Bartiromo wrote a Q&A column called FaceTime, which consisted of her asking questions of some business guy each week. She's not a bulldog questioner, but she's not incompetent either. Her strongest point was access: Hank Greenberg, Tim Geithner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg have all sat for her in the past month.

Her downsides: She's perceived as friendly to CEOs, which is part of the reason she gets that access. And whatever they pay her for that column is certainly inflated by her own celebrity, which is hard to justify when Bloomberg's getting ready to lay off a bunch of BW staffers. They'll be able to get good access with a much cheaper columnist, anyhow; who else will CEOs rattle off talking points to, bloggers? LOL!

Don't feel bad, Maria. Gurl U no Wall St luvs U no matta wut. Gurl let Jamie Dimon buy U a drank.

• Katie Holmes is pregnant, and we know because Tom Cruise put his hand on her stomach, in front of a restaurant. [OK!]
• Sean Hannity bought Alan Colmes a Rolex as thanks for serving as his liberal punching bag on Fox News for nearly 13 years. Fox's corporate sibling the New York Post then let it be known that Colmes was showing off the watch to his hippie pinko friends. [P6]
• Maria Bartiromo completed an adulatory interview with former Merrill Lynch boss John Thain. There's concern she may have kissed up to the guy because he and CNBC share a publicist, since she's normally just so tough and professional with corporate honchos. [P6]
• The British press thinks Paris Hilton is lying about believing Gordon Ramsay to be prime minister of Britain, but telling the truth about not dating Prince Harry because she respects Harry's ex-girlfriend wayyy too much to do that. Can't put one past Fleet Street.
• This year's Grammy parties are all going to suck, for famous people. [Gatecrasher]

They, along with 22 other estimable names, including Ogilvy & Mather Chairman-CEO Shelly Lazarus, aren't forming an agency in the traditional sense, but will be part of a "panel" offering marketing and general business advice to NBC Universal and its clients on how to reach women. The group will also blog, write and appear on air for the media company's women-oriented properties and contribute to a quarterly newsletter, "Power of the Purse," covering marketing to the demographic and the latest female trends. The panel will convene for the first time Feb. 10. In effect, it could become the most powerful female-focused agency in the country.

Ha. Um. As you can see, when times get tough, media companies just stop giving a fuck about anything except pulling in more revenue. Which this may or may not succeed in doing! This is a bit like Dan Abrams' comically unethical new PR firm featuring working journalists, except even more ambitious. Reportedly "Journalists and other members of the group will be able to recuse themselves as necessary to avoid conflicts." So all 'journalists' on there, just get out now, before things get ugly.

The revenge upon those who embrace this idea will be having to listen to Tori Spelling give paid advice. [Ad Age]

• Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett of CNBC insist they aren't backbiting rivals. The business network said the Post created the rivalry from thin air. The Post said someone at CNBC "leaked" word of the supposed feud for free publicity and now everyone on the inside is trying to figure out who the leaker was. Which is believable, because it's not like they have anything better to do right now. [P6]
• Lindsay Lohan is dressing up as Sarah Palin for Halloween. Sam Ronson might be Todd. [Daily News]
• Sad Suri Cruise longs for friends her age, supposedly. [P6]
• Does fashion photographer Bruce Weber regret caring for a 91-year-old woman now that he's not been named executor of her estate or paid the $80,000 he said he's owed? The whole situation is so far from the young gay utopia of an Abercrombie catalog. [P6]
• Mark Wahlberg thought Saturday Night Live's impersonation of him was stupid and not as good as Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression. But that doesn't matter because he hasn't watched the show in years anyway. In fact, uh, forget what he said about Tina Fey, he doesn't even know who that is, or what sketches she' s been in. [LA Rag Mag]
• The Sun thinks Leonardo DiCaprio is getting fat: "Hunk To Chunk." [Sun]
• Sandra Bernhard on Madonna: "I saw her at the gym, and I thought it was Dyan Cannon - all straggly and [bleep]." [P6]

