They ranked Fresno the stupidiestest:

"These people are here living their lives and doing the very best they can. They shouldn't be put down like this," said a lady in a bookstore.

They ranked my hometown, Vegas, right above Fresno. They haven't won any Pulitzers in the last few weeks, but they do have a UNLV professor who thinks The Daily Beast is right.

An English professor at UNLV, the 70-year-old Hickey considers those criteria and says, "Well, honestly, (the low ranking) is because the school graduates losers. It graduates people to middle management.

Go Rebels. San Antonio was next:

The Mensas at The Daily Beast are banking that you will get bent, click through to their site, read the rankings and let the Daily Beast reap the harvest of epic page views. They make you mad, you give them page views, and they scoop up the ad revenue. Trouble is, I didn't include the link, and I'm not going to include it. The Daily Beast can bite my ass. If they think I'm sending page views their way, they're not that smart.

Power to the people (and Google). Further up the list, Phoenix proved how astute they are with this cynical assessment of The Daily Beast:

The Daily Beast is one of those websites that summarizes what's on the internet on any given day.

while Houston trotted out some issues. The headline: "The Daily Beast: Houston — You Are 'Mildly Retarded.'"

Raleigh-Durham was cited as America's supreme genius city; profoundly retarded Fresno, with an IQ of 6, was listed as the dumbest. Austin was the highest-ranked Texas city, but you probably knew that already. It always comes out on top in these kinds of things.

What about the "winners?" In Raleigh, the mayor trotted out a press line. One comment on a website:

Obvious from this story that our diversity-driven schools are a complete failure.

Not much else. Seventh-place Seattle, pissed:

It's hard not to suspect some brainless methodology — considering the facts.

And New York, you're lucky number 13. A Google News search for reactions turned up virtually nothing, locally.

The lesson? America's slightly insecure, but we're not exactly a country divided. A general consensus proves that lists like these are inaccurate, pro-perception, anti-reality, useless, and that we—and I—are stupider for dignifying them. Sorry.

[Jasper Johns' Map, 1963, via MoMA]

Byron Pitts, who could soon become only the second full-time black correspondent on 60 Minutes, reveals that he was "functionally illiterate" until he was 12, and that as a kid he "was labeled 'slow' or even 'stupid'" because he had trouble reading. But whereas most TV news personalities are required to be functionally illiterate and stupid well into adulthood, Byron managed to get hired anyhow. Congrats to him on his unusual success in the TV world as a literate human.


Listen to this comically macho statement from an editor at the dying San Francisco Chronicle, of all places, to her staff: "You are going to smash whomever is naive enough to poke their noses in our market. Bring it on!" The reality is that San Francisco Chronicle editors are now paid in kidney beans.


Johnson Publishing is not confirming or denying a report that Ebony magazine is for sale, which means that yes, it is for sale. The question is, who will buy it? A white-person-controlled media conglomerate? Because that's the only option.


The Daily Beast is launching its very own book publishing imprint. It will be fast, mainly! "At Beast Books, writers would be expected to spend one to three months writing a book, and the publisher would take another month to produce an e-book edition." It's a slow blog.

Because Important People Deaths carry more weight than ol' lowercase regular people deaths, they can either elicit well-considered, clear-minded objectivity, or they can inspire transparent glibness, insipid tributes, and reactionary nonsense. Writing about Cronkite's death online is meta (man...), because his death apparently signifies the end of old-media (or something). Did his professional decedents and famous people respond accordingly? Well...

George Clooney wants to die. Clooney - who's old man was a newsman, and the inspiration to tell Edward Murrow's story in Good Night and Good Luck - doesn't want to exist in a world without Cronkite. Really.

"He was the most important voice in our lives for thirty years," the Oscar winner, who delved into the history of the CBS newsroom when he directed and costarred in Good Night and Good Luck, said in a statement Friday night. "And that voice made people reach for the stars. I hate the world without Walter Cronkite. "

Between this and his pet pig dying, it's been a shit year for him. You know who else is sad? Christina Applegate. Bet you weren't ready for this: ready for this:

Elsewhere, Shaq took a picture of himself with a sword, Perez Hilton appears to have not totally fucked something up, and John Mayer hit himself in the balls.

