Jobs is reportedly obsessing over a forthcoming Apple tablet, a top-secret device that is said to look like a giant iPhone. The device went through at least six redesigns, AppleInsider has reported, a tell-tale symptom of Jobs' perfectionism. The tweaking continues relentlessly and annoyingly, staff told the Journal's Yukari Iwatani Kane:

[Jobs] has been pouring almost all of his attention into [the tablet]... Those working on the project are under intense scrutiny from Mr. Jobs, particularly with regard to the product's advertising and marketing strategy, said one of these people... Mr. Jobs's focus on the tablet has been jarring for some Apple employees, who had grown accustomed to a level of freedom over strategy and products while the CEO was on leave, said a person familiar with the matter.

Freedom over strategy and products? What the hell kind of hippie commune were you operating while Dear Leader was gone, Tim Cook? Something tells us you'll be first through Jobs' inevitable reeducation camps, once he gets this tablet shipped out the door.

As Gotham's mayor, Michael Bloomberg feels he's gone above and beyond for the reporter, the Examiner's Michael Harris. Harris gets transportation in a special van and wheelchair access around City Hall, Bloomberg's flack tells the New York Times.

But the mayor turned nasty against Harris today. The reporter was waiting for a mayoral press conference on gay marriage to begin when a photographer knocked over his coat a few seats over. This caused his tape recorder to begin playing. At first Harris couldn't figure out what was going on, and the Times says most people in the room couldn't even hear the recorder's output.

Still, Bloomberg singled Harris out from the podium, even after the City Council speaker whispered in the mayor's ear, "he's disabled." (See video above.) Bloomberg waited about a minute and a half for Harris to reach the tape recorder.

Since the reporter was disabled, in a wheelchair, and penned in by other photographers (per the Daily News), this took a little while.

The mayor scolded him in the interim — instead of, say, asking an aide to help Harris. Then he went on to say something Historic and Very Important about how crucial equal rights are, and how we need to adjust our institutions for people who are different from us and who have been historically pushed to the margins of society.

In related news, Harris is demanding an apology.

A Bloomberg press release called Andy Lack a "news legend" upon his arrival in October to head TV, radio and Web operations at the financial news wire. Pearlstine promptly fêted the former Sony Music CEO at a high-profile meal at Le Cirque

Perhaps all the attention went to his head. Lack, one tipster writes, regressed to what we're told is a 10+ year old habit from his NBC News days: complaining about tiny limousines.

That whine would be in terribly bad taste for a man who just laid off 100 of his own people — the first mass firing in company history.

The story, per a tipster:

Upon arriving at Tokyo this weekend, Bloomberg TV honcho Andy Lack threw a shitfit worthy in comparison to his fellow co-news potentate Matt Winkler.

The limousine Lack had his Manhattan-based minions order from the aptly namedImperial Hotel to pick him up at the airport was too small for his liking. Theformer Sony music hatchet man, who fired hundreds of Bloomberg TV staffers thisyear, including a whole division and then some in Tokyo, screamed at the driverwho didn't understand his engrish. Ever cost conscious and environmentallyaware, the Ugry Amelican poo-bah then demanded that another larger, lessfuel-efficient tank be dispatched to the airport to pick him up.

Alas, that big boat didn't satisfy the Get Shorty lookalike. So after thehour-long plus ride into the city, "Limo" Lack stormed into the hoteland demanded that the very aporogetic general manager come out to the foyerentrance with a measuring tape to compare vehicle sizes.

The measuring tape trick apparently dates to Lack's NBC days. Back then, though, he had his own aide he'd send fetch the device, the tipster recalled. The bad economy, it would seem, affects everyone.

UPDATE: A Bloomberg spokesperson calls the story "completely false," adding:

The alleged "incident" you refer to never happened. The only true statement in your report is that Andy Lack visited Tokyo for a few days this week. He arrived from the airport in a standard hotel car and had a very pleasant ride to the hotel. Andy walked to the office every day from the hotel, which is a few blocks away from the Tokyo office. No arguments, disagreements or fuss at all. What you describe may have happened to someone else, but it wasn't a Bloomberg employee or manager.

