When your favorite famous black person gets arrested, PageSix.com will be there.

"When people wake up, PageSix.com will be the place they'll go to find out who hooked up at the clubs and what their favorite celebrity athlete is planning to say at his 10 a.m. arraignment. Simply put, PageSix.com is going to be the celebrity gossip addict's ultimate fix — morning, noon and night," said Chris Shaw, Vice President of Digital Media for PageSix.com.

And the site looks great (in Internet Explorer), with photos and videos almost-but-not-quite identical to the content on TMZ and OK! and UsWeekly, plus the items from the print column available in convenient "blog post" form.

Now we'll just wait for the inevitable cellphone-captured celebrity racist rant that will catapult PageSix.com to true web success.

PageSix.com

European Tabloids Still Agog Months After Child Vanishes [NYT]

Gender-Bend Shocker [NY Post]

Click to enlarge.

A couple of years ago, around the time when Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were splitting up, I got hooked on celebrity weeklies like Star and Us Weekly. They were fascinating because they purported to give their readers behind the scenes access to people whose public personae were larger than life, and for a while I was really into knowing these details. Information about famous people, no matter how banal—Angelina Jolie bought a baby sweater at La Petite Tresor! Britney Spears likes chocolate-covered pretzels! Reese Witherspoon wore the same sweater three times in a week!—seemed entertaining.

But my tastes got a little bit more bloodthirsty and ravenous once I burned out on this quotidian stuff, and so did the tastes of the tabs, or so it seemed. I wanted: more cellulite! More weight winners and losers! More hitting rock bottom! And then, after I started writing about "gossip," it became far less possible to delude myself that any of the weeklies actually had privileged insights into the lives of the stars. I'd pick up Us Weekly and feel sorry for the writer who had to eke 1500 words out of a paparazzi photo that showed Reese Witherspoon frowning. "REESE AND JAKE: ON THE ROCKS?" Uh, right, either that or she just didn't feel like smiling for the camera for the thousandth time that day. The thing is, though, that even though we all know it's bullshit, the idea that we could be privy to a tiny bit of insider info is compelling.

So when Internet microcelebrities like Julia and Jakob compulsively display their dirty laundry online, it fulfills a need that celebrity culture has instilled in me and come on, admit it, possibly you too. Instead of extrapolating what's going on in these self-proclaimed fameballs' largeish heads based on pictures snapped on the way out of a party, we can read about it and read about it and read about it on their blogs, or we can watch them fight and offer them relationship tips in Vimeo comments. Instead of musing about how Jakob's immaturity probably will make Julia cry eventually, we can actually watch her tears. She's letting us! She wants us to watch.

Which is probably exactly why we should turn away.

The kids, who long ago dropped out of regular school for work-at-your-own-pace school, have sold their apparently decent shots to the Daily News and TMZ.com, among others—and, of course, are developing a reality show.

Blaine's father is a real winner, not unexpectedly. He tells the Times that at first he was apprehensive about the thought of his young son staying out till all hours, scrambling with professional paparazzi twice his age and weight. "I thought, 'My kid is going out there with a bunch of paparazzi?' But I've since come to really like a lot of them. There are some I'd be more than happy to have over for a dinner party." Hoo boy.

Actress Rose McGowan had it right, when captured on film by Austin: "What's wrong with this town? This is so wrong!" We'll give Dr. Phil two weeks to get his ass in there and then we're calling SuperNanny.

ANNA'S EX SUES OVER GAY CLAIM [AP]

Hit Ordered on Kevin Federline? [ET]

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]

Janice writes,

I get it. I understand why Paris Hilton trumps interest in Bush's eavesdropping, whether or not she's on the cover of Us Weekly. The Paris story may be getting old, but the Bush one feels even older. Cultural critics like to decry our tabloid obsessions, assuming that Americans are too apathetic, dumb, or lazy to follow important political stories as they unfold. But I think the real problem is that George Bush is no longer that guy Americans would rather have a beer with. Like Paris, he is someone we no longer want to think is "just like us." He's become a former political celebrity few want on their red carpet.

"People talk about the tabloidization of society and what it means for the future of society, and people talk about celebrities and their role—but Paris Hilton didn't start any wars," Ms. Min reminded her young charges. "I have memories as a child of watching the Watergate hearings with my mother. And now we live in an era when CNN went for 90 minutes uninterrupted on Anna Nicole Smith's death!"

The Editor of Us Weekly Explains Why She Banned Paris Hilton From Her Pages [Slate]
Earlier: Janice Min: "Paris Hilton Didn't Start Any Wars"

"NBC had been interested in the concert for a very long time," he said in response to a question from a New York Post reporter about how the network got involved with the interview and the concert. "Months ago, they told me they were pursuing the concert and asked me what my interest level was.... But we had been talking to the palace about interviewing the boys for a long time, long before the idea of the concert came up. Once NBC decided to do the concert, it seemed like a great time for them to speak if they were going to speak. Perhaps on this occasion the boys would speak out—then it was just a question of whether the boys would do it with me, or me over some other people at NBC."