President Obama got right down to business:

"For decades, Walter Cronkite was the most trusted voice in America. His rich baritone reached millions of living rooms every night, and in an industry of icons, Walter set the standard by which all others have been judged. He was there through wars and riots, marches and milestones, calmly telling us what we needed to know. And through it all, he never lost the integrity he gained growing up in the heartland.

But Walter was always more than just an anchor. He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day; a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was family. He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down. This country has lost an icon and a dear friend, and he will be truly missed."

As far as media personae go, let's start with former MSNBC anchor Dan Abrams (of course), only because David Carr is somewhere in Bogota eating Arepas and has nothing to Tweet about Cronkite so far.

Abrams, whose new media consulting business arm media website ranks media personae against each other when they're not trying to kick sand at other outlets or mourning the breakup of gay penguins. Well, for one thing, poor Cronkite wasn't even awesome enough to make the list of 214 TV/News anchors in the first place. Sad. Abrams' website more than made up for it, though, with six different posts on the matter, each one more Google-happy than the next. The King Shit, however, takes a shit on all the media coverage of Cronkite, including that of his own site's:

...every major journalist is now vying to be part of the Cronkite coverage (including, I suppose, this one). No question so many grew up watching Cronkite's masterful work over the years - from war zones to the White House. And those who knew him well have offered moving tributes to Cronkite the man. But showing one's respect for Walter Cronkite also means paying homage to what the Cronkite name has come to represent –a time when it would have been unthinkable to cover Michael Jackson's death day after day....Even in reporting on his death many journalists have violated one of Cronkite's basic tenets: report the news don't become it. How many times this weekend have we heard top journalists memorializing Cronkite with sentences beginning with the word I. "I met Cronkite in. . ." or "I remember seeing him. . ."...

Having reported on many of the most notorious trials of the past two decades (including that of Michael Jackson) I have no claim to Cronkiteian journalistic purity. The same applies, however, to some of my colleagues now attempting to tether themselves to Cronkite's legacy.

Nothing better than a little self-flagellation to relieve the symbolic pain of a symbolic death now, is there? Meanwhile, friend of this site Peter Feld - who's done a few political liveblogs, here - just went live with a column on Mediaite...about personal memories of Cronkite.

Tina Brown's Daily Beast went with only three articles, including a pretty solid video tribute.

Another self-proclaimed Media Expert, Jeff Jarvis, couldn't have hidden his glee any worse:

And while our boss was being letting the company strategy out of the bag, and our night editor was coming up with conspiracy theories, Sarah Palin didn't have anything to say about Cronkite, instead, going for some nonsense about there not being rain without rainbows.

There's no greater point about Cronkite to be made here so much as a point about the immediacy and speed with which we react to the death of someone we consider to be important, and the natural de-evolution of that importance by the moment. But you'll often be surprised by who takes expediency in these matters, and maybe that, too, is the salient point: an Important Death can often bring out the more surprising, unforeseeable reactions you wouldn't expect. Like the New York Times taking Cronkite from above the fold:

While Drudge keeps him up:

Then again, maybe Drudge just - like the rest of us - enjoys a famous dead person. So it goes.

This is kind of classic Old School Media: getting sentimental with What Used To Be, in pre-9/11 New York, and bombastic titling in a story about someone who'd perfected an obscure, fleeting for-the-rich-by-the-rich "art." All that being said, it's a pretty great piece about, well, What Used To Be. Just imagine: you, getting shitfaced with George Plimpton in the head of the Statue of Liberty, pretending to be in Ghostbusters II. Meet "Farewell to the King of Parties," by Tina Brown. Highlights:

• The opening salvo, regarding the Talk magazine launch, which she does not take lightly! "The last party he pulled off for me was the Talk magazine launch event, co-hosted with the magazine's co-owner Harvey Weinstein, on Liberty Island in 1999, an extravaganza I have come to see as the last social celebration of the pre-9/11 celebrity decade."
  
