Another Reason Coffee at Night Is Bad for You

Three people were injured at around 1:30 this morning after a NYC taxi plowed into a crowd in front of a popular East Village coffee shop, the Post is reporting. And from the looks of this news photo, yet one more instance wherein "West Side Story" was a bloody disaster.

We Used to Feel Bad Dixie Carter Was Dead

We like to check out this exercise video periodically, when we need to refine our "fierce whisper." Or need reminding that all Southerners are, in fact, nuts.

Martha Puts Finishing Touches on Babs Wawa's Coffin, Pours Larry King Piping Cup of Hemlock

God love Martha Stewart, a woman who seems almost oblivious to her own strident coldness and shameless opportunism. In a conference call with reporters about her new partnership with the Hallmark Channel, Stewart, speaking about her forthcoming prime-time specials for the cable net, expressed a desire to become the next great television interviewer, seeing that Barbara Walters and Larry King "are kind of retiring." This, as The Washington Post points out, might come as news to Walters, who returns to ABC's "The View" next week after convalescing from heart surgery, and King, who recently extended his stay at CNN and also inked a radio-hosting deal with Ryan Seacrest. "Who's going to take their place?" Martha asked, innocently enough. "I'm throwing my name in there," she so generously offered. And once she's conquered that, apparently Martha would also entertain the idea of leading the free world, in between terrorizing employees, ironing doilies and hoeing the pumpkin patch (right after she buries Barbara Walters in there). After saying she'd like to interview political leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton (whose name, oddly, the Post misspelled; you'd think if anybody would get that right, it would be the holy Washington Post), Martha commented: "I'm involved as much as anyone in the political future of this country and hoping that we get ourselves on track..." Martha, God called: she wants her ego back. (Oh, and one more thing while God's on the line: she'd also really like to know how the hell you fold a fitted sheet.)

VF's New Establishment: The Year's Most Predictable Ranking of the Rich, Powerful, Egomaniacal, Obnoxious and Overexposed

UPDATED: In a former life, we were the Keeper of Lists: Top Magazines! Top Websites! Top Cable Networks! Top Innovations! We figured it was time to move on when we started toying with Top Ways to Kill Yourself (and the Next Tediously Servile Flack Who Pitches You Her Goddamn Magazine). Having mastered the fine art of best-of rankings, we can affirm two basic principles for creating the perfect top 10: make it journalistically sound, of course, and make it interesting. There's no doubt that Vanity Fair's just-published New Establishment List, singling out the 100 most influential people of the Information Age, follows months of intensive research and careful vetting. It also happens to be as dull and predictable as all fuck. Quick: name every rich and powerful mogul from the worlds of media, digital, fashion and Hollywood you can think of, just off the top of your head. No doubt, names like Jobs, Zuckerberg, Oprah, Murdoch, Lauren and Huffington sprang to mind. And so, there you have it: the utterly predictable and, thus, wholly unfascinating and completely useless New Establishment. As this is the shamelessly starfucking VF, naturally a handful of entertainers were thrown in, including Lady Gaga, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, the Jolie-Pitts and, weirdly, Johnny Depp (in the surprisingly lofty position of No. 20). There were a few other odd-ish picks as well, among them:

* The Times's Gretchen Morgenson (that anyone associated with the Times shows up on a list of the most influential pretty much says all that needs to be said about it)

* Jann Wenner (yes, Rolling Stone's explosive story on Gen. Stanley McChrystal juiced up the past-its-prime magazine for about five minutes, but as VF itself points out, Wenner dropped the ball by keeping the article off the website even as it got gabbed about everywhere else, stupidly depriving himself of all that sweet traffic)

* The Weinsteins (those broke-ass movie-producing brothers best known in recent times for having failed in their quest to reclaim their old company, Miramax)

* The much-reviled sleazeball and head of the Starz (!!) cable net, Chris Albrecht

* Tom Ford (who appears on every list in the world, regardless of what it happens to be a list of)

* Charlie Rose (you gotta be fucking kidding)

* And, of course, this bottom feeder of the blabosphere ...

