Beckman, of course, would be the mastermind of the entire Fashion Rocks campaign, so what the hell is a fluff interview of him doing in a WWD-penned special supplement, posing as legit editorial copy? Staffers there are asking themselves the same thing. They feel that Mary Berner, who formerly led Fairchild and WWD before it was all absorbed into Conde Nast, would never have stood for such a thing.

On MediaPost yesterday, Ari Rosenberg decried the whole ongoing degeneration of the advertising/ editorial line. "Today's media-buying demand for a 'big idea' required to earn a media commitment, combined with a softer and more competitive environment, all driven by a sales force that has no idea who Henry Luce is, have publishers doing things not done before," he wrote.

Which leads to this:

They’d been wanting an Olive Garden for years. They’ve done surveys over the years—what restaurants would you like to see in Sioux City? For twenty years, the Olive Garden was at the top of the list. I didn’t have a beat. I was on the copy desk for fifteen years and was just getting back into writing. I had been doing some faith-based and medical stories. The business editor had some kind of problem that day, so I filled in and did the story. It was a boring story, but people were expecting something kind of big, because to them it was a big event. I wanted to have a little fun with the story.

Sioux City residents were "camping outside for two months" when the Olive Garden opened.

Let it be noted that John Quinlan is a good-humored man who is, in fact, a real journalist who has written real stories for many years. I salute you, sir. With breadsticks.

[CJR]

From Sulzberger:

To the Staff:

Given the business challenges we face, we are constantly looking for
ways to reduce costs that do not affect the quality or quantity of the
journalism we provide to our readers. Next month you will see one
such way in the metropolitan edition of The Times.

Beginning Monday, Oct. 6, we will introduce a new layout of the paper
by consolidating some sections. Metro will be integrated into the
Main News section Monday through Saturday. Business
and Sports will
be combined into one section Tuesday through Friday. There will be no
loss of content for readers. In fact, there will be some advantages
— a freestanding Saturday Arts section and a return to later
deadlines for Business news on Monday — and we are working to create
later deadlines for culture coverage. The cost savings, which are
significant, will come from the production savings of having a single
run on more nights than we do today.

We are not reducing the space devoted to Metro or Sports news. This
is simply a way to produce the paper more efficiently. These changes
will affect the New York edition only, as the national edition is
already configured in a similar fashion.

That said, we don't make these changes lightly. We care deeply about
what our New York readers think about their edition. We know that
many of our readers like and are comfortable with our current
layout.
But after a good amount of reader research and exploring various
options, we feel this is an effective way to reduce expenses while
providing our readers with the breadth and depth of high-quality
coverage they expect from us and we are committed to giving them.

Arthur

From Keller:

