We know Sarah Palin isn't the biggest fan of Vogue, but we think she'd do really well guest-editing her own issue. So we've worked up a sample cover in the style of our Cover Lies feature (in which we expose how little relationship ladymags, like Sarah Palin, have to reality). While the real Vogue bows to the recession with its $300 "Steal" of the Month, Palin could show us how to get a $150,000 wardrobe for free — and how to pick a $700/night hotel, complete with robe and slippers. In lieu of book reviews, she could offer up a bunch of snide remarks about Katie Couric — "the perky one" probably can't read anyway. And for balance, Palin could add some media elite contributors, like Trig-birther Andrew Sullivan and Rebecca Johnson. (Johnson works for the fake America but the real Vogue, and says all Palin wanted to talk about in her much-maligned interview was "drilling for oil" — but what else is there, anyway?) In fact, right after a Jeffrey Steingarten piece on moose-meat, Going Vogue should include a free sample of premium Alaska crude. We hear it gets rid of both wrinkles and endangered wildlife.

Fact Check: Palin's Book Goes Rogue On Some Facts [AP, via Yahoo News]
Palin's Katie Couric Myths [Daily Beast]
Palin's Ego Trip [Daily Beast]

That's right: Immediately after shaking up the journalistic establishment by filling Dan Rather's seat at the anchor desk, Couric went out to the rooftop of the Hudson Hotel in Manhattan and shook something else. Words can't express how happy it makes us to know that Couric celebrated her arrival on on television journalism's hallowed throne by taking to the dance floor and letting the DJ save her life.

UPDATE: Couric's personal publicist Matthew Hiltzik writes, "Katie had a good time dancing with her daughters—they choreographed the dance and had fun doing it." They also put it on Facebook—the photos came to us from a tipster via the Facebook page of Ellie Monahan, Couric's 18-year-old daughter, who can be seen here and here showing mommy how to throw down.

Several tipsters reported to us that the photos were taken at the after-party for her first night on the air, held on the rooftop of Manhattan's Hudson Hotel on September 5, 2006. Indeed, the New York Post reported at the time that "after the broadcast, Couric retreated to the Hudson Hotel for a party with 150 friends who had gathered there to watch the CBS Evening News."

Here's some more evidence that the photos came from that party:

This is a screenshot of her historic broadcast, in which she seems to be wearing the same grey top and black skirt she has on in the dancing photos under a white blazer. Her choice of attire received much attention in the reviews next day, as critics picked over whether she had shown too much sex appeal. For example, here's the Boston Herald:

She's got great legs and CBS knows how to use them - but women scholars are divided on whether Katie Couric should keep her sexy stems behind the anchor desk.

Wearing stilettos and a skirt, Couric's toned and taut legs made their first appearance before the first commercial break Tuesday evening during Couric's CBS Evening News debut.

This photograph was taken as Couric left the CBS News studios after her first broadcast. As you can see, she's wearing that she is wearing the same outfit, the same watch and, if you look closely at photo No. 3, the same stiletto heels.

And here's a shot (inset) of the Hudson's rooftop party space, which features the same ivy and floor pattern that can be seen behind Couric's gyrating rear-end in the party photos. You can also see in some of the party photos the mounted wide-screen televisions that Couric's friends watched the newscast on.

So that settles it for us. What makes these photos so wonderfully appropriate is that in the days after Couric became the Face of CBS News and everyone was ginning up an opinion about what her ascendance to news anchor meant for our sexual politics and the culture of journalism, she was unleashing those legs and letting them do their thing.

UPDATE: We've learned that these are from the after-party celebrating Couric's debut as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Oh, lord.

A tipster sent us these photos after finding them in a Facebook photo album called "Four Martini Mimimum" and says they were shot in 2006. We've asked CBS News for information about where, when, and why they were taken—we think it's a toss-up between wedding and bar mitzvah. Or maybe a birthday party? Whatever the event: Katie Couric, you now have a standing invitation to any Gawker Media party.