Nikki Finke: the only known instance of a professional muckraker-slash-Lana Turner doppelganger proudly spewing terms like "asswipe" and "butt boy" in print and getting rewarded for it, surely making each of us especially proud to call himself "journalist." Curiously, one media bigshot was missing from the New Establishment list: VF's own editor, Graydon Carter. And looking across his utterly pointless, isn't-it-a-shame-all-those-trees-had-to-die-for-nothing listicle, it's little wonder. RELATED: A VF/"60 Minutes" poll indicates that 59% of Americans think Sarah Palin would be an "ineffective" president. No surprise there. But what to make of the fact that 26% of those surveyed believe she would make a great leader? The next time you're on the 6 train, look around and know that one in four of the people around you think "President Palin" is a fine idea. Results may vary in the heartland, at John McCain's house or inside any Walmart.

Psst, Did You Hear the Latest Gossip? Nobody Gives a Shit About The Village Voice Anymore

It's always a little awkward when the media cover themselves. And never more so than when said coverage comes off like self-promotion, defensiveness or sour grapes. Which, let's face it, it almost always does. Today, the once-important Village Voice (that's a weekly newspaper in New York City that used to be really popular and famous, kids) features a page-one story about the evolution of gossip reporting (Gawker, Page Six, the Voice itself, blah blah ...). Sadly, the piece, "Gotham's Gossip Loses Its Grip," is voluminous, tedious, and ultimately pointless. We respect the work of one of its authors, Foster Kamer, a Gawker expat, and there's no doubting it is a well-researched, recent history of New York's big-swingin' machers of celebrity gossip (Richard Johnson, the Voice's own Michael Musto, etc.). But this treatise on a topic that one would think would have TOAM standing at attention, first-thing-in-the-morning style, turns out to be so encyclopedic, clinical and just plain dull that it's akin to snatching from us, in our more intimate moments, that Kellan Lutz Men's Health cover ...

... and replacing it with an 8x10 glossy of Betty White ...

Outside those professional gossips quoted here and yours truly, who would devote a good 15 or 20 minutes of their busy morning to wading through this tiresome tome? Do we really need to be told, for example, that the line between gossip and legitimate news has blurred, that gossip sometimes happens to actually be news, and that gossip mongers (online and, to a lesser degree now, in print) are all-powerful? (We wrote that very same story upwards of two decades ago for the trade journal Editor & Publisher ... a story that was old news then, and in which, as it happens, Musto played a starring role.) We strongly reject even the Voice's very thesis: that since gossip is everywhere now, and since no single outlet has the market cornered, then New York's "golden era of gossip has faded." ("Everybody has a blog," gripes Musto, the onetime gossip king of after-hours Manhattan. Remember, oh, about a thousand years ago, when you'd grab your hot-off-the-press copy of the Voice from the Astor Place newsstand on Tuesday evening and rip into the "La Dolce Musto" column first thing? Now, the Paladium is an NYU dorm, the Limelight's a shopping mall, Madonna's a gazillionaire, the "Party Monster" is still in lockup, and from the looks of all those well-stocked, bright-red newsracks dotting the city, you literally can't give the Voice away anymore. No wonder Musto's bitter.) Note to Musto, et al.: Just because everybody's doing it and the new guys (and there will always be new guys) are trying every day to cut your balls off, you don't bitch and moan, sulk and whine about the "glory days": you wake up every morning, brush your teeth, Ke$ha-style, with a bottle of Jack ... and do more. We found it confusing and disappointing a few years back when one of our favorite editors, David Granger, pulled the plug on Esquire's legendary "Dubious Achievements" issue, a wickedly clever takedown, if you'll recall, of the year's biggest gaffes, foibles and fuckups that undeniably paved the way for all these snarky blogs. (It was that rare thing: a magazine special issue we actually looked forward to. And when's the last time you said that?) When we asked Granger at the time why the hell he would murder one of the most beloved franchises in all of magazine publishing, one with so much history and influence, he shrugged that "everybody else is doing that now." We would argue that everybody following Esquire's lead was a point of strength for the magazine, not a reason to cede its territory. The same goes for Musto and Page Six and Gawker. Stop bitching about TMZ stealing your thunder, own who you are ... and just start fucking working harder. RELATED: On the subject of gossip, celebrities and things that will forever be with us, WENN is reporting that Kelsey Grammer may be cashing in that meal ticket that just keeps on giving, Frasier Crane, with yet another sitcom based around his most famous character.