To the Staff:
As you've learned from Arthur's message, beginning next month the
paper will be reconfigured. Metro news will appear in the A-book along with
International and National news. Sports will be combined with Bizday,
except on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, when we will offer freestanding
sports sections. I just want to elaborate a little on what this means for
the newsroom.
The aim, of course, is to save money — and, importantly, to do it
without cutting back coverage. The savings come from eliminating an early
shift in the printing plants on some days. We do not expect to cut the
space devoted to these important and popular areas of coverage, or to
reduce the staff of journalists who deliver that coverage. For readers who
like to single out the Metro or Sports sections for the train ride to work,
the new configuration will be a little less convenient. But there will be
no less of the great news reports, enterprise, features and columns they
expect from those departments.
There are even few offsetting gains for readers:
— The new configuration will allow us to give readers a
free-standing Arts section in the Saturday paper.
— We will get some later deadlines, which will help us
competitively. Monday Bizday, which is now on the early press run with
deadlines in the afternoon, will be printed on the late run, something
business editors have long craved. Thus business news that breaks on Sunday
night can hereafter be displayed in its proper place, where readers most
expect it. We are working to assure that the Arts section can also move to
later deadlines most days of the week. We still have some details to work
out about the timing and mechanics of the later close, but our ambition is
to set deadlines so that late-breaking news from Hollywood or the art
auctions or awards shows can be included in the section.
— Metro stories that begin on A-1 will jump to Metro space. This
year, to ease navigation of our news pages, we have mostly eliminated those
annoying jumps from the front page into other sections. The result is that
front-page Metro stories mostly jump into National space, where they may
feel a little orphaned. Now they will jump into the company of other Metro
stories.
We have already begun a conversation with editors in Metro about how
we assure, in practice, that we keep the light of Metro burning bright when
there is no longer a freestanding Metro section. For one thing, I think we
will want to be more willing to front urgent Metro stories in the
metropolitan editions. For another, we will be looking for new features or
improvements to our Metro coverage to reaffirm our commitment to local
readers. We've also talked to Tom Jolly about using the front page more to
billboard sports coverage.
And then there are the opportunities the Web presents us.
It's worth remembering that these cost savings serve a long-term
purpose. While we are tightening wherever we prudently can, we are
continuing to invest in our journalism, especially online, where our
audience and revenues are rapidly growing. Metro and Sports have proven
among the most innovative departments in exploiting the possibilties of the
Web. Witness the Olympics coverage; witness City Room. My belief is that
our continuing proliferation of great coverage on the Web will erase any
questions about our commitment to Metro and Sports coverage.
The top editors at Metro and Sports have been briefed on this, as
have the members of the Masthead. If you have questions or thoughts about
this development, you know where to find us.
Best,
Bill

RedState heard Palin's teleprompter broke and she soldiered on like a pro! A guy who watched the speech in view of her teleprompter says that is not true, at all, wtf. Too late! The story's already being repeated as gospel!

Drudge says Oprah refuses to have Sarah Palin on her show! Oprah says there hasn't been any discussion, we only just heard of this woman a week ago, wtf, I'll have her on later. Who cares?

Hell, on a macro level various people call Sarah Palin a "maverick" and "reformer" and then she is one. Democrats can't replicate this strategy because there is not a legitimate news organization in the world that would unquestioningly use Kos (or even HuffPo??) as a source.

But if they want to try we'll happily post an item on that one time Martin Balsam and Robert Shaw hijacked Joe Biden's Acela and killed the engineer and he outwitted all of them and drove the train to safety. Now we wait for Chris Matthews to take the bait!

This week, as NYT reporter Carol Vogel returned from her annual August sabbatical, all kinds of news suddenly, magically appeared in the Times: Ann Temkin's promotion and a Braque acquisition at MoMA, the National Gallery of Art Villareal. (Collusion made obvious: Even after MoMA and the NYT announced the news on NYT.com, MoMA refused to send a writer a press release on the Temkin appointment.)

[Modern Arts Notes]

Stewie Griffin is Mr. MacFarlane's biggest breakout character. Stewie's ovoid head emblazons T-shirts, posters and merchandise that often match the subversive tone of "Family Guy," such as figurines outfitted in bondage gear. Total merchandise sales have climbed into the "hundreds of millions" of dollars, Fox says. Though it doesn't touch the fortune that "The Simpsons" generates with hundreds of licensees, "Family Guy" currently has 80 licensees. Discussions are underway with a brewery that would make real cans of Pawtucket Patriot Ale, Peter Griffin's brew of choice.

Do the Bartman! And did you know that MacFarlane is, like, an actual stressed-out boss of an entire army?

Mr. MacFarlane leads a team of about 320 producers, writers, animators and support staffers, but he oversees all aspects of production. Running late for a massage therapy appointment recently, he demonstrated how tension in his neck kept it from swiveling more than a few inches.

Still to come from MacFarlane: "a live-action sitcom for Fox," a Family Guy movie, and "a feature-length buddy comedy that he's planning with [Seth] Green." By then the backlash should be something to behold.

[I still think he's funny.]

