The Daily Show promotes the book which funnels free labor to the blog which supports that $100 million valuation Huffington just scored, and a vanishingly small percentage of the people involved in the food chain are getting paid.

Now that little racket would make for a good how-to book. Begrudgingly admire it in action in the clip above (including the best bit of the backstage stuff!).

UPDATE: Twitter pretty much hated her. Which is kind of beside the point: None of you nerds was going to write/slave for her anyway!

Stop braying on about your purchases as if you were doing something meaningful like removing brain tumors or solving the global economy. SHOP BUT DON’T TELL.
And stop allocating all your free time to shopping... you run the risk of being branded an idiot...
From now on, your shopping trips will be more like surgical strikes. Snag yourself a personal shopper who can streamline the process...
Deep is the new superficial!

And it's so simple: You just need to throw together a soul, intelligence and basic human empathy. They can be tricky to find but are always on sale!

In America, reports the Times, mothers (JUST like this one!) are cutting back on their all-important clothes-shopping trips (down a whopping 18 percent, jeepers!) and using "online tools to organize meetings with other mothers to swap clothing, toys, video games and books. Others are buying DVDs and video games in bulk from warehouse stores like BJ’s Wholesale Club, then taking the sets apart to create multiple gifts."

Sounds intense. What do mothers spend their time frantically worrying about elsewhere? Buying that Doodle Pro or Mortal Kombat disk in time for Ramadan or whatever? Not quite:

Her friend rushed over to help her, struggling to wipe the liquid away, when she too was showered with acid. She covered her face, crying out for help as they sprayed her again, trying to aim the acid into her face. The weapon was a water bottle containing battery acid; the result was at least one girl blinded and two others permanently disfigured. Their only crime was attending school.

It was not an isolated incident. For women and girls across Afghanistan, conditions are worsening — and those women who dare to publicly oppose the traditional order now live in fear for their lives.

Well, we can't save the whole world, and we'll probably have that whole Afghanistan situation fixed up in another decade or two. What about closer to home? Let's check in with South Carolina:

Capers searches for jobs and money while she endures living apart from her children. Her children call crying and asking to come home, and they sleep on the floor because her grandmother doesn't have enough beds. Last week, her youngest son told her he missed her so much that she managed to scrounge enough bus money so he could spend a night with her at home.

Oh, that sounds bad. Wonder why that wasn't the Times' cover story of sacrifice. Must be one of those clichéd "topics or angles the Times has already addressed" about the South. Even closer to home?Say, in New England?

Sarah Gloudemans rarely has a slow day. In a typical eight-hour shift as a supervisor at Wendy's, she'll take customer orders, wrap sandwiches, make change and generally fix whatever needs fixing. After work, Sarah might do some grocery shopping or laundry before picking up her 2-year-old daughter, Alizah, at day care and driving to their home in downtown Concord.
Home, in their case, is a shelter.

And it just gets even more horribly depressing from there. Really not the sort of thing to pump you up to stimulate our wretchedly dysfunctional economy this Black Friday by buying a bunch of useless junk with money you didn't save from sacrifices that don't hurt on credit cards you shouldn't have. So, really: Good call, Times.

(We are doomed, forever.)

(Thanks to tipster Megan for the pointers!)

(Photo: Charity Beck/Times)

Of course Thomas Friedman has to chime in via his NYT column, as he does with every trend. He's stopped yapping about "going green" and instead:

"So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: “You don’t know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn’t be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.”

So you're allowed to be there and we're not? Not even if we're on a date or treating ourselves to a night out? Hey, Friedman: please put your thoughts and ideas in a doggy bag and take them home.

Meanwhile, Womens Wear Daily asked celebs what they're not ready to go without in these recessionary times. Sample answers: both Hilary Swank and Rosanna Arquette can't go without facials, Jessica Biel needs "first-class travel," Amy Smart cannot live without organic foodstuffs, and Kim Raver sagely suggested, “Instead of buying 10 extravagant items, you maybe buy one or two extravagant items and mix it up with the Gap.” Mind-jarring.

