• Yesterday, we reported: "Susan Boyle's BACKINYOFACE, mothafuckas!" And now we're sad to report: Susan Boyle's "exhausted" again. She pulled out of a Manchester tour date because she wasn't feelin' it. This can't be good. I mean, let's just say what needs to be said here: the woman always kind of felt a little, well, off. It was her quirk and naivety of fame that did the whole "capture our hearts" thing, so, you know, you'd think: these things would be something to watch out for, indicators of some lack of preparedness for the fame she achieved two seconds after she stepped off that stage the first time. And now, here we are: a tired woman, being driven crazy by too much at once. Sigh. [TMZ]
  
  
• Still can't get over the Dustin Lance Black photos, if only because I'm trying to remember which other non-acting Oscar winners have had photos of them leaked. Really, this entire thing is just a solid Jeopardy answer in the making. Anyway: Black released a statement in response to the photos leaking, in which he apologizes for not practicing safe sex. "More important than the embarrassment of this incident is the misleading message these images send. I apologize and cannot emphasize enough the importance of responsible sexual practices." [E!]
  
  
• WTF. Cindy Adams wrote two pages for the Post this morning on how to stash cash away. Sample line: "You can glue single bills flat inside luggage lining — providing your suitcase is classy enough for a lining and you don't mind the inconvenience of then ripping that bag to shreds to get the paste off the money." Uh, thank you, Crazy Aunt Cindy? Next week, Neel Shah teaches you how to beat a dude with a lead pipe. [Page Six]
  
  
• Har! Salman Rushdie tore the shit up 'out the dance floor at a party the other night. Noteth Page Six, poetry in motion: "'She had heels on, so he only came up to her breasts,' laughs our source. 'With her low-cut dress and his bald head, when he's dancing with her he looks like her third boob.'" Oh, come on. That's funny. [Page Six]
  
  
• Prince Harry's new ladyfriend is a total starfucker. She dated Russell Brand at one point, and one time she had a "romp" in a hot tub with Jack Osbourne and another girl. A "romp," from what I understand, is a funny British word for "sex that isn't really sex" (as opposed to a "snog" which is definitely sex, or a "muggle" which is a non-magical person). [News Of The World]
  
  
• Colin Ferrell needs more bodyguards to protect him from all the paparazzi headed his way. I mean, really? Colin Ferrell? [Rush & Malloy]
  
  
• Michael Phelps is still rocking some kind of porn stache. It's fantastic. [TMZ]
  
  
• Craig Ferguson almost killed himself before running into the friend who would help him have the career he has now. ""I felt worse than I ever had. ... I was a drunk, a loser and a disaster as a human being. ... The shame was immense. It pushed down on me like a terrible weight." Wow. [Rush & Malloy]
  
  
• Ron Burkle denied everything Mark Ebner wrote about him on his blog that didn't make it into Ebner's book on Burkle, which mostly amounts to an "omitted chapter," a salacious little bit where Burkle calls in prostitutes for a girl-on-girl show. Ebner once wrote an article on the Church of Scientology, where, for the purposes of full-disclosure, he wrote: "I am an ex-drug addict who has solicited prostitutes in my day. I've also masturbated and inhaled at the same time, and I have been arrested more than once in my life. I dropped out of high school and I've been under psychiatric care." Here's the thing, Mark: you're not a celebrity! Not even the Scientologists care! Too much full disclosure. TMI. Seriously. [Page Six]
  
  
• Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell emerged from a strip club Friday night covered in lipstick. Cute. [P*r*z H*lt*n]

Ebner posted the chapter (which he says was cut for "reasons mostly editorial) on his website. It centers on high-end prostitution in and around Hollywood, and is worth reading on its own. But let's pull out the Ron Burkle bits, shall we? Ebner says that Burkle, along with Interscope chief Ted Field, was one of the best-known "lifers"—patrons of super-high-end call girls, all the time. He points out Burkle's close friendship with Bill Clinton, and his private jet that underlings allegedly call "Air Fuck One."

Ebner writes that Burkle and Field both relied on a pimp named David Reich to get them girls. And then: allegations that Burkle paid to watch girl-on-girl action, starring Paris Hilton, live:

I got in touch with Elizabeth Jawhary, a former Hollywood party girl who claims she serviced both Burkle and Field on occasion. Writer Ben Wallace also met Jawhary doing research in L.A. "She was a recovering meth addict, but she did talk about Paris Hilton being along for the ride," he says.