[WSJ]

Her speech at the Republican convention drew as many viewers as Barack Obama's masterpiece last week in Denver; the newsweekly shelf at my local newsstand half-covered by the moose-hunter's smiling mug (see picture); and take a look at the most popular stories on Gawker this week.

Sarah Palin may not persuade the pantsuit-wearing supporters of Hillary Clinton to abandon their political beliefs in the interest of gender solidarity. But, as an attractive woman, she does bring something unique to the ticket. Much more so than a decrepit white man or even a handsome black man, she's a viable cover star appealing to both male and female audiences. And all the talk shows will fall over themselves to book her.

Video games in the football broadcasts. This marks the failure of American P.E. teachers:

The network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, has spent the last year working on a new technology with Electronic Arts, the leading game publisher, that would allow ESPN commentators to interact live with realistic-looking, three-dimensional virtual players as they pontificate about coming matches during broadcasts...

Boiled down, the complex technology, which will make its debut this Sunday on ESPN’s popular “NFL Countdown” program, involves using an Electronic Arts’ title — say Madden NFL 09 — with specialized digital camera equipment in the studio. Presto: Both real and virtual people move around the ESPN set to demonstrate plays and possible situations.

The NFL never should have allowed this. Kids already prefer video games to real sports. You're just encouraging them. Hope you like announcing Madden XBox tournaments, ESPN. That's your future.

[NYT]

"(Us publisher) Jann Wenner supports Obama, Wenner media decided to follow the buzz around Palin before her speech, and now subscribers feel like a vote has been cast on their behalf," says another magazine editor. “It’s going to be tough to bounce back from this one. Especially if the advertisers get involved. If they get nervous, that can hurt all of us.”

It's easy to imagine the other shoe dropping in this publishing psychodrama: Wenner rival Kent Brownridge, newly installed at Us competitor and celebrity-servile OK!, makes a play for access to Palin, a (sigh) rising political star whose Republican convention speech drew 37 million TV viewers, nearly as many as tuned in to watch Barack Obama. If that happens — Presto! You've got MSNBC (Us) and Fox News (OK!) recreated among the celebrity weeklies.

(I'm pretty sure someone else floated the Brownridge/Palin scenario elsewhere yesterday, but can't find the post anymore.)

More likely, Us Weekly wises up and backs off the risky business of political coverage. One of MSNBC's sources characterized the Palin cover — which allegedly had nothing to do with Wenner — as nothing so much as a miscalculation:

“When Us went to print Monday night, it looked like the ticket was falling apart," says one magazine editor. “They went to print thinking Palin was dead in the water, and their mistake was thinking everyone who reads Us is a Democrat, when they’re not. Readers are loyal, but the base of a political party is more loyal."

Update: a friend at Us Weekly looked up the numbers. "We got about 1,000 cancellations over the issue, but remarkably, about 1,000 bonus subscriptions from supporters which I was not expecting. Who knew there was a motivated left? It also drove the third highest day ever on our website in terms of visits. Basically...the whole thing mirrors the McCain-Obama race. The two sides see everything in completely different terms. So the impact is a wash at the moment, which is shocking."

The discord between Bush and Casey is one manifestation of the often-debilitating rift that Woodward portrays between the U.S. military and its civilian leadership. The book describes a "near revolt" in late 2006 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who felt that their advice was not reaching the president. Adm. Michael Mullen, then serving as chief of naval operations, expressed fear that the military would "take the fall" for a failure in Iraq. According to the book, Casey and Abizaid resolutely opposed the large surge that the president ultimately ordered, as did Rumsfeld. Casey went so far as to refer to Baghdad as a "troop sump." Within the administration, only the National Security Council staff strongly supported the surge plan.

Actually, Fox's story is still more sensational and interesting, even though the Post had more time to write, but maybe the paper is still trying to save some details for a series starting Sunday ahead of the book's release Monday. Or maybe News Corporation just knows from sensational!