  
• Then, her guest-list, which she trots out while trying to remain as calm and humble as possible. Okay, or, not: "Guests, who included Madonna, George Plimpton, Demi Moore, Tom Brokaw, Kate Moss, Christopher Buckley, Helen Mirren, and Jerry Seinfeld, disgorged one after another from the Liberty Island ferry that Buckley immediately re-christened the "Star Barge." Like an A-list Noah's Ark, it motored slowly toward the tiny island where the Talk staff waited to greet the 800 guests in a warm August dusk." Emphasis mine, because that's exactly what I think when I hear about Christopher Buckley and Kate Moss on a boat: God told Tina to capture all the creatures of the land and save the ones worth saving, or something.
  
  
• Brown's semi-aplogetic, but slightly seething dismissal of the scale of the party in the face of the magazine's massive failure: "When the magazine folded two years later in a howl of schadenfreude, that party was considered one of the calumnies of hype I would never live down. (As the movie producer David Brown once said, "Never give an opening night party that's better than the movie.")"
  
  
• The previously mentioned George Plimpton throwdown: "A soft shower of purple rain over the Hudson River signified the start of the fireworks display narrated by one of the guests, George Plimpton. "This one is for you, Salman," George boomed over the intercom. "It's banned in Iran."" Comment needed? No.

And that's just the first page. Seriously. There's Salman Rushdie's apparent first meeting with Padma Lakshmi in there, too. And the rest of the article goes on to actually eulogize Isabell The Person, but not before you forget who you've been rhyming with this entire time. First, this priceless picture, included in a gallery with the article:

It's of Brown, Interview editor and Andy Warhol-ite Bob Colacello, Studio 54's Ian Schrager, and the founder of Phoenix House, Dr. Mitch Rosenthall. At one of Isabell's parties. Facinating, but: no Isabell to be found. Then this, the last shot fired:

There was a clear, full moon, and my husband and I stood leaning out over the rail facing the wash at the bow of the boat, along with a last group of stragglers who included Helen Mirren, the New Yorker writer Hendrick Hertzberg, and the movie stars Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson. As the boat sped back toward the lights of Manhattan, a large cold wave washed over the side and soaked us all.

The next decade turned out to be a colder wave than any of us imagined. Two years after that glorious party, the Twin Towers came down, Talk magazine folded, Padma and Salman recently got divorced. The economy collapsed. I last saw the beautiful Natasha Richardson in March lying like a medieval effigy in the open casket at her wake. And Robert himself has left the party forever. Our revels now are ended!

Revels, indeed. Did Natasha Richardson really have to be brought into this? Oh well. Yeah, The Party Planner may have died, and he may have taken The Party with him, but I think, as far as parties go, we're all better off.

All Tina's eulogy/wake-a-sleeping-dog dissection into history does is serve to remind many of the publications and people who used these extravagances of their asinine spending habits of yore that preceded the poor, shitshow shape they're in now (like Vanity Fair, which had to fire so much of it's support staff, or Talk, which is, again, long dead, but was a trendsetter as far as the "magazine launches signify magazine deaths" trend). Or of their jobs, which they used to have.

Is there any question as to why that aforementioned schadenfreude ever existed, though? These parties, though probably fun, cost ridiculous amounts of money, and were only accessible to a microscopic percentage of New York, let alone the rest of America. Much like the things they were meant to celebrate. And, naturally, much like this blog post about them.

Farewell to the King of Parties [The Daily Beast]

A good example of just one of the newspaper industry's problems: Macy's has cut its newspaper ad spending in half since 2005. That's a decline of about $600 million. And even after the decline, Macy's was the second-biggest newspaper advertiser in 2008, behind only Verizon. That money is never coming back. To newspapers.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Vogue's July issue proves that it is totally catering to hobos now, because it features "a 'Steal of the Month,' and a section with all items under $500." Why not just go to a garage sale, in the slums of Detroit, then? Outrageous. [SPOOF pic via]

This Daily Beast story on the release of a $1,000 coffee-table book on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing is apparently not a paid advertorial. Despite that, it still features this paragraph:

If the price is steep, what it offers is nothing short of a family heirloom in the making. Moonfire is a gloriously imposing tome, large enough to require a degree of exertion just to flip it over. Inside, in addition to a reproduction of Mailer's book, are scans of his original manuscript, and photographs that, decades after that Space Age began to feel dated, still boggle the mind. Taschen will print only 1,969 copies of the book-each will be signed by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and the final 12 will contain a chip of extremely rare moon meteorite. As a package, the project is an achievement worthy of the subject it celebrates.

Odd.

Media (unpaid) job opportunity! Write for, haha, "The Ennuist,"—a blog just as easy to pronounce as "Mediaitieite" but more pretentious better.

The Ennuist aims to provide a witty, irreverent look at pop culture and current events. Sometimes pretentious, sometimes controversial, often relevant, though sometimes not. Think Gawker when it was good, The Awl with a younger focus, or Radar Online before it turned pink and sparkly.

Haha, "The Ennuist." Haha. The good Gawker would have had a helluva line for that one.

Sklar - who's doing freelance work for The Daily Beast when she's not working as "media consultant" Dan Abrams' prime henchwoman - sits down here with Times media reporter David Carr (a famously reformed alcoholic) at a bar for a drink. The results are weird and beautiful and utterly fantastic, in that, I can just pull quotes from it and it's wonderful:

Carr's weirdness starts out: "Today was horrific." Horrific? Fun. Flamboyant! He continues, showing his media reporter card/hand: "The thing is, if you write something about the New York Times, a lot of people feel compelled to write in and say what would save the New York Times. And we've thought about most those things."

Who's we? And, wait: we have? "And Number one, we're not really in need of saving. And then there's a lot of people who think the paper's going to go away, somehow." What? No! Yes? I'm so confused!

Then Carr talks about how excited he is to be a media reporter, and Sklar - who appears to be eating a mango, maybe? - nods downward at the words "media reporter," or so the video's been edited! Conspiracy! But Carr is scared. "But I'm scared," he explains to Sklar. Her response? David Carr, Inc. can live without the Times, because he has a brand. And Carr cuts her off: "I'd never make what I'm making now." Well, that's why you hire Abrams Research! Duh!

Then Carr gets a "fry cut" - maybe that mango was a french fry? - and there's a bunch of nonsensical trivia about whether or not Carr prefers Star Trek over Star Wars. Carr begins to give Sklar the crazy eyes and she begins to look scared. And then, before we know it, the cinéma vérité masterpiece that is SklarCarr has come to an abrupt stop.

So, final count:

- Rachel Sklar looks down when Carr calls her a media reporter.
- Rachel Sklar looks terrified of Carr.
- Carr - the New York Times media reporter - doesn't think the now perpetually beleaguered paper needs saving.
- Carr will not abandon the mothership, because he's making too goddamn much.
- Carr thinks Star Trek is action-packed and the like and Star Wars is for nerds. What?

When future humans come back to earth to excavate our microparticles in order to learn about the civilizations that came before them and the silly instruments that provided the decline and ultimate demise of our culture, our means of communicating, and this whole "journalism" concept - print, electronic, telekinetic, whatever - in like, fifteen years, this video's going to be studied endlessly. I've watched it four times and it's still strangely, incredibly hypnotizing. I feel like I'm watching some acid-dropped deleted scene from Citizen Kane. It's that awesome.

The Thursday report Salon called into question found Taguba - who retired from his military career in 1997 - noting that the Abu Ghraib photos the ACLU's suing to have released show "torture, abuse, rape and every indecency." Last night, Taguba admitted that he hadn't seen the photos the ACLU is suing over:

"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said — but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.

Taguba then went on to mention that he still thinks "no other photographs should be released" because he fears it could generate and incite more violence and retribution against American soldiers.

The Daily Telegraph, now embarrassed at getting the story wrong and trying to find cover, ran their own version of Salon's story earlier this afternoon: their spin is that despite their initial report implying that Taguba had seen the suppressed photos, he had CONFIRMED their story in CLARIFYING that the photos he had seen weren't the ones Obama was trying to suppress. Ohhhhh. Got it. Hate to admit it, but Robert Gibbs was right about one thing: the British Press - kinda stupid, sometimes.

They also cited The Daily Beast: Scott Horton, who wrote yesterday about some of the photos Obama was trying to suppress, also had sources confirming their contents! Exciting!

The photographs differ from those already officially released ... In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position ... In one withheld photograph, not previously described, Specialist Charles A. Graner, Jr., an Abu Ghraib guard, is shown suturing the face of a prisoner, a reliable source tells The Daily Beast.

