Oooooh, "suffered"?? "Lookalike" son? Ouch!

Who is Joanna Coles? Well, for starters she is an actual real journalist, and was a longtime New York bureau chief for the Guardian in London before she got into fashion magazines, which is one of the reasons she is considered an "outsider" by fashion people. She is an outsider!

Man, would it kill the fashion community to be kind to its earnest newcomers? Yes! Seriously, guys! Well, in defense of the shit-talkers there is nothing more irritating than the British person who comes to New York and succeeds by embodying all the irritating traits for which British people are always mocking Americans. For instance, in the interview today, she admitted that she had been keeping a diary since she was seven. Who does that? Navelgazing Americans! She admitted in another interview that she really admired marathon runners and that she was training for a half-marathon herself. Who does that? Pointlessly overachieving Americans! She famously got her job by running after Hearst president Cathy Black's JFK-bound limo and jumping into it for an hourlong pitch session and she is proud of that fact. Who does that? You know, I bet the intern who took herself seriously enough to show up for work after her poopfest would do that. Amanda from The Paper would do that. I would never do any of these things and that my friends is your public service announcement for today.

She doesn't seem a lot like Nina Garcia! Yeah, she's pretty much the exact opposite of Nina Garcia, who is known for liking nice things, taking a lot of vacations, engaging in the odd extramarital dalliance, hanging out with the indulgent socialite likes of Tinsley Mortimer and Vogue editor Lauren Davis and never really giving a shit about the whole "having it all" dilemma that is one of the foremost obsessions of Joanna and her nanny advocating deputy Lucy Kaylin until she found herself pregnant at age 42. But Nina is famous/on famously good terms with all the luxury brand gatekeepers, and Joanna is an opportunist, so that's how that happened.

Should I work for her? Joanna's writers and editors mainly seem to love her. Part of this is because women's magazine employees have either been beaten down by the oppressive stupidity of the Bonnie Fuller model (Bonnie edited Cosmo, Glamour and Us) or the oppressive conspicuous consumerism of the Anna Wintour one, but it's also because she's a smart, genuinely good person who is neither fake nor insecure, and that is rare in the top spot at women's magazines! Just know that she is very intense, starting at the interview stage!

Enemies? Well, Como editor-in-chief and fellow Hearst editress Kate White can't love that she made a point of telling Fashion Week Daily:

We don't do Ten Ways to Have Sex with your Boyfriend Tonight.' We took the word "orgasm" off the cover. It's a much more knowing, much smarter approach.

But Elle mastheaders are probably Joanna's main enemies, because the two French-transplanted brands (which used to share an owner!) are basically the only two magazines still bothering to attempt to be simultaneously "smart" and "fashion-forward" and that can be death to the newsstand performance, as Joanna has learned! Elle has had a lot more luck, but they've had Project Runway and the distinction of having always been an actually good magazine. Marie Claire likes to point out how its readership has gotten wealthier*, and also that the Hearst building is about ninety million times nicer, but that would make a job there that much harder to leave.

*Ha ha, since I stopped having to buy it for Jezebel@

Related: Joanna Coles Has Huge Handwriting Frontal Lobe

In Over Her Dead Body, White's previous Weggins caper, the victim is the hilariously portrayed Mona Hodges, much-reviled editor of Buzz. Though White has never worked at a celeb rag, she says she is fascinated by that pressure-cooker world, where it's not much of a stretch to imagine that overworked underlings might want to bump off the boss.

And no, Mona Hodges was not modeled on Bonnie Fuller, she of the fearsome reputation who now edits Star.

So is it a coincidence that Mona's boss in Dead Body was named Tom Dicker, which sounds an awful lot like Fuller's boss, David Pecker? "Must have been a Freudian slip," White says with a smile.

Above that, her intimidatingly blond hair kept watch over the restaurant: A landscape of leisurely publishing types whose underlings would be at work late into the summer night. She was talking to some reporter who was recording her answer on a black iPod, about her altercation with Rosie. "It's just so hard to process," she said. "But, these days, it's par for the course. I mean, it's an emotional time." Nearby, HuffPo gal Rachel Sklar was just sitting down, her plunging neckline catching the eyes of not a few old men. She was waiting for Vanity Fair's David Friend.

Nearby a camera crew tailed Kate White, the author of a book that claims the dubious distinction as being the only one we know of that's derivative of a Reese Witherspoon movie. She clucked about, gathering her brood of old white blond ladies. But when the business end of a camera almost took her out, she swiftly booted the crew from the restaurant. The assembled broads made their way to a circular table, completely off limits to the few media members who had decided to stick around after it became apparent "Join Us For a Pre-Publishing Luncheon" meant "Watch Us Eat Lunch While You Wait Around Awkwardly." Kim Cattrall was at the table looking really really old. Scarily, Carolyn Kepcher was the most attractive woman at the table. Copies of Lethally Blond were perched on the sill.

Well, I thought. I'm kind of in publishing. If I can't eat with these bubbes at least I can sit at the bar and eat lunch. My, how wrong I was. Despite the bar being completely empty, each seat had an annoying placard that declared it reserved. And so, back I pushed open the glass doors, plunging into the sweltering heat and leaving behind a circle of old white ladies who are neither mysterious, lethal or blond.