Burnett is depicted as the naive, bright-eyed boarding school popular girl who never had to pay her dues because Maria, the elder elegant Brooklyn-born street hustling Italian trailblazer, did it all for her. Maria doesn't really try to understand the "kids today" or their slutty outfits, as we learn through this admittedly awesome anecdote:

[Maria] turns to climb the stairs to CNBC’s mezzanine studio when a Fox correspondent rushes up to her. She is wearing towering heels, tons of makeup, and a scarlet dress so tight you can see her underwear line and unbuttoned to expose her black lace bra. “Hi, Maria!” she shrieks. Maria’s eyes pop open, but then she smiles and kisses her. It’s only later that she says she was “taken aback.” The Fox reporter is a friend, and insisting that her name not be published, she says, “I did tell her, ‘Don’t ever show up here with your skirt up your butt and your shirt down low like that.’ I said, ‘It’s a distraction, it’s ridiculous, and it’s not what you want.’ I don’t know who’s telling her to do this, [but] there are a lot of women doing that.”

Ha ha, "skirt up your butt." Okay, well:

The story leads on September 15, the Monday Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the day that touched off the two weeks that shook capitalism and every last assumption the country held about the viability (not to mention virtue) of the current system. We learn that Maria finds all of it "truly wild" between takes relaying the frantic news flow with her Brooklyn accent and "enormous smoky blue eyes."

Oh yeah, and remember all that gossip news about how Maria fucked ousted Citigroup executive Todd Thomson on that private jet home from Beijing? Yeah, it was a totally unfounded nugget of scurrilous nothingness probably planted by the guy who ousted Thomson to begin with, but now people think it was actually good for her career. She's a "survivor," etc. etc. Meanwhile we learn Burnett played field hockey and finds it hilarious that so many Americans spent their stimulus checks on internet porn. Hey, I find that hilarious too! And sad, and so telling. That's like an anecdote straight out of some Mike Judge satire of Late Capitalism, huh? Whatever, the story takes it as an example of Burnett's irrepressible, uncensored weirdness, and moves on: hey, there are other hot CNBC anchors too! They just don't dress as skanky as the Fox Business anchors. Even Maria's old assistant is a hot business reporter for one of the networks now! Goodness, why are they all so hot? It didn't used to be this way, did it?

Who knows? Maybe it did, who cares? More importantly, is there a more embarrassing example of this new tiresome brand of "meta-sexism" whereby the media, in decrying all the horrible sexism of the media and the media coverage of said media, completely ignores the Actual Story About How, you know, we're experiencing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and these lovely ladies who have been paying attention for the past decade probably have some insight into that but we're not paying attention because they are so very very pretty and also, oppressed by sexism? Oh, probably, but at least they feigned interest when Lara Logan wanted to talk about the war.

*Bartiromo looks better though. Who gelled the hair on Burnett?

Dagen McDowell

Are you a spender or a saver? Recovering spender. Emerging saver

Alexis Glick

What was the one thing you regret buying? No regrets! Every choice good or bad teaches you something about yourself. Mistakes are worth taking. Life without risk is not an option for me. Follow your passion, do what you think is right and trust your gut. Dream with your eyes open!

Jenna Lee

What was your first job? My first job was working in an apple orchard. My brothers and I were paid based on the number of bags we could fill.

Sandra Smith

She was a trader at Hermitage Capital, where she executed U.S. equities and options orders, conducted portfolio analysis, prepared commission reports and serviced clients.

Shibani Joshi

Joshi has also served as the host of ImaginAsian TV's The Pulse variety show, contributed to ABCNews.com and ABC News Now covering technology and business stories, and was a co-host of American Desi's Point of View talk show.

[Women shown may or may not be single.]

Two days later, on April 25, we received this email: "Has anyone seen Todd Thomson, formerly of Citigroup and Maria Bartitomo? Is he at the 4 day Milken Bash in LA this week? Bartiromo is there and I wonder if she is picking up where she left off after occupying the press in Jan 2007. Just asking."