Well, Blow Me ... Down: Barely Legal Boy Toy of Calvin 'Gramps' Klein Is Former Gay Porn Star!

Geez, what's the next shocking revelation: Sarah Palin's not all that smart? Old people subscribe to Reader's Digest? We really can go blind by doing that, Mom? Gawker has gone and blown the lid (or something) off old-as-Methuselah designer Calvin Klein's squiring around a hot, 20-year-old underwear model who, it turns out, once starred in gay porn films. Why, we haven't been so disillusioned since we found out Kim Kardashian has had intimate relations with a gentleman, or two. We did, however, enjoy the rather dramatic before and after shots of the new Mrs. Calvin Klein, aka Nick Gruber, aka "Nick London" ...

Amazing what a pair of tweezers, some dental work and a possible/maybe nose job can do for your looks, and your prospects. But a word of warning, Nick: without the proper vigilance and upkeep, all that fiddling around with cosmetic enhancement might very well come back to kick you in the ass. Or worse, the face. Right, Mrs. Cobain?

(or better yet, Nick, just ask your grandfather boyfriend ... )

First Order of Business for Salvaging CNN: Dump Dumbshit Rick Sanchez Immediately

From his populist pablum, race baiting and Islamophobia to his insistence that four large pies from Dominos constitute a well-balanced meal and his compulsive cruising of airport men's rooms, we must say, we agree with Glenn Beck on virtually nothing. Except for Rick Sanchez. Beck, himself an infamous dumbass, has, on his radio show, correctly gone after the foot-in-mouth, mashed-potatoes-for-brains CNN anchor for his repeated on-air fuckups. And now, Dirty Sanchez has really gone and done it, referring to Barack Obama, in a live, heated exchange with a guest yesterday, as "the cotton-picking president." Oh, yes, you read that right: "the cotton-picking president." (Huffington Post has the clip.) CNN has got, got, got to get rid of this guy. Or, if their aim really is to load up their network with complete morons (or, as one Nobel Prize winner at Beck's Klan rally down in D.C. over the weekend put on his sandwich board: "morans"), then just go ahead and hire Rosanna Scotto and get it over with already. RELATED: As if he weren't overexposed-slash-dangerous to the public welfare and U.S. Constitution enough, Beck's starting his own "news" site.

For Conde Nast, Gourmet Is the Girl You're Not That Attracted To, Who's Not That Good in Bed, But Who You Call When You're Really Hard Up

The iconic Gourmet magazine, which Conde Nast iced last year in a fit of cost cutting, will be brought out of the deepfreeze with a series of newsstand specials beginning next week. Like when the producers of "Three's Company" replaced the inimitable Suzanne Somers with the lackluster Jenilee Harrison, or when our mom secretly switched our Frosted Flakes with the Kroger brand, we suppose we should be happy one of our favorites is still around ... but still, it's not as good as the original. Sadly, from the looks of the first issue (pictured here), the new Gourmet is, very much like Jenilee Harrison or cut-rate breakfast cereal, a cheap reproduction. It literally is not the same magazine, Ruth Reichl's rich content having been supplanted by a "Quick Kitchen" sub-persona and cover lines like "80+ simple dishes" and (shudder) "kid-friendly choices." The award-winning photography and Richard Ferretti design of the old Gourmet gives way to an uninspired roasted tomato tart (which you can "cook in 25 minutes!") so badly lit that it had us reaching for our Persols. With this warmed-over Gourmet, Conde looks very much as though it's trying to jump on the taco truck of Food Network magazine, Hearst and the cable net's smash new food mag for the hoi polloi, one of the most successful print launches since that other Hearst joint from a decade ago, O The Oprah Magazine. The difference: Food Network mag's DNA is an authentic match of the cable channel that inspired it (Ray-Ray, Paula Deen, lots of canned beans). But the new Gourmet, at first glance at least, seems akin to shoving Twizzlers down the gullet of Brooke Astor. One thing we do like: that Conde's charging readers a whopping 11 bucks for the 128-page special. (Nothing makes us angrier than publishers undercharging for their products as they count paperclips. Not that Conde has any choice here, as the new Gourmet carries no ads.) Besides, if you're going to pass off sliders as the filet at The Palm, then you may as well make 'em pay filet prices, no?

Cool Clips From the Emmy Awards (Too Bad You Won't See Them on NBC's Own Website)

Two of the most memorable moments from last night's Emmy Awards telecast on NBC - host Jimmy Fallon and the "Glee" cast's inspired opening number set to Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," and a hilarious tribute to departing series like "Lost" and "24" wherein Fallon channeled Elton John - couldn't even be posted on the network's own website (where they would've scored millions of viewers) because of copyright issues related to the songs being parodied, as Paid Content is reporting. Both sketches immediately spawned chatter across the blabosphere, and got picked up by sites like Mediaite and Pop Sugar and posted on YouTube. But as PC's Staci Kramer points out, the clips "should have been [posted on NBC.com] before the next commercial break for the network to take advantage of that buzz, and to take ownership before others started passing [them] around." Understanding that copyright issues can be complicated stuff, still, presumably they were all sorted out between the owners of the works in question and the Emmy show's producers (and the network broadcasting the program) beforehand. Which begs the question: which of the cast of bozos at NBC dropped the ball on this gem of an opportunity? We think we'll just lay the blame on the same person responsible for everything from the criminal neglect of the network's prime-time schedule to the Jay-Conan mess to Jennifer Aniston's career to the bubonic plague to the second law of thermodynamics (i.e., everything eventually turns to shit): Jeff Zucker. Considering Zucker's track record, we think he might have a bright future after Comcast takes over his network and boots his ass: at the West Side Highway Car Wash. Or if that turns out to be too lofty an aspiration, perhaps The Nielsen Co.?

Q&A With New Hearst Prezzie; Or, Everything You Never Wanted to Know About David Carey

There weren't a helluva lot of surprises in Mediaweek's Proustian questionnaire of new Hearst Magazines prezzie David Carey this morning. After all, the guy has been covered out the ass for years by the trades: including by us, for a big profile awhile back when Carey ran The New Yorker and occupied one of the most commodious, impressive office spaces we've ever come across in our two decades of covering the media racket, and that includes the workspaces of Martha Stewart, Jeff Zucker, Bob Guccione, and even the person Carey replaces at Hearst, Cathie Black. (The no-holds-barred Q&A we'd like to see in Mediaweek is with the CEO of its new owner and that other Conde Nast expat, Richard "Mad Dog" Beckman. Dawg, you always have a standing invitation here.) We knew, for example, that Carey's professional idol is Chris Whittle: a curious choice, since so much of what the creator of Channel One, former owner of Esquire and, like TOAM, famous Tennesseean has touched has turned to shit. (Interestingly, Carey's personal idol used to be Bruce Springsteen but now is George Lucas. Yeah, that last album really did suck.) We also knew Carey was a devoted, suburban husband and father and a brainy, wonky, geeky, nerdy technophile with a penchant for computer programs, gadgetry (especially Apple products, which he name drops throughout the questionnaire), sci-fi, reading books, and quiet nights at home with the family (nobody ever confused David Carey with David Zinczenko, after all). But like Dave Z (and anybody else in the industry we've ever met), Carey does not want for confidence: when asked how others would describe him, he answered, modestly: "honest, hardworking and humorous." The fact that Carey is able to retain that level of self-assurance is remarkable considering that he got tangled up with that mangy, three-legged dog Conde Nast Portfolio, one of the biggest failures in the history of magazine publishing. As for being humorous, we like David Carey and all, but have to say, he's no Jim Carrey (more like George Lopez). One thing that did grab us: David's favorite book is 80s boardroom soap opera "Barbarians at the Gate," because, he says, "I've always loved big dramas of the business world." Leading us to wonder: then why would he ever leave Conde Nast?