Either way, it's probably time for Woodward, his newspaper and his book publisher to stop trying to stage manage his book releases so tightly. If the Post is going to hold on to its exclusives, it's going to have to start publishing earlier and more aggressively. Or at least pre-write better contingency Web stories.

[Huffington Post]

Its out-of-touch publisher, Elisha R. Hagenbuckle, who resembles former Times publisher Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger, is "like a rhino with cage fever . . . muttering to himself . . . a parody of a man in animated concentration." He's horrified by such Web sites as Gawker and Defamer, asking, "Where the hell did it come from, this abiding compulsion to read about the breakups and breakdowns of third-rate celebrities?"

To which his son, a takeoff on Times publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., chirps, "That's the whole point, Dad. You've got to be snarky."

The odd thing here is that Punch retired as publisher in 1992 and as chairman in 1997, half a decade before Gawker started. The exchange would make more sense between Pinch and his own twentysomething son Arthur Gregg Sulzberger. But, hey, what's the point of slapping the "fiction" veil over your former employer if you can't take some liberties?

[Post]

"These girls who want to be called handbag designers, they're basically expressing their sense that they're not taken seriously because they're called socialites," said... David Patrick Columbia, the editor of the New York Social Diary website... "And, you know, they're not."

For Devorah Rose, editor-in-chief of Social Life magazine, being known as a socialite is a mixed blessing.

"Anyone who's not a celebrity, who's being photographed going out, becomes a socialite," Rose told Reuters. "Because it's not exclusive anymore, nobody wants to be a socialite."

Sorry, Reuters: Writing about how socialites have these basically fake businesses is not business news.

But you can maybe pass it off as that. If you don't mind feeling like one of those society gossips who puts on Wall Street airs (just read a good article about those gals).

[Reuters]

To: All TONY Staff
Fr: Alison Tocci

Statement from Time Out New York President Alison Tocci:

As Time Out reaches its 40th anniversary in London, and Time Out New York passes the 13-year mark, there is much to celebrate. Sadly, some of our achievement has been clouded by an anonymous, typo-riddled post on Gossip, I mean, Gawker.com, which alludes to our imminent demise.

I can assure you that rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Time Out, like all print media, has felt both the specific downturn in print ad sales as advertisers and readers migrate online, and the general economic downturn complicated by rising paper and printing costs. In addition, we have made significant investment into our own costly transition online.

The result is a tight cash flow situation that has led unfortunately to very slow payment to our vendors and freelancers.

Happily, our New York investors, who understand the value of the brand you have all built and have been entirely supportive over the past 14 years, remain fully committed to us. They have stepped up to the plate in a significant way and I can assure you that our valued vendors, freelancers and all service providers who make what we do possible, will be brought up to date over the next 90 days.

And unlike our anonymous and gossipy friend, you can sign my name to that.

Alison Tocci
President
Time Out New York

[Alison, please send future typo corrections and memos here.]

Synopsis
Tina Gaudoin guides us through the ins and outs of the most glamorous and bitchy of industries - the politics, products and the personalites. Having moved to New York following TMIL (The Man I Love), Tina takes the brave step of accepting a job back in London to get her career of the ground. Tina is catapulted into a job at Tatler where she's in above her head from day one, is struggling to make her long-distance relationship work and is soon to discover that her mother has terminal cancer. Through Tina's story we meet the celebrated movers and shakers in the fashion industry and follow her back and forth across the Atlantic between London and New York as she lurches up the magazine career ladder. With plenty of hilarious stories about top fashion designers, models and photographers at every step of her journey, there's a wealth of behind-the-scenes tales and anecdotes, but it's the combination of these with Tina's own story of ambition, love and loss that makes this the must read of the season.

Recall that WSJ editor Robert Thomson just said Gaudoin is "the world's most talented, the world's best magazine editor of British origin called Tina." How's that for bitchy, Tina Brown?