By May 27, it was clear we were dealing with someone with what might be called a prurient interest in the Money Honey: "There are some loyal older readers on your site who are sick of the current parade of young stupid dope heads featured on the decaying pages of Gawker. Do you ever get a shot of Maria Bartiromo? She is one of Ask Men.com and watched by 400,000 plus each weekday on CNBC. Desired by many thousands of men, and that includes me, but either she stays home all the time, which I seriously doubt, or your cameras dont recognize her. She is lovely and I ask you to see if you can catch a shot of her somewhere, sometime and thanks."

Eek.

Then, June 12, an email that implied that some sort of scrapbook was being compiled: "can't find your 2 feb 07 story about Bartiromo and Todd 'Thomson. The archives thing isn't working for me. [email redacted]. can you help???"

By July 22, our correspondent had gotten angry. "I am struck by the abscense of Lines and Pics of Maria B. Todd Thomson is rumored to be taking up shop on Wall St. in Equity again..........If they were fucking each other for two years.....1) Wont they try again? 2)Why didn't the husband (j Steinberg) have something to say. Also, Melissa Thomson must have been blind......or as the good book says Trusting."

And on August 14, it became clear that he was trying to use us to fulfill his sick fantasies: "I think that if you have a camera crew around the NYSE between 5 and 8 pm eastern...it might produce a match of Maria Bartiromo and Dylan Ratigan. They have three hours before Dylan returns to ait a Times Square. I heard they have been becoming very close."

Finally, this morning, we received perhaps the most disturbing email of all: "Rumor has it Bartiromo and Ratigan have time between his break from Closing Bell at 4 eastern til his 8 pm show and Bartiromos 5pm off air and her limo home. They have I understand, been both working out of the NYSE instead of Ratigan at NYSE and Bartiromo at Englewood Cliffs, N.J. makes it easier to grab one hour or two together. ....eh? Bring a long range lens. Interested withhold my name or email...please."

Uh, well, see, we were going to print it, actually? Because you're frightening us, and when you're arrested for stalking Maria Bartiromo, we want a paper trail. But then we got too scared.

"Ok, I always suspected this, but am only now finally able to confirm. I am a photo retoucher by profession, and I am constantly staring at people's imperfections. I noticed this once, and now can confirm:

Tom Cruise's entire top row of teeth is shifter to the left by one half tooth! If you look at the photo, [from the cover of a Good Housekeeping in 2006] and look at the line down the center of his face, the center line SPLITS HIS ONE FRONT TOOTH! Don't most people have TWO front teeth?

HE IS THE SPAWN OF SATAN!!

Love you, Gawker!"

• "Can you guys talk about just how utterly shitty M&A is? Probably the worst book I have ever read. I just wanted to get some thinly disguised dirt on the racquet club set. Instead Vachon manages to discuss retards, midgets, pirates, and cutting without an ounce of humor or irony. It sounds like it was written by a 13 year old. I guess that's what we all get for not finishing our novels."
• "What you really ought to check out is the connection between Anna Wintour and "Radar" magazine.
  (Then there's RA-DAR and DAR-FUR, the latter being something of an obsession with Kristof, the New York Times columnist.) Wintour seems to have really terrorized a lot of prominent people, as her main project or agenda. We know whence and wherefor the term "editrix" was invented for her — but followup is indicated."
• "Hi, How are you?
  You represent Jennifer Aniston, right?!
  Then... You it could pass me the email address of she??
  Please answers me!!
  Júlia"
• "Hi How are you??
  Well.... You know Jennifer Aniston, know?!
  Well, I need talk to her, if you have the fone number for her please pass me!! If you have will have another information of her please pass me!! It's emergency!!

