Australian tab New Weekly has a cover with the star looking like she's put on a few pounds. Given all that talk of anorexia a few years ago, you'd think that would be good, right? Wrong! The caption looks forward to the day she gets "healthy." Just last Wednesday Star also did the "Mary-Kate is fat" story, calling her weight gain shocking and saying "bye-bye billion dollar looks, hello bloat."

Star has a long history of railing on Mary-Kate's weight. It started in 2004, when they ran a cover saying she was too thin because of drugs.

They finally believed the actress' claims of anorexia in 2007 (see cover above), but did so by chastising her "stick thin legs" and wondering what is the best way to get her back to health.

Then, in 2008, they did an about face, saying she's headed back to rehab because of drinking and drugs.

There are really only six stories in a gossip glossy: diet (either too skinny or too fat), drugs, boyfriends, weddings, pregnancy and deaths. So just wait, they're soon going to say that the "bloat" is from drugs or bulimia or pregnancy or (gasp) all three! Maybe if everyone wasn't so obsessed with what she's eating, her weight would even itself out naturally. Why not go after Jonah Hill. He's overweight and probably much more in danger of a heart attack than Mary-Kate is in danger of anything other than wearing a bad outfit.

This statement just went out from Star:

Star Reporter Resigns Over Jon Gosselin

Star Senior Reporter Kate Major resigned this morning, Thursday, July 23, citing a conflict of interest between her reporting duties for the magazine and her relationship with Jon Gosselin.

Since Star was so happy about this in the first place, it seems impossible that they asked her to resign for (heh) ethical reasons. And since Major made sure to get herself photographed with Octo-dad in the first place, it seems impossible she didn't plan this advance. The only remaining possibilities:

1. Kate Major and Star decided that she can more effectively pump Jon Gosselin for scoops if he thinks she's really his girlfriend.

2. Jon Gosselin told Kate he wouldn't go out with her as long as she was a scumbag celeb reporter. She talked to Star and agreed that it would be worth "resigning" in order to stay with him, and pump him for scoops. See theory #1.

3. Kate's quote from press release: "I didn't mean it to happen, it just did. I went to do a story on Jon and ended up falling for him." Could this be...love? We refuse to believe it.

[Pic: INF]

Page Six says that Star reporter Kate Major is Gosselin's "latest fling," which apparently means she was seen eating dinner with him, and then a bunch of her fake friends talked a lot of shit to P6.

"She's a crackerjack reporter, very talented, very good-looking," said one of her bosses. "Sure, she uses her charms to get stories. Don't we all?" Major has previously been able to get close to people like Britney Spears' ex J.R. Rotem and Lindsay Lohan.

This could mean anything. Most likely possibilities:

1. She is flirting with him to get stories.
2. She is sleeping with him to get stories.
3. She went out to dinner with him, which means nothing.
4. She has fallen hard for Jon Gosselin's charms and he is using her to manipulate the celebrity-industrial complex to his own advantage.
5. Kate Major totally had a foursome with Jon Gosselin, J.R. Rotem, and Lindsay Lohan.

The one sure thing is that Kate Major's "friend" who told P6 she just got out of rehab is a "jerk." If this relationship were real, it would mean that Jon Gosselin is cheating on that girl he got with after leaving his ex-wife and Kate Major is cheating on journalism, so it would be perfect. Kudos to Star, for ruthlessness in love and gossip.
[P6. Pic: INF]

• Cameron Diaz is apparently boning Leonardo DiCaprio and Jude Law at the same time. She's been spotted out and about in London on "secret dates" with both of them, so yeah, she's taking both of them on the regular, no doubt. [Sun]
  
  
• Jessica Simpson drowned her sorrows after being dumped by Tony Romo by hitting the town with her girlfriends and sucking off a frat boy in the backseat of a Geo Prism. Actually, we're kidding about the last part. [Daily News]
  
  
• Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson got into a huge fight after Sam went out all night with Drea De Matteo and Lindsay went beserk with jealousy. Sam would up tossing all of Lilo's clothes out onto the street. Just another Saturday night for these kids really. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Victoria Beckham has hired a personal spray-on tanner person to keep her looking perfectly bronzed at all times. [Daily News]
  
  
• Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy are engaged! Supposedly he called her up on stage during his stand-up act and dropped to one knee while she was on the stage. [Page Six]
  
  
• Burn Notice star Jeffrey Donovan was arrested and charged with DUI in Miami after having three drinks while looped up on Benadryl. [Daily News]
  
  
• Lady Gaga showed up on the set of a German TV show for an interview and was wearing a coat made out of miniature Kermit the Frogs. It's quite a sight to behold. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Sienna Miller is not the world's best driver by any means, even for an actress. [Mirror]
  
  
• It now appears as though there will be no murder charges filed against Dr. Conrad Murray in the investigation of Michael Jackson's death. [Sun]

They "regret to inform" us that "due to market conditions, Radar magazine has stopped publishing." The other side informs that you can choose one of AMI's other magazines as a replacement: either Star, Men's Fitness, or Shape. Ominously, if you do not reply by January 12th, "your remaining subscription will be replaced by Star magazine." (How about "none of the above"?)