Indeed, when I first contacted her, she was quick to volunteer, "With Paris it was very low key. She would fly down and I was there with them. We would party pretty hard. Paris got naked, and the girls would get naked. This was mainly in Vegas. There were times where you would have Ted or Ron come down, and they would pretty much pay for girl-on-girl action. I'd be there. And they'd pay to watch us girls going at it. And they'd bring in Augie Busch III."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Jawhary tells Ebner that she repeatedly took trips, arranged by David Reich, to meet Burkle and Field. Which amounted to extremely expensive voyeurism and a handjob, she says:

"When I was flown to New York for Ron or Teddy, we stayed in hotels. When they were in Vegas, we'd stay with them at the Mansions at the MGM, the Palazzos at the Rio and those villas at the Mirage. They always had the best of the best. Whenever I would go to Los Angeles to visit, there were day trips - the dumb photo shoots I would fall for. On those day trips we would always go to Teddy's house, which was phenomenal, and the photographer was awesome. The limo would pick us up from the airport. The best thing about Ted is that he would have accounts everywhere - we'd have lunch or go shopping on his accounts. Ron was less generous. I can only remember one time I had a good time with Ron. It was when David had me and my best friend flown to L.A. and we went to spend the night with Ron. He told me it was where JFK had affairs with Marilyn. We went to his house at the beach and he had a big thing of Mr. Bubble. He put it in the Jacuzzi, and he was relaxed, and we just had a great time.

"I never knew Ron to get rough with girls, but I did know him to be a dick. If he wasn't getting what he wanted, he would throw attitude. I think a lot of that had to do with David Reich, and it would kind of trickle down to how he treated girls: 'I'm going to my room, and you all can do whatever the fuck you want to do." So, we were just gambling on his dime at that point. He was resentful that we were on his dime. The one common thread with Ron and Ted was that they would watch girls get it on, or get hand jobs or blow jobs. They wouldn't have intercourse because they were afraid of AIDS, and they were both AIDS Foundation supporters."

Reich himself told Ebner he was friends with both Field and Burkle, but denies being a pimp for either of them and calls Burkle "the classiest guy I have ever met in my life, and he doesn't need any help getting women." Really?

[Hollywood Interrupted]

If you'll recall back to Clinton friend and White House staffer Vince Foster's suicide and the plane crash that killed Clinton administration Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Christopher Ruddy, at the time working at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, worked diligently to promote his theories that both men were murdered for political reasons, implicating that the Clinton's maybe-kinda-probably had something to do with it in each case. But that's all water under the bridge now for Clinton and Ruddy, who are now a couple of old chums.

Among those he has been friendly with lately is Christopher Ruddy, a conservative journalist who was a chief proponent of cover-up theories involving the Clintons during the 1990s. In his book, "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster," Ruddy rejected official findings that Foster, a deputy White House counsel, killed himself in a Virginia park and suggested the possibility of "a cover-up conducted by people who have, with the help of the press, placed themselves above the law." Ruddy also advanced the notion that Ron Brown, the Clinton commerce secretary who died in an airplane crash in Croatia in 1996, was actually shot in the head.

Ruddy today is the founder and chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative news-magazine. He told me he came around on Clinton after Ed Koch, the former New York mayor, introduced them. That led to lunches and more contacts, and now Ruddy says he was wrong about Clinton. "I do consider Bill Clinton a friend, and I think he would consider me a friend," Ruddy said. "And to think of all the wars we went through in the '90s, it seems almost surreal."

With the passage of time, Ruddy said he came to believe that Clinton was much less liberal than his enemies thought. After all, Clinton overhauled welfare, tamed the deficit and promoted free trade. While still a proud "Reagan conservative," Ruddy said he now thinks the attacks on Clinton in the 1990s went too far. "Did we like and enjoy all the salacious reporting and all the stuff going on in the '90s?" he asked. "I guess we thought, This is just politics. But looking back at my role, I was probably over the top. And if I knew then what I know today, I wouldn't have pursued some of that stuff as aggressively as I did. I did an honest reporter's job. But I have a different take on it now."