  Bye-bye AND PLEASE ANSWER ME!!
  BYE!
  Júlia"

• "There are some loyal older readers on your site who are sick of the current parade of young stupid dope heads featured on the decaying pages of Gawker. Do you ever get a shot of Maria Bartiromo? She is one of Ask Men.com and watched by 400,000 plus each weekday on CNBC. Desired by many thousands of men, and that includes me, but either she stays home all the time, which I seriously doubt, or your cameras dont recognize her. She is lovely and I ask you to see if you can catch a shot of her somewhere, sometime and thanks."
• "I just (by accident) read this mindless page. To raise the merit of Ms. O'Donnell while denegrating the merit of Ms. Hasselbeck is asinine. Rosie has claimed that steel doesn't melt. Does she even know how steel is made, Dah? Also, she has claimed (by my inference) that Bush somehow masterminded the 9/11 attack. How utterly stupid! This secret could never be kept by all the parties necessary to keep the secret and would in no way escape the eager beaver reporting of the NEW YORK TIMES - that pillar of potentially treasonous activities. Their mindset, "What top secret, confidential, proprietary, etc. bit of governmet activity can we give to the enemy today?"
  
  Very sincerely,
  J. Dennis Omlor, Ph.D.
  
  P.S. Throw Joy Behar into the same mindless tank as you and Rosie. This is spoken by a true conservative, Republican with no shame. You Dems are so ashamed of your liberal/socialist ways that now you want to be PROGRESSIVE."
• "I would like to go to a good party in Manhattan with one friend, preferably starting early Friday evening. do you have any suggestions or where I might find out about a good party. this is just a one time event. I have no desire to keep going to parties, just a good one this week, early evening.
  thanks in advance
  David (I live uptown, CPW)"
• "There is some really horribly boring show on this morning called the View. I mean, really really really boring. At least Elisabeth says that she has her and rosie have begun the most important 'hot topic' they have ever discussed..... The process of forgiveness. ICK. The show won't go on."
• "HI,
  DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHERE ANN BRASHARE´S HOUSE IS?
  REGARDS,
  ADRIANA RIONDA"
• "Hi the new friend!!!
  I saw your announcement on a site in the Internet. There there were many good people. I do not know why I have written to you, probably something inside has prompted me to do it. I already during long time wanted to find to me directly people, but not from Russia. As in Russia very many bad people and are very difficult to find such person, which will serve me as a fine half. My best girlfriend has found to itself through Internet good people. Which has invited her in the country, and now they live together 2 months.
  It also has pushed to find me to itself of the satellite . Though I also do not believe life in it, that it is possible to find love through. The Internet I should hope for it up to the last. Now it - is slightly about me:

  My name - Julia.
  I the simple Russian girl who search for a basis the person from abroad for serious attitudes in the future for creations of family. I live the Russian city Cheboksary. It - very beautiful city In which I live.
  I am long brave to write to you and have written in hope which you will write also to me I hope for it, and I shall look forward to hearing from you.

  P.S. If I though have slightly interested you, please write to me the answer On mine E-mail: ritkasweet@yahoo.com
  I shall hope, and I shall wait, that you nevertheless will answer it soon. Please try to send your message on email. As I was very bad to use the Internet. I shall send the image in the following letter. With hope your new familiar Rita."

  Earlier: Glaring Omissions

Now, the résumés are flooding in — and the process is turning out to be every bit as unconventional as the billionaire investor himself. Among the 600 or so applicants so far: a Talmudic scholar who picks stocks from home, a Canadian economist with an intense yoga practice and even a four-year-old.

"We're going to run this like 'American Idol' in the end," the 76-year-old Mr. Buffett quipped in an interview.

There'd be early-round ritual humiliation:

What [a trial period] isn't, however, is a mentorship program, something many applicants have misinterpreted. He says he isn't looking for someone to teach, but for "someone who already knows how to do it."