Wallace—a Bush-era attack dog whose career highs include helping orchestrate the John Kerry flip-flop smear—was the staffer the McCain camp charged with keeping track of Palin. As predicted, she bears much of Palin's Going Rogue wrath, second only to openly hostile McCain adviser Steve Schmidt. Though Sen. McCain personally asked staffers to keep media exposure to a minimum during Palin's media blitz, Wallace gave an on-the-record interview to The Rachel Maddow Show (though declined to go on the air). It's the middle portion of this clip, and it's a doozy:

First, Wallace deconstructs Palin's claim that Wallace pushed her into the Katie Couric interview as a favor to boost Couric's "low self-esteem":

The whole notion there was a conversation where I tried to cajole her into a conversation with Katie [Couric] is fiction. ... I am not someone who throws around the word 'self-esteem.' It is a fictional description. Katie Couric was selected because we did evening anchors.

Regarding Palin's claim on The Oprah Winfrey Show that no one prepped her for the interview because it was supposed to be a "lighthearted, fun, working mom speaking with working mom" thing:

We set up this interview on the day of the U.N. General Assembly, with a walk-and-talk in front of the U.N. It was never made as two 'working gals.' It's either rationalization or justification or fiction. That was supposed to highlight her foreign policy savvy [in the context of] the U.N. General Assembly. The picture is in front of the U.N. to highlight her expertise and readiness to be vice president—it wasn't about two 'working gals.'

Note that Palin didn't actually use the phrase "working gals." Rather, Wallace combines Palin's words with even dumber ones, heightening the sense that the Thrilla from Wasilla is totally off her rocker. This is a patented right-wing rhetorical tactic (think "death panels") and we should all use it more often. But back to the matter at hand:

What she gets wrong is this personalization that [Steve] Schmidt and I were these lone villains—and that took place entirely in her imagination. ... I think she fixated on me from very early on. She hated me from the beginning. I try not to take it personally, the fact that she wrote a book based on fabrications. She gave a brilliant convention speech—other interviews that inspired support. But this book is a bizarre fixation on things that everyone else has moved on from.

And that is the story of how neocon PR warlord Nicolle Wallace won the begrudging respect of MSNBC liberals. Looks like the real uniter was Sarah Palin, after all. That, and the fact that no one gives a shit about Katie Couric's feelings.

The only non internet person on Couric's list, in fact, is FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The other people who control the media, according to the CBS Evening News anchor, are all Web heads:

• Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
  
• Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington.
  
• The founders of the women's blogging network BlogHer: Jory Des Jardins, Elisa Camahort Page and Lisa Stone. This is a big stretch but we're assuming Couric is trying to imagine the less sexist world she'd like to live in and lend some buzz to a feminist cause. Fair enough.
  
• Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder.
  
• Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.
  
• Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Couric is obviously just trying to butter up people who might be able to help her ditch the old fuddy-duddies at CBS News and expand her promising sideline in lifecasting. Which is, frankly, brilliant. We know some other people who might be able to help you Katie, call us.

Oh, and the Jewish thing? Couric is no anti-Semite, but we couldn't help but notice that her list of people who supposedly control the media does contain a majority of people of Jewish descent: Brin, Page, Newmark, Zuckerberg, Genachowski and Camahort Page.

Of course, the pace of change in Silicon Valley has a way of leveling these old-world distinctions. Page's family was non-practicing; Zuckerberg has gone atheist and Camahort Page is "a total non-religious person."

[via Bay Newser via NBC Bay Area]

Fairfield University has charged its own student paper with "harassment" and is threatening to pull its funding, all because of a remarkably stupid column about the "walk of shame" that the paper published from some still-drunk tool (pictured). Allow us to quote from it extensively!

There is nothing worse than the awkward wake up next to a girl, who is not as hot as you thought she was when you were 12 deep the night before.

Chris Surette, you cad! Tell us more.

Second, even though you might feel like the man for doing it, make sure you don't raw dog it...
Trust me, you don't want that hood rat giving you a venereal disease. Not because half are not curable, but the next time you try to bang and that little cutie sees that rash around your genitals, she's going to be running for the fences.