Ruddy also attributes his change of heart to Clinton's foundation, which has impressed him and other onetime foes. Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire publisher who financed Ruddy's investigations and other anti-Clinton activities, is now a contributor to the foundation. So is Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman whose Fox News was a regular thorn in Clinton's side. Clinton over the years has also made peace with other former adversaries, like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich. The elder George Bush told me he now considers Clinton "a real friend." When I asked what changed his view, he wrote in an e-mail message: "I didn't know him personally back then. I knew him, but not up close and personal. Now I do."

So if Clinton is friends with all of his old political opponents, who the hell is he hating on these days? Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy and Bill Richardson and Jesse Jackson and just about every other prominent Democrat who had the audacity to support Obama in the primary against Hillary, that's who!

People close to Clinton said he has largely got over his resentment at Obama but not toward Ted Kennedy and his niece, Caroline Kennedy. As Clinton sees it, they say, he did so much for the Kennedys over the years that he felt they became almost family. Nor has he forgiven Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who endorsed Obama even though Clinton appointed him to two cabinet posts. And the man once called the "first black president" remains deeply wounded by allegations that he made racially insensitive remarks during the campaign, like dismissing Obama's South Carolina win by comparing it with Jesse Jackson's victories there in the 1980s.

"None of them ever really took seriously the race rap," he told me. "They knew it was politics. I had one minister in Texas in the general election come up and put his arm around me." This was an Obama supporter. "And he came up, threw his arm around me and said, ‘You've got to forgive us for that race deal.' He said, ‘That was out of line.' But he said, ‘You know, we wanted to win real bad.' And I said, ‘I got no problem with that.' I said it's fine; it's O.K. And we laughed about it and we went on." The other side is moving on, too. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who once recalled an angry Clinton berating him on the phone for criticizing the former president's campaign rhetoric, is letting bygones be bygones, at least publicly. "No fence-mending is needed," Clyburn said through a spokeswoman.

Unfortunately, there was no mention in the article about which models and starlets Clinton banged on Ron Burkle's dirty old man fuck-plane, which was a major disappointment. Oh well, maybe next time.

The Mellowing Of Bill Clinton [New York Times Magazine]

To recap: Bill was working as a vaguely defined "adviser" for some investment funds owned by Yucaipa, Burkle's company. Then his wife goes and runs for president so Bill publicly "severed business ties" with Burkle, presumably to avoid being photographed with more attractive young women on Burkle's plane.

But! Bill's consolation prize was that Yucaipa would pay him $20 million when he left. For what? Nobody's really sure! But there were lots of things that could blow up in Bill's (and by extension, Hillary's) face, politically:

Mr. Clinton was one of the three owners of the foreign fund's general partner, along with Mr. Burkle and Dubai Investment Group (YGP) Ltd., an entity that was part of the business empire of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai.

The Yucaipa connection presented other potential difficulties for Mrs. Clinton, people familiar with the matter said. In late 2007, the foreign fund invested in a Chinese media company, Xinhua Finance Media Ltd., whose parent company had past ties to the Beijing government.

Oh you know who else was connected to Clinton via Burkle? Convicted scam artist Raffaello Follieri! So, my working theory here is that taking the money would have caused too much of a headache for Hillary in the press, and also, since Bill's payout was theoretically tied to how much he earned, maybe there wasn't all that much money there to be had anyhow. But if you know better, feel free to share. [WSJ]

Ron Burkle: Our tipster reports: "Ronny Burkle was lurking around the William Rast show last night with his pal Danny A. (Model wrangler extraordinaire who is BFF with Leo DiCaprio. Danny A. is the guy who is mostly responsible for filling Burkle's jet with attractive females.) A cloud of around 15 teenage girls swarmed Justin Timberlake (Rast is his label) as he left the show; I can't imagine Burkle was far behind." Yea, if he looked more dashing he might be able to get away with it. But that ratlike visage just sinks him. Give it up, Burkle.


Bill Clinton: You need to stop hanging out with Ron Burkle first of all, Bill! Even a serious Bill fan who considered the whole blowjob-in-the-Oval-Office thing to be really punk rock has got to admit that the time has come for Bill to retire from skirt chasing. (Not that there's any proof he still is!). Now you can enjoy sleeping with the Secretary of State, Bill. Can we call you Bill?