Selected Scenes of Thoughtful, Civil Discourse From Today's Glenn Beck-Organized Klan Rally

(Proud to be an American, indeed.)

Finally, a Poster That Might Actually Make Us Want to See a Movie Starring Katherine Heigl

One Way to Get Someone to Pick Up Glamour

When two big rigs collided in California yesterday, thousands of copies of Glamour magazine went spilling onto the freeway. You remember Glamour, which received this year's prestigious Magazine of the Year Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors. You read that right: Magazine. Of. The. Year. (Hold on just a moment please. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!) The favorite periodical, no doubt, of women enrolling at Harvard Law School, doing stem-cell research and sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, whose current issue features a highly relevant Jennifer Lopez with leopard-print top and pony tail (fresh!) along with seriously groundbreaking, brainy stories like "Love Your Hair," "How Celebs Really Get In Shape" and "What to Do When He's Not in the Mood" (do what everybody else does: watch late-night reruns of "Roseanne" on TV Land with a pint of chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream, duh). A local CBS affiliate reports that after the crash, "crews used a forklift to move 48,000 pounds of the October issue of Glamour into a bunch of dumpsters." (Nah, too easy.)

Ah Yes, the Great Ad Spots Never Really Die (Even If the Same Can't Be Said for This Career)

Jesus Christ, Marky: this is almost as embarrassing as "I Heart Huckabees." (Note the fine supporting work of Kate Moss, back when she was a real fat ass.)

VF's Wolff Sinking His Fangs Into Adweek, as Mad Dog's Big-Bucks Hiring Spree Rages On? Or, Is He Gonna Lift a Leg on Chicago Tribune?

Spotted at Adweek's offices: a Mad Dog chats up a Wolff in asshole's clothing. We mentioned the other day, in our item about Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria jumping to Time, that Richard "Mad Dog" Beckman was looking for someone of the caliber and bloated ego of Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff to come over and juice up the iconic Adweek and its satellites Brandweek and Mediaweek. (Sidebar: we find it pretty hilarious that whenever we post an item about Mad Dog, Google's AdSense, which assigns ads to this blog according to keywords from our content, throws up a banner for Purina Puppy Chow. Great system, dudes.) Though we had no confirmation Dawg was, in fact, courting Woof-Woof (having abandoned our tree house and binoculars outside the HQ of e5 Global Media in favor of a perch outside Anderson Cooper's steam room), it's been known for some time that he was hunting for a name journalist like Wolff to shake up the underperforming titles, much as he tapped A-lister Janice Min, late of Us Weekly, to reattach the balls of sister pub The Hollywood Reporter ... a move that, apparently, is going according to plan, as we pointed out yesterday. Wolff's is one of several names to be whispered and/or reported for some time now, along with Page Six's Richard Johnson. Now, Daily Finance, noting that Wolff has been seen around the Dawg house, is asking whether he may not, in fact, be coming aboard. (This, even though in his Newser column today, Wolff confirmed reports he's in the running to take over The Chicago Tribune. Dunno about you, but all this buzz around the comings and goings of Michael Wolff is making us dizzy-slash-drunk with boredom.) Dawg most famously chased former Observer editor Peter Kaplan to be the Adweek group's edit director before Gina Sanders, Dawg's successor at WWD publisher Fairchild, got him in her clutches. Might Dawg have finally found his man in the famously egomaniacal, ill-tempered Wolff? A man known to have all the charm of a flesh-eating virus? (If so, then God help those poor souls at 770 Broadway, those former, mostly beloved colleagues of ours who've already suffered ownership changes, several brutal rounds of layoffs, the shutdown of entire media properties, and enough crackpot personalities in the management ranks to stock a loony bin ... mercifully for the troops, most of it occurring on the watch of the previous owner, that special-needs child of the media world, The Nielsen Co.) Whether he lands at Adweek or the Tribune, there may very well not be enough gin, Xanax and 12-step groups in the whole wide world to make that palatable for Wolff's charges. (Ever the class act, he of the swelled head hung up on Daily Finance reporter Jeff Bercovici, but not before telling him he sucked at his job. Might wanna consider a cocktail of Xanax and Percocet, guys.) Speaking of things that are swelling, with most media companies still tightening those belts, we heard awhile back from a highly knowledgeable source that e5 planned to fill as many as 70 (you read that right, seventy) new editorial positions this year, information apparently as reliable as Jennifer Aniston's career prospects or the homosexual subtext of Men's Health magazine considering the hiring spree Min's been on since taking over THR last spring, including her enlistment of former VF writer Kim Masters for a rumored six-figure gig. (Min herself is said to be making a Wall Street-worthy seven figures, a heretofore unheard of sum in the world of trades. We're not sure most people toiling in the trades make that in a lifetime, let alone in a year.) As one big-swingin' media macher recently asked us: "How much longer can they continue to spend that kind of money?" The answer to that, dears, is fairly simple. As we've all seen time and time again, investor group-financed media shops like e5 (which acquired Adweek and THR, as well as properties including Billboard, from Nielsen only nine months ago) have all the money in the world at the outset, before their backers eventually want to see some glimmer of a return on that investment. And when that doesn't happen, naturally, all hell breaks loose. As another media insider said over lunch the other day: "Yeah, 70 new hires: all of them getting laid off in another three years." Actually, we were thinking it might be more like two. (The clock's tickin', Dawg.)

