MTV tacked on a $500 stocking stuffer to the final paychecks of those charity bloggers it was avoiding paying. Could it be the raunchy Viacom network believes in God? Or at least karma?

Ha ha, dig CNN golden boy Anderson Cooper's subtle dig at competitor Rachel Maddow's show in the LA Times today: He thinks she's great, he just finds her show boring and cliché. Oh, OK!

In today's NYT Book Review, media critic David Carr kinda savaged Michael Wolff's Rupert Murdoch bio. After the jump, see Wolff's vicious response via Facebook status line. Aren't media nerds cute when they fight?

She writes, "Did you hear the one about the stockbroker who’s been sleeping like a baby? Every hour, he wakes up and cries." I can't imagine this is a McCain original — sounds like an old one — but see him tell it yourself at the beginning of this clip from his Nov. 12 appearance on The Tonight Show.

As print dies, we will no doubt see an avalanche of obituaries for once-great, now-decrepit publications. In this vein, The New Yorker's Louis Menand celebrates the Village Voice's heyday in the late 1950's and early 1960s.

New York nightlife is in an incredibly bad place if the biggest spender on the scene is an Episcopal priest who drives in from Wilkes Barre, Pa., to drop tens of thousands of dollars on bottle service. The New York Daily News tries to figure out where Gregory Malia, the youngish fellow second from the right in the photo, gets enough cash to drop $52,000 in one night. He was ordained as a priest in 2002 and otherwise runs a pharmaceutical business that specializes in supplies for hemophiliacs. "I work hard. I make good money. How I spend it - that is my business," he tells the News. "I haven't done anything inappropriate."

Yesterday, we learned Caroline Kennedy is able to say "you know" twelve times in under a minute. Now that the entire NYT interview transcript is online, we know how much she loves "you know."

Wanna know why Bill Clinton hates Barack Obama so much? Because our Hopey President-elect is basically rerunning the entire script of Clinton's '92 campaign, including the Obama meme-of-the-day: chafing at life inside "the bubble."

In what could be the worst legal strategy since George Bluth faked a heart attack, New York Daily News gossips Rush & Molloy report hedge fund hustler Bernie Madoff is considering an insanity defense.

The maybe-fake Holocaust memoir we told you about—by Herman Rosenblat, who says he married the girl who tossed him apples over the fence when he was a boy in a concentration camp—has been cancelled.

Since the Panic of '08 started nailing Silicon Valley startups, people have been begging Philip Kaplan to restart his FuckedCompany website. But Kaplan doesn't want a second dose of dotcom doom.

Aspiring senator Caroline Kennedy might want to hire a vocal coach in addition to her PR help. Today's NYT headline reads "As a Candidate, Kennedy Is Eloquent but Elusive," but the accompanying audio clip says:

Barack Obama's Hawaiian retinue is getting showered with gifts from the locals as he enjoys his last pre-White House vacation on Oahu. Even the press corps is getting goodies — more than they expected!

Australia: the movie too bad to pirate online. [IMDB]

Chick lit is tired! We predict Xanax lit in 2009. In this week's Modern Love, we learn the perils of what happens when a breast-cancer patient cops an unauthorized Xanax in the waiting room before a biopsy.

It's Google's presidency. We're just watching it. Six Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt and cofounder Larry Page, have donated $25,000 apiece to fund President Barack Obama's swearing-in party.

It was almost a national nightmare: Obama wakes up to find himself powerless. Cheer up—the electricity in Oahu, Hawaii, where he's vacationing, should be restored by tomorrow. Plus, he got special treatment:

The world is always troubled. So why have fighting in the Gaza Strip and troop moves in Pakistan dominated the news? How disobedient these heathens are, after the Pope just called for peace.

A picture is emerging of Santa-clad death sprayer Bruce Jeffrey Pardo's sorry life: a brain-damaged son he abandoned as a toddler, a beloved dog he lost in a divorce, and a murder plan gone awry.

Uh-oh: it's the brand-new blog of Lindsay Lohan father/religious fanatic/jailed DUI-er Michael Lohan. Don't hope for gossip, however: "let me say that this website is NOT about Lindsay or Samantha."