from my dad's natural death. ok, well if u still dont think im a fuked up loser (:> — i really am laughing when i put this smile up there, ya know), then i was gonna ask you where u were gonna travel. i dont really like traveling tho.. only a little bit, for a very short time. but it is an intriguing thot. ok susie, bye fil

A week before Philip climbed the stairs of the Green Building, the manic prodigy sent an e-mail with a very different tone to Professor Machover in Big Sur. "I've got this idea, and I'm really interested in this," wrote Philip. "Tell me what you think about it, and I'd love to do a [class project] on it."

Machover remembers the idea well. It was to create a device that would allow people to take ambient sounds from the world around them and turn them into music. Philip wanted to record different types of sounds — people talking on the street, subway noises, music in clubs, animal sounds — and write software that would analyze their specific qualities. From there, he would mix the sounds together and turn them into melodies. The next step was to put the recorded material in an audio library that could be navigated with a joystick. Philip's goal was to make it possible for people to make music out of the world around them and combine sounds that didn't normally go together.

"That's great!" Machover e-mailed back. "Not only am I personally interested in this, but it's just a terrific idea, and I think you're a great person to do this. I'm in California, but — go for it!"

Philip immediately began working on his plan, enlisting the help of his buddy Michael Tarkanian. Tarkanian built a microphone for a high-resolution digital sound recorder Philip had acquired, and they walked around looking for choice aural material. One day they waltzed into the student rec center to record the sound of pinball machines.

In the meantime, however, Philip was binging on junk food and had all but stopped going to classes. "He didn't care about being on time to class, he didn't care about going to class," said Jesse Koontz. "I don't think he cared too much about nutrition either. I mean, it was kind of funny. He would eat McDonald's until he realized that he couldn't stand to eat it anymore. I think he was getting a little scared. He wouldn't bother himself with some of the details of life. There were too many annoying factors that seemed to bother him."

The day before he killed himself, Philip spent time with Jason Politi, sucking up hits of strong marijuana from a bong as he talked about what an idiot the campus shrink was. That evening, he went to Tarkanian's dorm room to borrow the microphone again. Then he stayed up long into the night playing the Internet computer combat game Dark Reign, duking it out online with top-ranked players.

By the morning of Friday the 13th, Philip was an exhausted, bleary-eyed mess. He started alternating bong hits with slugs of beer. Later, he slammed some CDs into his player and jacked the music up loud. One was Filter's Short Bus album, which includes a song, "Hey Man, Nice Shot," about a man blowing his brains out with a handgun:

"They think that your early ending was all wrong/For the most part they're right/But look how they all got strong/That's why I say, Hey, man, nice shot."

Sometime after 6 p.m., Philip walked down the stairs of his apartment toward bustling, party-crazed Central Square. Then he headed for the Green Building. He didn't bother to turn off the music.

Matt Munsey, a serious-faced MIT sophomore, edged up to Philip Gale's motionless body minutes after it struck the pavement. "He was lying on his back," said Munsey. "I think his face was in a shape of great distress or pain. Or anger."

Although he hadn't known Philip, Munsey was deeply upset by what he saw. In an effort to make sense of his feelings and share information about Philip, Munsey created a memorial Web site headlined "Who Was Philip Gale?" The site's introduction reads: "Since I saw him lying on the ground, I have felt that Philip Gale wanted us to know something, something about him and his life. My thoughts have caused me to create this site as a memorial to him and a warning to the world about Scientology." Munsey ended his introduction: "Philip Gale: You will be remembered forever."

Time: 14:23:32 Date: Tue Mar 17 1998 Host... how certain is it that Philip Gale was a suicide? (everyone seems to think so, although there's no official word)

Time: 14:24:48 Date: Tue Mar 17 1998 Host... I don't think anyone really knows. There's been a bunch of speculation.

Time: 14:26:24 Date: Tue Mar 17 1998 Host... I'd guess they'll decide it's suicide or murder. It doesn't look to be an accident.

Time: 14:30:41 Date: Tue Mar 17 1998 Host... The thing is, if you wanted to murder an MIT student, could you think of much better cover? I suspect the CPs may be investigating this for a while...