We're fairly confident that the fact that Chris Surette will not get laid for the remainder of his time at Fairfield University and, probably, well into his post-college life is punishment enough for his journalistic transgressions.


The Hartford Courant is now making its employees pay for home delivery of the paper. This will have the twin benefits of raising close to $63 in revenue for the beleaguered publication, and ensuring that reporters don't read their own work.


Declarative, worthless sports columnist STEPHEN A. SMITH twits that he's returning to the Philadelphia Inquirer as a sports columnist. An uninsightful, self-absorbed, phone-it-in, overpaid sports columnist at a financially crippled newspaper. Congratulations, Philly.


The world waits and wonders: Who would Katie Couric pick as the "Seven most powerful people in media?" Find out by clicking on this link right here! None of them are supercool, though. Fair warning.

He talks about love, he talks about charity, he bares his soul and grapples with the meaning of redemption. But obviously, all anyone cares about is hearing about is hearing about his fake hair, and other humiliations. Here they are:

1. The Time He Was Afraid His Wig Would Fall Off at the French Open. In the early years of his male-pattern baldness, a rabidly narcissistic Agassi took to wearing a flamboyantly high-maintenance weave. As if it wasn't enough that the hair that made him famous was fake, Agassi admits that it was a crappy fake, too: At the 1990 French Open, Agassi's conditioner caused his weave to fall apart, forcing his brother to bobby pin it to his head and the horrified tennis diva to go all sweaty-palmed over whether his scalp pelt would go flying mid-match.

2. His Girlfriend, Brooke Shields, Convinced Him to Ditch the Pelt and Shave His Head. There is something tragic about the moment when a balding man realizes he can fluff and rearrange no longer, and that it's time to give up on hair entirely. It is even more tragic when said balding man is Andre Agassi, and his famously hot actress girlfriend is the one who has to tell him he's reached the point of no return.

3. Ruined His Career with a Meth Addiction. Couric rattles off members of the tennis community who have public distanced themselves from Agassi following the revelation that he was junked up on meth for "the better part of 1997," when his pro career began to plummet. Confronted with Martina Navratilova's accusation that he is "up there with Roger Clemens," Agassi blinks repeatedly and speaks through a strangled voice as he points out that using steroids to be good at baseball is really nothing like the self-destructive pattern of chronic methamphetamine use, and anyone who equates the two is sort of a jerk. "I had a problem. I would ask for some compassion."

4. He dumped Brooke Shields. This is only mildly humiliating for Agassi. (What kind of fool dumps Brooke Shields?!) The real humiliation is Brooke's, because she had some really embarrassing relationships in the '80s and '90s, and then, just when it seemed like she had snagged herself a real catch, turned out he was a deeply troubled, self-hating drug addict—and then he dumped her. Good thing Shields' love life worked itself out, because if things had gone differently, she could be deep into Jennifer Aniston territory by now.

Econometric expert Daniel Gross speculates that Conde Nast's closing of Gourmet may mark the bottom—the trough, if you will—of the bad times for the magazine industry. It's an interesting piece. But I'd put my money on "when the last remaining print magazine company is bought by Google for a piddling sum, as a plaything." I'm no economist though!


Katie Couric's advice to college students: "Don't let the turkeys get you down." You just can't hear that one enough.


Turns out that Russians love George Will. Good. We hate him.


The AP is considering charging subscribers to receive their news exclusively about a half hour before all the non-paying bloodsuckers get it. Which is a pretty creative idea! But, possible scenario: Someone subscribes to the exclusive early feed; then they post those stories immediately on their website; then people read them there, for free. It's crazy, but it just might happen.