Steve Bing: Real estate heir, big time developer, Hollywood money man, Burkle and Clinton pal. He's 43 and he fathered a baby with Elizabeth Hurley out of wedlock. And he had another paternity battle with his other ex, who was Kirk Kerkorian's gal! All we're saying here is find a nice lady and settle down for fuck's sake. This Burkle-led triumvirate has spent more than enough time being the old dudes up in the club.


Mario Batali: The portly ginger-haired restaurateur enjoys whizzing around on his moped, wearing Crocs, manipulating salamis, traveling about Spain with Gwyneth Paltrow, and doing who knows what to young lasses in the back rooms of restaurants across Manhattan. We like your Olive Oil Ice Cream dude, but you're almost 50, and we just don't want to think about Mario Batali's sexuality. That's all there is to it really.


Ron Perelman: The bald-headed corporate raider is thrice-divorced, richer than god, and prone to playing the field, as many billionaires are. We don't like your looks, your gruff personality, or your shady PR firm, Perelman. When you next get married, consider very carefully whether you would like to stay married to said lucky woman.


But we do like:

Salman Rushdie: Yes, he could be accused of being a creepy old man, what with his hobbit physique and penchant for dating women absurdly out of his league (you would think, at least). But give the man his props. He writes some bitchin' books. Stares down death threats. Then goes out with Padma and, currently, with Pia Glenn, who we saw in Will Ferrell's Broadway show and, we must say, does one mean dance. So Salman Rushdie can't be put down. He's smarter than all the guys above and cavorts with badder women.

Celebrity magazines in trouble! New circulation figures show that in the second half of '08, In Touch and Life & Style both saw circulation fall about 30%, and Star and the National Enquirer were both down more than 10%. Ironically, OK! was only down about 3%, but they're the ones who can't hang onto an editor, because of (real or manufactured) fear they'll fold soon. The only real magazine showing solid gains was The Week, which is essentially a printed blog.



Every day, it seems, there's another story showcasing just how low the entire journalism industry has fallen. Here's today's: The Toronto version of the free daily Metro has laid off all of its paid writers, and now puts the entire paper out with unpaid interns. WHOA. This "How low can journalism go?" will culminate in a story about everyone in journalism being dead, with pee on their lifeless bodies. [Pictured: an intern]



Slate is launching a French version of its site. Didn't think it was possible for Slate to be more condescending? Slate is launching a French version of its site.

Ron Burkle's Source Interlink magazine wholesale company is suing the nation's largest magazine publishers, alleging that they're all conspiring to drive Source Interlink out of business, stemming from an earlier conflict over a proposed seven-cent surcharge on shipping magazines, which caused much consternation within the publishing industry. This all supports my thesis that there is little in the media more boring than magazine wholesalers, but hey, look at Ron Burkle the hot bachelor, ha.




New Yorker editorblogger Ben Greenman—recently reprimanded by us, on behalf of David Denby, for allowing 'snark' to creep into his work, thereby tainting that great magazine's entire legacy—has posted a new humorous work. But this one centers on Bernard Madoff, a man of sufficient public and political significance to render this work solidly 'not snarky.' Is it now fair to say that the New Yorker's entire editorial strategy is being driven by the backlash to David Denby's crappy book?; in other words, that this very blog is now the 'Man Behind the Curtain,' pulling the psychological strings at our nation's most prestigious magazine, thereby setting the de facto intellectual agenda of the nation? Well we can't stop you from saying that, we're not the police.


Alex Balk's plan to save the press: a tax on stupidity.

New Yorkers, your #2 bachelor: Steven Rubenstein, the New York Post's own flack. Huh. We'll leave all the commentary here implied.


Former MSNBC dude Dan is already going out with Renee Zellweger. More importantly he's already engaged...in a perversion of journalism. Pervert!


"Ron needs a woman who can be 'uptown' at galas and 'downtown' in the bedroom." Good god. Should not be allowed.


There's no denying that Keith, the most important writer of our time, possesses a sufficient amount of literary fameballdom to make the list. But he lives in Russia now. Sorry ladies.


The wealthy young Facebook founder is the perfect catch? But he lives in California. As does his girlfriend. Sorry ladies, pt. 2.


