• So, what does Lindsay Lohan have to say about her disastrous Ungaro show in Paris? She just didn't have time to make a collection that didn't totally suck. And those pasties? She didn't even know about them! "I wasn't aware of the nipple tassels on the girls until they were walking out..." Don't worry, though, because the actress says she's "still learning," which gives us an iota of hope her next effort won't fall so flat. [People]
  
  
• A crazed "in love" fan waited in line five hours so that he could punch singer Leona Lewis at a book signing. She cried a bit, but has made a full recovery. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Neither side will admit it, but Fox Business and MSNBC are both working double time to make sure their respective morning hosts — rivals Don Imus and Joe Scarborough — beat one another at the ratings game. Scarborough's winning, but newcomer Imus could still come up from behind. [Page Six]
  
  
• Here's something none of us could have ever predicted. Britney Spears, who once lost custody of her two tots, has been named "best celebrity mom" in a completely scientific poll put out by a Christmas savings company, the most important source on Earth. [Mirror]
  
  
• Hillary Swank will stop at nothing to have children — someday. [Showbiz Spy]
  
  
• We're really sorry to be the ones to tell you this, but we're sure you've predicted it, so here it goes: Jon Gosselin vowed to continue a career in television. [NYDN]
  
  
• All wait staff should be on high alert: Miley Cyrus does not tip well. You've been warned. [Splash News]
  
  
• A former bodyguard claimed Howard K. Stern helped Anna Nicole Smith shoot valium. Because, at that point, why not? [NYDN]
  
  
• The late Stephen Gately's Boyzone bandmates will sleep in the chapel with his body the night before his funeral because he wasn't fond of being alone. [Mirror]
  
  
• Eminem must be quite the diva: he refused to work with Madonna. Chump. [NYDN]
  
  
• Because domestic life no longer appeals to viewers, the fifth season of Tori Spelling and family's reality show will be a cross-country trip. Next season? Ultimate fighting. [ET]
  
  
• Rather than simply pleading insanity, one of the men accused of extorting John Travolta after the actor's son's death claims that Travolta's lawyer offered him the $15 million as "hush money." [NYDN]
  
  
• Former Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein will appear at Baruch Barnard College today to discuss the trials and tribulations of Iranian... hair. [Page Six]
  
  
• It's officially official: Avril Lavigne has filed for divorce from Sum 41 singer Deryck Jason Whibley. Now perhaps we'll never have to hear those names again. [AP]
  
  
• Joe Francis recently boasted that if he saw rival Brody Jenner, Jenner was "dead." Then he ran into Brody and his friends and did nothing. What a cock. And a tease. [Page Six]

[Video by Gawker intern Bill Zilla.]

Look at Mr. Fancypants! Let's all laugh at him for wearing fancy pants! Did your good friend blind governor David Paterson pick out those pants? Joe Scarborough is a jerk.

Between Chris Matthews never ever letting Capehart finish a sentence to Dylan Ratigan playing footage of him eating a bagel in order to mock him (leading to an embarrassing call from Capehart's mom), everyone at MSNBC is always making fun of Jonathan Capehart.

Poor Capehart has said he still thinks of himself as "that geeky little kid from New Jersey who had a giant head and enormous glasses to match" so we can only assume that he is just used to all this bullying by the asshole-ish alpha males who make up almost the entirety of MSNBC's lineup.

But you don't have to take it, Jon! Stand up for yourself! Or just get off cable news, where "smart and quietly well-spoken" is not really welcome.

Ben Dreyfuss seems to have inherited certain political values from his father, the actor Richard Dreyfuss, and communicates them in his own spicy way. We approve!

Joe Scabrorough of MSNBC isn't going to address the "twat" thing directly, though you might discover certain conclusions are implied in his response.

Pro skateboarder Tony Hawk's kid got burned by the internet, literally.

The Project Runway deal hasn't quite made Marie Claire a household name yet, according to assistant editor Sarah Wexler.

Hmm, let's see: Microsoft Office... ALL CAPS document... It must be email time for ABC's Jake Tapper! (Remember to select the "Internet" option under File/Print, Jake.)

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

Costello has done a thing or two to tarnish his own reputation in his later years—his Sundance Channel chat show is pretty embarrassing. And that stupid hat! But the spectacle of seeing a Gingrichite ex-congressman who once represented the murderer of an abortion doctor playing "Mystery Dance" and actually crossing his legs mid-song has killed rock'n'roll again, for the thousandth time. It's like when we found out that George W. Bush likes Alejandro Escovedo.