[via Mixed Media. Pic via MB]

TONY is light on content and heavy on listings. That's probably not going to change significantly. So consider what they're up against:

• Craigslist: The entire classified ad business has largely been destroyed by Craigslist. Especially in New York, where Craigslist is widely read. Because Craigslist is, you know, free.
• Yelp.com: A site with remarkably extensive listings and reviews of restaurant, bars, nightlife, bars, and shopping. And the reviews are customer-generated, rather than one magazine's opinion. Also free. (See also: Citysearch, Menupages, etc.)
• Blogs: Crazy micro-specialization means that there are probably a dozen good blogs covering any area of interest you might have in New York. Again, free.
• Other competitors: The Village Voice, NY Press, and L Magazine all do extensive reviews and event listings. All free. New York magazine could be considered a higher-end competitor, but its content is a million times better.

Suffice it to say that TONY can't depend on increasing sales of its print version to stay afloat. That leaves its website. Which they certainly understand—the mag tried to invest and make its website the leader in its category last year. Unfortunately that didn't pan out. And it's hard to see how they could surpass all the aforementioned online competitors now, even with a big infusion of money.

So if TONY's business model doesn't deliver them a solid profit right where they are today, the outlook is grim.

[Anybody out there with more info on TONY's financial situation (good or bad), email us please.]

"You're going to request meeting with Charlie on three separate occasions in his hometown of Los Angeles. First, a standard in-person interview of a couple hours or so. Second, you'll be a fly on the wall as Charlie conducts some business related to the film’s release. If there’s any postproduction left, that would be ideal—would love to see him in the editing room, for instance. Maybe even riding along with Kaufman as he heads to the grocery store. Then you do a follow-up interview—by phone if necessary. I'm confident once you meet him and form a rapport, you will come back with plenty of material and we'll strategize from there."

Well, the grocery store part sounds fun! You know there are a bunch of journalism professors out there making their students read this right now.

[The Process]

Shuter was a celebrity flack before he came to OK. So when he got the job, some of the esteemed journalists at the magazine were angry at this publicist interloping on their territory. But really, a PR guy is much better suited to the job than someone with a history on the editorial side.

The editor of OK essentially works to broker deals with celebrities and their managers and publicists. That was Shuter's gig before, on the other side of things, so he knows just how to make this work. His competitors, who came up as reporters and editors, will never have that experience. He could be functionally illiterate. No problem!

Celeb magazines are driven by photos—exclusive photos. Who fucking cares what OK's brain damaged stories say? People want to look at pretty photos of famous people that they can't get anywhere else, and that's what they get from Shuter. Plus, appearance on shows like ET and Access Hollywood usually materialize only after the exclusive magazine deal has been closed, meaning that celebrities have to deal with one of the mags no matter what. And since OK is the friendliest and one of the most financially generous, bingo.

Rob Shuter is a shameless man in a shameless job. Many lesser people would be embarrassed to be him. But Shuter can say with a straight face that he's "proud of the product" and dismiss competitors as "haters" and be totally genuine. He's worth every penny.

"Celebrity-fair" is the new "right-sizing."

Post-breakup, a writer's first instinct it to write or blog it out. This is their nature. It's totally fine if kept confined to a Word doc or a friends-only LiveJournal blog or whatever.

But still, you must work, work—as Chekhov said. Maybe you're freelancing, and you're miserable, and all you can think about is this fucking ex of yours who keeps popping up in the damndest of places—whether it's their byline in a magazine or at the corner deli or at a media party. And hey, why not mine your life for stories? That's what your writing teacher at that night class at the New School told you!

You might even earn some sweet freelance cash from a personal essay—or if you're really good, a Modern Love in the Sunday Times, which is the pinnacle of the breakup essay. You can then use the $500 to buy an awesome dress, which is sort of like an investment in a future relationship. (It's easier to catch flies at media parties with honey!)