Though she’s only been out of rehab for a year, insiders are claiming that “Lindsay's been drinking, doing cocaine and causing all-around mayhem for the past few months…. She quit going to Alcoholics Anonymous and has absolutely never taken recovery seriously. She's gotten progressively worse, and everyone in her life is really scared." Even worse, she showed up at the VMA’s with red scratches all over her arm, leading people to fear she’s started cutting herself again. If you’ll recall, the last time she did that was back in 2006 when she claimed she’d hit “rock bottom.”

Of course, Lindsay’s MySpace blog tells a different story. In an entry dated September 19th, the starlet writes (without using capital letters, just like e.e. cummings):

“my publicist emailed me today saying that star magazine is going to publish another ridiculous story about me- then again it’s not like their track record is up there with the new york times. if anything they printed was true, i’d be married, pregnant with mark ronson’s child and hanging with my sister and her ‘fake’ boobs all this while being dead due to an overdose… wow! according to them i am one busy girl, even more so i am one busy dead girl!!!!"

Hmm. So who are we to believe here, Lindsay herself or a tabloid magazine? At this point, it’s hard to say. Whatever the case, I’m just glad Lindsay has such a supportive family environment to fall back on in times of trouble. Oh wait…

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Lindsay Lohan Relapse:Booze, Coke & Cutting [Star Magazine]
• have a good weekend!!! [MySpace]

When he quit as editor of the Gatecrasher column in the Daily News and left on an extended vacation, Widdicombe said he had burned out after a decade on the party circuit. He wrote: "Also lately I’ve developed a peculiar attitude towards scandal—with some of the items that have crossed my desk I’ve thought, this really isn’t any of my business. Which is problematic for a professional gossip columnist." But not as problematic as a pile of bills on Widdicombe's return from his soul-searching vacation, presumably.

Apparently honesty isn't always the best policy for Mario Lopez.

Last week, Star told you that Mario was double-timing his recent ex, Karina Smirnoff, with a Hooters waitress. Now, we've caught him telling another fib.

Recently named to a magazine's hot bachelor list, Mario was asked during the accompanying interview if he "manscapes," which means removing excess body hair via waxing, shaving, laser or plucking. He responded, "Not at all. That's the Latin Indian blood in me. My Dad has a hairy chest, but I don't."

So how come he has a hairy chest in this 2003 photo... and a bare one in a more recent one?

J'accuse! Reader "blah" recoiled in shock, spitting, "What a liar! You can see the stubble on his ta'ta's... He is a complete loser!!" But perhaps no one was more hurt than "chris," who said, "I think Mario is pretty dishonest. He talks about how religious he is, and has such a strong faith. Excuse me...since when is not being honest ok?"

Indeed, Chris! Did Moses (or whoever) die for our sins so that Mario Lopez could lie to Hollywood publications about his smooth chest? Who among us will stand idly by while the pecs of Hollywood's so-called "Christians" go unchecked? Kudos, Star magazine: only one tabloid had the guts to adhere to that most forgotten of commandments (Commandment 9c): "thou shalt not worship false razors."

[Photo Credit: Star Magazine]

• Did Mario Lopez Fib about His Hairy Situation?! [Star Magazine]

This terror goes a long way toward explaining what innumerable editors and editorial assistants refer to offhandedly as her "pathologies." Her behavior would make a case study for a favorite regular pictorial feature in the new Star, "Stars Who Are Normal or ... Not Normal," wherein she analyzes just that. "Everybody knows stars do over-the-top things," Fuller says. "That's what makes them stars."

And for a star editor in chief? Having a clothing allowance: Normal. Not being able to find the right bra for an event, even after having your fashion editor call in numerous freebies, driving her to hand over the still-warm bra off her back: Not normal. (Fuller denies this, claiming, "I'm not a big clothes sharer.") Asking an editorial assistant to do a certain number of personal errands, like picking up the dry cleaning or wrapping presents: Normal. Purportedly asking assistant to wash out your breast pump: Not normal! (Fuller does not recall asking anyone to do this. "Could one of my assistants, being thoughtful, have done it? I don't know. I'm oblivious.")