• Kristen Stewart's now on the record as having said that being a Twilight star killed her social life, which has made her boring. Which is besides, you know, making the movie, and being Frumpalicious Vampire Bait. Listen, sweetcheeks: you get the sparkly vampire boyfriend, you gotta make sacrifices. Like your safety from cannibalistic 8th graders who wouldn't think once before sucking the bone marrow out of you in the middle of a Hot Topic without so much as a spork in sight were you to show up sans-protection. It's the small things us famous types miss, isn't it? When I go to Hot Topic, I just want to be left alone. Srsly. [NYDN]
  
  
• Our Lady of the Immaculate Penis, Lady Gaga, recently canceled her tour with Kanye West due to creative differences. She aspired to sell tickets. [Page Six]
  
  
• Jon Gosselin was going to quit Jon and Kate Plus H8 Eight for "the sake of the kids." See! Gosselin's recent cease-and-desist order for TLC to stop filming the show wasn't a ploy to get back at Kate for getting him kicked off the show, or for him to get more money: it was for the kids. Sure, assface. Many of us would've naively believed that back in May, but this half-way crook (and his wife!) knew his marriage was dunzo when they were resealing their vows in front of their kids on TV. Gosselin went on TV to defend his tabloid-worthy asshattery for the last few months, as well as to apparently make some kind of reconciliation with Kate, as he wants the divorce proceedings to stop. Honestly though, if the kids are off TV, great. But they're still going to grow up to hate their dad for his four months of completely being a cockface. Also, of all the things he regrets, no mention of Ed Hardy? Psh. Y'ain't sorry till you're sorry, holmes. [NYDN]
  
  
• Rev. Al Sharpton guest-hosted WWE Raw on Monday night, earning WWE their lowest ratings since last November. The crowd booed Sharpton as well, but then again, anybody who doesn't jump into a figure-four leg lock from the ropes while breaking a chair over their face gets booed by those people. Also, Rev. Al Sharpton: if you've got the scratch, you can apparently get him for your kid's bar mitzvah. And wouldn't that please Aunt Roz. [Page Six]
  
  
• After Katie Couric's husband died of colon cancer, she had a colonoscopy on-air to raise awareness. She was recently at a broadcasters' to-do, and make a joke about sticking a light up her ass. It was good. Among Katie Couric's more notable accomplishments will be making a colonoscopy not just something we need not fear, but something charming, as well. Her former Today show co-host Matt Lauer could not make a colonoscopy look charming. Watching fourth-hour Today show alcoholics Kathy Lee and Hoda is like getting a colonoscopy, except it's like someone's sticking a blacklight in the asshole of your brain. [Page Six]
  
  
• Hey! Brett Ratner! Kind of a dickbag making dickbag movies, but lo and behold, he can occasionally impart some wisdom on the masses when not imparting terrible, shitty, expensive movies on them: he recently got on Blog Talk Radio (what?!) to discuss whatever Brett Ratner would discuss on Blog Talk Radio, and ended up talking about America's most popular child rapist, Roman Polanski. He called the LA judicial system "corrupt," and then apologized for it later, specifying his intent to speak solely on the merit of the judge in Polanski's case. Ratner should've said "incompetent," but that would've hit too close to home? [Page Six]
  
  
• Joey Ramone apparently needed to be sedated. Recent revelation: he had schizophrenia. He got booked at St. Vincent's once for being crazy. [Page Six]
  
  
• Dolce from Dolce & Gabbana just closed on two penthouses at 200 11th Avenue for $29M, the most expensive real estate closing this year. Meanwhile, I paid my rent on time this month. [Page Six]
  
  
• The Erin Andrews peephole perv has been arrested. [NYDN]
  
  
• This guy who stole Kristen Dunst's $2,000 purse and Simon Pegg's iPod (on the set of the How To Lose Friends and Alienate People adaptation) was aquitted of all the major charges because he was a moron. A breakthrough for morons, or something. [NYDN]
  
  
• Lindsay Lohan posed on a stripper pole to promote her line of leggings. She could've posed above an industrial paper shredder and it would've made more sense. Also: those leggings are fugly. Not that I'm a connoisseur or anything, but you know: truly. I was recently discussing this with a colleague: leggings-as-pants are the best trend to happen to straight men (and gay women!) since the whole sweatshirt-off-the-shoulder Flashdance-era thing. Lindsay Lohan: are you seriously going to be the one to fuck this up for me? God. Damn. You are truly worthless. [NYDN]

Finally, in honor of our favorite aforementioned schizo punk, Weekend Readers: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.

