This morning, I blogged that Dell had "unpublished" CTO Kevin Kettler from the company's executive staff page. Kettler had been planning to leave as part of a reorganization, but his sudden disappearance from the management headshots would indicate a food fight behind the scenes. Truth is, Dell had never put Kettler on its exec staff page. As CTO, he wasn't considered one of the suits. There's a lesson here for me: John Paczkowski, from whom I got the factoid that Kettler had been removed from the management page, can be as wrong as Valleywag when he really tries. Sorry for the error. I have only one question for Paczkowski's publisher, AllThingsD: You guys hiring? (Photo by CNET/Stephen Shankland)

Barack Obama, who you might remember is the first black president, once called himself a "blank screen" onto which other people would "project their own views." Today, Times fashion writer Cathy Horyn took a turn gazing at Obama and what does she see? The whitest man in America: Jerry Seinfeld. Known more for her Anna Wintour slams than for her astute political analysis, Horyn writes that casual Obama in a baseball cap and track suit is a fashion statement stolen from a clunky Upper West Side Jew. Citing the displeasure of a Barney's fashion director as hard evidence, she even called Seinfeld to ask if Barack was stealing his slovenly windbreaker and jeans look. Is Horyn crazy, or is a dressed-down Obama a reenactment of Seinfeld's '90s fashion missteps?"I don’t know that I can make a proprietary claim to that look,” Seinfeld told her when she called for comment. After a campaign chock full of gorgeous suits, you can't blame Horyn for having great expectations. Having viewed the post-election Obama wardrobe, we're forced us to agree — he looks more like a stand-up comedian than a president sometimes.

THR reports NBC has canceled both Christian Slater amnesiac secret agent show My Own Worst Enemy, as well as Lipstick Jungle, in which Brooke Shields leads a troop of cosmetic assassins down the Nung River to eliminate the AWOL and believed-insane Colonel Mary Kay:

You thought the only news these days was depressing? Not necessarily! The Port Authority reports traffic at the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels dropped 6.4 percent in October, compared with last year, and traffic fell 4.4 percent at the bridges between New Jersey and Staten Island. Much of the decline, of course, can be explained by the thousands of people who have lost their jobs in financial services in recent months. But if you're looking for cheery news to brighten your day, you can probably assume that some percentage of the dropoff consists of oiled-up dudes from New Jersey or Staten Island who have been having second thoughts about cruising around Manhattan in a white Hummer limo with neon trim on Friday nights. And in these tough times you've got to take the positive news anywhere you can get it.

Shorter version of TechCrunch: It's the "worst economic environment in our collective lifetimes. Get your ticket for the TechCrunch/LeWeb party!" If this does not make perfect sense to you, please move back to Nebraska.

Just read Alleywag's summary. Then read the New York Times' official version. I tested Google's canned example: Search YouTube for "financial crisis." Get an ad for a super-violent movie. Those Google people are smart!

Oh hmm interesting, long-ago rock person Ted Nugent is talking once again about some mixture of guns and Republicanism. You've found your niche, Ted! He thinks the problem with the Republican party is all the sellouts "compromising values and cutting deals with the socialist prankster punksters." "My specialty is making Fedzilla punks squirm and turn into a puddle of sweat and drool," adds Ted. A funny occurrence would be if a prominent socialist prankster punkster NObama supporter such as former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis were to punch Ted Nugent until he, ironically, was drooling upon himself. [Human Events via Opinionator]

♦ The Times has the skinny on "Martin Eisenstadt," the supposed McCain consultant who leaked info to the press. (He's an aspiring filmmaker, not surprisingly.) In the meantime, MSNBC's retracted its story. [NYT, AP]
♦ You might be enjoying CW's Stylista, but the ratings thus far haven't been especially encouraging. [NYO]
♦ Two new cast members, Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott, will join Saturday Night Live beginning this weekend. [NYT]
♦ Showtime is developing an hour-long show by Stan Lee about a gay superhero. [Variety]

Do you shuffle through your day, dragging your feet and looking at the ground? Or do you practice your runway-model walk on the streets, prancing like a pony while maintaining a sexy glare? You're DOING IT RONG! Breaking: nobody knows how to walk properly. As the NYT Styles reports, if you're a precious, granola-obsessed, anal-retentive gentrifier, it's probably for the best if you pay someone money to teach you how to properly put one foot in front of the other. See, we were hoping that the recession would eliminate inanities such as these. But that is why the Styles section exists: to provide a way to spend money they otherwise would not know what to do with.