[They also referred to HOT BACHELOR painter Jules de Balincourt as "Jules Bettencourt"]

• The pair was seen last week with a group of 10 or so people at Lure in Soho enjoying a three-hour tour. Billionaire man-about-town Ron Burkle was there. The captains of wealth ate and ate and ate, their mouths glistening with fish grease, their bellies sloshing with beer, the salty dogs laughing heartily all evening. Sexy! [P6]
• Don't worry. The Blue Parrot, the "honky tonk" Mexican restaurant in decidedly un-honky tonk and un-Mexican East Hampton, will live again. And it will refuse to modernize or "go trendy." Phew. [P6]
• For $50,000 wan actress Chloe Sevigny will show up to your party and sulk for a while, then whine to you that she doesn't know how much a quart of milk costs. For an extra ten grand, she'll chain smoke in the corner and pass out in a heap on the floor. [P6]
• Swoony vampire hunk Robert Pattinson, from teen sex tingler Twilight, apparently told a young lady at a bar: "If I could, I’d have a — on the inside of my elbow so I could lick it all day long.” We're assuming the "—" is code for popsicle. [NYDN]
• Everyone at the Golden Globes took home bags and bags fabulous, glittery swag except for a few pompous principled little prisses. Vanessa Hudgens, the superstar from High School Musical, chatted modestly about her enormous new house while taking $12,000 worth of free shit, like a BlackBerry and a year's worth of movie passes and a gym membership and she smiled and politely farted while outside a hobo ran by in flames and helicopters began dropping out of the sky. [NYDN]
• Elsewhere at the Golden Globe Awards last night: Sascha Baron Cohen scandalized everyone by calling Guy Ritchie Madonna's hired help, Tina Fey made fun of bloggers, Kate Winslet won all the awards, Brad Pitt and Brangelina or whatever were "chaotic and messy," Aaron Eckhart said that Heath Ledger's posthumous meaningless trophy was "fantastic," a movie about horrifyingly impoverished Mumbai won many awards (the ones Kate Winslet didn't snatch away) as well as lots of self-congratulating nodding, knowing applause from the audience, and then across the country everyone else went broke [Us, NYT]

Image via Splash

Ron Burkle, the billionaire Supermarket magnate and young model enthusiast, is a longtime friend of the Democratic party. A huge fundraiser, he's personally close to Bill Clinton and hey, once he was a secret media mogul! That secret media moguling also involved fellow Radar investor Yusef Jackson, of the Jesse Jackson Jacksons.

Yusef and Burkle have a long history of shared investments, with Burkle aiding Yusef in his goal to own many disparate things that are hopefully profitable, and also some media just for fun.

Way back in 1995, Jesse Jackson Senior took his friend Burkle aside and asked that the billionaire "''look out' for Jackson's grown children if the billionaire supermarket tycoon saw a financial opportunity for them," according to a 2001 Chicago Tribune story. And with that in mind, let us read a selection from the Holiday Classic "The Criminal Complaint Against ROD BLAGOJEVICH" by P. Fitzgerald:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated he might be able to cut a deal with Senate Candidate 5 that provided ROD BLAGOJEVICH with something “tangible up front.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH noted he was going to meet with Senate Candidate 5 in the next few days. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to reach out to Individual D, an individual who ROD BLAGOJEVICH is attempting to obtain campaign contributions from and who, based on intercepted phone calls, ROD BLAGOJEVICH believes to be close to Senate Candidate 5. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D that Senate Candidate 5 was very much a realistic candidate for the open Senate seat, but that ROD BLAGOJEVICH was getting “a lot of pressure” not to appoint Senate Candidate 5. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D that ROD BLAGOJEVICH had a problem with Senate Candidate 5 just promising to help ROD BLAGOJEVICH because ROD BLAGOJEVICH had a prior bad experience with Senate Candidate 5 not keeping his word. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D that if Senate Candidate 5 is going to be chosen to fill the Senate seat “some of this stuffs gotta start happening now . . .right now. . . and we gotta see it. You understand?” ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A that “you gotta be careful how you express that and assume everybody’s listening, the whole world is listening. You hear me?” ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to tell Individual D if there is “tangible political support (campaign contributions) like you’ve said, start showing us now.” Fundraiser A stated he will call Individual D on the phone to communicate ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s message. ROD BLAGOJEVICH responded that “I would do it in person. I would not do it on the phone.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Fundraiser A to communicate the “urgency” of the situation to Individual D.