Time: 14:33:20 Date: Tue Mar 17 1998 Host... Even the worst stories I've heard about the Church Of Scientology don't generally include bumping people off. It's possible they've gotten less scrupulous, though.

Time: 00:54:34 Date: Thu Mar 19 1998 Host... Whee, Scientology flamewar on mit bulletin board

When the denizens of a popular anti-Scientology newsgroup caught wind of Philip's suicide, a frenzy of online speculation ensued about the church's possible involvement. Soon after, Marie Gale logged on from the Media Lab and implied that his death might be related to an interview he'd given to a Boston Herald reporter for a story criticizing Scientology. "I can only assume that there was some connection between this newsgroup (or the individuals on it) and that reporter contacting him," wrote Marie. "The interview was upsetting to him. That was the last time I talked to my son."

Despite her scolding, a flame war erupted on the newsgroup. Some writers wondered, among other things, if Philip's early immersion in Scientology — and its rabid opposition to psychiatry — might have kept him from seeking help that could have saved his life. Marie adamantly rejects that notion. "If Philip was listening to his upbringing, he wouldn't have been doing drugs, right?" she said. "He made his own decision. He had decided that the moral code of Scientology doesn't apply to him....That's evidenced by the way he was living his life. So his decision to see a psychiatrist or not was purely his own."

Cult experts and some ex-Scientologists believe otherwise. The church, they said, insidiously plants the idea in adherents' minds that if they ever leave, something bad will happen to them — such as suicide.

Steven Hassan, a cult exit counselor, described Scientology as a "mind-control cult" and argued that Philip, like other members past and present, was "systematically indoctrinated with phobias of the mental health system."

In any event, Philip's emotional problems closely paralleled those of many gifted college students who take their own lives.

Suicide expert Ralph L.V. Rickgarn cites a number of factors linked to suicides of smart young people: the death of a father, mobility and rootlessness, a difficult or failed romance, loss of a confidant, and — most strikingly — decreasing social involvement and lower levels of tolerance for others. Another problem, notes Rickgarn in the book Perspectives on College Student Suicide, is an "understanding of adult and world situations but an impotence to effect change." This, he says, contributes to feelings of powerlessness and frustration that can help trigger suicidal behavior. And of course, heavy use of alcohol and drugs can lower an individual's natural inhibitions about suicide. But Philip himself provided the deepest insight into why he took his own life in a handwritten suicide note found at his apartment:

"Presumably I have jumped from a tall building. Yes, it is odd. To tell you why would be to tell you my mind! I cannot do this. I am not crazy, albeit driven to suicide. "It is not about any single event, or person. It is about stubborn sadness, and a detached view of the world. I see my life — so much dreary, mundane, wasted time wishing upon unattainable goals — and I feel little attachment to the future. But it is not so bad, relatively. I exaggerate. "In the end, it is that I am unwilling (sick of living) to live in mediocrity. And this is what I have chosen to do about it. "The saddest part is the inevitable guilt and sorrow I will force on my family and friends. But there is not much I can say. I am sorry. Try to understand that this is about me and my 'fuked up ideas.' It is not because I was raised poorly or not cared for enough. It just is. "Please give my $ to my family and my gizmos to people who will use them. — and no fuking suing! "I am scared of the fall. I am scared of the impact. But when it is through, it will be through. "take care world, Philip"

At the end of the note, he drew a smiley face and added: "And stay happy!"

Time: 12:21:46 Date: Sat Mar 14 1998 Host... Does anyone else have a fuck-you anger-reaction at this person? I've got this real sense of rage that he killed himself in a way that was seriously fucking traumatic for a bunch of completely innocent people.

Following a somber memorial service in the MIT chapel, Philip Gale was cremated at a Boston funeral home. His ashes were shipped to his mother, who planned to scatter them by a sapling on her Oregon ranch. His friends got some of his toys; Eric Hu got an amplifier, some CDs were distributed.

