In his review today of the Atlantic Theater Company's production political comedy Farragut North — soon to be a film from George Clooney — NYT reporter/heartthrob Patrick Healy can't resist getting in a few jabs about his many months covering the Hillary Clinton campaign. The play from former Howard Dean staffer Beau Willimon characterizes the interplay between campaign officials and the reporters who cover them, and Healy isn't shy about putting the blame somewhere specific.Since the play concerns itself partly with the interplay between campaign flacks and reporters, Healy is able to offer a look at the reality of the fiction:

Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson has humiliated Village Voice plagiarists, conducted frightening YouTubes in his Second Life persona, and successfully litigated on behalf of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. He's found another person to bring justice to in Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University student who is being sued by the RIAA for downloading seven songs as a teen. In doing so, he'll file a lawsuit that directly challenges the RIAA's ability to willy-nilly sue anyone it likes. Does this crazy-ass lawyer have a chance of succeeding?Joel Tenenbaum was a teenager when he allegedly downloaded just seven songs over a P2P service. The RIAA sued him last year and attempted to bully him into a settlement, but Tenenbaum wouldn't budge. Nesson just filed a counterclaim challenging the weight and premise of the RIAA's original suit in this brief (pdf):

From the moment we heard those first three words — Fox, News, and Channel — you felt like there should be just one more word after that: University. Yes, Roger Ailes' venerable cable institution has begun training young Shepard Smiths and molding cheaper, less Jewish versions of Bill Kristol to endure the tough times ahead. There's no better time to "educate" the next generation of young people who can't read or write than at FNCU. Apply today!Intern duty usually includes penning hit pieces against Hamas and the bonuses are huge:

The moment we knew we'd plunged too far down the Barbara Walters-moderated rabbit hole that is The View came last night, and it came during Saturday Night Live. Our initial reaction to the show's View spoof was not, "Oh, Kristen Wiig's playing Elisabeth Hasselbeck!" or even, "Casey Wilson couldn't do an impression of a single View co-host?" No, instead our visceral first take was, "Elisabeth would never wear that color yellow!" In this case, the shame is spread all around: a healthy helping goes to the SNL costume designers who forsook the chance to design the wildest pirate shirt ever, and we'll claim the rest for ourselves. Click through for the clip.Click to view

The early returns on Zack and Miri Make A Porno aren't what Harvey Weinstein was hoping for. After fighting over how explicit the film's promotional materials and title could be, the Seth Rogen-Elizabeth Banks romantic comedy didn't explode at the box office this weekend. The film netted an underwhelming projected $10.6 million even after a really slow Friday night opening. It looks like all the free publicity and feel-good endings in the world couldn't turn a frog into an Apatovian prince.Apatow's R-rated fare usually does a decent job crossing over to younger audiences, and Smith may have been hoping that pattern would continue with so many recognizable actors from Judd's films in Zack and Miri. Parents may have been especially wary of their teens seeing a film with 'Porno' in the title. Even the dour Changeling might have more legs than Zack and Miri, as Nikki Finke argues. In any case, the film's gross so far is more in line with Smith's past results than Apatow's: even Forgetting Sarah Marshall brought in $17.7 million on its opening weekend. Good word of mouth could help, but the film hasn't been a critical favorite so far either. Update: That early estimate may be a tad high. From The Hollywood Reporter:

When "your place" is Pete Sampras' mansion in Beverly Hills, it doesn't make much sense to dabble around with his and hers apartments in a fledging relationship. In the case of Will & Grace creator Max Mutchnick's relationship with entertainment lawyer Eric Hyman, you move in together after the first week. Whatever the merits of Mutchnick's fly-by-night approach, he and Hyman made it work, as memorably depicted in today's NYT Weddings and Celebrations.After the first date he had with agent Eric Wyman, Mutchnick knew he'd found someone different and special:

What if you started reading a friend's private diary, and in it he took great pains to say how pathetic you were? That's pretty much the feeling you get reading the anti-American issue of Der Spiegel. The America hatefest starts with an angry Uncle Sam, and asks such pertinent questions as "Can Condoleezza Rice Emancipate Herself from Bush?" and "When Will America Collapse?" The German vision of America is a racist, broken country, and they're not afraid to pronounce us dead. Click for the full eulogy.The German problems with America aren't limited to our recent economic collapse. We have a host of faults to atone for, and while electing Obama would be a good start, we suck in so many other ways:

If you're going to do a column about morals and ethics, don't hire a comedy writer. NYT Ethicist and former Letterman writer Randy Cohen has the easiest job in America, and yet he can't help pilfering questions from other columnists, as in today's repeat from Philip Galanes' "Social Q's" column in last month's paper. The paper now has more advice columnists than questions for them to answer — click for the sad Times gaffe as only they can do it.Apparently the original question was just that good, although it was edited down for Randy Cohen's smaller brain:

I write you, my friends, at a grave time in this country's history. Apparently people think they can just record any old YouTube endorsement of Barack Obama without the possibility of it backfiring and costing the Democrats the presidency. Ben Affleck endorsed John McCain for the greater good of the Democratic Party last night. If you're like him and you find yourself with a lower IQ than the norm and access to a video camera, don't post your thoughts to the internet, especially when those thoughts involve chanting, "Black Man in the White House!" Only the McCain campaign's lack of YouTube awareness can save us now.Can we really rule out that transgender YouTuber (and pop singer) Ms. Chris Crocker is a spy working directly under Karl Rove? Ms. Crocker made herself famous by netting millions of pageviews in YouTubes like "Leave Britney Alone!" Judge for yourself whether she made an egregious mistake in this one:

Though both Barack Obama and John McCain were rumored to be planning appearances on last night's episode of Saturday Night Live, only McCain showed up in the end, and the two sketches he appeared in repped a decidedly mixed bag.McCain was game throughout the cold open, a QVC ad that spoofed his inability to match Obama's major network infomercial. Unfortunately for the candidate, his willingness to self-deprecate (with wife Cindy along for the ride as a ginsu knife spokesmodel) was deflated by a clearly over-it Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, whose every through-the-motions gesture read, "Is an 8.5 not enough for you people?" Later, McCain appeared solo for a Weekend Update skit where he was greeted with a chorus of boos before launching into an amiable self-ribbing. Was the bit funny enough to overcome that rocky first impression? We've got the Hulus — cast your vote. Click to view

The comedy duo the Masked Avengers called up Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, pretended to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and told her that Sarkozy's gorgeous wife Carla Bruni had written a song about Joe the Plumber. Whether or not Gov. Palin knew who any of these people were is certainly open to debate, but Saturday Night Live will have a hard time following this clip. Click through for the good audio.

Yesterday the New York Post reported that A-Rod and Madonna crashed at Jerry Seinfeld's $103 million dollar pad in the Hamptons last week, having taken separate helicopters to get there for just a four-hour long stay. Now that the Dominican slugger is hanging out with the Seinfelds, there's not much question as to where he'll be spending his Rosh Hashanahs and Hanukahs, but what exactly did the magical couple do for four hours in the Hamptons before heading back in one copter? Here's an educated guess:When Alex married a woman he met at the gym while he nervously watched her train, he had dipped into the cougar pit for what was probably not the first time. As disturbing as we find the idea of Rodriguez worshipping the Kabbalah, if this is step one to making A-Rod a Jew, we have to support it. Here's how their time in the Hamptons broke down: 2 p.m.: Lunchtime! A-Rod has a cantaloupe, a Caesar salad and a Red Bull, while Madonna drains the blood of a vampire played by Stephen Root in order to maintain eternal life. 2:15 p.m.: Spongebob Squarepants. How do you fill your days?

When The WB and UPN merged into The CW in 2006, there wasn't much hope for the new network. And even after premiering a string of show with buzz including Gossip Girl, the ratings didn't match the rep. Now suddenly those shows are doing record numbers, indicating they are found consistently by their intended audience. This young, female viewership loves soap operas, and with the first season of 90210 and the recent greenlighting of the Melrose Place revival, it looks like they'll get them in spades. Here's four more from TV's past that deserve to be resurrected by the fledging network.

As the results roll in this Tuesday, the whole nation will be watching the judicial womb that is the state of California. The non-presidential portion of the ballot — Proposition 8 (to ban gay marriage) and Proposition K (to legalize prostitution) — takes center stage in a state Obama will win handily. We try to predict how each initiative will do, along with figuring out how many pictures of protesting prostitutes can fit in one post.Popular San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has come down hard on both proposed measures, supporting gay marriage with one hand and rallying against legalized prostitution with the other. The prospect of the decriminalization of prostitution led Newsom to point to the surrounding Tenderloin district and tell his audience, "If Prop K passes, can you imagine living here? If people really knew what was happening in these massage parlors, there would be outrage." Say what?