Former RNC Chairman Mehlman Becomes Last Person to Find Out He's a Flaming Homosexual

(WARNING: SCREED ALERT) When we heard that a powerful Republican from the Bush years was coming out, we were sure it was going to be everybody's favorite high school gym teacher-slash-Dubya confidante, the magnificently mannish Karen Hughes. But no, it's former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, whose gayness has actually been common knowledge for years but who has now officially come clean with the "big secret" in an interview with The Atlantic. (A dead giveaway might've been that Dirty Sanchez we spotted him doing with Karl Rove behind a bush in Rock Creek Park that time.) Is there anything more dulllllicious than when a D.C. insider, especially a conservative, bursts out (or better yet, is shoved out) of the closet ... or in the case of Larry Craig, out of the toilet stall? But our happiness over Mehlman's joyous outing turned to incredulity-slash-blind rage when we came across this line in the Atlantic piece (our commentary in brackets): "Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview [bullshit]. ... 'It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life [bullshit]. Everybody has their own path to travel [bullshit], their own journey [bullshit]. ... The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago [no shit, Sherlock].' " With all due respect to Jann Wenner, it is patently absurd, and everybody knows it, for somebody in his forties to claim to have woken up one morning only to realize he's gay ... especially in the case of a blatant human blowtorch like Mehlman. If you're gay, you figure that out at approximately the same time as a person who's straight does: age eight, when you realize you're much more intrigued by Randolph Mantooth of "Emergency" (he of the dark, chiseled features and Oxydol-white hotpants), or maybe this dude ...

than by that object of desire among most other little boys in the 70s, the onetime Mrs. Lee Majors, Farrah Fawcett. (True story.) Any gay person, public or private - especially in this country, especially in this day and age - who has lied for 43 years, um, straight does not receive a gold medal, including in cases such as Mehlman's wherein one is giving said shiny object to oneself in an interview in the national media. At the risk of sounding like Julia Sugarbaker here: you do not, in fact, have the luxury or the privilege of "comfortably traveling your path and making your own journey" at a time when your very rights and those of millions of others are being trampled upon, railed against, preached against, criminalized, shredded, hung, pissed on, set in flames, held up in courts, sodomized (and not in the good way), and hotly debated on the Faux News Channel and Rush Limbaugh for the purpose of entertaining bigots. Sorry, but yours truly does not share the sentiment: "Oh good for you, Kenny; better late than never. Welcome aboard! You will be receiving your Pottery Barn gift card, "Beaches" soundtrack, Abercrombie & Fitch catalog and autographed 8x10 of Rosie O'Donnell in the next 6-8 weeks." Frankly, these candy-ass closet cases do much more damage staying silent while in positions of enormous power than they ever make up for by coming out once nobody gives a shit about them, whether it's Ken Mehlman or David Brock, Elton John or that grating queen Ryan Seacrest (oops, jumped the gun there). There's a name for yellow-bellied, prevaricating cowards like you: Tom Cruise.