Well, guess who else looks stupid, here: yes, The Daily Beast. Salon published those two photos in 2006, and Salon's Alex Koppelman took to the streets (blog) about an hour ago to scream that those photos were so three years ago, they had already been there (First!!11!!) and that none of you morons claiming to actually have some kind of exclusive on these photos or their content do.

So Salon's playing their own horn really loudly - fine. But both The Daily Beast and the Telegraph both look fairly ridiculous, today: they bought a story without trying it on, took it home, and wore it out to the club. And then Salon pointed out the giant skidmark near their collective ass while they were in the middle of doing the "Soulja Boy." They did a great job sussing out what they smelled as a bullshit story, and called out two fairly large media outlets in the process.

Meanwhile, despite what're probably good intentions by Taguba, he definitely screwed this one up, too. Why didn't he just come out as an opponent of the photos' release rather than someone with new information to bring to the table in the first place?

Maybe the photos don't show any of the abuses Taguba noted. But they're definitely being suppressed, and as Salon's made very evident, some pretty bad shit's already out there. One thing's certain: the desire for revealing whatever's actually in those photos - be it motivated politically, emotionally, or just out of the public's sheer masochistic curiosity - keeps growing with each story furthering this news cycle. Hopefully, none of the reporting on it will continue to be as grandstanding, shoddy, and scoop-happy as some of this. It really doesn't help.

Taguba denies he's seen abuse photos suppressed by Obama [Salon]
Telegraph report over Abu Ghraib 'abuse' photos confirmed [Daily Telegraph]
The Bogus Torture Coverup [The Daily Beast]
"New" Abu Ghraib photos aren't new [Salon]

William Shatner, whose expertise is listed as Film, recommends Susan Boyle. Good discovery, Bill. What, did you find that on Priceline? Lydia Hearst recommends a band called Bat for Lashes. She likes a song called Daniel because, "Her lyrics are definitely really bizarre; her sound is dark and ambient, sort of dreamlike. Watching her videos puts me in a trance!"

What's funny is that when the Beast started, they actually did get some smart people to recommend shit they liked. Bill Clinton recommended three books about the bail-out; Missy Suicide, of Suicidegirls.com, recommended The Institute for the Future and Simon Sebag Montefiore recommended Frost/Nixon.

The latest recommendation is a singer named Kat DeLuna. She recommends aromatherapy oils. So either since October 2008, the Daily Beast has cycled through all the smart people in the world or their cachet has sunk to a level where instead of asking a former president to recommend a couple books they're asking a 21-year-old pop star about aromatherapy. Both explanations are equally plausible.

The fear is palpable in Brown's Daily Beast column about Portfolio. If Condé Nast is giving up on a big project like Portfolio, she asks, how will it nurture visionary, money-losing editors like... well, like Tina Brown? Has Si Newhouse, steadfast chairman of the magazine group, and longtime Brown benefactor, lost his stamina — his manhood?

The fact that [Newhouse] elected to close [Portfolio]... suggests a worrying element of panic engulfing the steadfast publisher I worked for so comfortably for 17 years at Tatler, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker...

Until now, he was always the media emperor who could live and do as he chose... Let's hope this pitiless economy doesn't force him to cap his noble career by performing a lobotomy.

The closure no doubt has Brown fretting over the $18 million her upstart Web venture the Daily Beast will cost Barry Diller's IAC through fall 2011. No worries, Tina: Diller still has the sort swagger old Si threw off in the early days of Portfolio. Though for good measure, you might to whisper for him your line about a money-losing publication being a mogul's "sexiest calling card." You know how much he loves being fabulous and sexy.

Golf champion Woods and former Secretary of State Rice both went to Stanford, you see. They were tight.

I once sat with him at a Stanford-Duke basketball game. Stanford won on a buzzer beater, and we stormed the court together. With that kind of bonding, whom else would I pull for?

So when it came time for Rice to attend her first Masters tournament, there was no question who she wanted to follow around the course. When organizers asked, Rice writes, "I said, 'Duh?'"

Sadly, Woods groupies were lined up at the first tee two hours before he started, so Rice pretended she didn't care and was all, "that's fine, I'll just chill at the 16th tee and watch whoever."

