America's tabloid television programs are the only thing that stand between our nation and total forgetfulness of past momentary tabloid sensations.

Braunstein: "Everyone sees a lot of me in the ‘Joker' character here. It's kind of a running joke, like, ‘that guy's a lot like you.'"

Once we put criminals in cages, it makes it all the more entertaining to tease out the manifestations of their mental illness, for laffs!

Braunstein: "Monday nights, it's like sacred, man. Everybody in the cell block knows that. Nobody talks to me when Gossip Girl is on.

Watch and be amazed as Peter Braunstein confirms that he is still a ruined post-traumatic victim of the celebrity-media-complex wars!

Braunstein: "Even though [Blair Waldorf is] scheming and has a thing about power, she's loyal. She's everything that I wanted in a girl."

Thank god the media's purged itself of the cancer of immorality. Watch the promo clip on InsideEdition.com now!

This is just scary. Watch the video.

I've got nothing else for you. Braunstein's nothing more now than a quietly disconcerting slice of New York; the kind of psychopath this city used to breed regularly. It's the freak beast of humanity, it's a monster, the real kind: that which moves without remorse. And there's nothing any of us can do about it. We can't even be scared. How can you be afraid of something when there's no way to conceptualize their actions, or a way to respond properly to them? There's no better way to live your life, there's no fear to grab onto. This shit just is what it is: terrible.

Because, you know, they will publish them! Or selections from them anyway. No one wants to transcribe all seven handwritten pages of crazy.

Yes, Peter Braunstein, Woman's Wear Daily writer turned lunatic fugitive turned suicidal inmate, loves Gossip Girl. Why wouldn't he?

"There's another incentive or two for staying in the game, namely, Season 3 of 'Gossip Girl,' " says the suicidal, stir-crazy sex fiend in a seven-page, handwritten letter to The Post.

"But still I ask myself: Sure, it's probably going to be great, but is 'Gossip Girl' in and of itself reason enough to stay alive? We'll see."

This fucking guy! Hand-writing Gossip Girl recaps from prison! It's like some overrated black comic novelist invented him for a novel about the dark soul of the young New York media scene. (Do people write those anymore?)

Well, we know he reads this newspaper. In a letter pleading for leniency from Judge Thomas Farber, Braunstein whined about how the criminal-justice system, the state mental-health laws and especially the media all conspired to convict him. He even quoted from my column, in which I said that he was not sick, but evil. "This kind of tabloid rhetoric is essentially a mandate for harsh sentencing," he wrote, as if it were a bad thing.

No Pity For Petey [NYP]