To be sure there's plenty of competition for that title, but we think Germany's Prince Marcus von Anhalt (above) has a pretty clear shot at it. Born Marcus Eberhardt in 1969, he started out as a butcher, went into the brothel business, did some time for tax evasion and human trafficking, then bought himself a title (from Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband): Prinz von Anhalt, Herzog zu Sachsen und Westfalen, Graf von Askanien. Now the SOB's latest stunt is driving around in this Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe covered in a Louis Vuitton multicolored monogram print.

Last year lobster boy started the Royal Race - he likes to think he's royalty - a sort of Gumball 3000-style exotic auto rally for equally egregious eurotrash. He claims to be a millionaire "in the three digit range", says he owns 20 brothels and 26 cars, has a portfolio of luxury real estate in Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Germany, Switzerland, Dubai and Monaco, and to claims to have a retinue of 12 bodyguards and 25 servants. Can the International Criminal Court please indict this douchebag for crimes against taste, nature and the fairer sex?

Here's what you DO need:

• An unquenchable desire for fame: Obviously. It is what drives all fameballs.
• Shamelessness: Your desire for fame must be greater than that voice in your head screaming, "Stop; you look like an idiot."
• A lack of redeeming talents: This isn't the Nobel Prize, okay? If you're a shameless fame whore but you also, say, cured cancer, one could argue that your talent is being properly appreciated. This will not do.
• An abundance of non-redeeming talents: These may include, but are not limited to: oversharing, self-regard, delusions of grandeur, superficial physical attractiveness, a ridiculous distinctive personal fashion trademark, the ability to talk about oneself without end, conspicuously false modesty, and sluttiness and/or man-whorishness.

• Growing a conscience: It can happen to the worst of them. Instant death.
• A desire for meta-fameballdom rather than actual fameballdom: This is the key mistake that people make when they come directly to us, begging for coverage. We're talking to you, lady who keeps sending us emails billing herself as "The next Julia Allison." You see, while we do grow and cultivate fameballs, it's absolutely essential that those fameballs are not seeking our approval; they must dream of stardom (even micro-stardom) in the outside world, not simply with a knowing wink on Gawker. A fameball's famelust must be their undoing, not their doing. If you're deserving, we'll find you.
• Being a one-trick pony: Lots of people do embarrassing fameball-like things from time to time. But do they have the staying power to keep plumbing ever-greater depths of self-abasement? Only the greatest do.

Best:

9. Boston Globe reporter tells married source "Don't shave" — This was almost a non-scandal, just a stale affair that happened in Miami the year before. But the emails! "I haven't shaven since I left Miami. Thought you would like that image :)"

8. Jared Paul Stern's wife cheats, there are pictures — At first we couldn't believe the former Page Six gossip writer's wife would have sex with a random business partner, but then there were photos. As if getting fired from the Post amid nasty extortion allegations wasn't sad enough on husband Stern. Tragic.

7. "Steve Ratner has paid my wife $500,000.00 to leave me." — The head of private equity at Credit Suisse was driven from his job by a man whose wife he slept with. The guy spammed a tawdry tale of humiliation into newspaper comments sections. A sympathetic feature in the Times only deepened the humiliation. The internet is to blame, as always.

6. Lara Logan, CBS News' Iraq-based homewrecker — She was a correspondent in Iraq, slept with a contractor named Joe Burkett (and this other guy, who works for CNN!) and then got pregnant. The first guy's wife was not happy. There was something about sexism and double standards but, really, it was just all awful and every involved came out looking pretty terrible, Logan very much included.

5. The "redneck" father of Bristol Palin's baby — Tobacco-chewing, self-described redneck Levi Johnston, 18, knocked up Sarah Palin's daughter right before Palin was named John McCain's running mate. His mere existence was a scandal to the coastal elites, who looked at him and were all "eww," especially during the convention. He still hasn't married Bristol like he promised!

4. Max Mosley's Nazi- or prison-themed S&M orgy tape — News of the World had five hours of video in which a British racing boss is disciplined by German-speaking women in some kind of make-believe prison-camp. Mosley denied it was a Nazi thing and won a suit against the tabloid for invasion of privacy. When will America learn to manufacture a proper, quality sex scandal with elaborate bondage and tons of video?

3. Madonna and A-Rod — They claim not to have slept together while Alex Rodriguez was married, but Madonna was, at the very least, emotionally close enough to the Yankees slugger to be named an "other woman" in his wife's divorce proceeding. The couple also felt the ned to meet at a New York restaurant in secret. Then, after the divorce, they flew all over the world together.

Maybe they really do just study Kaballah and stare at each other, but isn't Madonna getting kind of old for these games? Wait, sorry, that was sexist.

2. John Edwards cheats on his cancer-stricken wife, lies about it — Sure, other politicians have cheated on their sick wives and gone on to distinguished careers, but Edwards lied to the press, ran from National Enquirer reporters and hid in a bathroom, delayed any explanation for weeks and then issued a fishy, limited admission that, yes, he did screw former campaign videographer Rielle Hunter. But that love child isn't his!

No one's really convinced, and by delaying the inevitable Edwards became a political non-entity at the precise time his populist, anti-corporate message looked more prescient than ever.

1. Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his prostitute, Ashley Dupre, are busted — Many people enjoyed the comeuppance of Mr. Holy McSmartypants, the former Wall Street-busting state attorney general turned arrogant governor. The feds got him, for whoring.

One of Spitzer's hookers, Ashley Youmans (stage name Ashley Alexandra Dupre, hooker name "Kristen") had a MySpace account, had made video for Girls Gone Wild as a teenager, had a song on the internet, for sale and had made a music video. Everything was in place to explode her story.

Like Edwards. Spitzer, too, was ahead of the curve in calling out the rotting uselessness of then-respected American financial institutions . Oh well.

Worst:

• Miley Cyrus wears lipstick in Vanity Fair, let's panic: She's wearing only bedsheet at age 15! Sex! Aggggh! She's a terrible role model and probably a witch! No wait, that Jewish lesbian mystic hypnotized her and instilled devil sensuality into her! Actually, it turns out she's been doing silly sorta sexual poses with her cameraphone, on MySpace, for various boyfriends forever, and she quickly acquired a 20-year-old man, and then said she'd love to work with Annie Leibovitz again.
• John McCain maybe sexed a lobbyist, on a jet: The Times stuttered and stammered this accusation over months, and then couldn't bring itself to even make it. God. Like there were no other, more solid McCain scandals to go after?
• Sarah Palin cheated on her husband: Ya, that one really panned out decisively. It's actually pretty heartening that Katie Couric's old-fashioned journalism on old-fashioned topics is what made the difference. Not that sex isn't a relevant issue, but, come on: path of least resistance.
• Cindy McCain kisses another man!: They couldn't get this out before the election was over? At least then it might have drummed up some interest. Nothing has been heard about it since. Even if it pans out: Depressing.

Consider the man's history. Starting out as nothing more than a dude with a ridiculous hat, he worked his way up through the gossip muck to the top ranks of the New York Post. He had his own column called "Nightcrawler" for a time, and was a regular contributor to Page Six. He was living the life that the young man who first put on the stupid hat dreamed of living.

Then, of course, he tried to extort Burkle, and got publicly scandalized and tossed aside by the Post. He's quietly made his way back into the media with various projects, but nothing as high-profile since. And then last week some random guy decided to publicly release a (purported) tape of him having sex with JPS' wife. Damn.

People can bounce back from most scandals. In time, even the "Payola Six" affair—sensational though it was—would have receded into history. But JPS has never been able to bounce back, because his ongoing lawsuits and, now, alleged cuckolding cause the original damage to his reputation to keep getting rehashed.

So here's our gentle advice, JPS: the sympathy of the world has now, excruciatingly, returned to your side. Use it. Drop all of your various lawsuits against everyone involved in the Burkle mess—they'll ultimately do nothing but drain your bank account. Hold your head high, admit some wrongdoing in the past, and forge ahead. Disgrace is almost a foreign concept in the gossip world; schadenfreude does not run deep enough for people to say you deserved all of this. With an extended moment of grotesquely poor judgment and a run of very, very bad luck, most anyone in the New York media could be in your shoes right now. So get out there and make it, JPS—for all of us!

(Warning: I would say this story signifies Nothing, but it probably signifies Nothing-1!)

Once upon the early aughts I lived in Philadelphia with two other soon to-to-be bloggers and a sad young literary journal editor.* When we lived in Philadelphia we were gainfully employed but also bored, so we — well, chiefly Pressler, who had a "gossip" column in the local alternative newsweekly, but also the other three of us, who committed various acts of "journalism" — unconsciously went to work constructing our own memory palace of microcelebrities, proving that a microcelebrity economy can exist even in a city with a crippling five percent wage tax and a severe (SEVEEERE) case of "brain drain"! The key was simply to 1. Zero in on someone trying to get attention and 2. Write about them in such a way that captures/wryly acknowledges/satirizes the absurdity of their endeavor to get your attention. Among them were:

1. A party promoter who was sort of like our Julia Allison named Rachel Furman. Pressler liked to call her "Hotel heiress Rachel Furman" but she eventually started a business not promoting parties but just showing up to them and the business, and eventually she, were called "Rachel Inc."
2. Restaurateur Stephen Starr, who owned all the restaurants in town and dated a much younger woman named January, and another restaurateur Neil Stein, who was a huge cokehead and pillhead and owned nothing but he used to write Pressler from prison, where he had to go on charges of tax evasion and being a big pillhead I think. I believe we pretended they had a "feud" although Neil Stein was too much of a drug addict to really feud with people and Stephen Starr's actual feud was with Jeffrey Chodorow, but Chodorow did not live in Philadelphia so we acted like he did not exist, even though he was actually important.
3. A crew of ambitious publicists who traveled in packs, stole one anothers' clients and marketed themselves by dressing like Julia Allison and sending out Christmas cards with pictures of themselves in Sex & The City poses. At the time we thought they were kind of pathetically trashy but at that time The Hills did not exist, much less The Real Housewives of New York. They all feuded all the time! Then we found out one of them was bisexual and had an "open relationship" with her husband and that was fun too.
4. And speaking of Christmas cards: a prodigiously obnoxious "blueberry heir" named Anthony DiMeo who became a sort of John Fitzgerald Page-cum-Tucker Max sort of character for us. Girls in his apartment building emailed us constantly to attest to his terrible woeful obnoxiousness. Pressler scanned his Christmas card for one of her columns, and DiMeo sued her. Fun times!
5. Gervase. Of Survivor I fame. (Obviously!)
6. A state senator named Vince Fumo who supposedly bought fake tits for his bartender girlfriend and had really amazing hair transplants.
7. An assortment of deejays, because hipsters were very important back then, the most — oh who am I kidding with the "most" -0 notable of whom was Diplo.*

See, it was not too unlike Gawker! Except we sort of hated Gawker in those days, because we read it and assumed the people it covered were somehow less pathetic and more special than the people we covered, which was actually not true. (Also this guy named A.J. who was from Philly but living the awesome New York used to try and get us to move because Philly was so pathetic.) But somehow Jessica convinced everyone that Philadelphia was the "Sixth Borough" and around that time Gawker even noticed us! Then somehow Doree and I ended up working here and Jessica meanwhile got a job working with former Gawker editor Jessica Coen at New York's Daily Intel. And A.J. — following a stint back in Philadelphia! — is also working for Gawker Media. And last I heard:

1. Rachel Furman had some sort of existential crisis wherein she went off the internet and drove cross country to get a nose job.
2. Stephen Starr owns a bunch of restaurants in New York now and he no longer returns our flirtatious text messages.
3. One of those publicist girls told everyone she was a millionaire.
4. Some guys made the TV show we always wished we had made about the whole scene but, who are we kidding, we don't know how to do that.
5. Diplo stopped dating M.I.A. and is still nowhere near as annoying as any of the Misshapes!
6. Vince Fumo was charged in a 139-count, 267-page corruption indictment. (I guess we could have paid attention to that!)
7. Anthony DiMeo sued Tucker Max.***

Anyway, today the same shit keeps happening with a whole new cast of new people! Every time we sit down to devote ourselves to trying to write something a little more pointful, it's…Mary Rambin! Raffaelo Follieri! Tao Lin! Jared Paul St…ill?! See, but it never lets up! Eventually "our Gessen" — he lives here now too! — wrote a highly thoughtful think piece on the subject for the Times Magazine. Perhaps we might direct you to the line:

This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well.

And trust us, "out there" does not only mean New York. It is like Staphylococcus Aureus…it's actually everywhere, but it's not going to emerge as the bombastic plague of pointlessness until you start cultivating it in the ego-advancing agar of your wholly unwarranted attention!! (It's the microbiology of microcelebrity, doncha know!) (I know! It doesn't ever stop though.) And to that end I will leave you with two quotes from a seventeenth century philosopher I learned about from this N+1 guy:

If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.

It's universal! But… this

To establish oneself in the world, one has to do all one can to appear established.

So what are you waiting for? Go forth and establish! Perhaps I can interest you in Tumbling your endeavors? We'll be most gracious followers.

*One was former Gawker editor Doree Shafrir, another was New York magazine Daily Intel blogger Jessica Pressler, and the literary journal editor — "our Gessen," as Doree calls him fondly — was a guy named Matt "Mattathias" Schwartz. (Everyone was intimidated/repelled by Schwartz's highminded seriousness at first! But I ended up dating him and he turned out to be high-mindedly serious in a good way.
**Philadelphia deejays have a long history of local prominence: we often found ourselves writing about the antics of this one, who is now 67 years old.
***Though alas, Tucker Max won the great douche-off.

Bonfire of Inanities [Eye Weekly]

Full set: Jossip (NSFW)

The facts of the matter: there is maybe an arrest warrant out for JPS's wife Ruth Gutman, "on charges of a little identity theft, computer trespassing, and fraud." All presumably based on a criminal complaint filed by Deane Benbenek. He says they started a business together in 2007, selling hand cleaner. According to Benbenek, Gutman filed papers with the state naming her sole proprietor, and then gave Benbenek forged papers calling them co-owners.

Also according to Benbenek, in January of 2007, they had an affair. Benbenek says he videotaped them doing it. Jossip has seen... stills? Or something? They say: "And he offered us the photo evidence to prove it. By all accounts, it looks legit." Huh. Then post it! [Update: They did!]

The only documentation available for your perusal so far is the restraining order Gutman filed against Benbenek. But! Here's some random Internet detritus!

Ruth currently sells "Red Bear Hand Cleaner." A Whois search says she registered the domain in January of 2007. Benbenek's "Bear Paw Hand Cleaner" can be found, oddly, at Glennbenbenek.com, registered June of 2007 by Deane, and at bearpawhandcleanrer.com, registered by Deane last March.

So Jossip's report is already confused—it looks like Ruth (and Deane) founded Red Bear together back in 2007. And then, when the partnership went sour, Ruth didn't so much "steal the formula" as Deane took it with him to Bear Paw. Deane's MySpace confirms!

I started a company called Red Bear Hand Cleaner not that long ago(I have been making hand cleaner for 15 years) but got screwed by the most evil partner in the world. But I am back and better than ever. Thanks RG.

Oh, and according to Deane's MySpace page, he himself is married. With "two little ones!" So he really means business with this "sending proof of an affair to blogs" stuff. Here's his last blog entry:

Of course, none of this explains why he is only friends with Tom and someone named Jason.

Here's a photo of Ruth and Deane together, in better times:

Jared Paul Stern denies everything and calls Deane a "stalker." We withhold judgment on all of this until we see proof of something.

Update!!! Photos. Whee!

Stern promises to appeal the ruling, first off. Which will be fun. And Stern is still suing his former employers at the New York Post! In Florida. Because Stern's lawyer Larry Klayman is a conservative political activist who keeps suing the Clintons over and over again, so now he's only only allowed to argue cases in Florida, Pennsylvania, and D.C.. Maybe some sun will do Stern good?

And hey, Stern should still look on the bright side. His life may be in shambles, but at least he's not one of the two former Page Six contributors currently in jail for statutory rape or theft. He's not even reduced to writing for Gawker! (Anymore.)

"But—spoiler warning—things don't turn out so well for him. According to the source, in the fictionalized version the gossip is killed when his car is wired with a bomb." [Gatecrasher]

Reached for comment, Stern gave us some plot rumors of his own: "I hear that Burkle is being played by John Goodman. He goes to jail in the end—just like he will in real life—becomes the sweetheart of Cellblock C and finally gets to empathize with all those teenagers who found themselves face-down in the back of [his private jet] 'Air Force Two.'"