Somewhere when John Kerry was in the middle of a run-on sentence, psychologist Drew Westen wrote Message Handbook for Progressives From Left to Center, a how-to guide to change liberal rhetoric to make in sound appealing to people in the center of the country. With Republicans perched on wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion more than ever, the book redefines how to con people into having dinner with Bill Ayers. Westen's strategies might be making a difference in close races across the country.Emory University professor Westen crafted Message Handbook for Progressives From Left to Center because, he says, he wanted "to rebrand progressives using language that's as evocative as the language of the other side, and stop using phrases that just turn people off." If the resulting document — which the Times reports is a must-read for all Democratic operatives — makes you think of Karl Rove's taint, that's probably a good thing:

Since she came into the blogging world just a short time ago, Emily Brill's complete lack of awareness has been properly appreciated by fameball connoisseurs the world over. Is the future heiress to the Brill fortune now gone like Keyser Söze? Some are speculating that Emily terminated her blog because of an ultimatum by her parents after some less-than-bright comments about being lost in lower Manhattan and only seeing signs with foreign lettering on them. Wait, you're saying she doesn't have a translator with her at all times? Pray this doesn't mean an end to an era.As Stevie Nicks so meaningfully informed us in "Landslide", "time gets bolder/people get older/I'm getting older too." We just assumed that didn't apply to people with giant trust funds. If this really is the end of Essentially Emily, bring on Daniel Stern for some Wonder Years-style narration, and enjoy the greatest hits of the poor man's Mary Rambin:

As magazines like Radar and Men's Vogue perish amid a more conservative economic climate, we pray nightly that some of our favorite publications don't go under. We would hate to lose print gems like Harper's "Readings" section, a compendium of found text and photography that always manages to congeal into a torturous, depressing whole. This month's edition brings you the story of Operation High Roller, a California investigation into hawk murderers. Wallow in the sad glory of print after the jump.Some magazines struggle to keep up with the shifting expectations for print journal's but Harper's has done a decent job keeping their magazine interesting. Whereas other publications fear dipping their toes into darker waters, the Readings section's dark investigations into torture and greed always did remind us of the best possible blog. Here the magazine reprints conversations between undercover officer Ed Newcomer of the Fish and Wildlife Service and people who keep "roller" pigeons. Such folks aim to protect their pigeon collection by eliminating natural predators like hawks and peregrine falcons, sometimes in sadistic fashion. In the following excerpt, Newcomer incriminates pigeon keeper Rayvon Hall by asking him how he kills the hawks.

Through the course of the day, you and the rest of the world will start surfing through Flickr and Facebook galleries to see what the rest of the country dressed up as last night. But no costume will be so frightening as what our favorite celebrity couple Seal and Heidi Klum put together. I regret that these two exhibited this travesty in front of their children. Get ready to have the same image in your inner eye for the next decade.Heidi's well known for her Halloween costumes, and her constantly sexual relationship with pop singer Seal. In the past she's dressed up as a variety of things, but this year, she really took it up a notch. These are from her Halloween party at 1-OAK in New York:

Kevin Smith wants what Judd Apatow has. Using elements of the New Jersey director's brilliant comedies Clerks and Chasing Amy, Apatow built a foul-mouthed comedy empire where Smith's films always fell short of major box-office success. As the film opens this weekend, does Zack and Miri Make a Porno belong to Kevin Smith, or Judd Apatow?From the moment The Weinstein Company logo opens on Kevin Smith's latest, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, there's considerable question as to whose film this exactly is. Does the film belong to Smith's pantheon of grungy comedies, or Judd Apatow's free range of Seth Rogen-based stoner adventure stories? You can't really tell by the supporting cast. As with all of these recent comedies, the familiar milieu of Zack and Miri is more designed to make the audience say, "Look, there's the guy from The Office! Look, there's the chick from that porn you showed me!" than to revel in the performances themselves. This is also true of the industry that is satirized in Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

When Matt Drudge saw the Zogby poll that put McCain up a point last night, he let out a squeal of glee. "A story I can control!" he shrieked, probably still in his The Crow Halloween costume and makeup. McCain is within the margin of error in one Zogby poll, that much is true. But on the same morning where Drudge tries to sell a McCain victory, respected National Journal Charlie Cook says that the Republican candidate can't win without divine intervention. We have to ask: could Obama really be in trouble?Drudge has to tell his story, and in this case it's that McCain slipped above Obama in what basically amounted to an afternoon and a morning of polling. As of this writing, Drudge's "reporting" consisted of this quoting this John Zogby exercise in hyperbole: