Between the sizzlin' fajitas and fun-time 'ritas, Kells and Liz managed to have a serious conversation about how it's everyone's fault but Kelly's that she came off like a hideous beast on her first (and, one hopes, last) season of the Bravo reality gurgle.

I am an aspirational kind of girl. The "Housewives" show was an opportunity for me. In only three months, however, I became a household name, a favorite of Page Six and all the tabloid magazines. They see me as a bitchy socialite, a bad girl from the Country Club set. But the hardest thing in life is to be true to oneself. And I have a great family backing me up – an older sister, a twin brother and my parents in Illinois.

Which, OK.

1) She is not a household name. I mean, maybe in her own household. Like, her kids know her name. So maybe that's what she meant.
2) A "bad girl from the Country Club set" implies that she's interesting, when in fact she's just dumb and boring. I would kill (almost literally) for a "bad girl from the Country Club set" to be on RHoNYC. But Kelly Beensomeone is not that character. Even if she tries to convince us for thirty-five agonizing minutes that she is.

Anyway, tin Lizzie found out that we were watching her:

Kelly and I sat down in my apartment building in the celebrated El Rio Grande restaurant for a chat and by two o'clock PM the same afternoon, with nobody on our side calling in, we turned up on Gawker.com as lunching and "having a business meeting." There wasn't much business to it; just two longtime girlfriends chatting.

Ah yes! Two longtime girlfriends chatting, no business aloud!, and then later the conversation ends up on an old lady website. America, ladies and gentlemen.

So, everybody laughs.

WSJ reporter Kate Kelly is writing a book on the fall of Bear Stearns. But hers isn't done yet. But another book on the fall of Bear Stearns, House of Cards by William D. Cohan, just came out. And Kelly was surprised to find that Cohan's book included a quote about her, from former Bear CEO Jimmy Cayne, who called her a "cunt... whose capability is zero." And Cohan didn't contact her in advance, so Kelly never had a chance to respond. She probably couldn't have been perfectly candid even if she did respond, so here you go, Kate: Jimmy Cayne is an asshole.


The Washington Post is folding its standalone business section into the main news section to cut costs, as other papers have done. Luckily there is little business news these days.

Former Bush roboflack Scottie McClellan just had a baby (his wife, actually)! Can you imagine what a flag-burning hippie this child will grow up to be, according to the standard model of anti-parent rebellion? Should be great.


Hmmm, former employees of the now-dead Rocky Mountain News want to start a new online news site—"But the launch will only take place if In Denver Times lines up 50,000 subscribers [at $4.99/ month] by April 23." In other words, the launch won't take place.

Octogenarian gossipmonger Liz Smith—who is now permanently employed by a website, full time—tells Intelligencer that she just recently learned how to use email. "I would still be writing with a feather if they'd let me," she joshed jokingly, the kidder. If you think about it email is actually way easier than writing with a feather, so what's the big deal?

The cherry on the sundae was a phone call late at night from a mysterious voice inquiring, "What cha doin?" It was none other than Warren Beatty who wanted to say I was on an upper path now and better off and he encouraged me to really develop my Web and Internet skills. "Learn to control the Internet yourself; don't depend on people to help you."...We ended the chat with him remarking, "I just wanted to call because, as you know, you are in a class by yourself!"

Many other celebrities support Liz as well! You will find the entire list lovingly detailed in her column. How many congratulatory emails from Sly Stallone did you receive, Col Allan? Yea. [Variety; Pic via]

For the second time in a week, Smith claimed Gawker and PerezHilton.com were run without "editors, publishers, lawyers," even though this site has all three, the editors being listed right on the front page.

Not that it has any bearing, as Smith claims, on factual accuracy: CNN and Tina Brown's The Daily Beast both have the full complement of structural gatekeepers listed by Smith, and both left Smith's error unchallenged.

We will give the cranky octogenarian credit for learning one trick of the Web trade: Trying to start a dustup with a much larger competitor in an obvious bid for attention. Sometimes it works!

(Video via Huffington Post)

Former Daily News gossip Lloyd Grove asked Smith to open up about getting canned, and boy did she ever. Though Smith said the loss of her gossip column was "emasculating," she (still) thinks gossip as a trade is dead and pointless and stupid, because what's with the kids these days and their non-stars? Cheryl Crane and Johnny Stompanato — now those were some celebrities.

Since gossip is absurd, Smith these days is "doing philosophical journalism." We're not sure if she's talking about her WowOWow column on breast augmentation, or the one about how she sleeps naked, or maybe the one about "the best public bathroom in NYC." (Oh, Liz.)

But the point is, all the other gossips are fools. Which Smith has been saying for a while, but now she names names, including ours.

Page Six gets it:

I read Page Six mystified every day, and everybody I talk to agrees with me. They don’t know who anybody is.... Well, it’s almost like they just dump a bunch of chicken feed out there and there’s no bones in it.

Here's a dig at the Post generally and (probably) at Aussie editor Col Allan specifically:

The New York Post, I hate to say this, is not a New York newspaper. It doesn’t love New York, it hasn’t adjusted to New York. It’s like aliens came down. It’s a fun newspaper at times. I always liked its saucy, vivid, way, but it has no New York heart. I figure they didn’t like me because I was alien to them.

Another swipe when asked about "sites like Perez Hilton and Gawker"

I don’t think they mean anything either... I wouldn’t give any credence to most of the stuff I read. I mean, there are no publishers, no editors, no lawyers vetting anything [Gawker has all three of these things; but then again the Daily Beast has at least two and that didn't stop this error —ed.]. This is the problem with the Internet where everybody has a voice and we’re stuck with it.

...which leads directly into this swipe at herself:

We’re going to have the Internet even when we don’t have things to eat. We’re going to still have it. I’m all for it, and I’m doing it myself on the Wowowow.com site, but it’s not important. It isn’t even semi-important.

The only person who escapes Smith's ire is fellow old-school gossip Cindy Adams, who keeps it real in the N-Y-Pizzle. She's not some Aussie interloper or reality-TV zombie whippersnapper!

If Smith hates the gossip business so much, why did she try to renew her Post contract, telling Rupert Murdoch she "hoped to die with my boots on my desk?" Why is she still writing a syndicated newspaper column and for Variety? Maybe Smith is afraid her life will be meaningless if she gives up her longtime gossip gigs. But she should give retirement another look. Not because of what the Post thinks about her work, but because of what she thinks about it.

I will still be writing a five-days-a-week column for my syndicated TMS newspapers, also twice a week here, in Daily Variety, and especially for the WowOwow website where next month we expect 1 million unique hits (visitors) and it's growing. My daily column also appears on the Drudge Report.

Ha, OH LIZ. When will you stop writing things that make us break out the "OH LIZ" tag? Hopefully never! [Variety]

Fort Worth, Texas, specifically, which is where Liz was born, way back in 1923! She married her high school sweetheart, left him, got a journalism degree down there in Texas, then made that grand journey up here to New York, city of lights!

Her first big gig was as a producer for Mike Wallace—who would later go on to become a famous journalist himself. What are the odds? She started ghostwriting a gossip column in the 50s. And she was hooked! The golden dust of the gossip world had seeped into her blood!

She had editor gigs with Cosmopolitan and Sports Illustrated, but in 1976 she started writing her own gossip column for the NY Daily News. That propelled her to years of TV reporting, as well. She moved to Newsday in the early 1990s, and added in her Post column several years later. Where she stayed, writing all types of illustrious gossip, until today. In her book, she recalled the heady early days:



Liz was also one of the highest-paid women columnists ever, anywhere. This gossip thing has made her a boatload of cash!

Let's remember a few of the great moments we've shared with Liz over the years, shall we?

She likes to sleep in the nude!
She was sometimes at odds with her employer!
She decries tackiness of all stripes!
She loves pets. Possibly more than she loves people!
She can't get enough of Nicole Kidman's breasts!
She admits that the internet is too hard!
And now, at long last, she's come to the conclusion that gossip is bullshit!

It is a sparkly career to be proud of. And you must respect her good cheer! So don't be mad at the Post, Liz Smith fans; reminisce on her accomplishments, then go catch her all new work over at Wowowow...owowow. [Pic via]

Col Allan cited the economy when he told her he wouldn't be renewing her contract:

"Like so many other newspapers around the nation, we are buffeted by unprecedented economic gales," Col Allan, the editor in chief of The Post, told Ms. Smith in a Feb. 9 letter that said he was not renewing the contract for what he called her "legendary column."

Well, it's been clear for a while that Col Allan and Liz Smith didn't care for each other. We saw this coming months ago. But it's still a sad thing. The batty lady is irrepresible, though! She's over at her womanly site, Wowowow.com, still writing about various and sundry topics, such as what a jerk Col Allan is. So you can find her right here, on the internet.

We'll be right there with you Liz! [City Room; Pic via]

UPDATE: NYP flack Steven Rubenstein sends us this additional statement from Col Allan: "The Post is grateful to have been able to publish Liz Smith's legendary column for so many years. We wish her the very best for the future."

Of course, the reporter who first published New York State Senator Diaz's "they're going to see exactly what we can do" rant is Liz Benjamin of the Daily News, not the Post's octogenarian gossip doyenne Liz Smith. (Benjamin, in addition to being 100 years younger than Smith, is a brunette.)

FYI, here were Diaz's remarks:

"The gays are calling my office. They're jamming my phones. They're going to see what we can do. They've going to see exactly what we can do. Ed Koch is going to see what we can do. They're just going to see. That is what I'm telling you."

And here is his clarification:

For the Record

I need to state exactly what I told Liz Benjamin from the NY Daily News this past Tuesday evening because some of the important facts that I told her were not reported:

I told Liz Smith that the gay community has been jamming my office phone line and making threats to me and my staff. I told her that I am very angry that my office has received phone calls threatening my life and calling the women on my staff “whores” and “bitches”. I told her that to add to those names, Ed Koch called us rats.

I told Liz that the only rat is Ed Koch. I told her that when he was Mayor and was rejected in my community, the only person who stood by him was this rat, and that now this rat is good no more. I told her that I am so angry that because of their calls and editorial boards and because of the insulting Koch statement, there is nothing else that they can do to us or say to us, and that they will see what we can do.

That, my friends, was the basis of my anger, not because the gay community is jamming my phone lines. I am an elected official and I am an old man, and they can do this any time. It was the content of their calls that made me angry. I welcome people to call my office - but with respect to me and to my staff.

When I told Liz that they will see what we can do, this was not at all meant to be a physical threat. As far as what we can do, we have many options, which include: going to the Republican Party, staying neutral to create an impasse, or going to the Democratic Party.

So that is the whole story, and I hope it will set the record straight, for good or for bad.

Yes, sure. That clarifies everything! He was furious because Malcolm Smith and the Albany Senate Democrats refused to cave on their principled support for gay marriage and let him be the majority leader, so he told the gays, and Ed Koch, that "they'll see what we can do" as an explanation that he and his colleagues have many options open to them, not as an open threat to fuck over the gay community. Also, he is very old, so you shouldn't be mean to him.

Guy Ritchie gets about $70 million. He is not walking away "without a penny." Please! He was no poor boy picked up from nowhere; so now he has to be compensated to support the life to which he has become accustomed. Guy Ritchie had a name and considerable cash when he and Madonna married. He's earning about $4 million right now for directing "Sherlock Holmes." But once you taste the really high life, you hold on if you can.

Elsewhere in the Post, Alex Rodriguez's ex-wife complained that Madonna stole the Yankees slugger away from his kids for Thanksgiving. Rodriguez is said to like "a woman with a strong hand." Sounds like this one will be less mouthy than that awful Guy Ritchie!

“In retrospect,” she says now, “[Ivana and Donald Trump coverage] was a story about rich people getting a divorce. It had absolutely no other significance or meaning whatsoever... can’t believe I took it all so seriously."

...There’s no more Wasp society. Just like the derision with which British royalty is held, it’s just gone steadily downhill... I think what’s different is that celebrities are different now. There are some big stars, but they are very few. And they’re totally unapproachable, for the most part, except by the people they’ve chosen.

But there are some gossip subjects Smith approves of:

Anna Wintour, she says, is “about as near as we come to a really mysterious, glamorous person, a woman whom either you don’t understand or you aspire to be like … She has become like Hillary Clinton or Madonna, people who just transcend criticism.” Also on the list are Oscar and Annette de la Renta, “elegant people with money who live very tastefully and try to stay out of the papers. There is a crowd … Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg, Reinaldo and Carolina Herrera. These are all really nice people who are civilized, know how to act, have actually read a book. And the big thing is for them to go on boats. To go on Barry Diller’s or David Geffen’s yacht. They get away from the great unwashed and they can do as they please.”

Still, such a short list does not a gossip column make. Prediction: When Smith's contract with the Post is up, she switched to writing full-time for her WowOWow.com, where she can move beyond gossip to such preferred topics as sex after 80, sleeping naked and slamming cheesy memorials to British royalty.