Sad news for those who are fans of people who were famous about eighteen years ago. NBC has canceled Christian Slater's new spy-with-dual-personalities show My Own Worst Enemy and Brooke Sheilds' the-world-is-a-cold-dead-place lady drama Lipstick Jungle. The latter was something of a miraculous holdover from last year, while Slater's show sputtered and died after only four episodes. This is bad news for the struggling NBC, which had pinned high hopes on Enemy, launching a rather enormous ad campaign. At least the show had one cultural zeitgeist moment before it died. And it had to do with sex! Last month the show made mention of something called The Hummingbird sex position. People were so curious about what this wife-pleasing technique could possibly be that they made it the top Google Trends search of the day. The crusty old ladies at wowOwow even got in the game! (Though it's still kind of unclear what, if anything, it actually is. I'm assuming it means really fast sex against a window.) Oh and it bears mentioning that Lipstick Jungle did invent the Cougarnaut Position, which can only be done with a two year old pair of Manolo Blahniks and a bitter sense of life having pretty much passed you by. So yeah, two once buzzy shows now lost to the ages. We expect more beloved but pretty much as little-watched shows like ABC's Pushing Daisies to follow fairly soon. Pie Maker Position or not. (Blackbirds required.)

Good morning. My name is Joshua David Stein. Today we will be discussing Season Five of Bravo's Top Chef. The premiere of that show aired last night.
The minutes before 10pm could not tick away fast enough. After a taxing season of Project Runway, Top Chef was back and with it the possibility that true villainy, true genius, and perhaps Padma Lakshmi's boob slipping out of her dress and, looking to shore up their breeder ratings, Bravo would keep the nip slip in. The first episode of a season is always like Day One at camp: you figure out your bunk bed (are you a top or a bottom?), you make first stabs at alliances, you wear a t-shirt you think is really clever that you've picked out months before that has writing on it that you think will make you beloved by all. Writing like, for instance, "Beer Pong" or "Diablo" or "Trust Me. I'm Perfect." Mostly though, you meet your bunkmates. Let's.There were, what, seventeen cheftestants? Obviously our sticky emotional strands will only Glaad Cling Wrap® to a few. But for the sake of simplicity and because the work has been done for us, let's break them up into teams. On one side, Team Rainbow (LGBT), on the other, the Europeans, on another the Obamas (rascally and inspiring minority report), on the other The Palins (the scary, the sad, the unfit). These four teams form the inward facing phalanx of Top Chef combat.

Peaches Geldof carrying takeout in Brooklyn ... Ed Westwick walking around town in a velour track suit ... Kate Winslet talking on her cell phone in the West Village ... Kelly Rutherford buying a pretzel on the street with her baby Hermes ... Salma Hayek carrying her baby Valentina ... Taylor Momsen and Connor Paolo filming scenes for Gossip Girl in Midtown ... Katie Holmes heading to yoga class and later getting out of an SUV outside her East 13th Street apartment ... Russell Brand and Jack Black standing outside the Late Show with David Letterman ... and Whoopi Goldberg protesting Proposition 8 outside a Mormon church on Columbus Avenue.

It looks like Justin Timberlake plans to spend more time in New York now that he's gone into contract on a condo at the Pearline Soap Factory at 414 Washington Street, according to the Post. Timberlake's 3,000-square-foot loft, which was listed at $5.25 million, comes with three bedrooms, 14 floor-to-ceiling arched windows, Sub-Zero appliances, and views of the Hudson River. Photos of the apartment where JT will soon be rocking Jessica Biel's body are below.