Of course, there was last month's "recession chic" piece in the Times Styles section to help us out and suggest that buying Hermes purses is now considered tacky.

Remember that "going green" media-trend from a while back? This is sort of like that. It was so comical to watch fashion magazine editors with six-figure salaries pace around their offices in $500 dresses freaking out about "doing something green with this issue" when producing a fashion magazine is the most wasteful process ever. We imagine the same scene is playing itself out in the offices of Hearst, Conde Nast, and Time Inc right this minute, only with the word "recession" replacing "green." Same song, different name.

[In new Target ads,] Watching a $13 DVD on the living room sofa is celebrated as “the new movie night.” A $59.99 bicycle is presented as “the new commute.” There are similar salutes to people who eat in rather than dine out, cut their children’s hair and turn a backyard tent into “the new family room.”

Hooverville bad. [NYT; Pic via]

Todd surely meant she was on the "wrong" side of town because it was the opposite of where she wanted to be, geographically. Not because she was scared of bitter poors and so forth. Right?

Because Bloomington, where Todd was attacked, is described by a historian (cited on Wikipedia) not as a ghetto but as "a feast, as rich to the eyes as the homemade tortellini and cannoli in its shop windows are to the stomach." Judging from the ShoppingBloomfield.com website, that description sounds like it remains accurate to this day, what with the gourmet bistro, art gallery, antique store and farmer's market.

Google Maps has a street-level panoramic picture of the intersection where the attack occurred (click the white arrows to move around). The ATM is across from a church and some nice-looking houses and next to a sports supplements store, clothing shop and Italian-themed cafe. Across the street is a Thai place. Doesn't look like too bad a neighborhood. But one never knows when and where a random act of violence might occur!

Although you would think the political revolutionary thugs would be more at home in, say, Philadelphia. Maybe they dispatch the dyslexic, backwards-"B" carving ones to Pittsburgh?

UPDATE: As Wonkette, reports, you can still see the Twitter stream here. And as one of our commenters points out, even Michelle Malkin isn't buying the story.

Spokeswoman Maria Comella declined to answer specific questions about the expenditures, including whether it was necessary to spend that much and whether it amounted to one early investment in Palin or if shopping for the vice presidential nominee was ongoing.
“The campaign does not comment on strategic decisions regarding how financial resources available to the campaign are spent," she said.

The McCain campaign must have known this was coming. In fact, it seems to have timed it: Palin's purchases didn't start until September, according to Politico, even though the convention started Sept. 1 and Palin spoke Sept. 3. Maybe the campaign wanted to push disclosure back a month, near the end of the campaign, after Palin had cemented her blue-collar reputation.

Also, prior to her disastrous interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson and CBS' Katie Couric, Palin tended to help the McCain ticket whenever she was mentioned, regardless of the context, by distracting people from her less popular running mate. That was the case when the first reports surfaced of Palin dressing in the clothing of the elites last month.

Since then, the economy has imploded and unemployment is skyrocketing. And as implausible as it might seem, there just might be some lingering Palin supporters in swing states who could stomach Palin's embarrassing interviews but not the betrayal of Barney's and Bloomindale's.

In this morning's Times it emerged that Maddow's new show doubled its predecessor's ratings "in a matter of days." Such gumption! It took the liberal pundit's mentor, Keith Olbermann, years to get to that point, and he probably never had to save up to fix a broken chimney. Maddow is also beating CNN's Larry King among 25-to-54-year olds. So the Times is calling on MSNBC to at least buy poor Maddow a TV set, already:

...Ms. Maddow insists that she has never watched either [Larry] King’s program or the 9 p.m. program on Fox News, “Hannity & Colmes...”
“I worry every day about the homogenizing forces at work in my professional life,” she said, adding that it can be difficult to preserve creativity within cable’s production process. It helps, she said, that she does not own a television at home.
Even so, Ms. Maddow said, she has finally committed to getting a set, primarily so that her companion can watch her program. With Ms. Maddow delivering MSNBC a record audience, it might seem that the least the network could do would be to deliver her a television.