Curbed founder — and former Lure "mayor" — Lockhart Steele became outraged at the pork dumplings lavished on his successor.

Noted student of pop culture Joe Scarborough, who moonlights as an MSNBC anchor, helpfully explained who this mysterious "John Hughes" is.

Air America's Ana Marie Cox, meanwhile, looked back in Hughes' work in a reproductive context. (In the "cloning" sense of reproduction.)

Conservative editorialist Tunku Varadarajan declared it was time to start sipping on G&Ts.

VentureBeat's Paul Boutin finally escaped the office.

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

Business Insider's Dan Frommer asked the smartest follow-up question about TechCrunch and Twitter.

Web entrepreneur Jeff Atwood isn't saying people should spit in Mike Arrington's face for publishing internal Twitter documents, just that the TechCrunch publisher deserves to have people spit in his face. Is this what the high road looks like?

The New York Times' Patrick LaForge, meanwhile, wondered if Arrington might be confined to his home by the authorities. Actually, it was the authorities who forced him to leave his house.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, meanwhile, discovered Paul McCartney playing outside the Ed Sullivan Theater and spent at least an hour livetweeting the performance (almost like a real broadcast journalist!).

Berkeley food mecca Chez Panisse joined Twitter, in a way that maximized the glory of France. Naturally.

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

• Jeff Goldblum and Harrison Ford are not dead, despite the plethora of rumors that have been floating around on the internet that they were both casualties of The Week America Died. [Daily News]
  
  
• Joe Scarborough was scheduled to be a guest this Sunday on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, but had to cancel because David Gregory cried like a little schoolgirl because he wanted Scarborough on Meet the Press or something. [Page Six]
  
  
• Chris Brown has been ordered by the courts to stay at least 50 yards away from Rihanna, but Rihanna and Chris both want the order dropped, probably so they can bone. [Daily News]
  
  
• The newly single Kate Gosselin wore a bikini in her front yard with the paparazzi around to make Jon eat his freakin' heart out at what he's missing out on! [Daily News]
  
  
• Kim Kardashian says she has a huge girl crush on Megan Fox, the deformed-thumbed shunner of flower-bearing British children. If I was my boy Reggie Bush, I'd do everything possible to stage an "accidental" run-in between Kim and Megan very soon. [Sun]
  
  
• Celebrities around the world did what celebrities around the world do when one of their own dies—They Twittered about it endlessly. [Mirror]
  
  
• Ashlee Simpson is stepping out around New York wearing black leather from head to toe, trying to look all hot for her boy Pete. [Sun]
  
  
• Kanye West is joining the lineup at a music festival in Britain and fireworks are sure to fly because Oasis is playing their too and Kanye and Noel Gallagher, both epic pricks, hate each other. [Mirror]
  
  
• Leonardo DiCaprio's ex, Bar Refaeli, is the new face of Garnier Fructis products, which she claims to have been using personally for years. For some reason we doubt that. [Just Jared]

  Pic via Daily News

Scarborough, appearing with GOP strategist Mike Murphy in a roundtable discussion with host David Gregory, said, "I suspect that Cairo speech really scared the Grand Ayatollahs...If they were going to fix an election, this was the time to fix it."

Now, even the most hardcore Obama supporter would be hard-pressed to credit a single speech by the President with triggering a revolution in a Middle Eastern country, but Scarborough's theory that his words at Cairo University may have freaked out Iran's string-pullers to the point where they became too aggressive in their election-fixing, thus sparking a revolution by outraged citizens, does have a ring of plausibility to it.

And this sort of intellectual honesty is one of the reasons to like Joe Scarborough.

Video via Media Matters

Scarborough mentioned that of the "hundreds" of shows he's appeared on, Stewart is by far the angriest host he's ever met. He's just so angry dangit! Joe thinks he suffers from the ole Napoleonic Complex or something. He's a comedian, he's rich, he's successful, so why isn't Jon Stewart just smiling like a coked-out circus clown all the time? Joe can't seem to wrap his brain around why he's so angry!

Now, we actually like Scarborough a bit and think he's one of the most intellectually honest conservative talking heads (Then again the competition in that regard isn't really that stiff!), but we love Jon Stewart, so we're really looking forward to seeing Stewart respond to this and we will laugh, laugh, laugh when he makes Joe look like a Herculean idiot on his show. Sorry Joe, we have our allegiances and we're sticking to them.

The Scarborough interview, by Johnnie L. Roberts was a "web exclusive." It was posted to Newsweek's web site on Friday afternoon with Roberts' introduction leading with the newsiest bit of the interview: Scarborough's first comments about serving as the defense attorney for Michael Griffin, the anti-abortion zealot who murdered Dr. David Gunn in 1993, and whether that had affected his coverage of the death of Dr. George Tiller. Here's the original introduction:

In the wake of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor shot dead in front of his church on May 31, a Village Voice writer had set the blogosphere abuzz about Joe Scarborough. Why had Scarborough's morning news show, "Morning Joe," been silent on the sensational murder story? Was it because Scarborough, as a young lawyer in Pensacola, Florida, had helped defend one of the nation's first murderers of an abortion doctor 16 years ago?

"We covered it as a news story, Scarborough told NEWSWEEK during an interview about his new book, "The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise." Scarborough says he condemns the Tiller murder, and has since talked about his involvement in the 1993 Florida case on his show. "I'm an attorney," he says. "I represented clients. I did it as a favor to the family. The goal was to stop this young man from trying to defend himself."

Purchasers of his book won't read about this time in Scarborough's past, though he does advise conservatives to stop demanding that Washington become entangled in "gay marriage debates and ob-gyn issues." The morning news anchor spoke to NEWSWEEK's Johnnie L. Roberts about his book, Rush Limbaugh and how conservatives lost their way.

That went up Friday afternoon; by Friday night it was gone, replaced with an anodyne introduction that didn't mention Griffin or Tiller. Roberts' exchange with Scarborough about Griffin was still in the interview, but moved down into the body of the Q-and-A. And it no longer contained a reference to the criticism that Morning Joe gave short shrift to the Tiller murder or that Scarborough's book—curiously, for a work that deals with the politics of abortion and extremism—omits his relationship with Griffin. And that troublesome link to the Village Voice's reporting on Scarborough's past was also gone. The time-stamp—"Updated: 3:02 p.m. ET Jun 5, 2009"—remained unchanged, giving readers no clue that the introduction had been completely rewritten.

Why? We asked Newsweek editor Meacham:

On Friday, a member of Scarborough's team (not Scarborough) reached out when the original story, which led with Griffin, was posted; when I read it, I thought it was better to include that material in the flow of the interview, where it is now on Newsweek.com.

Scarborough himself claims that he had no idea that a member of his "team" was putting pressure on Meacham, a frequent Morning Joe guest, to soften the magazine's coverage of him. "I've never talked to Jon about the article," he says via e-mail, "and never saw the version of the intro you're talking about." Did he ask someone to harass Meacham on his behalf? "No. Below my radar. Again, I didn't know it was even up for a few days. Had a big family get together and didn't spend my weekend inside online."

We don't believe you, Joe. Here's a screengrab of the original introduction:

That's right. The Village Voice's Wayne Barrett reminds us, by way of reference to a bracing attack profile he wrote last year about Scarborough, that in Florida in the early 1990s—before he was a congressman or a lovably irascible co-host for MSNBC's Morning Joe—Scarborough served as Griffin's lawyer in the Gunn case free of charge.

The history makes one wonder what Scarborough has to say about Tiller's murder, and if he disclosed his relationship with Griffin when he discussed it on the air. There are no transcripts of Morning Joe available, so we don't really know. But Google turns up no statements from Scarborough that we can find. And the Morning Joe web site features 40 clips from the show going back to May 29, none of which, as far as we can tell (we didn't watch them all), deal with Tiller.

The only discussion of Tiller on Morning Joe that an MSNBC spokeswoman could confirm was a news update read by Mika Brzezinski on Monday's broadcast. She couldn't provide specific quotes, or say whether Scarborough talked about the case or disclosed his previous advocacy for an abortion provider's killer. An e-mail to Scarborough wasn't immediately returned.

Scarborough describes himself as a "family friend" of the Griffins. He was a civil attorney, and told the Voice that he initially represented Griffin only while the accused man searched for a qualified criminal attorney. After Griffin's arrest, there was some confusion about who would represent him. At one point in June 1993, Griffin demanded that his court-appointed attorney be taken off the case and replaced with Scarborough. In the end, criminal defense attorney Bob Kerrigan took the case, but Scarborough represented Griffin from March to June of that year. Scarborough told the Voice last year that it was absurd to think that a judge would allow him, with limited criminal defense experience, to sit on a potential death-penalty case. He was just a caretaker attorney, doing a favor for a family friend. In press coverage from the time, he was quoted explaining his client's legal theory behind subpoenaing as-yet-unborn children as material witnesses in his case:

Griffin family atty. Joe Scarborough said Griffin's attempt to delay the trial for unborn witnesses "may have been an attempt to set the stage for a defense argument that the doctor's death was necessary to prevent what he considered a greater evil— abortion."

But Griffin himself, in two handwritten letters to the Voice, told a different story, saying Scarborough was eager to stay involved in his defense but was barred by the judge:

Griffin, who is doing a life sentence, sent two handwritten letters in response to Voice inquiries, maintaining that Scarborough tried to stay on the trial team. He says that Kerrigan and Scarborough brought motion papers to him, which he signed, that would have kept Scarborough on as co-counsel. He maintains that "the judge rejected it" at an informal meeting outside the courtroom. According to Griffin, Joe told him "several times" that he would represent him at trial and that he "had three friends still in law school who would help him," adding: "I have an exact memory on this point."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The next year, Scarborough won a congressional seat with the help of $15,210 from the National Right to Life Committee.

Every criminal defendant needs a lawyer, no matter how loathsome. So Scarborough's representation of Griffin, whether it was fleeting or purposeful, is no shame. But given the fact that Scarborough has always been fiercely pro-life, one wonders whether he was motivated by a concern for the rights of the accused or by ideological kinship.

MSNBC's Morning Joe had the disgraced former New York governor on this morning to talk tough about all those Wall Street scoundrels and tell us how he'd be dragging them all to the Tombs by their starched collars right now if only he hadn't banged that hooker. But Spitzer dropped his Top Cop pose when Scarborough brought up Rattner, the extremely well-connected former New York Times Reporter and friend of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. whose former investment firm is under investigation by New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo for paying off middlemen in order to get state pension money.

"Every time I say Steve Rattner's name and ask why he's still working in any capacity while this investigation is going on, everybody looks down around the table," Scarborough told Spitzer. "Everybody's scared of him. And why is it that it looks like he and his firm was involved in a scheme that you would have busted up... and it seems like they're going after everybody but Steve Rattner?"

Instead of tapping into his legendary righteous indignation when it comes to Wall Street excess, Spitzer told an incredulous Scarborough that Rattner is "a very nice" and "extremely smart guy who appears to be doing a very good job" and who most certainly did not commit an "illegal abuse of power."

Of course not! How could the vice chair of Spitzer's 48th birthday party [pdf] be guilty of such shenanigans? (Dick Grasso should have kicked in). No, Joe, no one will go after Rattner. He knows everybody.

Cramer, the relentlessly incorrect host of CNBC's Mad Money, discussed his ongoing war of words with Stewart this morning on sister NBC shows Today (on the flagship network) and Morning Joe (on MSNBC). Even he seemed to think the feud was being inflated beyond all reason. "I think you ought to lighten up," he told Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough as Scarborough ranted against the Daily Show.

Stewart apparently feels likewise. So while he made fun of some of Cramer's statements from the NBC morning-show tour on the Daily Show tonight, as promised, he also made light of the clash itself. As it turned out, those were the show's funniest moments (see latter half of the clip above).

Why is it so much fun to watch these two entertainers fight? Cramer's been taken down a peg before, after all. There are plenty of serious examinations of the state of the economy out there. But that's all so depressing, especially when you realize there will be no Jon Stewart-supplied punchline at the end.

Details are scarce, but we know the mugger approached Mika outside her hotel and asked for $20, as muggers usually do, but Mika only had $6, so she gave him the six and he left. Mika, this was not a mugging. This was an over-aggressive beggar.

Muggers usually don't ask for a set dollar amount, first, and second, a proper mugging involves weaponry and maybe a blow to the head or two.

Joe Scarborough came to her rescue, of course, and blasted the mayor, Adrian Fenty, for allowing a mildly stressful incident to happen to a pretty white television personality, in his city. Fenty, to the best of our knowlegdge, neglected to try to explain to either of them what an actual "mugging" usually entails.

Setting aside his tactical blunders, McCain heads a party deeply divided on the campaign's central issue, the economy. If the showdown between Bush and Congressional Republicans over the Wall Street bailout didn't illustrate the fissure clearly enough, the public loss of faith by populist conservatives O'Reilly and Scarborough should do the job nicely.

For all his problems, one can't escape the uneasy feeling that McCain may very well sacrifice what remains of his dignity in a desperate, last-ditch shot at victory-via-dirty tricks. It almost certainly wouldn't work. But an October Surprise — well beyond the attempt to brand Obama a Bill Ayers-loving terrorist — would cause real pain in a nation that has already had more than enough this month. And that, my friends, would suck!