Individual D could certainly be a lot of people, but it is fun to imagine Blago shaking down Burkle, isn't it?

But honestly, Ron, is a Senate seat for Jesse Jackson, Jr. really a better investment than a niche magazine about style and pop and politics and pop and things? It's a vanity project either way.

• Barack Obama. Blago wanted to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.
• Rahm Emanuel Obama's incoming chief of staff was the one Blago wanted to negotiate with—he hoped to get stuff from Rahm in exchange for picking Obama's preferred candidate. Also Rahm maybe alerted the feds!
• Tony Rezko This Chicago fundraiser and felon raised a fortune for Blago, and a smaller fortune for Obama back in the day. From Blago he got plum appointments for associates and friends, and lord knows what else.
• Sam Zell Blago was unhappy with the Chicago Tribune's coverage of how corrupt he was, so he told the owner of their parent company, Zell, to make them cut it out. Zell, who needed the state's help to unload the Chicago Cubs, allegedly agreed to look into it. Zell also connects us to Lee Abrams! Abrams is Zell's friend and Tribune Co's insane "Chief Innovation Officer." He will hopefully have a crazy memo about this soon.
• John McCormick This is the Tribune editor who was mean to Blago all the time. Supposedly Zell agreed to have him "restructured" out of his job in exchange for state help with Tribune's bankruptcy, but this didn't actually happen.
• Patrick Fitzgerald the dreamboat US Attorney who's bringing Blago down is known as a tenacious prosecutor, and he was already famous for his role investigating Plamegate, the weird old scandal in which Bush administration officials leaked the name of a covert CIA operative to journalists to damager her husband's credibility. That scandal, as we all remember, ended up with Times reporter and terrible hack Judy Miller going to jail rather than revealing to Fitzgerald that her source was Scooter Libby, even though Libby had already given her permission to reveal this.
• Jesse Jackson Jr. It's sill possible that "Senate Candidate 5" is Jesse Jackson, Jr. Even if he isn't, he's a family friend of the Obamas (specifically his childhood friend Michelle) who is seen by many as a front-runner for Obama's vacant seat. So Blago would obviously have been in contact with him regarding the seat, and what Blago wanted in exchange for giving it to him. Meanwhile Jackson's brother Yusef was an investor in a magazine called Radar with pervy billionaire friend-of-Clinton Ron Burkle!
• Also Jesse Jackson Sr was on The Oprah Winfrey Show, as was Kelly Preson, who was in Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon!

The connection is pretty straightforward: Obama brought Hillary Clinton into his cabinet; Hillary comes with Bill; Bill comes with Burkle. This is why Mickey Kaus recently called the supermarket magnate "Hillary's gift to the press" before pointing to Burkle's latest investment-screw up. Out in San Francisco, Burkle relived his experience with Rafaello Follieri, the con artists imprisoned for bilking the investor and partner Clinton out of tens of millions of dollars.

This time around, the sketchy character was Jonathan Rogers, who raised tens of millions of dollars, including millions from Burkle, to build a network of "Pay By Touch" fingerprint scanners. Writes Lance Williams at the San Francisco Chronicle:

The investors' suit filed in October claims that after a party in Florida in 2003, Rogers offered cocaine to an unnamed member of the Pay By Touch board... Rogers began missing work - or showing up looking disheveled, the suit claimed, while a prospective deal with American Express fell through after Rogers missed a scheduled meeting and did not show up for days. Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed by former company executive Jon Siegal accused Rogers of advising a female employee to submit a false expense account to pay for drugs.

Additional disarray was reflected in a wrongful-firing lawsuit filed by the company's vice president for personnel, Bernadette Robertson. Starting in 2005, she said, employees began complaining that Rogers was making "sexual comments" to women at work. Robertson also said she was told that Rogers spent company money on "inappropriate entertainment" and was instructing subordinates to give jobs and shares of stock to women he met...
"You are despicable, and have breached all of your duties under law, and before God, to the company, to your friends, and even to your own family," he wrote in one such e-mail [to an investor or company employee]. "You cannot even call yourself a man."

Welcome to the Clinton world, Mr. President Elect!

What rank hypocrisy! Where's the blame for tapping Yang for the job in the first place? For not pushing him out sooner? And for that matter, for not having a hot-swappable substitute in the executive ranks when Hollywood dude Terry Semel abruptly quit last year? Those are all grave transgressions to which Yahoo's directors ought to confess.