The New York Observer's moving again. It went from an UES townhouse to a normalish Flatiron office building to, now, an office building on West 44th street between 8th and 9th. Owned by Jared Kushner! His quote: "If I'm paying rent, I'd rather pay it to myself." That man, he has the soul of a poet, I tell ya.


O ho, the Washington Post Magazine has been "revamped" for our dynamic modern age, and it's reportedly "A truly solid product for Columbia Heights hipsters, McLean mommies and everyone in between." So, upwardly mobile 24-38 year-old whites living in the DC metro area will enjoy it!


Michael Moore made a movie about how rich people are bad but then he had a party for it in.........a Ritzy Manhattan Penthouse! To be fair, most of the media people that go to these Ritzy Manhattan Penthouse parties would never show up to a party at a homeless shelter, so cut the dude some slack.



Watch CBS Videos Online
Shucks, Katie Couric's "highly hyped 44-minute Webcast sit-down with Glenn Beck" did not turn out to be the journalistic tour de force that some had hoped for. Rather, critics say, it was a bit soft. Hard to believe Katie Couric would be a bit soft, Haha, get it? Because really she is.

Hosting the very first installment of her new web show, @KatieCouric, the CBS news woman was playing a bit of word association with Beck and asked him to free verse on Hillary Clinton. Beck, that lyrical wonder, explained that he would have "much preferred" her as President and maybe, in some world, would have voted for her over McCain, because McCain's "this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was."

Then, remembering his irksome ability to shock and awe, offered, "How about this? I think John McCain would have been worse for this country than Barack Obama. How's that?" Um, that's fine. Actually, it's probably pretty fair. But whatever will his viewers think?! Is that the sound of pitchforks being sharpened that we hear?

The fact of the matter is that Couric remains third in the network news race, and her producers are well aware of her ratings struggle. So now, though they insist she's safe, executives are encouraging Couric to evolve:

In a meeting last week, Ms. Couric and her producers made plans to nurture some existing franchises, including the financial investigation series "Follow the Money." Ms. Couric also wants to add more upbeat stories to the newscast, "since the news can be so depressing now."

More significantly, Ms. Couric continues to seek to diversify her role beyond the evening broadcast. "I've tried to utilize all the existing platforms at CBS, and when they don't exist, create them myself," she said.

Apart from CBS, she will conduct monthly interviews with notable women for Glamour magazine, beginning in the December issue.

Those interviews are no doubt influenced by the fact that another woman, Diane Sawyer, will soon venture into the nightly news arena, and provide hints of what could be a journalistic cat fight.

If Couric's Glamour scheme can get the women, Sawyer better start thinking of ways to get the gays, the only force that can counter the female force.

In addition to the above changes, Couric will start a new web-based interview series. Her first guest will be Glenn Beck. If that's not a gimmick, we don't know what is...

Praise be to the lord and all that is holy, Couric turned Jackson down, probably because he was a pedophile and also because he had "weird tape on his nose."

If the thought of Couric and Michael Jackson enjoying a romantic evening together isn't nauseating enough for you, you need turn only to this clip of Larry King on Jimmy Kimmel's show from two weeks ago, wherein King recounts his 1981 date with a young Couric in Washington, D.C., and actually utters the following words: "Once, I did Katie Couric."

Again with all appropriate praise to the TV gods, King misspoke: He did not "do" Couric, who is 24 years younger than King, because "I thought we were going to go up to the apartment, Katie and I, but she said she had a roommate." Naturally, Kimmel asked why King didn't go for the threesome. Sweet dreams tonight, kids!

Couric, being a classy lady, doesn't mention the error-prone Times scribe by name, but we all know who she's talking about.

I had to smile albeit, a tad ruefully, and I think he would too when I saw The New York Times correcting a piece that had appeared following his death. The article contained not one, not two, but seven errors about his life and career.

She then goes on to recount a number of the errors. It's almost as if she's a woman scorned. Oh wait, didn't Stanley once say of Couric "at the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights?" Oh yeah, she did! (PS—that article has a correction attached to it.)