Bitch 'n' Moan: Showbiz Press Rivalry Devolves Into Wrap Editor Calling THR's Min the 'B' Word

Talk about a tempest in one of those tiny handbags. We always think it pretty petty whenever an editor attacks a rival in a bald attempt at self-promotion and further swelling one's own ego. This kind of thing goes on all the time, of course. Take Murdoch's New York Post, which routinely goes after Mort Zuckerman's Daily News for its circ declines (forget the Post's own slumping readership) or editors bolting (ditto the Post) or conflicts of interest (you know, unlike the Post and its sister properties, including Faux News Channel, deafeningly failing to point out that the principal backer of the "Ground Zero mosque" is, inconveniently, also one of News Crap's Corp.'s largest shareholders). Now, in another self-serving attack, The Wrap's Sharon Waxman is going after The Hollywood Reporter's new EIC Janice Min for the trade site's snarky new tone, commenting: "Who's the bitch now? Taking a page from her reign at Us Weekly, Janice Min has been making her presence felt on The Hollywood Reporter website." It is, we believe, the first time in recorded history that a trade editor has called a competitor the "b" word, at least publicly. Sharon was taking issue with a headline on a story about Jennifer Aniston's most recent flop: "'Switch' a Bitch for Jennifer Aniston." (Clearly meaning that to star in yet another stinker is a "bitch," not that Aniston is. All together now: DUH!) Waxman goes on to point out THR's "flip tone" under Min and its various "scandalous and little substantiated" stories about Hollywood insiders, "jarring to an industry accustomed to a softer, friendlier (though not widely read) trade paper." Hilariously, she quotes a Hollywood publicist who trashes a news org whose job is to pull off the veil said publicist earns his paycheck to knit, calling such "scandalous" stories "dicey for a trade publication." Wow, there's so much to say about all this that it almost warrants its own blog. Firstly, isn't it a little childish and cheap for the editor of an up-and-coming site like The Wrap to suggest her rival is a "bitch" whilst, in the same breath, accusing said rival of being "flip" and "scandalous"? And speaking of those supposedly "scandalous" stories of THR's ... could it be, oh we dunno, that Sharon's pissed about being scooped? (Jealous much, Sharon?) As it happens, she is quite correct when she notes that Min is shaking up THR and turning on their head notions about what a "trade publication" should be ... all of which, as pretty much anybody in this business who's awake would agree, desperately needs to happen. As for the slam about a pub that's "not widely read," hmm ... at the risk of sounding like a flack for THR, we can't help but wonder whether Sharon caught those comScore numbers THR reported earlier this week which showed it attracted 1.9 million uniques in the month of July, many times those of its competitors, including Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood (1.1 million), Variety (450,000) and, most notably, The Wrap (370,000). So despite all the rosy press the ascendant Wrap has been getting, its following, it turns out, remains stalled at about one-fifth that of THR (strange that Sharon forgot to mention that in her story). Hey look, nobody's been tougher on THR than we have (we believe we called it a "ragtag trade rag" awhile back). Then again, nobody has cheered Min's working overtime to reinvent the tattered title (and the whole showbiz trade genre) any more than we have either. In performing the publishing equivalent of a simultaneous heart and brain transplant, Lasik surgery and the reattachment of both testicles, Min has clearly has hit a few nerves, not only with the consumers of such content but with Hollywood's big-swingin' machers ... and, it would appear, with Sharon Waxman.