Chairman Roy Bostock should be first out the door. An old-school adman ridiculed within Yahoo as an "empty suit," Bostock has added nothing to the company. And he shredded any remaining credibility by brazenly lying to Newsweek about Jerry Yang's status as CEO, saying he was firmly ensconced in the job even as the board discussed his ouster.

Add to the list investors Ron Burkle, Gary Wilson, and Art Kern, whose ouster I called for earlier this year. Can anyone say what Yahoo has gotten from their collective 26 years on the board?

Corporate raider Carl Icahn, too, should make his stay on Yahoo's board brief and symbolic, a prize won for waging a fierce battle with Yahoo management over its failure to sell the company to Microsoft. He may have been right about Microsoft, but I can't believe he has the company's long-term interests at heart.

And Jerry Yang, who has been allowed to keep his board seat, should resign it. Yahoo needs a clean break from his mismanagement; a lingering presence will only hurt the company he professes to love.

Whoever Yahoo picks as its next CEO should make a priority of mucking out the boardroom; candidates for the job should demand that these six directors offer their resignation before they sign on the bottom line. Otherwise, the job will be untenable.

The rest of the board I'd recommend Yahoo's next CEO keep, at least for the time being. Frank Biondi and John Chapple are too new to pass judgment on; venture capitalist Eric Hippeau and Hewlett-Packard executive Vyomesh Joshi actually have knowledge of the marketplace that's valuable to Yahoo; and telecom exec Maggie Wilderotter is a credible candidate to step in as Yahoo's CEO, should the board choose one of its own.

Burkle made his money with supermarkets. It is quite profitable, of course, to own all the supermarkets, because people need to eat. But, you know, it's not very glamorous! And Burkle enjoys flying around on his private jet with famous people, and globe trotting with politicians, and partying, and models. He likes models. One can enjoy this lifestyle with supermarket billions, but isn't it more fun to enjoy it with media holdings?

So at some point he and Jackson decided to invest in Maer Roshan's crazy magazine about "pop and politics and pop culture and scandal and pop" or whatever the hell the tagline of Radar 3.0 was. And they gave him 15 issues to do with as he pleased, and he did eventually turn out a pretty good product. But the money wasn't there, because it was a new magazine, and there's not even money for old magazines anymore.

And honestly it was probably not as exciting and fun to own a magazine as Burkle thought it would be! It's tough, because he also wanted to secretly own the magazine, and no one who secretly owns things gets the same pleasure Rupert Murdoch does from personally tearing up the Wall Street Journal and remaking it in his image. And Murdoch loves newspapers. There's really never been any evidence that Burkle loves magazines. Murdoch will take a loss for years on something like the New York Post. Burkle didn't give Roshan the five years he said it'd take to break even on Radar before he pulled the plug. Because if it's not subsidizing his lifestyle, it's not worth the cash. He's a capitalist, obviously, and Radar was not a charitable endeavor, but if we had his fortune we wouldn't mind wasting it on the talent Roshan brought together.

Back to controlling distribution and sales of food! Unlike media, mac and cheese is recession-proof!

But between mentions of a modelizing Leonardo DiCaprio, a sweaty Doutzen Kroes and Jay-Z's $100 bills, a reader may start to wonder if Morgan's marquee party boys aren't getting a bit long in the tooth. P. Diddy, for example, is 39; Venture capitalist Vivi Nevo, 43; supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle, 56. They're the "old guy in the club," as comedian Chris Rock has it. Then again, pray they never grow up: They're probably keeping the club in business.

Morgan's article/

[Now in convenient link form!]

On one hand, the story is clearly marked as a sponsored item, so it's not deceptive. On the other hand, all the rest of the story's presentation, and its placement on the site, is identical to that of a normal Radaronline.com feature.

On the third hand, we here at Gawker run "sponsored" blog posts from time to time, which are (clearly marked) ads that go up with our other posts (but aren't usually written by staff writers). The same tactic is also practiced by print media, and raises grumbles sometimes when items are too similar to standard editorial stories. But as long as there's disclosure, it's generally recognized as a matter of taste more than ethics.