According to one editor of a celebrity weekly, it's the "last trip to the buffet table," as Britney Spears' gurney-bound trip to the hospital signaled the end of dish. If that seems a bit ominous, it may be because there is a discernible lull in glossy-packaged brain candy. "There's nothing going on in celebrity land. There's no news, no gossip, no scandal," whined a TV producer to Liz Smith a few months back. "The Oscars showed how dull things are. People are only interested in politics." It's true. Reliable pop tarts no longer yield Google results like they once did (at left, Paris Hilton's trend chart, which shows a baseline traffic drop of about two-thirds). Here are a handful of theories about what's happened:

1. Politics trumps all. Hillary dodges phantom sniper fire, Obama defends/tolerates/repudiates his reverend, Bill fields a panicked 3 a.m. phone call from Gina Gershon, and McCain's inner beast is the only thing that can stop the Army's latest bioforce experiment gone haywire. Nicole Richie would have to actually get fat before she could stand to compete with Ashley Dupre.

2. Media boundaries are getting blurred. The Atlantic Monthly ran Britney on its cover in the same news cycle that had Us Weekly interview Obama and Camille Paglia. Then the New York Times paid almost as much attention to Heath Ledger's demise as, well, Gawker did. Things are not as they should be and we are all scared and confused.

3. Burn-out. What can Paris possibly do next except mutate into Lynne Cheney? And who cares?

4. Bad narrative. Here's Salon's Rebecca Traister: "Every once in a while a slam-bam terrific plot development — Pitt's abandonment of Aniston for Jolie was probably the apotheosis of celeb-weekly euphoria — would shake up the whole tableau, allowing the character descriptions to become fluid: stud could transform into cuckold; nice girl into tramp; a blood-obsessed, tattooed husband-stealer could even become a mother earth figure." So not only do their scripts lack cohesion, their lives do, too.

5. Gossip mongers are too old/out of the loop. Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt sound like they'd get up to no good in an Evelyn Waugh novel. In fact, they're engaged, and she's on The Hills. Go figure.

All reasonable explanations for the current wasteland, but none really indicative of a Jann Wenner-led Rapture. The election will be over soon. Just because tabloids are being replaced by papers of record doesn't mean people aren't paying attention to the same content—it's just getting harder to track how they do it. And slam-bam terrific plot developments can't go extinct: there's always royalty to depend on for a good debauch with national consequences, and innocence will continue to be lost so long as its existence continues to be heralded.

Number 5 seems the likeliest bet. The next generation of sex tape stars and unwitting genitalia models is still in transition from the Disney Channel. But if Miley Cyrus is anything to go by, they (and the people who exploit them for a living) have a bright future yet. But can someone please get poor Spencer Pratt a Wikipedia entry?

It's known around the Post newsroom that Liz Smith despises Col Allan, the tabloid's grumpy, pugnacious Aussie editor. It was he who cut Smith's column down to [UPDATE: three] times a week, and she didn't appreciate it. Now, when forgetful people call her up to ask why she's not published more often, her response is, "CALL RUPERT." So she likely thinks Rupert Murdoch isn't a great boss, either!

It's widely assumed that Smith will leave the Post altogether when her contract comes up for renewal. That could put her at WowoWow full time, in which case: yikes.

[WowoWow]

UPDATE: A note from Liz Smith:

Thanks for today's ink re a boss of mine being a shit, but please note—my column in the Post runs three days, not two. All good wishes—-as many as you wish me, anyway. Liz Smith

Hey, at least they didn't include any of the high-profile women on corporate sibling Fox News. Like... uh... hmmm.

Greta lives in DC still? D'oh.

[Post, AdScam]

The club was quite a hot affair for the first 40 or 50 years after its founding in 1905. It once boasted members like Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, and the cream of the city's journalism, literary, and artistic communities. Today, it can be more accurately embodied by the membership of gossiping octogenarian oddball Liz Smith. They're old:

A weekly e-mail message is sent out to "newcomers and forgetful old-timers" reminding: 1, Lunch is still $25 and wine is on the table; and 2, please be sure to turn off cellphones, or put them on vibrate.

They like to get buzzed:

A gold medal dangling on a red ribbon is handed out to guest speakers and performers, engraved with the club's mascot: a man in a top hat and tails with a monocle reclining in the bottom of a martini glass.

And they're now equal-opportunity horndogs:

Women were not admitted until 1991, a dramatic change that came about after intense voting, which required a recount because of suspected cheating...

Since the 1920s, the club has produced a yearbook known for its drawings of nude women that used to be inspired by the club's favorite coat check, hat and cigarette girls. At the end of the annual dinner, members will be given their 2008 yearbooks by the club's first woman president, the cabaret singer KT Sullivan.

[NYT]