Then again, Maddow is very superstitious, telling the Times, " A handkerchief can never be put in another pocket after it has been in one pocket." Ack, wait, actually maybe leave her living like a pauper! You're going to jinx her otherwise!

"Overnight, it was like the script [for a movie about 'the entitled rich and their limousine culture'] had been written two years ago," said Arturo Interian, Lifetime's vice president for original movies.

Mr. Interian is still keen on the movie, with one major revision: fewer discussions about stock, more about playing it safe with bonds. And how about throwing in a pariah chief executive?

Good luck selling ads against that one!

[The key: Purplish-pink for traditional strongholds of the rich that will remain unscathed. Red for core neighborhoods that are probably too gentrified now to roll back significantly. Pink for marginal hoods, where a recession could send gentrifiers fleeing. And grey for wilderness neighborhoods, where yuppies would fear to tread after The Poors and other non-glamorous types take them back for good.]

[Map by Steven Dressler]

Facebook pages. Scratch-and-sniff lottery tickets. Gas discounts. Partnering with Indiana Jones and Deal or No Deal. Lotteries are doing all these things (and more!) to attract the dwindling dollars of desperate Americans into their swollen coffers.

"There has been a general increase in lottery sales," said Gary Kubo, a director at Independent Lottery Research, a consultancy that specializes in lottery marketing and research. "You are starting to see people migrate to the lottery not out of necessity but as a way to earn a little extra cash."

My, how morally bankrupt! Lotteries, remember, are essentially taxes on the poor. Ads that succeed in increasing lottery spending are inherently making poor people poorer. Ed McMahon is only doing the ads because he's broke himself. Low cost index funds, people!

• Domino's Pizza is attacking Subway: their sandwiches are inferior.
• Campbell Soup is attacking Progresso: they are not fresh.
• Burger King is attacking McDonald's: Big Macs are small.
• Beer companies are in an all-out war.
• Even New York condos are trashing each other.

Andrea Levine, director of the [National Advertising Division of the BBB], says that in August alone, the NAD had 15 advertisers challenge competitive ads that rivals had begun using — compared with six challenges in August 2007. September also saw complaints jump about 50% from last year.

It's a fact: when times get tough and money gets scarce, the knives come out, meaning attack ads are here to stay. Watch for more updates here, and not on weak-ass Perez Hilton. Thanks. [WSJ]

Among the products that are getting a new marketing push since the financial apocalypse: Cereal, soup, milk, and "single serve frozen dinners." Don't forget the ramen noodles and berries foraged from the forest! And also:

Kraft Foods Inc. has begun advertising its Kool-Aid powdered beverages on national radio for the first time in 11 years...

"Food companies will be careful to shift consumers to products that are still high margin," says Robert Moskow, an analyst with Credit Suisse. "Powdered Kool-Aid beverages are one of the most profitable food products in history."

If it took a complete meltdown of America's economy to resurrect Kool-Aid radio ads, well by god, we will support it.

[WSJ]

Odd that the newspaper's Republican ideological allies in Congress, the fiercest opponents of the plan, have more faith in the free market than the Journal itself.

With the conservative movement in such disarray, perhaps Rupert Murdoch needs to stage an unprecedented intervention of his own and refashion the Journal editorial page so people know what the hell it stands for .

[WSJ]

Bosses were "infuriated," the Post reports this morning, and O'Brien is now out.

Speculation will inevitably turn to whether O'Brien was drunk when he wrote the email, but a coworker already told the Post it sprang from his "insecurity and jealousy." Which are the sort of emotional problems that tend to come vividly to the fore when one is no longer blunting them with drugs or alcohol.

[Post]

Hang on. Expect to see shell-shocked bankers, and greedy-eyed hedge funders, in the streets of Manhattan.

The Mother of All Mondays [WSJ]

Wall Street Prepares for a Grim Monday [CNBC]

Somebody talked me into writing an autobiography about six or seven years ago. And I said I'd try. We talked into a tape recorder, and after a couple of months, I said, To hell with it. I was so depressed. It was like saying, "This is the end." I was more interested in what the hell was coming the next day or the next week.