On the fourth hand, we now have a post about Radar's blog, and Radar's blog currently has a post up about Gawker! In this way, the whole blog world is one big clusterfuck of editorial cross-promotion, even when it's coincidental (and sometimes catty!). In the end readers will decide how much the ads on any site affect the credibility they give to it. If they get the feeling your site is shilling too relentlessly, you lose.

Is model-loving billionaire Ron Burkle's role in funding Radar worth mentioning here? Probably not.

In the Daily News' Rush & Molloy gossip column today, there was this about Dicaprio:

Leo? The good times find him. The other night, at a Chelsea club, an exquisite brunette glommed onto him. (Isn't that disgusting, guys?) But we're assured they did not exchange phone numbers.

Ha, but guess who was hanging on the other arm of that brunette? Ron Burkle, of course! An eyewitness tipster tells us that the 55-year-old rich white guy was on the other side of the girl with his hand on her leg, while she was simultaneously caressing Leo's head. Uh, kinky, I guess.

This behavior will do nothing to keep Burkle out of the gossip spotlight. Neither will his insatiable thirst for models. We also hear that not long after the Leo-brunette outing, Burkle scored a front row seat at the William Rast show at Fashion Week. After the show, "he hung around the "VIP area"
and mercilessly hit on May [Andersen]"—to the point that the model started calling people on her cell phone while Burkle stood there, just so she didn't have to talk to him.

Ron Burkle seems to lack a bit of grace. And good sense. Money can buy many things, but it will never buy him a face and body that can compete with Leonardo DiCaprio's. Nor will it buy a complete press blackout of all his high-flying partying. Although it's obvious that Burkle (along with some Jesse Jackson relatives) is interested in establishing a friendly media beachhead with Radar—we hear he went in for a meeting with those folks just last week.

It's not enough, Ron! You're uncontrollably drawn to models and parties. Either embrace that lifestyle publicly and accept the ridicule you'll get for it, or give it up. It's just like that unreachable fantasy featuring you, Leo, and that girl: you can't have it both ways.

Dressed in navy blue corrections department clothing, Mr. Follieri appeared unshaven and in need of a haircut. His sentencing was initially scheduled for Dec. 12, but his lawyer, Flora Edwards, asked the judge for an earlier date, saying that Mr. Follieri was having “a very difficult time” in the Metropolitan Detention Center...

“The game he played was not unique. It’s been done before,” Ms. Grubman said. “Planes, trains and automobiles are very sexy to anyone who is young.”

Follieri will be sentenced in October, and he's getting several years, at least. Let this be a lesson: don't fuck with the Pope.

[NYT]

Mr. Follieri's move toward a guilty plea comes despite some potential problems with the government's case. While prosecutors contend that Mr. Follieri overstated his Vatican ties to attract investors to his church real-estate deals, he did have some high-level connections in Rome. Last year, a Clinton spokesman said at least two senior Catholic Church figures had spoken up for Mr. Follieri, including Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who, as Vatican secretary of state, effectively ran church operations before retiring last year.

[WSJ]

Consider the man's history. Starting out as nothing more than a dude with a ridiculous hat, he worked his way up through the gossip muck to the top ranks of the New York Post. He had his own column called "Nightcrawler" for a time, and was a regular contributor to Page Six. He was living the life that the young man who first put on the stupid hat dreamed of living.

Then, of course, he tried to extort Burkle, and got publicly scandalized and tossed aside by the Post. He's quietly made his way back into the media with various projects, but nothing as high-profile since. And then last week some random guy decided to publicly release a (purported) tape of him having sex with JPS' wife. Damn.

People can bounce back from most scandals. In time, even the "Payola Six" affair—sensational though it was—would have receded into history. But JPS has never been able to bounce back, because his ongoing lawsuits and, now, alleged cuckolding cause the original damage to his reputation to keep getting rehashed.

So here's our gentle advice, JPS: the sympathy of the world has now, excruciatingly, returned to your side. Use it. Drop all of your various lawsuits against everyone involved in the Burkle mess—they'll ultimately do nothing but drain your bank account. Hold your head high, admit some wrongdoing in the past, and forge ahead. Disgrace is almost a foreign concept in the gossip world; schadenfreude does not run deep enough for people to say you deserved all of this. With an extended moment of grotesquely poor judgment and a run of very, very bad luck, most anyone in the New York media could be in your shoes right now. So get out there and make it, JPS—for all of us!