Payback is a bitch, but Katie Couric is not, so she never makes it personal—especially considering, if this were a knife fight, Stanley would be lying on the ground bloody and defenseless. However, our Katie-poo does get in a few good zings.

So as we say goodbye to the Dean of TV news, let's all remember as journalists when we say "that's the way it is" - it really is.

In Stanley's case, we hope Couric is using the term "journalist" loosely.

Watch CBS Videos Online

I Twitter and blog very selectively... I don't think anybody gives a rats ass whether I am about to eat a tuna sandwich. I don't even care.

Some of it is so inane and narcissistic and bizarre I don't quite get it. I don't know why anyone would want to read it, much less why I would want to write it.

So Twittering a tuna sandwich is terrible and pointless, but Twittering "lobster bisque, striped bass [and] fruit confetti w/pound cake" is OK, judging from one of Couric's recent tweets (see left). As is blogging from the American Idol audience.

When will Katie Couric apologize for being a terrible East Coast Media Elite?

Seriously though, KC: We all like to pretend we're the fascinating center of the universe sometimes, and until the rest of us work out way up to the point where, say, David Letterman and TMZ care about us like they do a certain TV news anchor, Twitter remains a choice venue for those little narcissistic moments.

Maybe you'll understand some day, when Twitter subsumes all human thought and expression.

[Variety]

• Dylan Ratigan is quitting as CNBC's Fast Money host, supposedly over disagreements with the producer at whom he yelled, during a commercial break, "Don't ask me to talk about every [bleep]ing e-mail that comes up on the screen. I'm not going to host a [bleep]ing TV show that consists of reading [bleep]ing e-mails to [bleep]ing traders... now is an unwelcome time to hear your voice... You lie to me routinely." It's all on tape. Ratigan is widely expected to explore a collaboration with actor Alec Baldwin. [P6]
• Madonna is determined to adopt a second child from Malawi into her stable, nurturing home. (It's not clear if current "boy toy" Jesus Luz will accompany her to Africa.) [Sun]
  
• If you squint at the data just right, Katie Couric's not in last place: Her CBS Evening News beat NBC Nightly News in the New York TV market for the past six months. Page Six, which has enrolled in Fox News' feud with NBC News, is happily trumpeting this tremendous victory. [P6]
  
• Prince William's girlfriend's friend runs some kind of regular orgy party, supposedly. This marks the British Royal Family's first-ever encounter with scandal of a sexual nature. [Sun]
  
• Method Man has the money to pay his taxes, it's just that, like, the self-described pothead has been avoiding opening his mail for the past seven years. There's totally some checks in there! [Gatecrasher]
• Rihanna showed up to yet another nightspot with yet another guy, and it was reported in yet another tabloid. We get it: The official line is that she's over Chris Brown. Now just please make that actually be true. [P6]
  
• Also: Rihanna got a tattoo of a "tiny gun" above her ribcage. [Scoop]
• Nadya Suleman took two more of her octuplets home from the hospital, but didn't get much attention for it. What a waste. [Us]

"The news has a negative effect on customers as well as employees," according to auto dealers, as well as the drone ABN salesman in this video clip. In other words, things that are happening, in the world, are bad for your business, as a seller of cars. True.


But even in the fucking ABN commercial, they couldn't avoid "DOW DOWN 500+ POINTS" in the background. Probably because of the auto industry.

Update: Jeff Bercovici reports that Couric didn't authorize the use of her ABN clip for use in their news-bashing marketing materials. So, CBS News sent a C&D letter to CBS Outernet which runs ABN and forced them to take down the clip. They complied, but there's still plenty of Couric littered throughout the site. For instance, this:

Swoon.

If the Bush years were about winging it, Sullenberger is the refreshing antidote: Someone who knows how to do his job.

And not just as a pilot. Sullenberger, somehow, can handle not only a water landing on the Hudson River but also being elevated from mere mortal to the walking embodiment of a nation's hopes for itself. As he indicates at the end of the clip above, the pilot is fully aware of the projection that's going on and is trying his best to handle it with grace.

He's already ensured himself a distinguished record in that regard, too.