You people are obviously pussies who can't handle a real man. Bill's awesome. He's a straight shooter, and one of my favourite people in the biz. He's always been really nice, and good to me.

Got it: "Real men" throw temper tantrums when someone writes something on a cue card they don't understand, and they can be as mean as they want to other people as long as they aren't mean to you, Rachel Marsden. Sounds like someone is aching for another visit to the Fox News studios!

[Gawker via David Seaman]

• Who is Jimmy Wales? Everyone knows he founded the collaborative encyclopedia edited by a mob of prickly nerds. But it's also important to know that Wales is very much like Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist: His fans treat him like a holy man. He's not like Steve Jobs, who wants to come across as hip and spiritual but is really just an old corporate dude in a turtleneck. Jobs gives nothing to charity; Wales runs a non-profit. Wales is Jesus.
• What's Wikipedia? Again, you know this. But you also should remember Wikipedia is a symbol of the Internet's promise. It's a bit less accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica, but that doesn't matter, because it was built in seven years and it covers everything. Most importantly, Wikipedia proves that a crowd of strangers can accomplish something just to make the world better.
• Really? Not really! Because lately Jimmy Wales has been acting less like Jesus and more like Pat Robertson. He wants to overthrow Google with his search company, Wikia. And:
• What's his sex life like? I know, you didn't actually ask! But remember that to a growing crowd of nerds, this is like asking if Jesus porked Mary Magdalene. And he did! He shagged conservative Canadian commentator Rachel Marsden — or at least just talked about shagging with her, in these lurid IM chats that feel exactly like every lame flirty IM conversation I've had since I was 13. [UPDATE: Marsden confirms she shagged him "seven times," and I'm updating this post in hopes that I've at least earned some heavy petting.]
• Who's Rachel Marsden? She was fired from Fox News comedy-news show Red Eye; she says it was nothing, but the New York Post says it was for "erratic behavior." (You can read more on her Wikipedia page.) She's not just a right-winger and thus an odd match for the supposedly liberal, technoutopian Wales; she's also crazy.
• So. Why does this really matter? Because Jimbo violated the rules of his own holy church. He met Marsden when she asked him to fix her Wikipedia entry. That's not how things are done at Wikipedia! And that's why Wales reportedly sent a memo to Wikipedia staff saying he'd stay out of her profile. It sounds like a confession that he'd been meddling.
• So he's a mere man now. Jimbo denied any wrongdoing in a personal note yesterday. "A few gossip websites," he said, had spread rumors that he was in a relationship, but in fact he has "one meeting with Rachel Marsden on February 9th, 2008." The Clintonesque precision helps Jimbo avoid admitting that his non-relationship with Marsden included all the dirty IMs about having sex in hotel rooms. So Jimmy gets to break site policy to intervene in some hot woman's profile, talk dirty to her, brag to her about his plans to beat Google, bang her, then wash his hands clean of his own affair and pretend he's still untainted. Why doesn't he just run with it and get all the notable women of the world to spend a night with him so he'll tweak their profiles? That seems more fun.

I've never actually had a problem with Fox - nor they with me - despite all the false gossip.

Marsden, who has been described as a Canadian version of Ann Coulter and who now spends her time running a political recruiting company, also blew a kiss at Fox News chief Roger Ailes:

I've always been a big fan of Roger Ailes - and am always honoured to be asked to contribute to anything this great man has built.

RUN. FOR. YOUR. LIVES.

Subject: Scoop for you

[snip]

I was in DC this past weekend to emcee at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Yesterday, it was brought to my attention by a friend in the media who was also in attendance that my former co-host at Fox News, Greg Gutfeld, insisted on planting security guards on "Rachel watch" at the door of the CPAC Reason Magazine party - just in case "scary Rachel" showed up.

Greg might want to know that he's thoroughly safe. No one could pay me anymore to be in the same room as him - as my leaving Red Eye has already proven.

Incidentally, I was on a date that night in Georgetown with someone exponentially more high-profile and infinitely more secure in his manhood than Greg Gutfeld.

Feel free to quote, however you see fit. The only downside in doing so is that Gutfeld might reach a total of 10 viewers.

Subject: Also

If Gutfeld desperately wants to avoid me that badly, perhaps I could suggest not crashing events where I'm scheduled to speak.

Ont. anti-terror officer investigated on leak allegations [National Post]

Through the routine decisions of daily journalism—how prominently to play a story, what pictures to use, what voices to include—the newscasts were sending an unmistakable message. And the message was that George W. Bush's war was a debacle. Administration officials regularly complained about the coverage as unduly negative, but to little avail.

Huffington Post has a roundup of some anchor-machinating tidbits from the book, which sounds like more of the general beefing about Katie Couric's potty-mouth and how Brian Williams, probably accurately, thought that his numbers on the NBC Nightly News were being killed because local stations were dying and not throwing him any lead-in viewers.

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