The tragedy past, the campus settled back into its normal rhythms, its thousands of undergrads gearing up for spring finals. But Philip lingered in the minds of those who'd known him best. Michael Tarkanian remembered him as "one in a million...just the most outstanding person I ever met." Eric Hu, who keeps a framed photo of Philip at a happy moment atop his desk, described him as the smartest person he ever knew. Susie Wu called him "a beacon of hope to all of us who wanted to live their lives the way they wanted to live their lives." To his ever-rational Scientologist mother, Philip "opened the door to computer concepts that I had no prayer of understanding."

One of those who was most affected by Philip's death was his old EarthLink pal, Brian Ladner.

Ladner, then working as a senior software engineer for another Internet firm in L.A., was devastated by the suicide. He found it hard to concentrate at work; he couldn't stop thinking about Philip. At the time, Ladner was also grappling with a particularly complicated project at work, trying to write a code that would allow a client's Web server to talk to a new Oracle database. "I had spent nearly a week trying everyone and everywhere on the 'Net, on the phone, on newsgroups, mailing lists, and Oracle themselves," Ladner said. No one could help him. But one night, he just decided to do it, somehow, and began coding. For the next 72 hours he worked without a break, determined to solve the problem. "I would talk to friends at night who began worrying about me working so much and not sleeping," he said. "And finally I admitted to them and to myself that I couldn't leave the building. If I did, I would have to walk home, and that walk would include thinking about Phil. And I just wasn't ready to handle that."

Finally, Ladner hit on the answer, which gave him profound insight into other technical challenges he faced. In fact, it prompted him to think in whole new ways about integrating computer systems with the Internet. Excited and happy, he yearned for somebody to discuss his triumph with. But almost no one, he knew, had the brains to understand what he'd done; even fewer would care. It was at that moment, he said, that he truly understood what it must have been like to be Philip Gale.

To many industry watchers, US Weekly remains an intriguing prospect for a sale. Mr. Wenner is perceived to be less emotionally attached to it than to Rolling Stone, which he founded 41 years ago as an outlet for his interest in music, and with which he is as personally and professionally involved as ever.

...And while he periodically floats the idea of selling his magazines, friends and former colleagues say, Mr. Wenner himself says he would like to hand over the business to his sons.

Still, he won't exclude the possibility of a sale. "You always think about it," he said.

And you always think about in such visible places!

[WSJ]

"(Us publisher) Jann Wenner supports Obama, Wenner media decided to follow the buzz around Palin before her speech, and now subscribers feel like a vote has been cast on their behalf," says another magazine editor. “It’s going to be tough to bounce back from this one. Especially if the advertisers get involved. If they get nervous, that can hurt all of us.”

It's easy to imagine the other shoe dropping in this publishing psychodrama: Wenner rival Kent Brownridge, newly installed at Us competitor and celebrity-servile OK!, makes a play for access to Palin, a (sigh) rising political star whose Republican convention speech drew 37 million TV viewers, nearly as many as tuned in to watch Barack Obama. If that happens — Presto! You've got MSNBC (Us) and Fox News (OK!) recreated among the celebrity weeklies.

(I'm pretty sure someone else floated the Brownridge/Palin scenario elsewhere yesterday, but can't find the post anymore.)

More likely, Us Weekly wises up and backs off the risky business of political coverage. One of MSNBC's sources characterized the Palin cover — which allegedly had nothing to do with Wenner — as nothing so much as a miscalculation:

“When Us went to print Monday night, it looked like the ticket was falling apart," says one magazine editor. “They went to print thinking Palin was dead in the water, and their mistake was thinking everyone who reads Us is a Democrat, when they’re not. Readers are loyal, but the base of a political party is more loyal."

Update: a friend at Us Weekly looked up the numbers. "We got about 1,000 cancellations over the issue, but remarkably, about 1,000 bonus subscriptions from supporters which I was not expecting. Who knew there was a motivated left? It also drove the third highest day ever on our website in terms of visits. Basically...the whole thing mirrors the McCain-Obama race. The two sides see everything in completely different terms. So the impact is a wash at the moment, which is shocking."

