A Connecticut company successfully trolled for blog links by distributing pictures of a Michele Bachmann "action figure." It's wearing giant platform shoes and looks a little like... Demi Moore, maybe? The eyes could be crazier.

• Is Time Warner planning to shed its Time Inc. magazine division? [Crain's]
• Condé Nast is hunkering down for a big round of budget cuts, as you've probably heard. One Condé title that happens to be doing quite well: Vanity Fair's Italian edition, which having its best year ever, apparently.
• Saturday Night Live's Jenny Slate won't be punished for cursing on the air. But it's looking like Darrell Hammond may have been dropped from the show.
• Tina Brown's Daily Beast is planning to get into book publishing. [NYT]
• Former Times film critic (and Turner Classic Movies host) Elvis Mitchell is in financial trouble again: He reportedly owes $500,000 in back taxes. [P6]
• How much the cast of The Hills makes might make you nauseous. [TDB]
• Can Twitter ever earn enough in advertising revenue to justify its recent valuation of $1 billion? It's highly unlikely, say some observers. [AdAge]
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was No. 1 again this weekend. [LAT]

Arianna Huffington is accustomed to a life of wealth. She rides her friends' yachts and jets. She even wanted to buy a plane for the Huffington Post, says an insider. So why's she talking about CEO "excess" on The View?

Remember on last week's Mad Men where a British ad man got his foot run over with a lawn mower? Well, the gossip is that he is based on one of Mathew Weiner's mortal enemies, but who?

Did you know that the run-off elections for comptroller and public advocate take place in NYC tomorrow? Probably not, since turnout at the polls is expected to be so low that pollsters are having a hard time coming up with accurate predictions about who's going to win when John Liu faces off against David Yassky to be NYC's next comptroller and Bill de Blasio goes up against Mark Green in the battle to be public advocate. But that means if you do plan to vote, you might actually make a difference! Just something to keep in mind! [Crain's, NY1]

In your wispy Monday media column: the New York Times performs unnecessary duties, Wesleyan spends unnecessary money, a hockey team gets a pet reporter, and people like to read about gangsters.

As the world has learned, 77-year-old director Roman Polanski was arrested and faces extradition to the US over a 31-year-old rape case. Seemed a good moment to sort out what the h- this is all about.

"The Journal is a wonderful aid to men," this ad says, in real life. [Copyranter at Animal NY]

Learning about how much the stars of The Hills make will make you want to vomit. If it doesn't make you want to vomit, it will surely make you want be on TV. Both are appropriate reactions.

Of course the moment that everyone will remember is when Don Draper got donkey punched by a bunch of drugged out kids, but it was the series of silent vignettes that really made this episode different.

The Home Shopping Network is a 24/7 ad for various useless crap. But is one single nonstop layer of ads enough, for consumers to learn about various pieces of crap? Or maybe could they put some ads in those ads?

America has a terrible health insurance system and crippling shame about sex. On the bright side, our problems are helping some Eastern Europeans make thousands of dollars per week, one fraudulent internet transaction at a time.

When Allen Stanford said that he found prison life "oppressive," he wasn't kidding. The financier accused of operating a $7 billion Ponzi scheme has returned to his cell after a prison brawl last week left him with mild concussion, broken nose and two black eyes. [Reuters]

Even though the "Values Voters Summit" was just last week in DC, Conservatives had themselves a "Take Back American Conference" this last weekend. This one sounds even crazier.

You may once again consider Las Vegas the place to go to make all your midget stripper dreams come true. After experimenting with a series of new (rather uninspired) new slogans ("Vegas right now!"), the recession-ravaged city has decided to return to the tried-and-true tagline of "What happens here, stays here." [LV Sun via Daily Finance]

As you all know, we've just concluded the opening weekend of Tucker Max's film debut, "Alcohol and Poop Go Together Like Whores and EZ Cheez." How grand a mark has it made on cinema history? Let's go to the scorecards!

A flack gives nine reasons "suck ups," "weenies" and "has-beens" leak to the media. Objective.

Columnist and presidential speechwriter Bill Safire was one of only three non-disloyal Jews President Nixon could name. Here is the speech he drafted for Nixon to read in case the Apollo 11 Astronauts became stranded on the moon!

Anne Morell Petrillo, 38 year-old heiress to the Scripps newspaper fortune, jumped to her death off the Tappan Zee bridge last week. Trauma from a bad marriage and her mom's brutal murder? Perhaps. But the NYT has an additional theory:

[Peaches Geldof walks the line between being a chic socialite taking home armfuls of fashion swag and a bag lady when leaving Milan today. Image via Bauer-Griffin]