The misunderstanding is reflected in dozens of letters from students, profession investors and a surprising number of engineers and lawyers hoping to be apprenticed [natch!] to the master. "I assure you," wrote one 20-year-old college student, "although I may be short on experience, I am very long on potential." [Ed: Sure you are, Aleksey] A lawyer in Oregon recommended his four-year-old son, characterizing the toddler as a "great negotiator" on issues such as "bedtime, chores, allowance, baths, etc."

In Ottawa, economist Klaus Kostenbauer takes a more spiritual approach. As manager of Prosperous Yogi Investments, he regularly practices a rigorous form of yoga call kundalini, and mediates several hours a week.

"My yoga makes me a better investor," says Mr. Kostenbauer, 40. "It helps with discipline, mastery of your emotions, and mastery of greed, fear and patience."

Please read the whole article. Political economy is fake. —Jon

Want to be Next Warren Buffett? A Line Forms in Nebraska [WSJ]

• Everything you need to know about Conrad Black, whose fraud trial starts this week. [Maclean's]
  
• The week in redesigns: Time's print edition (coming Friday), The New Republic's print edition, and the dreadful, dreadful Daily News' website. [NYDN]
  
• David Carr on the Village Voice situation: Michael Lacey should really be running things. We loved the last two paragraphs of this column. [NYT]
  
• Which TV news anchorwoman is almost certainly Maria Bartiromo? [NYP]

• New culprit in Brian Williams' tanking ratings: Ellen DeGeneres. [NYT]
  
• If Sam Zell buys Tribune - and who knows if he will, this story is as fucking ridiculous as it is long-running - this is the kind of boss he might be. [LAT]
  
• NYT will nod politely, pretend to listen, as disgruntled institutional shareholders make presentations to the board. [WSJ]
  
• Kurt Eichenwald: not a buyer of stories. Or young boys. [MarketWatch]
  
• Why bad things happen to reporters in Russia. [NYT]
  
• It's hard to believe now, but at one point Premiere was actually relevant. And now it's dead. [LAT]
  

• MTV names reality TV queen to head programming. Expect lots more pimping and punking! [MediaPost]
  
• Sure, Les Moonves can lean on the little guys, but will he able to pull off the same kind of deal with the Comcasts and Time Warners of the world? The Post says no. [NYP]
  
• Maria Bartiromo interviews Citigroup Chairman Emeritus Sandy Weill. Presumably there were no questions concerning snakes on a plane. ('Cause, remember, that Citigroup guy allegedly did it to her on the company's private jet? It was like a month ago or something. Can't you remember anything?) [TVNewser]

• Let's all take a moment to think of those poor paparazzi, who are being put out of business by everyday schmucks with cameraphones. [Guardian]
  
• Joost, the new video venture from the guys who brought you Kazaa, is totally above-board. Seriously, nobody wants to get sued again. [NYT]
  
• NBA joins NHL in allowing YouTube to post highlight clips. [NYP]
  
• More Tyler Br l means more fun diacriticals to cut and paste! Oh, yeah, Monocle's out. [WWD]
  
• Amanda Congdon's new vlog has been delayed by raccoons. More like rack-coons. Haha, get it? Because she's got big tits. [Amanda Congdon]
  
• Stuart Elliott looks at the Oscar commercials. RELATED: Were we the only ones to notice that Cadillac spot that used the Pogues' song "The Sunnyside of the Street" and chose to leave in the lyrics "So I saw that train and I got on it/with a heart full of hate and a lust for vomit"? Uh, WTF? [NYT]

• The FCC, which has done such a great job regulating obscenity, now wants to take a crack at violence as well. [Reuters]
  
• Maria Bartiromo can do whatever the hell she wants, say her employers. We'd still recommend flying commercial for a while. [NYP]
  
• Jeff Zucker installs three new fall guys. [NYT]
  
• Once again, folks are upset about suggestive ads for pecker pills. [WSJ]
  
• Plenty of people are lazy enough to sit through commercials whether they've DVR'd them or not. [NYT]
  
• Port olio: still hiring. [NYP, second item]
  
• Soledad O'Brien: laugh riot. [WWD]