Then in the middle of the tournament, when Woods was doing well, Rice had the chance to say "hello." But she didn't, because she didn't want to distract him. Now she has to regret that decision for the rest of her life, every time she leafs through the old Sports Illustrated Woods stories she keeps in her hope chest.

Not that it mattered: Woods choked anyway, after Rice got to see him on the 12th role. She hasn't lost faith:

When Tiger's ball hit that tree at 18, I felt like Joe Montana had just thrown a pick in a two-minute drive in the Super Bowl. But you know that Tiger will be there to do it right the next time...

When Tiger is on the course and starts one of his surges, it feels like Magic Johnson or Jerry Rice, one on one with an opponent.

Condi Rice, loyally sticking by a surger, no matter how badly he appears to have blown things. Sounds about right.

Tina got a hefty dose of start-up cash from Barry Diller, so TDB hasn't felt much pressure at all to go forth and seek, you know, income. Just over a week ago they were being positively breezy about the whole thing. But now they have secured an "advertiser!" Some fashion thing, Bottega Veneta, is in for one month (of glory):

[TDB's general manager] Ms. Marks said "breakthrough ads" will become a standard part of the site's advertising inventory. She declined to comment on the cost of the ads or how they compare to more standard online ad units. She said only that "this is premium advertising for online."

Only time will tell if this whole "advertising" scheme proves to be more than a fad. [Ad Age]

Meghan is 24 and so she knows what the kids are into these days. The kids these days are not into her dad, John, or his party, the GOP. Meghan thinks the problem might be that young people hear a lot of bad stereotypes about Republicans, and all of those stereotypes are embodied by this woman named Ann Coulter, a scary, mean woman who no one likes.

Coulter could be the poster woman for the most extreme side of the Republican Party. And in some ways I could be the poster woman for the opposite.

Yes, Meghan, sure. You are definitely known as the poster child for whatever the opposite of Ann Coulter is, and not simply as "the blonde daughter of John McCain who posted quite a lot of photos of herself on a blog while he was running for president."

Meghan she goes on:

I consider myself a progressive Republican, but here is what I don't get about Coulter: Is she for real or not? Are some of her statements just gimmicks to gain publicity for her books or does she actually believe the things she says?

Yes, well, everyone who thought about it for ten minutes figured this out 7 years ago, but for those who haven't, Ann actually answered some questions from the evil New York Times! In ALL CAPS, because that's how she rolls:

I DON'T SAY THINGS JUST TO "GET A REACTION" OR "PROVOKE MY AUDIENCE" ANY MORE THAN ANYONE WHO TALKS ABOUT IDEAS DOES. I IMAGINE CHURCHILL HOPED TO "PROVOKE HIS AUDIENCE" WITH HIS "WE SHALL FIGHT ON THE BEACHES" SPEECH. I'M TRYING TO EXPRESS IDEAS, USUALLY ABOUT IMPORTANT ISSUES, AND IF A POINT IS MADE WELL THAT WILL TEND TO ELICIT A REACTION.

So there you have it!

Next week Meghan will write a column called "who is this Rush Limbaugh guy, you ever heard of him?"

Our tipster writes, by way of preface:

So I recently got this from a freelancer who now works at the Daily Beast. Believe it or not it is actually the most insidious and annoying email ever. Though it may not seem so prima facie, it in fact contains everything that is wrong with journalism and a particular type of freelance journalist. Where the source of the shittiness is unclear, I've annotated. Feel free to post but do not, per favore, use my name.

Bile, with footnotes! We love it. Syme is 25 and has a Tumblr, if that helps paint the picture. Syme's offending email:

From: Rachel Syme

Date: Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 5:11 PM

Subject: Know anyone who has moved away?

Hi all,

Doing some canvassing for a story I am working on for a magazine [1] (if you want to know which one, I'll tell you when you e-mail me).[2] In any case, it's a very respectable one. [3] Working on a piece about New Yorkers who, despite being tried and true, have left the city due to downsizing of their jobs or hopes...but intend to come back. People who are taking advantage of the recession and down mood around these parts to pursue a longtime passion elsewhere, and then bring it all back home at some point. [4] Do you know anyone?

Let me know asap. [5] Feel free to pass this along to someone who might know someone as well. Looking especially for people who have left the finance sector to do this.[6]

And hello. [7]

Rach

And the promised footnotes!

