Watch queen of all insults Joan Rivers get deeply insulted (well, as deeply as Botox permits) in a spirit of comedic camaraderie by host Kathy Griffin on Comedy Central's Roast of Joan Rivers. Premieres August 9 at 10 p.m. ET.

Without a clear reason for being, Twitter is about to flail its way into a "cyber-ghetto" for the aimless, alongside second-tier social network MySpace. At least that's the argument of a provocative post from Cody Brown, NYU's new-media wunderkind.

Oh shit. Dylan Ratigan aired an embarrassing clip of Jonathan Capehart scarfing a bagel. So this morning Capehart's mom called in and chewed Ratigan out for mocking her son. She is cool, but somehow we think this isn't making Jon look cooler. [Jon Capehart is actually cool!]

When CNN launched a new ad claiming (falsely) to be beat MSNBC and Fox News in viewers, Fox's flack retorted that Time Warner CEO "Jeff Bewkes is too smart to buy [CNN president] Jon Klein's bullshit." But Rupert Murdoch isn't.

INF photogs snapped these candid pictures of Michelle Obama and daughter Malia leaving Top Chef Spike's burger joint in DC. Breaking: there are paparazzi in DC!

Incompetent superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian thinks Israel should kill "a thousand Arabs for every one Jew they kill," which may be why he would never have a terrorist, or Barack Obama (related???) as a client.

• News Corp. posted a hefty loss for the most recent quarter, reporting that profits were down by 30 percent, although things would have been worse if weren't for Roger Ailes's cash machine, Fox News. In related news, Rupert Murdoch seems to think he can get people to pay for content on the Internet and plans to give it a shot over the next year. [NYT, BN, NYT, Guardian]
• Not to be outdone by Keith Olbermann's anti-Fox News rant on Monday night, Bill O'Reilly took aim at NBC's parent company, GE, on his show last night. This truce thing sure is working out beautifully, isn't it? [Gawker]
• Time Inc. is shutting down Southern Accents, a luxury lifestyle title. [NYP]
• Twitter was crippled by a big denial-of-service attack today, which you know full well if you happened to try and log into Twitter today. [CNET]
• If you don't watch Charlie Rose's self-indulgent talk show on PBS, now you can not watch it on Bloomberg TV, too. How convenient. [NYT]
• The Post's Page Six may be hiring Emily Smith, formerly Britain's Sun and Life & Style, to replace the recently-departed Paula Froelich. [Gawker]

After a yearlong Army deployment to Iraq, how does it feel to enter Google's bubble of notoriously cushy working conditions, stateside? It's as disorienting as you might think, reports public affairs specialist Dale Sweetnam, now embedded with Google.

We've learned that Page Six has hired Emily Smith, formerly of The Sun (UK) and Life & Style, as a replacement for recently-departed deputy editor Paula Froelich.

Time Inc's Southern Accents is the latest victim of the Great Magazine Die-Off. The full memo:

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a life-long piece of work, is going to spend the August congressional recess surfing with Barney Frank. We're guessing it'll be weird?

Google has put the complete archives of the Village Voice online, going back to 1955. So go while away the hours by traveling back to a New York with a fascist mayor, a groundbreaking music scene, and closeted gay people.

Thanks to the economy, coffee shops around town have been growing increasingly annoyed about customers who come in and order a single cup, and then spend the next five hours hunched in front of their laptops. Now they're taking action: "In some places, customers just get cold looks, but in a growing number of small coffee shops, firm restrictions on laptop use have been imposed and electric outlets have been locked." So don't be surprised when you hear how the next great American novel was written by someone sitting on a stoop, mooching Wi-Fi from a unsuspecting neighbor. [WSJ]

The Way We Live Now: Revenge-d by the nerds. Statisticians are the new Hedge Fund Guys. The less math-y among us are just marks for con artists and shady Metrocard machines. But: hot stock tip, below!

We're deeply, deeply sorry. Early this morning, we were reminded that Beverly Hills 90210's Jennie Garth would be appearing at the TJMaxx on Sixth Avenue from 12-2 to kick off "'back-to-school season," but we completely forgot to mention it, and now the opportunity has been lost forever. That said, we promise to notify you well in advance should Tiffani-Amber Thiessen decide to make any appearances at a nearby Forever 21. Can you forgive us? We do hope so.

Screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg died Wednesday. He was among the first generation to be born Hollywood royalty, and he wrote what is probably the only classic movie business novel to have never been adapted for the screen.

Padma Lakshmi's fitness secret: Be a freakish genetic outlier.

Annie Leibovitz has been facing serious financial problems for a number of months now. But things took a turn for the worse last week when Leibovitz was served with a suit by the financial firm that lent her $24 million earlier this year, and she now faces the grim prospect she'll eventually have to relinquish control of her real estate holdings and the rights to her archive of photographs. The big, unanswered question, though, is where, exactly, all the money went. On top of the $24 million she borrowed from Art Capital Group, she takes home an estimated $2 million-a-year salary from Condé Nast, and collects millions for her advertising work. Is she just really bad at managing her money? Or is it something else? Bloomberg News' Katya Kazakina, who suggests Leibovitz might be better off filing for bankruptcy rather than fight her creditors in court, looks into another possible money pit.

In an effort to promote different sorts of jokes about its uselessness, Radio Shack is rebranding as "The Shack." Don't tell that to the guy being paid to promote the new name.

Aug. 5 @ 10pm [Submit your own Gawker Stalker sightings to stalker@gawker.com] I was walking home, heard a husky voice and saw "the countess." She was obviously wasted and was screaming, "that show is NOTHING without me!"