Lost in the glee over Bernie Madoff's prison sentence is this: What will become of poor Ruth Madoff? She's stalked by paparazzi; rejected by landlords; and left with a mere $2.5 million. Here, Dear Ruth, is your road to redemption.

We can all agree that Jenny Sanford is awesome, right? She is relentlessly honest in her public statements and interviews. And now everyone on Earth wants her to ruin her life by running for office?

In a historic first, it seems the National Enquirer's headline from January proclaiming that Michael Jackson had "six months to live" turned out to be spot on. Not that any of us should be that surprised. "When you constantly make things up, you're bound to get something right. Right?" [Buzzfeed]

[Leighton Meester arriving on set to for her first day of "Gossip Girl" season three shooting; image via Bauer-Griffin]

So who watched Hung last night? HBO's latest installment in its string of series depicting lives lived on the fringes of America is about a well-endowed gym teacher who becomes a gigolo to earn some extra cash. It was... good?

It's one thing for little nonprofit groups like Consumer Watchdog to hound Google for how it handles privacy and competitors. Much trickier for the company: A large corporation like Microsoft, can afford to whisper in reporters' ears, individually.

In your sad Monday media column: the New York Times will limp along a little longer, Iran locks up journalists while they're engrossed in Twitter, Tim Rutten is predictable, and the television industry loses a couple billion, no biggie.

Hah. So Mika Brzezinski complained about the old sex scandal double standard, and then when she had Rudy Giuliani in the studio to talk about Mark Sanford, she forgot to ask him about his own business.

Happy Autopsy Day! Michael Jackson's revealed him to be a hairless disfigured ghoul, but was also fake. Billy Mays' found that he died of heart failure, not head trauma after a rough airplane landing.

Gambling is bad for poor people, except all the people who work in casinos, who would otherwise be poor. The latest bright idea of Vladimir Putin, monster: He's shutting the casinos down in Russia. All of them. Closed. Hundreds of thousands of people will be put out of work. They won't be put into work, in more useful industries; they'll just be locked out, to wander the streets, dealing blackjack for nickels. Casinos will be allowed to relocate, if they choose, to the very very worst regions of the Russian empire, like the North Korean border and the Siberian tundra.

• Despite unkindly reviews from most critics, the Transformers sequel racked up $112 million at the box office over the weekend, bringing its five-day gross to more than $200 million. [THR]
• Don't worry too much about the New York Times going under. AdAge reports the paper should be in business until at least 2011. [AdAge]
• Viacom is not going to buy MySpace from News Corp., alas. [Reuters]
• NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker is so concerned about the situation at the company's film division, he's sending his CFO to LA to crack skulls. [NYP]
• More bad news for the TV biz: According to a new report, the industry faces a $2 billion ad slump over the next four years. [FT]
• Not only did the New York Times keep news of reporter David Rohde's kidnapping a secret, the paper kept it off of Wikipedia, too. [NYT]
• MSNBC's is hoping broadcasting in HD boosts ratings. [B&C]
• Kate Gosselin's next book has been postponed; you can guess why. [NYP]
• VH1 has two new hip-hop-themed reality shows in the works. [THR]

Jimmy Wales had an image problem. After bending his online encyclopedia's rules for a lover and, allegedly, for a benefactor, the Wikipedia co-founder faced rebuke and embarrassment. Then the New York Times made him a hero.

Only last week, the socialist press was fawning over Obama's healthcare plan and Brian Williams was sleeping in Obama's bed. But now the backlash is winding up, and people are starting to notice that Barack Obama plays golf.

Alanis Morissette—angry/thoughtful lady-pop voice of the 90s—sometimes acts. She showed up as God in Dogma and a bisexual on Sex and the City. And now she's appearing on Weeds for seven episodes. And we're pretty happy about it.

A "luxury fair" designed to appeal to the world's richest people took place in Sardinia this past weekend. But if you were thinking the economic downturn would have put a damper on things, well, think again. Thirty bottles of "Exousia Gold Luxury Water," which is describede as a "gold petal designer label mineral water" and costs $2,800 a pop, were sold over the course of two evenings. And the water still isn't good enough to drink as is, apparently. "A spokeswoman for Exousia said sales were mainly to Russians, who 'like to use it to make tea.'" [DJ/Wealth Bulletin]

This wailing ringtone featuring a horsey Philip Roth sample is still better than anything Moby came up with for New York magazine. Of course, the joke is that there are no "hip literary types." [Guardian]

Mark Sanford was totally going to be the next president, until he fell in love with Maria. Now, not so much. But Republican strategists have so many other Great White Hopes! What disasters will greet them?

The victims of Bernie Madoff reacted in different ways to the news he'd been sentenced to 150 years in prison. Burt Ross, the former mayor of Ft. Lee, New Jersey who lost $5 million to the Ponzi scheme (and who covered today's sentencing for The Daily Beast), celebrated by planting a kiss on his wife in front of the hundreds of reporters gathered. Other people assembled outside the courthouse with giant placards or strange looking figurines. A few photos of the zany scene outside the courthouse after the jump.

Maureen Dowd fired up her patented pop-culture-meets-political-sideshow engine again yesterday to explore the resonances between The Holiday, the 2006 Cameron Diaz movie that Dowd thinks Mark Sanford recommended via e-mail to his Argentinian paramour, and Sanford's life. Wrong Holiday, MoDo.

Bernie Madoff has just been sentenced to 150 years in prison for running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. It was the maximum sentence the judge could have given him.