[Victoria Beckham at Heathrow Airport today; image via Bauer-Griffin]

Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially said today that she is the victim of a CIA information operation directed against the constitutional leadership of the United States. So what else is new?

An hour-long outage of some Google services this morning has turned into a full-fledged Twitter storm. What this really shows is a failure of Twitter to be meaningful and relevant to anything but Twitter.

In your dire Thursday media column: Us Weekly starts a war, America refuses to watch gay broadcasters, "I.D." is the unluckiest magazine name, and North Korea will try the US reporters it snatched:

What were the "many sad logistics" that Keith Olbermann had to attend to when he took three days off work last month? That remains unclear, although he did have time to head over to Citi Field and take in a ballgame with his girlfriend and Jason Bateman. We all cope in different ways, clearly. [MLBlogs] [Update: Gawker has spoken with a source of its own at MSNBC and is now backing our account. See here.]

Here's the thing about Peter Arthur Stories: you want to be in this tiny movie. You want the orange scooter with the torpedo sidecar. You want to love a red-headed stranger so much that you get out of dodge and head to Pennsylvania Dutch Country to find her. The six-toed cabin girl, the bag of little ceramic heads, the gooey molasses pie. You want it all.

The world needs a Catcher in the Rye sequel like it needs an asshole on its elbow. Well, since New Jersey exists, so too must the book. Some debut novelist has published an unauthorized sequel.

Dan Baum chronicled the loss of his New Yorker gig on Twitter. His story—and the New Yorker's own reaction—is a great reminder that America's best magazine still runs itself like a secret society.

• Union members at the Boston Globe will vote on the controversial concession package proposed by the New York Times Co. on June 8. [E&P]
• Last week's broadcast of Meet the Press earned the NBC chatfest its lowest ratings since David Gregory took over as moderator. [HuffPo]
• Supermarket tabloid smackdown: Us Weekly is standing up for integrity in journalism (and Brangelina) by waging war against In Touch. [TMZ, Gawker]
• Who says magazines are dead? The publisher of Interview is in the process of launching a quarterly design magazine called Modern. [Folio]
• Neil Patrick Harris will host the 2009 Tony Awards on June 7. [AP]
• The two American journalists who were first detained in North Korea two months will go on trial for "hostile acts" on June 4. [NYT]

New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni—the most powerful man in food, in his own way—is leaving the restaurant beat to become a writer-at-large for the NYT magazine. This memo just went out:

A while back, we mocked Jake "The Octogon" Tapper's habit of reproducing his exchanges with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on his blog with his own tough, no-nonsense questions in bold. He didn't like that!

Have you ever had an angel burp on you? Ever felt the soothing hand of God as He gives you a purple nurple? If not, then you didn't watch American Idol last night.

It's one of many casually accepted, unchecked assumptions in Silicon Valley: Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal and Facebook investor, is a billionaire, right? Leaked documents from his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, show he's not.

The 60 Minutes profile on Vogue editor Anna Wintour runs this Sunday. The publicity push is underway! We've learned who gets quoted in the upcoming segment—everyone else is screwed and unimportant:

Keith Olbermann has responded to our story about his three-day absence late last month:

As expected, Frank Bruni is giving up his coveted gig as the New York Times' restaurant critic so he can hit the trail and promote his forthcoming book (and not have to do it behind a wig and sunglasses). Per the official memo: "Recognizing that the book is certain to seriously compromise his ability to be a spy in the land of food, Frank picked this as a natural time to move on. He will be turning in his restaurant-critic credentials when his memoir, "Born Round: the Secret History of a Full-Time Eater," is published in late August. After a break for book promotion and some overdue vacation, Frank will become a writer-at-large on the staff of our Sunday magazine..." The job hasn't been filled yet, by the way. Interested? Call 212-556-1234 and ask for Bill. [NYT, Gawker]

"Everyone today wants to be a professional and most people believe they are." But most of you are deluded. Mark Penn is here to tell you why. And to spout further generalizations, for money!

John Gechter, the gay porn power bottom from a Christian college, is moving to New York. And now some helpful gay has written him a letter to help ease his transition. It's wonderful! And horrifying.

Panic rooms have been all the rage the last few months as ridiculously wealthy New Yorkers prepare for an end-of-days scenario out of a low-budget horror movie. (Of course, some people were paranoid long before the recession came along; hedge fund tycoon Bruce Kovner, for example, is rumored to have the only safe room in NYC capable of protecting him in a dirty bomb or chemical weapons attack and he had that installed years ago.) Have you made the necessary arrangements to guarantee that you'll be okay if things take a turn for the worse and angry mobs start roaming the streets? It's never too late to ensure your home is "secure, stylish and comfortable"! Emphasis on "secure," naturally. [HalogenLife]

Elizabeth Edwards has been demanding that her interviewers not utter the name of that woman—Rielle Hunter—as a condition for granting interviews. And CNN, Oprah, and NBC News have all caved.