The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Parsons' lovemistress is MacDella Cooper (pictured), a model who also runs a charitable foundation dedicated to helping the poor children of Liberia. Cooper is 32; Parson is 61. He's been married for 30 years, and he has three kids with his wife.

Cooper gave birth last August, according to a source, who said Parsons will support the child and has set up a trust fund for her education.

Neither Cooper nor Parsons would comment to George Rush, who broke the story. But this will obviously take a bit of sheen off of Parsons' relatively spotless reputation for probity. (Or make every other major CEO identify with him more, who knows?).

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Parsons' name was kicked around after Obama's election as a possible member of the "celebrity cabinet." Parsons said he wasn't interested at the time. Maybe he didn't want to go through the background checks?

[NYDN. Pics: NYDN, Flickr, Macdellacooper.org]

Citi's chairman, Richard Parsons, the ebullient former Time Warner CEO, was spotted driving up to the White House Monday afternoon. Who was he meeting with? Valerie Jarrett, a top advisor to Barack Obama. The object of their meeting? Brokering some deal to shore up the finances of Citi, run by one Vikram Pandit, with the government taking up to a 40 percent stake in the troubled bank.

How typical that Wall Street and Washington's ruling classes only cede power to people with different skin tones when the situation gets desperate. It's progress, of a sort. How typical of the white male power establishment, though, to hand over the prize only after it's gotten tarnished.

• Rihanna's facial injuries were "horrific," law enforcement sources told TMZ, with major contusions on both sides of her face, a split lip and bloody nose, plus bite marks on her arms "and several fingers." Chris Brown bowed out of an NBA All Star event. Some websites speculated wildly about the cause of the fight.
• Gwyneth Paltrow didn't hang out with husband Chris Martin after the Grammys, and he spent 45 minutes talking to some other woman. Which would be kind of "meh" as far as scandal goes, except the couple's marriage has long been rumored on the rocks. [Gatecrasher]
• A national Asian American group was not satisfied with Miley Cyrus' first apology for doing a dumb "Asian people" imitation, so the singer apologized again. She's sorry people were offended about her "unintentionally hurtful" actions. In fairness, basically all 16-year-olds suck at mea culpas.
• Madonna's Brazilian model boy toy used to charge $225 per fashion show. Now it's $135,000. He's not returning his old manager's calls. All thanks to this one photo spread.That and, you know, having an affair with a famous lady four years older than his mother.
• Vanity Fair's Oscar party is back, but much smaller than before. [WWD]
• Page Six writes another very friendly item about Dick Parsons. This one actually uses the word "valentine." Hmmm.

• Patrick Swayze, "losing weight and very weal," has stopped medical treatment, says the National Enquirer. [Mail]
• Richard Parsons is a genius for taking Amtrak from New York to Washington, DC instead of a corporate jet. The Post is so very proud of the Citigroup CEO's incredible PR savvy, it wrote him his own little adulatory gossip item. Who's a good plutocrat? WHO? You are! You are! (Clue: His poxy company already got $45 billion in taxpayer funds, now it wants another bailout. But let's talk about his trip on the choo choo.) [P6]
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s daughter Kick will intern at Rolling Stone, on the strength of her name. Her first name. [P6]
• Matt Damon claims Barack Obama's people demanded $50,000 to let him and a guest attend the inauguration. [Fametastic]
• To kill a vampire, drive a wooden stake through its heart. To kill a Stephenie Meyer vampire novel, leak the unfinished manuscript online. (Practically, you only need to memorize the last piece of advice. It could really come in handy.) [Gatecrasher]
• John Cleese's latest ex-girlfriend claimed to be 27 but is really 45. Comedy or tragedy? [Mail]
• Michael Jackson is even being sued, for money, by the guy who directed his "Thriller" video, John Landis. [Sun]

As with TWA, Icahn is making a fundamental mistake. He thought that an airline was about airplanes, and he likewise must imagine Yahoo is about websites, or banner ads, or searches. Wrong in both cases. Those businesses aree about people. At TWA, his actions precipitated crippling labor unrest. At Yahoo, the talent won't strike, but it will leave — those who haven't already walked out the door, that is. At Microsoft, too, the thought of taking on all of Yahoo's problems is sparking unease among the executives who would be charged with making a deal work.

Besides Microsoft, it's unclear what Icahn can do for Yahoo, or to Yahoo. Certainly, its board and management need wholesale replacement. Yahoo requires a "product Nazi," one Silicon Valley executive told me, to bust through the company's broken culture of consensus and impose a singular vision on all its efforts. But Icahn is exactly the wrong person to attract that kind of talent. He freely admits he knows nothing about technology; he's just good at opportunism.

As Dan Lyons, writing as Fake Steve Jobs, points out, Icahn's assault will likely start with a character assassination on Jerry Yang, as Icahn did with Motorola CEO Ed Zander, who soon resigned. With Yang's poor performance handling the Microsoft bid, he has sharpened Icahn's knives for him.

Yahoo president Sue Decker should start earning her outsized pay and head this off by taking the lead on handling Icahn. (Yang, the prickly cofounder) is far too tone-deaf to handle such a negotiation.) She should take her cues from former Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, who played Icahn like a fiddle during his attempted raid on that company; instead of breaking the company up, as Icahn suggested, Parsons arranged for a slightly larger buyback of shares than previously planned.

The lesson from Parsons: The way to handle Icahn is to spend lots of time letting him talk, and then figure out how to pitch something the company was planning to do anyway as his brilliant idea. For Decker, who is widely thought unqualified to be CEO at Yahoo or anywhere else, it will be excellent practice for her future as a perpetual No. 2.

(Photoillustration by Jackson West; photo of Icahn by AP/Mark Lennihan)