1. Elision of the first person singular. Though Ms. Syme has taken the time to write this email and send it to hundreds of her contacts, she hasn't the time to start sentences with I. This stems either from the baseline assumption that of course she means I because everything is about her anyway or from insisting on a false sense of urgency and drama, because writing I is simply too time consuming. Related: False Amity.

2. Unnecessary Secrecy. Including this as a parenthetical aside, Ms. Syme infuriatingly presupposes the following: The reader of said email, who is being asked for a favor by Ms. Syme, wants to know badly exactly who she is writing for (as opposed to not caring). That though Ms. Syme won't share this information with hoi polloi, you will care deeply enough to email her to find out. Related: Universal Secrecy, the annoying habit of telling every friend, colleagues or acquaintance information of a personal nature and swearing each in turn to secrecy, often preceded by "Totally OTR."

3. Insecure Vainglory. But even though she can't tell you exactly which magazine it is, rest assured, it's better than the one you are writing for.

4. Offensively Clichéd Story. All this is a preface to a request for sources for perhaps the most clichéd and already written recession story ever. There's only one thing worse that receiving these sorts of emails for good stories you wish you had thought of. That's receiving these emails about bad stories, you've already thought of, realized have been written elsewhere and that, out of pride and professionalism, you've spiked.

5. Urgency Shift. Ms. Syme, no doubt late in beginning her research [OMG, Fashion Week!] would like you, dear reader, to drop what you're doing and respond as soon as possible. We're on deadline here people!

6. See point 4.

7. False Amity. Ms. Syme, with 841 Facebook friends, is not just a professional contact, she'd like you to know. She's also your friend. Even if the only moments of contact come in a request for sources or of personal crisis. Also presupposes, you'd be deeply hurt if she didn't say hello.

(Photo by Nikola Tamindzic)

“We’re not offering big fees,” Ms. Brown said. Posts are generally good for $250. One recently laid-off staffer who’s been pitching the site was told posts could get $300 to $500—others say it’s closer to 50 cents per word...

“They want celeb-focus and featurey stuff that’s light and fun to read,” said one recently laid-off staffer who contributes. “They’re less interested in the scoop and more interested in the fun, light read. They like stuff with celebrities attached with little lists: five of this, five of that.”

Well that sounds like... our job. If we got paid at that rate, we would make six hundred and eleven million dollars per year. [NYO; pic via. Choire Sicha is on The Daily Beast, for example!]

He tells the New York Observer:

I’m over it now. It’s guess it's funny. I guess it keeps my name in the spotlight, doesn’t it? And I didn’t have to do anything—zero! I called my lawyer—not to sue—but I kind of, like, didn’t know what to do. The design was fine, but I didn’t want to be like misquoted. I mean, this is for, like, the president’s wife! Not that anyone is reading that piece anyway, I’m sure.

Heh. Ouch.

Something about this arrangement smacks of social climbing. But who's climbing whom? Randi Zuckerberg, one of Facebook's early employees, who helped the site grow to 100 million users? Or a has-been magazine editor, famous in Manhattan but nowhere else, grappling with how to adapt her outrageous spending habits to a far leaner medium, and leaned on her pal Barry Diller to fund and launch the site, rather than trying the entrepreneurial route?

From a Left Coast vantage point, it looks like Brown is trying to attach herself to Zuckerberg's star, not the other way around. Zuckerberg, cleverly, registered her own website, shouldiredorshouldiblue.com. A wise hedge, should Brown's website go down in expensive flames.

Buckley's hate mail column, though, has the advantage of quoting an unnamed editor from the magazine his father founded! "One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions 'cretinous.'" Ha, ha, that is probably from Rich Lowry? Buckley continues:

Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.

Is it perhaps too cynical of us to assume that this was all orchestrated as a PR stunt for Tina Brown's crazy new Internet Thing?

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

Amusingly, over at NRO's The Corner, they've been running fawning friendly interviews with Chris all week. A vague request for comment on this column by Mark Steyn has not yet been answered. Presumably K-Lo and Jonah are wating for the "grownups" to weigh in seriously, or alternatively for a particularly insane email they can quote in lieu of coming up with a rosy response to this rather ominous column from a current high-profile National Review contributor.