Buckley was "anti-fashion in the original sense of the term," says designer and style expert Alan Flusser, author of "Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion." "He came from an era and background where if you looked like you spent too much time thinking about clothes, then everything else was suspect. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those Shetland sweaters actually had holes in them." At social functions, men of Buckley's era and class were content to serve merely as backdrops for their wives. By contrast, Buckley's wife Pat, who died last year, was almost a caricature, one of William Hamilton's New Yorker cartoon WASPs come to life.

In the end, beyond a general notion of the preppy staples that have been replicated by everyone from Ralph Lauren to the latest designer-of-the-hour since Buckley's Millbrook days, it's hard to remember exactly what he wore during his many years in the public eye. Which was precisely the point.

Buckley was “anti-fashion in the original sense of the term,” says designer and style expert Alan Flusser, author of “Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion.” “He came from an era and background where if you looked like you spent too much time thinking about clothes, then everything else was suspect….I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those Shetland sweaters actually had holes in them.” At social functions, men of Buckley’s era and class were content to serve merely as backdrops for their wives. By contrast, Buckley’s wife Pat, who died last year, was almost a caricature, one of William Hamilton’s New Yorker cartoon WASPs come to life.
In the end, beyond a general notion of the preppy staples that have been replicated by everyone from Ralph Lauren to the latest designer-of-the-hour since Buckley’s Millbrook days, it’s hard to remember exactly what he wore during his many years in the public eye. Which was precisely the point.

Times: A Style Salute | William F. Buckley Jr.

We're sure Matt Drudge, Time Inc. guy Jim Kelly, the TV critic of the Washington Post, and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin really enjoyed watching Laurel praise her staff. Uh oh! Here comes novelist and former Page Sixer Ian Spiegelman!
Eeek! And Portfolio blogger Jeff Bercovici!
Uh oh, did someone say former Page Sixer and Ron Burkle-suer Jared Paul Stern? (It's like Candyman—say his name and here he comes!) We sure wish we knew!

And yet... we never did find out who the hell this "Hunter" was that Laurel mentioned; the Mediabistro item was written by someone called "Noah." Perhaps, as it was lower-cased in Laurel's praise email, she was referring to her staffers as "hunters"—they hunt and gather information and bring it back to the Mediacave! It sounds fun there, maybe we will go apply for jobs.

As of now, Col Allan & Co. seem to be betting yes. They've lined up an interesting masthead for the launch, most of whom have a fashion and/or women's magazine background. Helming the ship is former Harper's Bazaar executive editor Margi Conklin, and the Post has also snagged several refugees from Jane: Former Jane executive editor Stephanie Trong is lined up to have the same title at P6M (hopefully this will mean Jeff Johnson will write for them!), former special projects editor/entertainment Shelly Ridenour will be features editor, and former market/fashion news editor Kelly Culp has signed on as fashion editor. Radar assistant editor Rachel Syme will be entertainment editor.

Word is also that they've already managed to land several high-profile fashiony advertisers for the first issue, including Marc Jacobs and Manolo Blahnik.

We're wondering why they decided to call it Page Six The Magazine, if it really has very little to do with Page Six and none of the P6 staffers are even involved (including overlord Richard Johnson). Presumably, the Post felt that the power of the Page Six brand, and awareness of the first two issues, was strong enough that it didn't matter if the content of the magazine was totally different.

So will it work? They're certainly not skimping on the talent, and we also hear that they are paying freelancers quite well. But it's a crowded field they're entering, and doing it as a weekly—as opposed to the monthly-ish T—will be challenging, to say the least. We're envisioning a sort of Sunday Styles-meets-New York vibe, but with shorter paragraphs. Presumably they're going for the same fashion-media-power nexus that devours Page Six (and the Styles section), but that doesn't typically buy the Sunday Post. Will this make the Post a must-read on Sundays? Maybe. Will it make Times-fellas Trip Gabriel and Stefano Tonchi sit up from their piles of cash and take notice? Slightly less maybe but still maybe. One thing we're sure of: It'll provide gainful employment for former Jane staffers. In that, at least, everyone wins!

Earlier: Jared Paul Stern Poorest He's Ever Been After Six-Figure Book Advance

Dunn About Done at Snooze? [JPS]