• Lorne Michaels bought dinner for, and had an intense conversation with, Caroline Kennedy. Which means she's probably going on Saturday Night Live, contingent upon Fred Armisen doing that David Paterson impersonation the governor hates so much.
• Kennedy, meanwhile, rushed to pay six years worth of overdue state bar fees. Which explains why Michaels picked up the tab for dinners. [Gatecrasher]
• Kanye West hired someone to clean and photographically catalog his 450 shoes. In a down economy. Just imagine the sort of household servant jobs he cut. [Ask Men]
• Thanks to a move by top editor Larry Hackett, People's LA bureau chief is no longer in charge of the LA bureau. [P6]
• Guy Ritchie was flirting with various women at Soho House. Jude Law was his wingman. Uh, good luck, buddy. [Gatecrasher]
• Chris Buckley will be this year's commencement speaker at Yale. He plans to teach them "how to get a job at Starbucks," as a sort of joke, you see. By the the time the speech is actually delivered this summer, of course, it will have been reworked as practical advice. [P6]
• HBO may soon make a series about the plight of Ellen Barkin, whose $80 million windfall divorce from Ron Perelman was so traumatizing she still throws things at him when she runs into him at a restaurant. [P6]

The newspaper hasn't retracted the story. But public editor Clark Hoyt, the paper's in-house media critic, delivered a scathing review, saying that reporter Brooks Barnes got the most basic fact wrong. Hoyt, after interviewing People editor Larry Hackett and various Jolie intermediaries, concludes that Jolie never even asked for an "editorial plan" promising favorable coverage when negotiating for photo rights — the key allegation in the Times piece. The only condition in the magazine's written contract to license the photos was that the interview be conducted by email. (Barnes told Hoyt that his anonymous sources stand by their version of the story.)

We always thought the Times piece oversold the editorial-plan angle. Why would any of the players involved put something like that in writing, when it's implicit? People editors never needed to promise favorable coverage; its cuddly Brangelina archive did the work for them. True, it's not as sexy as a backroom deal — but a more nuanced take on the workings of the celebrity-industrial complex might have spared Barnes the public ink-lashing.

His magazine, big national popular Time Inc. owned thing that it is, can't handle its press as well as lil' old Angelina Jolie. The Times piece was basically an unveiling of celebrity glossy coverage policy that everyone knew already. People is always nice to everyone. Booooring. But all they gave was one little comment denying the thrust of the article. Jolie should teach a class at the Learning Annex. "How to Leverage Your Coverage" or something. Hackett could learn a thing or two.

The whole RS segment is embedded below and is kind of silly except for two things: First, fun archival footage of a CNN Angelina Jolie interview where she raps an interviewer on the knuckles for asking about her rumored pregnancy. And second, Kurtz calling Jolie "the wild, slutty wife of Billy Bob Thornton."

Wild and slutty, baby. Wild and slutty.