I love Owen, but he has trouble writing in English during a crisis. So here's the basics on what's happening at Valleywag:

What's the point of having a "Climate Czar" if it won't be Al Gore? The rich and chunky Tennessean has taken himself out of the running for the made-up position in Obama's cabinet, meaning it will probably go to some dead-ender ex-governor who never even won an Academy Award. Is this the beginning of the end of Obama's alleged "Celebrity Cabinet" plan? We're going to say yes, and thank god for that. Remember a couple of days ago when that flowchart of unknown provenance came out that allegedly showed the frontrunners for all the cabinet positions, and they were all like political superstars? But then Colin Powell took himself out of the running for the Secretary of Education, and Gore is out, and do people really want RFK, Jr. running the Environmental Protection Agency? If you're going that route, why not Captain Planet? Why not Aquaman? Other bad-idea frontrunners on that chart: Screamin' Howard Dean for Health and Human Services, Smilin' Bill Richardson for Dept. of the Interior, and NYC police head Ray Kelly for Homeland Security. It's like the lineup of ABC's Sunday morning talk show! Also John Kerry and Chuck Hagel and Tom Daschle and every other politician that any significant portion of Americans have heard of is on that list. Barack Obama doesn't need a celebrity cabinet. He's the celebrity. Any further political celebrities require air, water, and attention that should be reserved for Barack Obama and his lovely family and a dog to be named later. [Pic via MSNBC]

For a while it looked as if weekly topless scenes of Robert Buckley would keep Lipstick Jungle in business, but it seems that one man's perfect abs can only do so much: NBC has axed the Candace Bushnell adaptation after a move to the Friday lineup failed to make more viewers believe that massively powerful businesswomen juggling relationships, children, and perfect designer wardrobes would also have time to meet every day for breakfast, lunch, cocktails, and dinner. Of course our sympathies go out to the cast of Brooke Shields, Lindsay Price, and Kim Raver (as well as to the cast of My Own Worst Enemy, which NBC also canceled). But you know who we feel most sorry for? Bushnell's ballet dancer husband. This news is not going to improve her already volatile mood.

Yesterday you guys concluded that the sad lady who desperately tried to keep her reality show on the air was Denise Richards. Which I think is exactly right. So, well done all. Today we have a tween star with a secret heroin problem, a new mother who's doing drugs and drinking on the sly, and a performer who made up a scandal to get more famous (it didn't work.) 1) "Some very odd behavior from this tween star. And I do use the term tween star. Outside of the tween world probably B- list, but in the tween world and A lister for sure. All of the missed interviews, plane flights, and screaming fits and repeated bouts of the flu over the past few weeks make a lot more sense when you realize that our little tweener has a big problem with heroin. A big problem as in trips away from LA have been a real challenge and has made life miserable for everyone she encounters. With no steady supply our actress has been getting worse and worse. A quiet "vacation" is no doubt in the works in the very near future." [CDaN] 2) "Which new mom is having a little too much fun when her baby's dad is out of town? Booze and coke aren't quite the best diet for someone who is still breastfeeding." [Star] 3) "This young performer deserves a smack upside the head. She manufactured a scandal that has been known to gain "exposure" for other young stars. She cried big fat alligator tears about how someone was out to ruin her. It was all actually a publicity stunt staged by her to jumpstart her negligible career. Looks like the girl will have to marry her boyfriend with the famous name to generate publicity." [BlindGossip]

You know what's really important to up-and-coming young entrepreneurs these days? What you wear! More important than, for example, economics. This is why older people run all the real businesses, while younger people spend their time talking to WSJ columnists for unintentionally hilarious and depressing features on how kids avoid going "corporate" by buying the correct name brands. Is your CEO "urban" or a "surfer?"

If you're gunning for a high-ranking job in the Obama administration, hope you've kept a record of everything you've done over the past decade or so. Potential cabinet members and other top officials in the administration have been asked to fill out this list of 63 questions. You'll be happy to hear, though, that traffic tickets under $50 need not be reported. [NYT]

• Kanye West is astounded by the lack of sober judgement and integrity in the MTV Video Music Awards. He thinks they're fixed! The cable network is shocked he would question the ethics of the "MTV Academy." [Sun]