Lauer claims he was forced to jump through hoops before the palace would approve the network's request to interview William and Harry, including having to send over tapes of his previous interviews. "I was very excited when I got the interview," Lauer said.

"Usually those types of interviews involve lots of chasing," the Post reporter prodded. "Because of the concert, was it NBC's guarantee that you would get the interview?"

"When the concert deal was signed, they hadn't decided they were going to do anything. There's no quid pro quo here," Lauer said. "But the concert gave us an enormous advantage, absolutely. It's a no-brainer."

Now, let's parse that. Lauer claims there was no quid pro quo, and if by quid pro quo he means, literally, that the network said to the princes, "Here's $2.5 million for the rights to the concert and now you have to give us an interview," then sure, there was no quid pro quo. But the second part of his response—"the concert gave us an enormous advantage"—seems to be what people are getting their boxers in a bunch about these days. Sure, there's no official deal. There's nothing that anyone can point to as concrete evidence that there was a quid pro quo.

"I was not in on the business dealings of this," Lauer said in response to another question. "If there had been a quid pro quo I wouldn't have had to go through the hoops I had to go through. There was nothing set on paper before we started making those calls."

Well, sure! But it also seems that Lauer—and the rest of the NBC News division—are almost willfully ignorant about the way that their Entertainment division works. After all, if Lauer keeps himself in the dark, he can reassure himself that it was his wonderful audition tapes that landed him the interview with the princes, not the $2.5 million that the entertainment division of the network paid the princes for the rights to the concert.

But Lauer will be hosting the concert for the network as well. So is he working there as a member of the NBC News team? Or as a representative of the Entertainment side? The latter seems more likely.

It's a good thing Alison Rogers won't be needing her New York Post job back. The witty Harvard grad rips owner Rupert Murdoch and editor Col Allan in her new book, 'Diary of a Real Estate Rookie,' the story of becoming a broker after Murdoch's 'refusal to pay her a decent wage' as editor of the real-estate section. This, despite Rogers' estimates that she brought in $5 million in two years to the paper. But the 'final straw' came, Rogers writes, when Allan 'yelled at me for three straight days ... three days of red-faced hollering. We were done, Col and I.' When reached for comment, Allan clarified: 'I yelled at Alison for four days, not three.'

Side Dish [NYDN]

Tina gets assigned a proper historian in the New York Times Book Review, and comes off just fine, slightly less so between the lines. Vanessa Grigoriadis flashes her sharpest teeth at Tina in New York magazine but keeps whirling by.

Tina died when Diana died, suggests Vanessa, though of unrelated accidents. "There's very few places where anybody can actually have an intelligent conversation today," says Tina. This lament again. Blogging is bad for writing, says Tina; Tina is unemployed, notes Vanessa. Tina claims to not have any plans, which is totally not true. She's no Arianna Huffington, suggests Vanessa. But clearly Tina Brown is planning something right now.

Doesn't it sound hot and/or absurd?

"Seriously sexy Victoria's Secret model Karolina Kurkova was the filling in a Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie cannoli, according to a scandalous new report.

At a recent clothing fitting, Karolina [Kurkova] was reportedly "giddy, like a schoolgirl" when talking about her supposedly torrid time with Brad and Angie, a fashion insider claims in Australia's New Idea magazine. However, the claims stand in stark opposition to what really happened: that such a threesome never occurred and that Karolina says she never even met the couple.

WE HEAR... THAT Cynthia Nixon will appear in the first episode of the ninth season of "Law & Order: SVU," playing a woman with multiple personalities...

Cynthia Nixon is keeping busy. She'll play a woman with multiple personalities on the season opener of "Law & Order: SVU..."

WE HEAR...
STARR REPORT [NYP]
[Image via]

For starters, all the "fake" stories that Us is refuting are stories that it has reported, with perhaps a slightly more conservative spin, in recent issues. Sure, Life&Style maybe went out on a limb by implying that Brad and Angelina were "living separate lives." But in this same issue of Us, Angelina is reported as having given Olivier Martinez a "lap dance." Just as hollow is Us's refutation of last week's Star Tom and Katie "Divorce!" cover: "Troubles? Yes. But divorce? Not in discussion... Pal Jenna Elfman told Us... 'they're together.'" Oh, okay, as long as Jenna Elfman says so!

Calling out OK! for predicting the demise of J. Lo's marriage prematurely was, of course, a safe bet. But the critique of In Touch's "Surprise Boob Jobs" cover is the story's most toothless, since the article in question didn't actually allege that anyone besides Heidi Montag had one, and that is just sort of like "duh!" Also, Us's rebuttal ("The Truth") begins,"A rep for Simpson, 26, denied that the D-cup singer got a lift or implants." Well, as everyone knows, publicists never lie. And neither does Us Weekly. —Emily

Taking Shots [WWD]

People in the tabloid media are themselves people who are abused and are people who are living with shameful secrets. They make it their career to humiliate you and expose your secrets. You find out that everybody who works in tabloid media are people who are filled with self-hatred and shame, and the way they manage those feelings, they destroy the lives of other people and reveal your secrets.

Baldwin: 'I Apologize to My Daughter' [ABC News]