Its owner is Jann (pronounced Yann, like the first syllable of "Yanni") Wenner Jann Wenner not only gives money to Democrats, he has such a hard-on for some Democrats his other magazines have been known to run images of Democratic candidates with sporting actual hard-ons. (Fig. 1) Also, ever since he came out of the closet after in his mid forties, Jann Wenner has been a "known homosexual."

Us has a known toxic love-hate relationship with probable neoconservative Angelina Jolie. Despite her estrangement from her Republican father*, Angelina Jolie has persistently refused to tow the typical Hollywood liberal line, telling interviewers she hasn't yet decided which candidate will get her vote in the November election and allowing that she is fond of John McCain. Savvy observers will note, however, that Angelina Jolie's conservative leanings, aired most publicly in her February Washington Post guest op-ed piece supporting the McCain-backed troop surge, actually predate the conception of Bristol Palin's unborn child. Surely Us has been "keeping tabs" on Jolie's political sympathies, and quite possibly applied pressure in the case she threatens to break from the socialist liberal Hollywood homodoxy. Do you think it's a coincidence that their harshest attack on Angelina's fitness for motherhood coincided with the theretofore deadliest form of exactly the sort of insurgent attack the troop surge was engineered to combat? ("Yes" is actually the right answer to that question, just to be clear!) (Fig. 2)

Today's headlines speak for themselves.
COVER STORY: Sarah Palin: Political Opponent Recalls Being Ridiculed
EXCLUSIVE: Cindy McCain's Half Sister: I'm Voting For Barack Obama
EXCLUSIVE: Tim Gunn: "No Contest" — Michelle has better style than Cindy
Father Of Bristol Palin's Baby: I Don't Want Kids

But in fact, Us has been tacitly endorsing Democrat Barack Obama ever since it branded the Illinois senator Just Like Us in February. (No such pronouncement was made of John McCain, whose appearances in the magazine have thus far been limited primarily to his surprise show of support from The Hills star Heidi Montag, which the magazine immediately undermined by quoting Heidi's fiancee Spencer Pratt saying he "didn't think America cared" who Heidi supported.) Meanwhile, when Obama nakedly dodged a question posed by the magazine earlier this year, the magazine managed to "package" it (so to speak) in a way that seemed to paint the Democratic senator in a favorable light.

IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, though, the media crit mob is probably right that going all "Kos" on Palin — and seriously, how exactly does a Troopergate cover line sit next to "Halle Berry First Baby Photos!"?? — smacks of hubris and recklessness, if not another outright attempt to distance itself from the heartland and paint itself as the trashy supermarket tabloid of privileged thin Blue Staters who just like killing brain cells. Either way, it's kind of tacky. But um, then, we are the ones who just spent the last hour assessing the policy agenda of Us Weekly.

*As the magazine's glowing coverage of Jenna Bush's nuptials illustrates, 'Us Weekly' DOES have a soft spot for the daughters of well-known conservatives — so long as they write children's books about the importance of safe sex, promise Larry King they are probably not voting for McCain, and take their vows in ceremonies performed by radical socialist Obama-loving African pastors who are willing to talk shit on McCain's moral convictions. Put another way, 'Us' embraces conservatives' daughters who stick closely enough to their script of hardline Bolshevism couched in fuzzy Sesame Street racial tolerance and "Just Like Us!" dresses to adequately perpetuate the subtle policy indoctrination of young impressionable females/theater club males. Bristol Palin, we hope you are listening.

Fig. 1:

Fig. 2:

[Times]

Jann Wenner: Jim [Clark] and Marc [Andreessen] set up a demonstration. I'd never seen a hyperlink before. I don't think anybody had. And it was kind of drop-dead amazing. That you could click on this blue, highlighted, underlined word and then, bam, go to a whole new level of information was dazzling.

There's so much more. Including the day the founder of Earthlink tried to call information to get the number for the internet, when Microsoft tried to indemnify itself against Michael Kinsley's many, many lies, and Cindy Margolis claiming to have invented the beloved term "cyberbuddies." Also Elizabeth Spiers reveals that in addition to Spy Gawker is a total rip-off of Mark Twain.

How the Web Was Won [VF via Radar]