Certainly her most glaring "Not normal"s revolve around perks. "Oh my God, the town cars!" says Kent Brownridge. "We'd discussed this pointedly several times. We'd say, If you worked late, you can take a car home. Jann wanted to support her when her daughter was in the hospital"-almost the same day she started at Us, her daughter, Leilah, then five, was diagnosed with leukemia (and 10 years earlier, her older daughter Sofia had a benign brain tumor removed)-"so we'd say, Take a car up there-it's hard to get a cab up to Columbia [Presbyterian hospital, where Leilah was being treated]. So somehow that got turned into taking a car to work, then taking a car to the gym, then having it wait while she worked out, then having the car take her to work. Her rationale was: I'm working my ass off-you should do this for me." Regarding Bonnie's perks-or lack thereof-at Us, an incredulous Michael Fuller says, "Do you know when she worked at Us she had to take the train in every day? The train!" (At Conde Nast, where she'd worked before Us, the policy for editors in chief using company cars is known to be more liberal.)

One highly placed executive at a rival company said Fuller had someone on staff, Kelli Delaney, whose title was creative director but whose real job description was procurement officer. "Kelli Delaney's job? To get Bonnie free shit," says an editor at Us who worked with Bonnie and Kelli when they were there. "There wasn't really tons of fashion at the magazine. But Kelli would be made to fetch her everything from high-end label goods to underwear." Delaney says, "I have no problem telling you that people are giving Bonnie stuff," referring to the common practice of designers sending samples to editors with the hope of being featured. "I guarantee you they send a heck of a lot more to [other editors] than to Bonnie."

"Do you know the Make-a-Wish story?" asks one former editor who worked closely with Bonnie for years. "This is the most unbelievable story about entitlement. I say this as someone who really likes her, but there are things about her you can't fathom." Right before Bonnie quit Us, she had planned a family trip to Hawaii. The Make-a-Wish Foundation, an organization that arranges for the dreams of critically ill children to come true, was sending all six members of her family there owing to Fuller's ill daughter. What startled the editor was not so much the trip but the conversation that ensued right before Fuller left. She was overheard in the office shouting at one of the Make-a-Wish officers: "I just can't believe I'm going coach! How am I going to make that flight in coach?" Fuller says she did bump her family's fares up to business class, at her own expense. "Clearly," she says, "whoever [said that] doesn't know what it is to travel with four kids."

"I feel for her, I do," says the editor. "She's tortured by this money stuff. But she has these compulsions."

Fuller's worry may be fueled by factors in her life she doesn't discuss much. She is, more or less, the sole support for her family of six. Husband Michael is an architect but mostly oversees their four children: Noah, 17; Sofia, 13; Leilah, 7; and Sasha, 3. (Along with the housekeeper. "Don't buy all that Mr. Mom stuff they tell you," says one former assistant. "Michael's a great guy, but he thoroughly enjoys the lifestyle Bonnie provides.") Some insiders say Michael may be her Iago, whispering in her ear about how undervalued she is. Certainly she's provided him with the means to renovate one lovely, unpretentious home-a traditional stone-and-stucco house with a terra-cotta wraparound porch, overlooking the Hudson River, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York-and build from scratch a vacation home nestled in the mountains of Alta, just outside Salt Lake City. But on top of the support for her own family, there are hints from her mother that she also helps out members of her extended clan. "Nobody could ask for a more generous, thoughtful daughter," says Warsh.

The problem is that being the perfect daughter doesn't translate into being the perfect boss. Fuller is a perfectionist, and perfectionists annoy anyone who's not; that's self-evident. But how many editors have entire Web sites devoted to their malfeasance? Some former peon-no one knows who-started a site called isurvivedbonnie. It features a lovely head shot of Bonnie, flaming horns on her head, with the words "El Diablo."

In the past, her staff has retaliated with revenges large and small. "Bonnie had gotten a Michael Kors dress sent to her, and it was wool," says a former assistant. "It had a tag on the arm that said, 'Lavare a Mano'-'Wash by Hand' in Italian. It was supposed to be snipped off, but she didn't seem to know that. She had this tag on her sleeve and she loved wearing this minidress. I knew what it meant, but I didn't tell her. She wore it like that and I was like, That's for keeping me here till 11."

And here's a cautionary tale for all those who are cavalier with their minions: "I've never admitted it to a stranger over the phone, but, yeah, O.K., it's true," says one of Fuller's former editorial assistants about a story whispered to me that I was sure was the magazine equivalent of an urban myth. Bonnie had a free meal prepared. Then her assistants were ordered to pack it up and send it home in a company car, so that she and her husband could enjoy it later. "And she was just being so, so horrible to so many people and ... look, I swear to God, we're really nice people. You just don't know what we went through." One assistant "had a bad cold, so she, um, pulled some stuff out of her nose. That went in the mini souffle chocolate cakes. And the loaf of bread ... that went inside my pants."

"I have been out of the office for nearly three weeks, one week or so while my mom was sick and now she passed away and I have been sitting shiva all week. It is not true at all. I am not looking for another job and I am NOT negotiating this contract with AMI to leave. Please tell Keith if he does this while I am sitting shiva it would be terrible to me."

