So we all know, of course, that Sarah Palin loves Real America, which means the parts of America that are pro-American, which according to recent polls is pretty much between 40 and 45 percent of America, population-wise (but much more, maybe, geographically!). And part of loving pro-America America is hating, obviously, East Coast Elitists and Washington DC and the Beltway and the Georgetown Cocktail Circuit and New York City, and also Hollyweird and San Francisco. The Coasts are not Real America! And especially not Real America are the Media Elites who are threatened by Sarah Palin and John McCain. Except of course obviously those Media Elites created John McCain and Sarah Palin. And Palin and McCain are both crippled by their all-consuming desire to be accepted and loved by those Media Elites. Jane Mayer wrote a very informative piece for this week's New Yorker about how all the chattering classes and cocktail circuit insiders created and sold the Myth of Sarah Palin.

"To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. 'Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?'" — Humorist David Sedaris on supposedly 'undecided' voters. [The New Yorker via Cynical C] "You really have to work hard to violate Governor Palin's standards on negative campaigning." — Barack Obama talking about McCain's automated phone calls. [23/6] "I will not be commenting on her divorce as that is a private matter between her and Guy Ritchie and would consider any commentary on my part dishonorable and disrespectful." — Madonna's brother Christopher, who recently 'wrote' a tell-all book about the pop star and blamed her marriage to Guy for the siblings' falling out. [Showbiz Spy] “She never spoke of the rigors and privations of aid work in Kandahar, one of the most difficult places for a young woman to work in the world, but she kept a smile on her face and always had a good humored chuckle at the difficulties she must have endured." — Aid organization Serve Afghanistan about Gayle Williams, a 34-year-old British woman who was shot and killed in Kandahar while at work this morning. [NYT] "Tonight, for a few innings, it felt like it was gonna carry over." — Sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy reacting to last night's Red Sox loss to the Rays in the 7th game of the ALCS. [Boston Globe]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Microsoft a patent, first applied for in 2004, on technology to censor profanity — or any keywords off a list — from an audio stream in real time. This technology could be applied not just to online video like YouTube but also for cell-phone audio and internet chat. Think China will be the first buyer? @#$% yeah. [Ars Technica]

Click to viewBoomp3.com Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took a meeting with Academy Award winner Sean Penn on Monday. President Chavez wondered why Penn hasn’t done a part like the immortal Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Penn did not have an answer, nor was he willing to do the voice for the leader. [Photo Credit: Flynet] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Our rapid 24-hour-a-day news cycle is turning "solid journalism" into a quaint anachronism! As you may have heard. First it was round-the-clock cable news, then the internet happened, and now even real news outlets are making all types of errors trying to keep up with blogs, where we just invent our stories whole, like Keyser Soze staring at a police station bulletin board. Fortunately some journalistic theorists have just the thing to prevent the general public from being suckered into believing everything they read: media training for tots!

Click to viewMost venture capitalists I know are deeply insecure. Why? Because they're not entrepreneurs. Yes, it's true: The Valley's moneymen have a founder fetish. And the worst of the lot are the former lawyers, who never did anything even remotely resembling building a company, but retain the lawerly suspicion that they're smarter than their companies. I mention this because I've stumbled across August Capital partner David Hornik's intro video from The Lobby, his invite-only Hawaiian vacation masquerading as a conference.In the video, which he posted publicly to his personal blog, Hornik puts on a series of baseball caps — he wears many hats, yageddit? — from his portfolio of startups. A song plays: "You're my superhero, my knight in shining armor." Venture capitalist to the rescue! Hornik's wife and kids also appear. He's a family man! At first, I wondered if Hornik had actually made Lobby attendees sit down and watch this video en masse. Not so, I'm told; instead, it was preloaded on the free iPods everyone at The Lobby received, along with other self-introduction videos. The Lobby's schtick is that it has no formal schedule of presentations; instead of sitting in a room ignoring the video while Twittering, attendees can simply ignore the program outright, as it sits unviewed on an iPod's hard drive. I don't know what's worse: the image of Hornik inflicting his egofest on a captive audience, or the pathetic vision of him wandering around his own conference, wondering how many actually bothered to watch it. And that's why Hornik's a funder, not a founder. He has enough ego to make this video — but not enough ego to force it on people. He lacks the chutzpah an entrepreneur needs — and I suspect he knows it.