...When I look back on it, I wish I had had more quality time with my children. I remember once taking the two boys on a three- or four-day hike around Aspen Mountain. I remember every minute of it, and they remember every minute of it. I should have done more of that sort of thing.

...My nephew just got back from China. He's been there for two years on a teaching program, teaching English to poor Chinese kids in agricultural areas in the southeast. And I said, "How poor are they? Are they really on only half a bowl of rice a day?" And he said yes. He said that perhaps on holidays or the Chinese New Year, they'll get a ration of meat. He said there are lots of areas like that.

You've got tens of millions of people like that. And then you've also got great economic expansion in these countries, which is causing a huge demand for energy and for food. When people come off the land and go work in a sweatshop and get ten dollars a day or something, the first thing they want is a bit of protein. And that's why, when you go to the supermarket, you're paying 30 percent more for milk or a burger or cheese than you were a year ago.

Rupert Murdoch implicitly criticizing China over human rights violations? Revealing emotional weakness? Admitting he consorts with, and emotionally bonds with, children? It's too much. Next thing you know Bill O'Reilly will be defending a Democratic presidential candidate from a right-wing smear campaign.

[Esquire]

"Lighten up,” she said in a telephone interview. Vogue is about realizing the “power of fashion” she said, and the shoot was saying that “fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful,” she said.

“You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously,” Ms. Tanna said. “We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world,” she said.

Never mind the bleeding hearts: Tanna risks having her eyes clawed out by Anna Wintour herself with all this business about not taking fashion seriously.

[Times]

(Vogue India scan via Times)

You got your David Letterman

Your Amy Winehouse

Your giant panda

...and Tiger Woods next to a penny.

[via Best Week Ever]

[JournalismJobs.com]

"Money is pretty nice. I like money. It's good for buying things. But having a lot of money does not automatically make one a successful person. What you want is money with meaning - you want your work to be meaningful, because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life."

Oh my God, what does my last paycheck mean? An excellent antidote to Oprah's rather ridiculous words of wisdom comes from a 2006 "On the Contrary" article in the NYT titled "Dear Grads: Money is a Means":

It's graduation season, and once again affluent commencement speakers are fanning out across the land in something like an organized smear campaign against the almighty dollar. So I feel that it's my solemn duty to offer a little corrective: Graduates, it's not fashionable to say it, but money will, in fact, buy you a better life, all other things being equal. And if it can't buy happiness outright, it can certainly help you avoid a lot of misery.

[video via Huffington Post]

Oh no, I don't read the blogs—you couldn't pay me to read the blogs. I don't want to know what people who can't even afford to eat in my restaurant, let alone know how to cook have to say about me, and the few comments I did read on Eater.com a few weeks back because my job asked me to read 'em. The best they could come up with was that I was ugly.

[via WSJ]

One of the residents... says it is like “living in a public bathroom.”

...Sometimes they literally become bathrooms. They are known for their giant, raucous parties; revelers occasionally urinate in the halls.

But it's totally worth it because this is The Place To Be! "This could have been Greenwich Village 60 years ago, or SoHo 30 years ago, or the East Village in the 1990s," wrote the Times' Cara Buckley.

Cara is very familiar with the dorm, and injected a bit of a hipster tone into the Times metro section:

The McKibbin is a revolving door, with each weekend bringing wide-eyed newcomers, usually in skinny jeans and chunky eyewear. Vacancies, announced on Craigslist or spread by word of mouth, are quickly filled. The typical tenure at the McKibbin is one year, and residents often go through distinct phases.

After the honeymoon stage comes denial when, say, one gets woken up by someone’s band at 3 a.m. or mugged on one of the tough surrounding streets. Next comes anger, usually after someone hurls a 40-ounce beer bottle from the roof and then urinates outside your door. Then comes acceptance and, finally, departure.