Newsweek profiles Arnell in this week's issue, and apparently he spent all his time staging elaborate spectacles for the benefit of the reporter, who must be made to understand how important Peter Arnell is:

There's a phone call with someone named Jay. Arnell puts the call on speakerphone. In case I don't recognize the voice, he stage-whispers to me, "It's Jay Leno." Afterward, he calls Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, and Rudy Giuliani, but can't get them on the phone.

Also, how bizarre:

He owns 1,600 pairs of eyeglasses, all fitted with his prescription...Having done advertising work for the New York Fire Department, he's managed to get a fire-department badge and radio, and has outfitted his Jeep Commander with flashing lights. Two former business associates, who requested anonymity to avoid damaging their relationship with Arnell, say Arnell carried a handgun in an ankle holster. (Arnell acknowledges only having a gun permit and says stories of him carrying it at work are "inaccurate.") He also carries a Sony digital camera, and he snaps pictures constantly-75,000 in the past 12 months. An assistant uploads and catalogs them. Arnell devours oranges, about 20 a day, which turn his hands yellow. When he's done with one bowl, an assistant whisks away the peels and brings in another.

Mmm hmm. But where is the man who we named one of the worst bosses in New York?

This person recalls Arnell humiliating employees by making them get down and do push-ups in front of clients. "He is unencumbered with any sense of morality. Until you experience it firsthand, it's just completely and utterly unfathomable."

There he is! Why, we can...only imagine working for such a tyrant. Got any more good Peter Arnell stories? Send em over! [Newsweek via Kempt]

The disgraced Illinois governor appeared on Maddow's MSNBC show after the Illinois senate heard for the first time on Tuesday federal wiretap recordings of his conversations. His strategy seems to be to keep talking and talking until everyone gets bored with him and forgets what he did wrong. Hence his tour of morning shows like Good Morning America and the View and his chat with Larry King.

By the time he made it to Maddow's program, Blagojevich had gotten bold. He said he wanted "every taped conversation to be heard so the whole story can be heard in the full context" since "I consider myself the anti-Nixon."

But the Democrat is not the "anti-Nixon," because within seconds he got all jumpy. He said "I can't go into the details" when Maddow pressed him for a real answer on whether he tried to get Chicago Tribune editors fired. He later sputtered a half-denial, saying he didn't tell Tribune Company to lay off, and his aide was "never directed" to do so.

The guv apparently managed to run afoul of judicial regulations, since, Blago said, there's a "Supreme Court rule" that won't let him discuss the specifics of his case. Which he had just discussed. Rather unconvincingly.

Blago surely plans to keep talking, Supreme Court rule or not, because his embarrassing presence in the national media is one of his only remaining political bargaining chips, and because he knows his constituents will eventually beg him to finish out his term if he promises to just stop talking, on television.

The news network joined HaperCollins, Random House, the BBC and the Financial Times in a government-built media campus in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. At a time of widespread cutbacks by U.S media in international coverage, CNN will staff its new bureau there with 30 people and launch a new show from the the hereditary Islamic oligarchy.

CNN insists it's paying for the space, but a UAE exec told the Times in October that the payments are "negotiable." Also, the government invested $1 billion in a movie deal with Time Warner, so CNN's parent company is still net positive, cashflow-wise.

Then there's Forbes. In November, a Russian billionaire was rumored to be trying to buy the magazine for around $700 million. Forbes denied any deal.

But the transaction seemed plausible, if only because authoritarian media sugar daddies dominate deal talk like never before. And it doesn't stop with Sam Zell and Tribune Company or Carlos Slim taking a stake in the Times (ahead of a once-rumored sale to Michael Bloomberg); the once-sacrosanct, nonprofit world of journalism education is in the game as well.

The Northwestern j-school, Medill, is setting up a Qatar branch; USC's journalism school has plans in Dubai and NYU is duplicating its whole academic program in Abu Dhabi.

If the internet is pushing a new, more democratic crop of news outlets online, it seems to be having the opposite effect on traditional journalism. For old organizations, it's far easier to switch from one well-heeled boss (say, a family or benevolent media mogul) to another (an oligarch, sheik or finance billionaire) than to try and adapt to the uncertain, low-margin business of publishing for the online masses.