And so you write. Whether what you write is good or bad, the fact is that it's published, and it's out there. The written-about ex might form a rebuttal. They might not. They might get a six-figure book deal which allows them to feature you in any damned essay they want, like Ms. Gould! That essay might get leaked and it might contain certain bits about your sex life or your musculature.

Of course, there have been other, more luminary, writer couplings. Sartre and de Beauvoir, Plath and Hughes, the Bloomsbury Group. Do not pay attention to them. They had no high-speed Internet.

And so the vicious cycle continues. But enough about work. You doing anything Saturday night?

Are we trapped in Peggy Noonan's bubble? Seriously, people? The speech blew you away? It was a generic stump speech with a couple killer lines, delivered competently. It was the Republican equivalent of John Kerry's speech at the DNC, just given by someone America doesn't hate (yet) while the national networks were listening.

We honestly can't believe the same media that knew full well that they were playing into the expectations game became so convinced that Governor Palin would massively fuck up that the fact that she was perky and pleasant and funny—the fucking reasons she was selected—was some revelation, or the birth of a new political superstar. We can't believe everyone gave her a pass on the 'bridge to nowhere' bullshit. We can't believe people keep calling her a "reformer" and "maverick" even though as a politician, completely outside her self-constructed narrative, she introduced focus-grouped wedge politics to small-town Alaska and lobbied for the most corrupt politicians in America. Is it really this easy?

We know this miserable woman. We are from the great white north, the land of Ms. Palin's congressional doppelganger. We still can't help but feel that the "just folks" everyone images they understand better than everyone else will find Ms. Palin to be, well, as Ken Layne put it:

America, we’ve met Sarah Palin before. It was in junior high. She was that snarling evil god-obsessed nut who punished you constantly and enjoyed nothing more than torture — seeing you tortured, that is. And your parents would never quite believe it because she “seemed like a nice lady,” from a distance, with her squeaky voice.

So yes we will grant that the "red meat" portion of the proceedings (where the fuck did that term come from? Chris Matthews got hungry and invented a political meme!) seemed effective and cutting. The small town bullshit still plays. We'll grant that the "people keep calling her a hick" story (while not true outside of conservative persecution fantasies) works in her favor, even though it's equivalent to complaining about how everyone keeps calling Barack Obama an elitist (the difference being that people actually do). But those were one-liners no more substantial or amusing than the crass and vile bullshit Rudy Giuliani delivered a few minutes before, and no one has ever, ever doubted Palin's ability to talk before cameras. She was a pageant contestant and a local news sports person. We know those are the only real qualifications for national political office, we merely wish everyone else who knew it would acknowledge it, instead of acting shocked that this woman can read.

It was just after the 1988 Republican convention ended. I was on the plane, as a speechwriter, that took Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, and the new vice presidential nominee, Dan Quayle, from New Orleans, the site of the convention, to Indiana. Sitting next to Mr. Quayle was the other senator from that state, Richard Lugar. As we chatted, I thought, "Why him and not him?" Why Mr. Quayle as the choice, and not the more experienced Mr. Lugar? I came to think, in following years, that some of the reason came down to what is now called The Narrative. The story the campaign wishes to tell about itself, and communicate to others. I don't like the idea of The Narrative. I think it is ... a barnyard epithet. And, oddly enough, it is something that Republicans are not very good at, because it's not where they live, it's not what they're about, it's too fancy. To the extent the McCain campaign was thinking in these terms, I don't like that either. I do like Mrs. Palin, because I like the things she espouses. And because, frankly, I met her once and liked her. I suspect, as I say further in here, that her candidacy will be either dramatically successful or a dramatically not; it won't be something in between.

But, bottom line, I am certainly sorry I blurted my barnyard ephithet...

There are more inexplicable wrinkles to the story in Noonan's full telling (link below), but the point is: Yes, she thinks Palin is a bullshit pick, and she doesn't mind doing a little bullshit rhetorical dance to try and placate her conservative benefactors without actually backing off her statement.