She also found this tragic old couple:

The oldest residents are believed to be Mel Smothers and his wife, Lizzie Hansen, who are both 61 and live at 248. Mr. Smothers moved from California three years ago to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming an artist in New York, and Ms. Hansen later followed, reluctantly. The McKibbin had the only loft space that Mr. Smothers could afford. The previous tenants were skateboarders, so he had to disassemble the ramp they had built and the four doghouse-like structures they had slept in. He has since lined his and Ms. Hansen’s tiny bedroom with insulating foam.

“Here’s why I stay. It’s still the cheapest lofts around because it’s so badly managed,” Mr. Smothers said. “Once I make enough money, I’m moving out of here.”

Oh that's horrible. I'm not sure I can sleep. Isn't there a social service agency to help these poor souls? An old "surrounded by hippies" rescue agency from the 1960s that could be re-activated? Where is the Times editorial page on this? I smell Pulitzer.

[Times]

(Image via Wikipedia)

2. Paul Krugman. It's called a razor! And why don't you iron your one suit once in a while?

1. Choire Sicha. GET A JOB, HIPPIE.

(The rest of the pundit class looks precisely as well-fed and content as they actually are.)

Neighborhood Key:

Unemployment

Immigrants

Disconnected Youth

"In the case of a dog found in the care of a homeless man in Frederick, Shea was able to track its ownership through an identification microchip implanted in the animal's skin. When an animal control officer went to the owner's address, he found a vacant 'McMansion,' Shea said."
'Some people will just open the door and let them out, hoping for the best,' she said."

As the Official McKibbin St. Shit-Talking Forum puts it, "McKibbin St. is home to painters, musicians, actors, filmmakers, dancers, clowns, magicians, comedians, Hasids, crackheads, indeed, all the best of God's children. McKibbin St. is in a constant state of flux; just as the artists ousted the indigenous peoples, so now are the yuppies and rising rents ousting those artists. We may not be able to do anything about it, but the least we can do - is talk some shit."

It seems that since Madge helped international adoption become so trendy, local adoption has decreased, leaving large numbers of orphans in institutions. (The obvious questions spring to mind: Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?) Also, poorer countries in the EU have seen institutionalization rates rise as parents hope to send their children to better lives in the west. Madonna should really be more careful, otherwise her adopted (heh) native-city of London will be overrun by lovable (if, admittedly, syphilis-ridden) street urchins. Like the Artful Dodger. Or Filthy Sex Show Sally (modern times!) [Showbiz Spy] Some clips from a documentary on the problem are below.

My dad sent this joke to me today.

I was walking down the street when I was accosted by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless woman who asked me for a couple of dollars for dinner.

I took out my wallet, got out ten dollars and asked, “If I give you this money, will you buy wine with it instead of dinner?”

“No, I had to stop drinking years ago”, the homeless woman told me.

“Will you use it to go shopping instead of buying food?” I asked.

“No, I don’t waste time shopping,” the homeless woman said. “I need to spend all my time trying to stay alive.”

“Will you spend this on a beauty salon instead of food?” I asked.

“Are you NUTS !” replied the homeless woman. ” I haven’t had my hair done in 20 years!”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to give you the money. Instead, I’m going to take you out for dinner with my husband and me tonight.”

The homeless Woman was shocked. “Won’t your husband be furious with you for doing that? I know I’m dirty, and I probably smell pretty disgusting.”

I said, “That’s okay. It’s important for him to see what a woman looks like after she has given up shopping, hair appointments, and wine.”

HAHA

[Style By Mary Rambin]

Amazingly, these sorts of postings have not endeared Mary Rambin to readers. Here is a recent thread from comments on a story about Leven Rambin on the LiveJournal site Oh No They Didn't:

montspan
2008-03-05 09:31 pm UTC (link)
i went to high school with her sister, it's so weird that she's famous. her sister was not very nice.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

mhmmm
2008-03-05 10:02 pm UTC (link)
mary? i read her blog and she is SO elitist it's insane.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

montspan
2008-03-05 10:18 pm UTC (link)
Yes! Elitist is the perfect word! I saw her last year at some party and she made some disparaging remark as to my haircut and then gave me a card so I could buy one of her handbags. Ugh. I was like, thanks, I haven't seen you in like 7 years, and you insult me? Bitch.