(Pictured: Alexander Lebedev, said trying to buy Evening Standard, and reportedly kind of a good guy, as far as oligarchs go.)

There were plenty of similarly nasty, bile-filled remembrances of the executive, following his death earlier this month from cancer, on the Yahoo Finance message board for JRC. "Ding-dong, the witch is dead," read one. " Another: "The guy was an @#$% on Tuesday, when he was still alive. He was an @#$% on Wednesday, when he died. And he is still an @#$% right now."

But the memorials that besmirched Jelenic's memory the most were the ones about how he was an awful person.

Jelenic's notoriety was fairly well established before he died. His company owned a chain of community newspapers — generally not well regarded — in the Northeast. The stock now trades at half a cent as the company struggles with heavy debt due to acquisitions.

Forbes profiled him under the headline, "Cheapskate Journalism," adding that "nobody cinches the belt tighter" and recalling how one large corporation refused to sell a group of newspapers to Jelenic, even though his was the highest bid by a significant margin.

Jelenic also lashed out at an American Journalism Review writer, pelting her with insults. "Flashes of his ego and temper are almost immediately on display," she wrote. "The interview lasts nearly two hours, and Jelenic appears to hate every question."

On Yahoo, this portrait of a small, angry man was fleshed out:

A call on the board for a modicum of respect, for the benefit of Jelenic's family, was rejected. Disgruntled former employees said the former CEO's loved ones should be faring far better than the families of those he laid off, fired, or put in peril through terrible business decisions. Fortunately, talk of bitter employees at the funeral, unloading their hatred on mourners, apparently did not come to pass.

Firing a ton of people to achieve 35 percent margins is probably not, even among salty newspaper types, and even on anonymous message boards, enough to stir this sort of public grave-dancing. But doing so while being a tremendous jerk about it apparently is. Moguls be warned.

Corporate colleagues also arched their eyebrows when Wintour told a reporter at the National Magazine Awards to "Just go away" after she asked about rumors of the editor-in-chief's impending retirement. The touchy reply added to their suspicion that Wintour, who just this past June celebrated two decades atop Vogue, was worried about being pushed out by Newhouse before she'd lined up a soft landing elsewhere. Her purported $2-million-per-year salary is seen as a hindrance, given the state of the economy, in lining up a follow-on fashion gig of the sort that seems natural, post Vogue: creative director at LVMH, that sort of thing.

Whether the palace intrigue at the world's fashion bible unfolds according to the Waverly buzz or not, it is clear the Vogue masthead is not at equilibrium. Wintour in recent years positioned herself as a sort of mini-mogul over various baby Vogues. But this fall, she's fallen back down to earth. The closure of Men's Vogue was a major personal embarrassment. It followed a possibly fatal blow to the Vogue Living experiment and the cancellation of Fashion Rocks. Worst of all, it came amid slipping numbers at Vogue itself, as competitors leveraged reality television to undermine the title's dominance over the world of fashion.

The poor performance surely undermined Wintour within Condé Nast. But even if the legendary editor-from-hell still had Si Newhouse's full support, there's the issue of personal satisfaction: Wintour could hardly be expected to content herself with a downgrade from "editorial director" of a magazine collection to mere editor-in-chief of a single title, shrinking in ad pages and influence. Even if Wintour does not yet realize that, Newhouse surely does. Thus we see the unwelcome rumors of her retirement in the tabloids. And so it may be that a French revolution comes to Vogue in January 2009. (Photo by Jeremy Kost)

UPDATE: As many of you noted in the comments, the rumored replacement of Wintour by her French rival puts a tragic (for Wintour) twist on a plotline specific to the film adaptation of the novel The Devil Wears Prada. The real-life French Vogue editor has said Wintour is "like a puppet." In a clip from the movie below, Wintour stand-in Miranda Priestly manages to divert her competitor Jacqueline Follet by arranging for her a job once promised to Priestly's lieutenant at Runway (aka Vogue). Her own boss is dissuaded by threats that Priestly's fashion-industry allies will blackball the magazine. That sort of loyalty seems far too posh an extravagance at a time of economic panic and powerful TV shows like Project Runway.