[WSJ]

"The National Enquirer's coverage of a vicious war within Sarah Palin's extended family includes several newsworthy revelations, including the resulting incredible charge of an affair plus details of family strife when the Governor's daughter revealed her pregnancy. Following our John Edwards' exclusives, our political reporting has obviously proven to be more detail-oriented than the McCain campaign's vetting process."

The McCain camp issued a full-throated denial and threatened to sue, though it's worth noting that Edwards at first outright denied the Enquirer's affair charges in late 2007.

The Enquirer promises a fuller report next week. Will the traditional press discuss the story in the meantime? Probably not. Though some publications seemed to regret their silence during the Enquirer's reporting on the Edwards affair, the tabloid had more evidence then on Edwards than it does now on Palin. Edwards was seen going into a hotel where his mistress was staying, and ran from reporters when he was confronted hours later as he tried to leave. And he failed to reiterate a real denial of the charges.

Hopefully some enterprising news outlets will at least attempt to investigate the Enquirer's allegations, however. Now's your chance to shine. Anchorage Daily News!

[Huffington Post]

"Pissed off" is among crude language regularly removed from Times coverage as part of what McCoy acknowledges is "a conservative standard" when it comes to publishing coarse or vulgar remarks...

Clark Stevens oversees the style and usage guidelines at The Times... "It's a phrase we've all heard, and most of us have used. But is it essential to the story (or the quotation) here, and is it consistent with the overall tone and image we want to project to our readers? I think that's where conservative judgment prevails in favor of not using it..."

The policy for the first time takes into account the online world vs. the print world. As McCoy wrote in her cover note to staff when she distributed the updated guidelines on obscenity and taste, "A less formal voice may be appropriate in online stories and on blogs (as is often the case in feature stories too), but a conversational style is not an invitation to abandon The Times’ high standards by introducing gratuitous obscenities."

So whether it's on latimes.com or in print, curse words and crude language are supposed to be used only when they are essential to conveying an important point of the story.

Thanks for keeping everyone excruciatingly up to date on your slow-motion embrace of Web culture, LA Times, rather than boring us with stories about, say, philandering politicians and their mistresses!

[LA Times via Romenesko]

Many things have changed since the Sun was founded: lead investor and Chicago Sun-Times owner Conrad Black went to jail, oil went above $100 a barrel, Israel went to war with Lebanon, Bill Buckley died and someone named "Julia Allison" gave birth to something called "microcelebrity," and the embarrassing unbridled jingoism unleashed by the events of September 11 greased the proverbial wheels of a prodigious bounty of lousy deals that would result mainly in death and disillusionment, the latter of which would eventually, mercifully, find itself directed at the Republican Party and the conservative movement that, in addition to God, granted it so much power. But here is what has not changed: conservatives do not really read, which is to say, of course conservatives read but not things that are like, long*, and those who do tend to compartmentalize the pastime as something rather far removed from their ideology, and if that's not the case, well, they would seem to be sufficiently alarmed by the defilement of their once-optimistic "movement" to be directing their information demands at suppliers of cruder, less ideologically-refined sources than the Sun. Of course, this is all blather and speculation; I am merely stating what I believe to be the nature of business conditions in the niche. But it is not just the Rupert Murdochs of the conservative media ideologically softening these days; the nuttycon Washington Times would seem to be on a bid to "mainstream" itself, while the talking heads and bloggingheads running such outlets as the National Review seem primarily to be brokering in new cute phrases: Sam's Club Republicans! The Sourpuss Vote! We've been Palinized!
We think you'll agree, if there's anything the industry needs right now, it's de-Palinization.

*Yeah, case in point: NONE of those guys actually read the Bible.

"I mean, I’m an idiot, I should have said, "Look I’m not that into this." But it was like getting caught in a lie. I’m not going to be like, "Guess what? You spent the last 45 minutes munching box, and I’m not that into it."