Kelly has punished the fibbing celebrity editor for her lie with particularly brutal coverage in today's Post complete with a vicious spoof of her departure as it might be reported in a celebrity tabloid and a nasty headline—Ding Dong, Bonnie's Gone. For Fuller's greater sin—a lie on her mother's grave—she doesn't have to answer to Keith Kelly; only to her own conscience and whatever dark deity she worships.

AMERICAN MEDIA ANNOUNCES BONNIE FULLER TO STEP DOWN AS EVP AND CHIEF
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR; TO SERVE AS EDITOR-AT-LARGE OF STAR MAGAZINE AND
CONSULTANT TO COMPANY

NEW YORK, MAY 13, 2008 American Media, Inc. (AMI) today announced that
Bonnie Fuller, who has served as Executive Vice President and Chief
Editorial Director since July 2003, will resign from those positions as of
May 14, 2008. Going forward, Ms. Fuller will serve as editor-at-large of
AMI¹s Star magazine, and also will act as a consultant to the company¹s
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David J. Pecker.

"I am proud of the significant achievements of American Media¹s celebrity
and fitness brands over the past five years, and I am now ready for a new
adventure," said Ms. Fuller. "The transformation of Star from a tabloid into
a glossy magazine was unprecedented and has proven to be a great success. I
am also proud of the redesigns of several other titles over the past few
years. I have been fortunate to work with an exceptional group of talented
editors and publishers, and am thrilled to continue my involvement with AMI
through my role as editor-at-large at Star and consultant to David Pecker."

"Bonnie Fuller has been an important part of a team that has overseen a
range of extremely successful editorial initiatives over the past five
years," said Mr. Pecker. "I am pleased that we will continue to benefit from
her journalistic contributions through her role as editor-at-large at Star
and a consultant to the company."

KURTZ: But you seem to have the attitude of, I don't really care whether people are praising me or denouncing me as long as they're talking about me.

ALLISON: You know, no. I don't believe that all press is good press. But I do believe that I don't have a heck of a lot of control over it anymore. People are going to say what they're going to say. And if they read my blog, they'll see that, I mean, I'm not really a jerk. I'm not mean. I'd never say anything negative about someone. And so ultimately, if people want to—if people want to be jerks to me, then fine. Go for it. You know, if you don't have anything else going on in your life, go for it.

::Tiptoeing away, twiddling my thumbs and whistling to myself::

For one thing, Britney sporting a minor bloat anywhere near her uterus is neither a confirmation of pregnancy nor what anyone with a sane mind would consider to be "news." Rather, that's just how her body looks these days (besides, after having two children and losing a very public battle with Cheeto addiction, who can blame her?). Additionally, just about everything coming out of her camp of late seems to have very little to do with anything resembling the truth. That rubbish about her getting married to Adnan in a secret ceremony in Mexico? No dice. Brit sending her driver to buy meth in a dark alley? No evidence. So congratulations, Star! You've got yourselves an explosive cover story with the believability quotient of the late, great Weekly World News' Batboy coverage. Best of luck to you with your upcoming "Britney Impregnated At Area 51" exclusive!

• EXCLUSIVE: ADNAN: BRITNEY'S HAVING MY BABY! [Star]

Her full query to ProfNet:

I am looking for a psychiatrist who specializes in suicide and a surgeon who has treated patients who attempted to commit suicide. I need them to first look at two photos. Background: This particular individual was admitted to a hospital after reportedly attempting to slit his wrists in a suicide try. The two photos, taken just eight days afterwards, appear to show no scars, scabs or bandages whatsoever. My question is, is it possible, based on these new pictures, there could be any way this person had tried to slash his wrists eight days before? Even if he only scratched at them deeply, would there be at least some scabs or bandages? Contact: Ilyssa Panitz, [REDACTED]

Well, the universe in which In Touch is even less desirable. Also, Star pays a lot, and has aggressively been going after every celebrity reporter in town, we hear. Eventually some of them are going to cave. Besides, snipes a staffer from a competing weekly, "In Touch and Star are on equal footing in terms of workplace misery. The only thing better about Star is the commute, so if you were stranded in Englewood, wouldn't you go?" That doesn't quite jibe with what we've heard about the rank-and-file at In Touch, who are reportedly a fine bunch. But those Germans who own the place... mmm. Not the best to work for!

Which brings us to the Brad and Angelina covers. This week's, for example, screams, "BRAD GIVES UP!" According to the mag, "Angelina is seeing her ex again. Brad realizes that he will never be enough for her." REALLY, In Touch? Everyone else seems to think they're doing just fine. Sure, Angelina looks like she might waste away, but as far as everyone else is concerned, she and Brad are solid. So WTF?

Anyway! If there are any out-of-work celebrity reporters out there, you might consider knocking on Bauer's door. We're sure they could use the help, now that they've basically been raided.

Star Hires [NYP]