Musicians writing novels! Alterna-MILF Liz Phair is writing one, Ryan Adams is publishing a novel plus a book of poetry, and the Observer reports that Bad Seed Nick Cave has just sold his second, titled The Death of Bunny Munro. Cave's first novel, published in 1989, was called And the Ass Saw the Angel. It was really good, according to Galleycat. They also add, "Cave once chewed us out on a nationally syndicated radio show when we called in to say how much his novel reminded us of Flannery O'Connor!" Geez, what an insult. An excerpt of his first book follows.You'll notice two things here: first, all I did was search inside the book for the word "sex," naturally. Secondly, Cave shows a fondness of writing in regional dialect, like Irvine Welsh and Eugene O'Neill.

The fallout from Paramount's recent release-date shuffle continues today, with agents and saber-rattling DreamWorks brass continuing their protest over The Soloist's move to 2009. While we sustain our first impression that the Jamie Foxx/Robert Downey Jr. tearjerker will in fact be better than the diabetic-coma inducing trailers already in circulation, that's not much comfort to those who fear the bump from November to March will impugn Soloist's profile among critics and audiences alike. But now, as a peace offering to the angry gods at CAA who packaged the film for the 'Works with its clients Downey, Foxx and director Joe Wright, Paramount has forged a silver lining for one-third of that jilted braintrust.Sort of. After all, can DreamWorks or CAA ever really find consolation in a Tropic Thunder campaign pushing Downey as Best Supporting Actor? They'd better — neither Downey nor Foxx had a shot at Best Actor anyway with Sean Penn (Milk), Josh Brolin (W.), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) and Brad Pitt widely foreseen to hold down four of the five slots, and the latter star's Curious Case of Benjamin Button (not to mention, to a lesser degree, Downey's Iron Man performance) already drawing from Paramount's awards war chest. DreamWorks insiders are still griping over some perceived revenge from Paramount, but even they'd acknowledge that The Soloist is better off with spring prestige all to itself. And that a nominated blackface performance is no doubt one of the least controversial ways to revive public interest in the Oscars. We're pulling for you, RDJ.

Zima has been discontinued. Lightweights despair. [AP]

Remember how the Hawaiian Tropic Zone was slapped with a $600 million lawsuit two weeks ago after four women alleged they'd been harassed (and, in one case, raped) by a former general manager of the restaurant? Yea, well, it doesn't seem the venue learned anything from the PR fiasco: Not only is it inviting prospective waitresses to show up at the restaurant to speak to the manager with their headshot and a "bodyshot" in hand, the company's Las Vegas outpost is offering up a free boob job to the woman who collects the most candy at its Halloween party.

The Linux Foundation has strategically leaked a report showing that the "Linux ecosystem" — distributors, resellers, support specialists, and other hangers-on of the free-to-download operating system — is now worth $25 billion. Ignore the inevitable quibbling over methodology; what this means is that every open-source entrepreneur out there is going to slap that figure on a PowerPoint slide, trot down to Sand Hill Road, and get funding for the latest open-source boondoggle. The sales pitch: "It's the Linux of distributed databases!" Translation: It's just like Linux, except for the $25 billion.

Famously cranky Golden Notebook author Doris Lessing is 89 and frankly doesn't give a rat's that she won last year's Nobel Prize for Literature. She likes to talk about how she's burned out on writing and loves to complain—and is therefore our favorite Old. This Sunday, Lessing wrote an essay about her typical day for the Times of London: "When I’m not talking, I read." And everyone, irritatingly, thinks she knows the meaning of life:

· Hugh Grant has abandoned Lost For Words, a comedy about a British actor who falls in love with his Chinese-speaking director, played by Ziyi Zhang. A spokesman blames creative differences—shorthand for, "Look, the script stank, OK? Imagine Music & Lyrics, but you can't understand what the fuck Drew Barrymore is saying. I mean, more so than usual." [Variety] · Cartoon Network is developing NASTYbook—a children's book series of twisted tales like the one about the "Internet-trolling witch"—into a CGI film, repackaged as Dr. Laura: The Movie. Eep! [THR] After the jump: Advantage, SAG!· SAG is playing "hot potato" with the strike issue: They've asked for a federal mediator, putting off a strike-approval vote and essentially placing the ball back into the producers' court. Variety's apostrophes, meanwhile, are in Day 18 of their little-known Firefox-only labor stoppage, crippling the world's leading trade paper until editor Peter Bart agrees to to their demands for better working conditions in his rough drafts. [Variety, THR] · A.C.O.D. (Adult Children of Divorce), a divorce comedy feature from two Daily Show writers, is being developed by Miramax. [THR] · A long Jets-Raiders game gave CBS the win last night, edging out ABC's Desperate-led lineup. [Variety]

A judge's ruling last month to allow Kentucky's governor to seize domain names to gambling websites is being upheld. One reprieve that the judge did grant was to let site operators keep their domain names if they install Internet filters to block out any IP address from Kentucky. [TechDirt]

The inter-host squabbling has become so heated on The View that there's little a celebrity guest can do to keep up (short of revealing dramatic, semi-incestuous childhood memories), so it's no surprise that producers have been scheduling more and more all-"Hot Topic" editions, as they did this morning. Also no surprise? Things got absolutely bananas today, as Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar reached heretofore-unglimpsed levels of annoyance with Elisabeth Hasselbeck while arguing about a weekend full of juicy political news.

Cosmopolitan Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni: "Taste is personal. For instance, I love the texture and consistency of lamb hearts, and for some reason the idea that they’re hearts doesn't bother me emotionally or intellectually — doesn't give me any pause. I love the custard-like richness of brain, though I admit that for some reason I have to make a bit of an effort to edit out my consciousness (and I’m not making a cute joke here) that it’s brain I’m eating." Fine, just put down the knife and we'll bring you whatever you want. [NYT]

Japanese electronics conglomerate Toshiba has bought a portion of its flash-memory joint venture with SanDisk back from its partner, in a deal worth $1 billion. Some analysts think this makes SanDisk a more attractive buyout candidate for Samsung, which has twice offered $5.85 billion for the Silicon valley company. [WSJ]

♦ Did you expect Anne Slowey to play down the reported feud between herself and Nina Garcia? Au contraire: "I'm not even really conscious of the fact that, oh yeah, she used to work at Elle," bitches Slowey. [NYO]
♦ Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman has joined old-school jeweler Garrard as a guest designer. Good to know she's feeding the joint account now that husband Harvey's career isn't exactly on fire. On a related note, Marchesa's having a sample sale this week. [WWD, Teen Vogue]
♦ Kate Moss's transition from elusive to overexposed is officially complete, as she provides interview answers that miraculously manage to be even more mundane than the questions. Her "fail-safe party item," you'll be scintillated to hear, is a "little black dress." [Times UK]

Last week we re-introduced Gawker Pin-Ups, in which we scour the web (and your Facebook pages) for hottt photos of people in (or vaguely around) media. Who did you want to see shirtless? Requests for the New York Post's Justin Rocket Silverman were basically overwhelming, because he is one of the few straight men in media. So here he is! We have no idea what exactly he's doing in the following photos, nor do we care. Ladies, his Myspace profile says he's 31, single, and straight. He's even modeled for Mens' Health! Justin, if you play these fifteen minutes of blog-fame right, you could definitely get lucky by the weekend.

"Follow That Tiny Speeder Bike!" We defy you to look at this adorable Star Wars tableau—achieved, much care is taken to point out, without the use of Photoshop, but rather with an actual Scout Trooper action figure riding bareback on an actual adorable chipmunk—without going, "Awww." Still, we'd caution not to look at the next photo in the series, in which the Trooper slices open the chipmunk's stomach and climbs inside to survive a bitter Hoth ice storm. [Great White Snark]