"I had scheduled my gyno appointment for right after work and didn't have time to take a shower beforehand. So I ran home quickly to freshen up. I shed my clothes, grabbed a bottle of perfume, and spritzed my V zone generously before getting dressed again. When I arrived at the doctor's office, I put on the gown and got on the examining table. When my gynecologist lifted up the paper gown, I heard her chuckle quietly. I gave her a weird look, and she said, 'Fancy!' I figured she was just referring to my Brazilian wax, but when I got home, I realized I had mistaken my glitter body spray for perfume. My nether region was covered in multicolored sparkles!"

From the June 1996 issue of the FOAFTALE News, the Newsletter of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ooh baby!):

I heard a story that has all the markings of a legend. It was told by my aunt, a Maryland resident, who claimed to have heard it from her daughter, who lives near San Francisco and insisted that it actually happened to a "friend of a friend." It goes like this: A young woman returned from her annual visit to her gynecologist in a state of some humiliation. She almost tearfully recounted to her roommate (another woman, it seems) that when the doctor viewed her in the awful position women must achieve on the examining table, he exclaimed, "Fancy!! Faaannnnncyyy!!" She reported she was too embarrassed to ask what inspired the outburst and just skulked away after the exam. Her roommate asked if he'd ever acted weird like that before and was assured that he certainly hadn't — he was the soul of discretion. She next asked her distraught friend if she had done anything different in preparation for her exam. "No, not at all. Well, I did borrow some of your feminine hygiene spray." She gestured to an aerosol can on the dresser. "That's not feminine spray! It's glitter spray for my hair!" Fancy, alright.

Cosmo receives hundreds of submissions for Cosmo Confessions each month, and because we allow readers to remain anonymous in order to protect the innocent (and guilty!), these confessions aren't always easy to fact check.

FOAFTALE News, June 1996

Fuller, White's Cosmo predecessor, saw her similar self-help tome come out in paperback in January, retaining its original, ridiculous hardcover title: The Joys of Much Too Much: Go for the Big Life—The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted (Even If You're Afraid You Don't Have What It Takes). That book has sold a mere 338 copies, according to Nielsen Bookscan which, duh, only tracks 70-80% of outlets but still! Ouch, the pain of much too little. Hey, that's way shorter! —Emily

White's Thighs Fail To Set Fires [Radar]

• The Times takes a look at prospective Tribune buyers Eli Broad and Ron Burkle. The latter is "best known for his friendship with Stephen Bing, the film producer who fathered a child with both the actress Elizabeth Hurley and Kirk Kerkorian's former wife, Lisa." [NYT]
  
• Doubledown Media thinks there's money to be made in magazines tailored to rich folk. [NYP]
  
• It's time for TMZ TV! Insert your own Lloyd Grove joke here. Also your angry ruminations on how the world just keeps getting stupider. [AP]
  
• Not willing to be left out, the WSJ is looking for a consulting team to tell it which employees to fire. [WWD]

• Also in WWD (which is subscriber-only today), Cosmo EIC Kate White's mystery series"featuring crime-fighting magazine writer Bailey Weggins have been optioned by Lifetime to become a possible television series." Yep. [WWD]
  
• The people who brought you KaZaA and Skype want to give you a new way to watch Ugly Betty on your PC. [WSJ]
  
• Live mic incidents across the pond are just as entertaining as the ones we have here. [Telegraph]
  
• After last year's Colbert kerffuffle, the White House Correspondents Association has decided to play it safe, by hiring a host who does a mean Dwight Eisenhower impression. [SF Examiner]

It's a mutual favor that we're doing for each other's readers. If it works out, maybe we'll joint-venture on a parenting magazine.

Cosmo Girl Seeks Men's Health Guy [AdAge]

I don't want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls.

Ian Spiegelman: Try missionary once in awhile; you might be surprised.

Chuck Klosterman: Comparing Dee Dee Ramone to some punk from Ratt? You should be gnawed by rats, asshole.

Deborah Schoeneman: Up here in Bangor, gossip tends to revolve around lobstering and axe-murdering. Pick either.

Kate White: If it's right there in the title, someone's thighs better actually catch on fire by chapter three.

James Frey: Smoke crack.

J.T. Leroy: Exist.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Ah, go ahead and toss that fucker over Reichenbach Falls.

Don't kill Harry Potter, authors urge Rowling [Reuters]

[Photo: Getty Images]

Remember Omarosa from The Apprentice? She was considered the evil one, of course, the conniving bitch, but I met her when I did a segment on the first Apprentice and I found her intriguing. After the show was over, I invited her to my house for dinner. One of the things that struck me about her was that she really believed in her own sexiness. She wasn't waiting around for someone to tell her. And because of this, she could light up a room. My dog, a little Westie, leapt into her arms when she arrived and then sat in her lap for the rest of the night. I have never, ever seen him act like that with anyone else. As far as he was concerned, she was on fire.

For those of you as aroused as we were, we're gonna have to play spoiler and tell you there's no need to click through: Omarosa doesn't fuck the dog.

Excerpt: 'How to Set His Thighs on Fire' [ABC]

We've looked at Hayley's MySpace profile and, aside from lying about her age, she actually seems like a decent kid (or, at least, she's not a member of any groups like "Edward 40-Hands"). We do, however, have one concern, and we're only going to raise this issue only because we care about our youth: the Vera Bradley bag. We mean, the girl's 16, we can overlook the arctic expedition boots. But Vera Bradley? Does her mother know about this?

Hayley [MySpace]
Earlier: Little Girl Dreams Can Come True