We fell asleep and I thought, thank God it’s over. But the next morning, he went right back down south. As soon as I woke up, my eyes were like starting to open, and I was like, "This is a joke." I just wanted to get out of there. This guy thinks it’s like a gift from God, but it’s absolute torture."

Oh. Good to know!

The editor's note: "This woman is now older, wiser and happily married." Well, that's no fun.

She says she was protected by "a wooden fence approximately five feet tall" in her yard, but the defendants nevertheless trespassed to photograph and expose her unclothed body to the wilds of the internet. For shame!

We couldn't find any definitive candidates while digging around Egotastic. The closest Miami shots appear to be Helena Christensen (but she was at the beach with her boyfriend) or Brooke Hogan (but she's not nude, or a supermodel). So who is it? Guesses about this matter of legal import in the comments.

UPDATE: Elsa Benitez?

[Courthouse News]

Unless bloggers and enterprising commenters come up with actual evidence of weird natal misdeeds, their investigations will likely lead to just another MSM crisis about how the "bloggers" are devious and evil. Especially because the conspiracies are getting so dark. As far as we know, the story as it's currently postulated is that a) Palin covered up for her daughter Bristol's first pregnancy, and then Bristol either got knocked up again immediately afterwards or she's faking this pregnancy; or b) that Palin was indeed pregnant and her amniocentesis followed by her insane and inexplicable schedule the day of Trig's birth are proof that Palin was trying to cause a miscarriage. This is weird and horrible stuff and the very act of suggesting it will make respectable people queasy. But hey, it's out there!

The "blog conspiracy theories", as cable people are surely already calling them, will make these responsible journalists (pls add own scare quotes) probably less likely to do their own digging into and speculating on the story of Baby Trig. Families: off-limits! (That reductive construction is a facile and childish simplification of issues that are newsworthy and even related to actual policy- and decision-making but whatever. The press doesn't want to look bad beating up supermom.)

Soon the "the press is victimizing Sarah Palin" narrative will ramp up even further. Already poor Clarence Page got in trouble for calling Governor Palin a nice "young lady." That is mildly condescending, yes, but sexist? "Lady" is a bit old fashioned, maybe, but Lieberman just referred to the Democratic party nominee for president—a black man, btw—as "an eloquent and gifted young man" in a speech before the Republican National Convention on primetime television last night. And no one but TNR noticeed or cared.

But this speech tonight! It was just explicitly spelled out on MSNBC: "the bar is not very high." Everyone will be pleasantly surprised at how well she does, how she's a breath of fresh air, how she is so much better than the terrible old white men of the Republican party. Unless she accidentally makes some huge factual fuck-up, like talking about that damned bridge to nowhere again. But they are probably being careful about that.

The media has most likely dug up every salient detail there is to find about Troopergate and her early political career, and now it's up to Obama's people to exploit those, but where it may still get interesting is in the celebrity media. Specifically with Levi Johnston. The campaign will be dragging Levi to the RNC tonight, and presumably this shotgun wedding will go on as planned, but there are rumblings, already, that Levi is a brickheaded young thug who's maybe knocked up girls before, whose parents don't approve of this foolishness, and we've even heard that he had to dry out in rehab before the sham wedding could take place.

So we rely on the Enquirer and, to a lesser extent, Us Weekly to pursue these stories. Because honestly the families that relate to a working mother dealing with her oldest daughter's understandable mistake will surely not relate to forcing that poor girl into marrying a local drunken hoodlum, as it is no longer 1910 or something.

The McCain campaign knows—and indeed has explicitly stated—that they've been totally successful in making this campaign not about "issues" (even lazily defined "issues" like "the economy" and "Iraq") but about "character" which means personality and hagiography. Palin was the perfect pick in that sense, because she's aggressively blue-collar suburban normal, but she may soon become the sort of "normal" that people can't fucking stand—your uptight god-loving neighbor who makes you look bad but can't keep her own house in order. This, against the adorable nuclear Obama family, is not a good narrative for McCain.