• Wintour famously passed on the chance to cooperate with the launch of Project Runway four years ago; by September Runway partner Elle was well on its way to passing Vogue in total ad pages, growing while Wintour's magazine was shrinking.
• Vogue's belated (but semi-successful!) reality show response, Model.Live, was masterminded by worried Vogue publisher Tom Florio, not Wintour.
• Those hussies at Elle launched their own cable show imitating an imitation of an imitation of Wintour. And she's not even getting royalties and whatnot!
• Vogue this year was beset by a series of ill-advised covers.
• Wintour was publicly snubbed in Europe for being an arrogant cultural imperialist.
• Men's Vogue fell in the Great Magazine Die-Off and, according to Page Six, Wintour didn't even have the energy to mount a vicious internal turf war. Sad!

Worst of all, the Times not two months ago profiled one of the bevy of smart young Euroskanks angling to push Wintour out the door (an elegant Russian with a Ph.D.), so when Wintour goes to recommend a replacement to Conde Nast boss Si Newhouse, as Page Six said she plans to do, he might just ignore her and go off in his own direction. (Maybe the editor of sexy Vogue India?)

Vogue's people deny everything, but leaving the magazine makes so much sense for Wintour: She gets to exit while the magazine is still on top; she doesn't have to learn how to effectively publish on this cesspool they call the internet; and Wintour will finally have time to close the deal on one of her many crushes. If the editor hasn't considered these positive aspects of retirement, she ought to, because someone at Conde Nast thinks she should!

According to state and city election records, Mr. Robbins registered to vote, under the name Tim Robbins, in November 1997, listing an address on West 15th Street, and registered a second time, under the name Timothy F. Robbins, in February 2004, listing an address on West 19th Street. The 1997 registration is now listed as inactive, while the 2004 registration is listed as active...

[An elections board member] wrote that, based on the active registration, Mr. Robbins should have gone to vote at the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, at 40 West 20th Street, not at the McBurney YMCA, at 125 West 14th Street.

Catch that? Robbins registered twice, most recently at an address (his office, it turns out) assigned a different polling location from his old one. Election officials said they would have caught Robbins in this inadvertent mischief sooner, but he used a new voter registration form instead of an address change, and he hasn't tried voting in at least the last two elections.

Robbins said he doesn't remember registering twice — right, see, that would be the problem — and a poll worker told the Times she remembers Robbins voting at the supposedly invalid location in September.

We're betting the movie star will simmer down once he receives the copy of his signed 2004 registration form, enclosed in a letter from elections officials. As a Board of Elections official told the Times: "We were confused, but he shouldn't have been confused... it’s all very logical: He filled out a new voter-registration form with an entirely new address, and went to the old address."

Robbins "resents" this statement, and is printing things out and accusing people of going after his family just generally acting like a lunatic. Which means he'll probably take his march to City Hall, just as soon as he can locate it. And also his wallet, and a pen, where the hell did he leave that damned pen...

(Photo from TMZ)

He sees a big problem in that so few Americans now pay any income tax. "We're now at a point where a very large part of the population pays no federal income tax at all. When you have a majority of the population that realizes that you can transfer money from the productive to themselves, that's one of the great questions for the future of civilization, as far as I'm concerned."

(Emphasis added.) The "most people don't pay income taxes" saw is a key Republican talking point in the 2008 election, and a misleading one at that, since a> it's closer to 40 percent and b> virtually all workers pay, directly and indirectly, payroll taxes amounting to 15 percent of wages.

But more to the point, saying the majority of Americans are unproductive is just the sort of thing that's going to prompt customers (like, say, me) to choose alternate carriers when redistributing their own meager (and for the most part declining) wealth this holiday season via Amazon.com and the like.

Smith has secured a brighter future for himself in a hypothetical McCain Administration, at least. Hope it was worth it.

All right, he’s not quite a liberal. He remains a militant free-marketeer and is still pro-war (grudgingly, he’s retreated a bit). And there was the moment, one afternoon, when over a glass of his favorite coconut water (meant to increase electrolytes) he was propounding the genetic theory that the basic problem of the Muslim people was that they married their cousins.