The Return of Dead Trees, Rabbit Ears, and Television Ads That Make Women Think They Have to Look Like Courteney Cox to Matter

A big turnaround for traditional media stoked first-half profits by double digits for WPP, the world's largest group of ad agencies. Still, boss Martin Sorrell's "cautious forecast" (in which he warned of "a slow-growth slog" ahead) drove down the value of WPP shares in London trading, as Adweek points out. Still, what a kickass comeback year 2010 is turning out to be for the ad racket. In the first six months, net income at WPP, which encompasses JWT, Ogilvy and Y&R, climbed by about 40% year-over-year to $232 million, on nearly $7 billion in revenue (a 3.5% bump). Meaning, we suppose, we will overlook creative lowpoints such as this debasing little gem from Y&R currently stinking up the airwaves, aka Sara Rue's "I Can Wear Skinny Jeans, So I'm a Human Being Who Deserves to Breathe Air Like Everybody Else Now" spot for Jenny Craig:

Bad News, Katie: Your Ratings Now Officially Are Sagging Lower Than Andy Rooney's Balls

UPDATED: Can someone (NBC? Oprah? Rochester's public-access station?) please save this woman from further humiliation? As if we needed more evidence that "The CBS Evening News With Katie Couric" has about as much appeal among the American public as the latest film any film starring Jennifer Aniston, TV Newser is reporting that Old Unwatchable has managed to best even her own reliably ratings-murdering self, tying last week with its all-time bottom of a basic-cable-worthy 4.89 million total viewers. This, even with Couric's much-promoted broadcast from Afghanistan. Couric's latest record-shattering failure comes on the heels of her old NBC colleague Brian Williams saying the other day that she's always welcome back at the network. Personally, we think Johnny Carson has a better chance of returning to the Peacock, what with Couric's No. 1 cheerleader, Jeff Zucker, headed straight for the failed-network-executives abattoir the minute Comcast gets its clutches in. What the hell would Katie do over there anyway? Back to the "Today" show? Sorry, those jobs are already filled ... all four hours' worth. "Nightly News"? Don't think ratings champ Williams is looking for a sidekick. Maybe a prime-time newsmagazine or daytime talker? Yes, and those career moves worked out so well for that other "Today" expat, Jane Pauley (who?). Somewhere, Deborah Norville is laughing her fucking ass off. RELATED: The Daily Beast is reporting chaos inside CBS News, as Couric prepares to mark five years with the once-fine news organization she helped destroy.

Finally, Controversy Involving NYC Buildings That Doesn't Have to Do With Hating Muslims

UPDATED: At last, a building project everyone can agree to hate. Just when we were starting to get really good and bored with the great Ground Zero-mosque-that-isn't-really-a-mosque-and-isn't-really-at-Ground Zero dustup, the New York press (including the Times, the Post and NY mag) is abuzz this morning over another construction controversy, this one in the shadow of the iconic (if recently bedbug-infested) Empire State Building ... this one, unlike the situation down in the financial district, actually being offensive. Developer Vornado wants to knock down lugubrious rathole Hotel Pennsylvania, across from Penn Station and a block from the ESB (so far so good ... though we don't know where Jimmy Dolan will have his nooners now), aiming to replace it with a monstrous phallus of a tower, to be known as 15 Penn Plaza, that surely only Jenna Jameson could appreciate. (See rendering above, from Pelli Clarke Pelli.) Hilariously, yet so predictably, the Post strained to conflate the City Council's perceived "chilly" reception of ESB prez Anthony Malkin, who yesterday paid a visit to she-beast Christine Quinn and her cast of idiots to have the Penn Plaza project blocked, with his (very correct) refusal to light up his building in honor of the 100th birthday of Mother Teresa. (Teresa Giudice from Bravo's "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" is about as deserving of such an honor.) Isn't it bad enough that New Yorkers have to suffer the slap in the face that is the forthcoming new home of Conde Nast known as One World Trade Center, the crumbling, built-from-matchsticks atrocity Citi Field, the singularly hideous Westin Hotel at Times Square, the gaudy albatross that is Columbus Circle's Trump International, and Madonna's new house? And now, we have to witness this tiresome, "mine's-bigger-than-yours" display smack in the middle of midtown between some narcissistic, big-swingin' terrors who want to inflict their will upon us all? (But enough about Jimmy Dolan, Donald Trump and Madonna ...) LATEST: On Wednesday, the City Council OK'd the hideous phallus, paving the way for its, um, erection.