Other hints that Murdoch is still an unpolished, rough-and-tumble media mogul: He is a terrible mumbler, has alienated many of his children from his business and likes to personally report dirt on his foes (Wolff observers him trying to nail down gossip about a Hillary Clinton adviser).

But is no longer the unwavering backer of Fox News that he once was. After begging an audience with Barack Obama, Wolff writes, Murdoch arranged a "truce" with the Democratic presidential candidate and Fox News. Also, he's no fan of Fox shouting head Bill O'Reilly:

Fox has been his alter ego. For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed—he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not possible that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.

And Murdoch would "really like to own" that temple of liberal New York respectability, the Times:

Now, everybody around him continues to tell him that buying the Times is pretty much impossible. There will be regulatory problems. The Sulzberger family would never … And then there’s the opprobrium of public opinion.

But it’s obviously irresistible to him. I’ve watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal’s backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff’s quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple.

Given his history with the Journal, it would be a mistake to write off Murdoch's ambitions for the financially-troubled Times. And given his savvy, it would also be a mistake to assume the mogul walked through his acquisition fantasy with a media reporter for any reason other than to broadcast it to the entire world, in particular the Sulzberger family, whose dividend payouts are crippling the newspaper they supposedly would never relinquish.

[Vanity Fair]

"Mario was originally No. 1 on our radar as we planned the campaign," said an insider. "We were ready to call him with an offer, but then we saw Nick. He's younger, sexy, more interesting. On top of that, his body was crazy. We set up a meeting, and when he walked in, that was it. We never even looked at anyone else after that."

Another underwear exec called Adams, 25 to Lopez's 34, "the new face of sexy." Burn!

Obviously, the underwear story could be a giant marketing ploy. The company claims it was "ready to call [Lopez] with an offer," but it is never stated that Lopez sought or had any interest in the endorsement deal. On the other hand, Lopez sounds like he'd strip down in front of a camera at the drop of a hat.

[Post, Nick Adams, Mario Lopez]

(Photos via nickadams.biz and mariolopez.net)

• Matt Drudge, longtime nemesis who briefly was nicer to Clinton and then went back to completely hating on her. He recently "had the nerve to show up at Mrs. Clinton’s departure speech on Saturday"
• Chris Matthews, MSNBC host who said Clinton had succeeded thanks to her husband's infidelities and who called her staff "kneecappers" for seeking scalps over that comment and another allegedly misogynist statement from another MSNBC correspondent.
• Keith Olbermann, who actually left MSNBC once over its aggressive coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal but who became disillusioned with Hillary and issued several "Special Commentaries" against her and Bill involving, in one case, the Clintons' alleged race-baiting of Barack Obama. He also maybe said Hillary should be beaten. Physically.
• Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair. Duh.

At one point in time, being on the Clinton shit list might have meant you didn't get any favors from the White House or its federal agencies, and maybe also you committed "suicide" some day or had a terrible deadly "accident" on a deserted road. But what can the Clintons possibly do now? Cross your name of their hypothetical vice presidential inauguration list? Have David Brock hound you via Media Matters?

Besides, if Hillary ever makes another run at the White House, she'll make nice, just like she did with Richard Mellon Scaife and a million other people over the past year.

[Times]

It's good to see that both Democratic candidates are putting some of their most obnoxious supporters front and center on a consistent basis, just to make things a little easier for John McCain in the fall.

Then, as soon as the cameras went on, BOOM — onto the forehead. THE END IS NEAR.

She related the June 2002 threat that prompted the Pellicano investigation: a fish and a rose left on her car, next to a note saying “Stop” and a bulletlike hole in her windshield. She told of phone trouble beginning that month, of learning that her D.S.L. service had been canceled without her knowledge and that large chunks of e-mail had been stolen, and of finding a virus on her computer.

On an August morning, she testified, two men in a Mercedes nearly ran her down. One put a finger to his lips, as if warning her to keep quiet, and then motioned with two fingers as if saying goodbye, before the driver sped off.

That November, she finally got the phone company to check her phones, and learned there had been a wiretap on her lines since June. “I was stunned,” she said.

Ovitz said he did not direct Pellicano to intimidate Busch, and Pellicano's cross-examination implied the threats came from other subjects of her writing.