Whatever intern is tasked with explaining current events to Barbara Walters failed miserably today, as she misunderstood the growing controversy about a perceived-to-be-racist Post cartoon in the most hilarious way possible.

In your bracing Tuesday media column: rumors of Newsweek closing a bureau [UPDATE: or maybe more than one], Barbara Walters tells the truth, questions are wrestled with, and Flex sells:

• Ad pages for monthly magazines in March dropped by 26 percent. [Crains]
• Sirius XM has reached a deal with Liberty Media to avoid bankruptcy. [NYT]
• What Bristol Palin had to say in her interview with Greta Van Susteren. [ABC]
• Not surprisingly, local news stations covered A-Rod's press conference today in lieu of President Obama's signing of the stimulus bill. [THR]
• A look at Politico and "the brave new world of post-print journalism." [TNR]
• Barbara Walters at a breakfast this morning with 60 Minutes's Steve Kroft and Ken Auletta: "I think the only programs that will still be there as they are now in 10 years are the morning shows." How convenient. [Portfolio]
• Thanks to the popularity of Slumdog Millionaire, ABC is thinking about reviving Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? during primetime. [NYT]

After months of enduring Barbara Walters's insidious campaign of passive-aggression, the hosts of The View (led by Sherri Shepherd) finally had their revenge today by implying she was a veritable painted harlot.

Only in our nightmares does Barbara Walters shriek, "Do you have sex?" in a repeated, accusatory tone—and yet, when it happened on The View today, it was strangely satisfying.

Babs was moaning on The View today about how the New York Times ran a photo of her interviewing Rod Blagojevich without printing her name. Then Sherri Shepherd had to make a vagina joke.

Has our dream of a Mickey Rourke/Bai Ling Oscar coupling been deferred? Today, Rourke expressed his wishes to bring dog Loki as his awards date—though in a pinch, he'd settle for a certain View cohost.

This is how ingrained Barbara Walters's reign of passive-aggression has become on The View: her tone-deaf (but well-meaning) attempt to draw a comparison between the Obamas and the Cosbys finally provokes Sherri Shepherd to snap.

Perhaps cognizant that very soon they wouldn't have George W. Bush to kick around anymore, the ladies of The View brought the crazy shouting and insane assertions big-time this morning.

Over the weekend, George W. Bush demonstrated perhaps his most terrifying lapse in judgment in an administration full of such moments: he let Elisabeth Hasselbeck into the Oval Office.

Now that Tom Cruise's appearance on The View has aired, we can bring you the whole, Scientology-defending Jett Travolta conversation without any delightfully premature interruption by the Us Weekly bumper.

Today, an insane Barbara Walters gave us the clip that will be played on the news in slow-motion when she finally uses her costume jewelry to garrote Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson were the main attractions at Monday's Bride Wars premiere at the Lincoln Square Cinema. Others who turned up for the chick flick: Vera Wang, Tara Subkoff, Rachel Roy and her daughter Ava, Barbara Walters, Cindy Adams, Erin Fetherston, director Gary Winick, producer Alan Richie, Kristen Johnson, Robert Verdi, Holly Dunlap, Damien Fahey, Mike & Juliet hosts Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy, Lisa Rinna, model Hana Soupkova, and Dina Lohan, as well as the cast of Real Housewives of NYC: Jill Zarin, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Simon van Kempen and Alex McCord, LuAnn DeLesseps, Ramona Singer, and Bethenny Frankel. [PMc, Wiremage, NYO]

Barbara Walters is just letting her passive-aggressive flag fly these days on The View, garnishing nearly every "Hot Topics" segment with a cruel, cutting barb that her dunderheaded cohosts are powerless to rebut.

With rumors flying about how much time Patrick Swayze had left after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, the actor sat down with Barbara Walters to come clean.

• Jeffrey Epstein is a free man—sort of. The billionaire money manager, who was sentenced to 18 months for soliciting a minor for prostitution, is now working at the office of his non-profit foundation five days as a week as part of a work-release program. [P6]
• Mort Zuckerman became a dad for the second time on Friday with the birth of a daughter named Renee Esther. [NYDN]
• Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey's frosty relationship has turned into "outright contempt" since Baldwin mocked Fey's scar at a recent photo shoot and told the photographer to "get ready to do a lot of airbrushing." [Star]
• Suri Cruise gets 100 fan letters each day, you'll be creeped out to learn. [Star]

Jessica Szohr taking some of her hard-earned GG cash out of an ATM at a deli on the Upper East Side ... Barbara Walters walking down the street by herself ... Beth Ostrosky arriving at Fox for a TV appearance ... Jennifer Connelly leaving ABC studios after an appearance on Regis & Kelly ... Leighton Meester and Blake Lively filming scenes for Gossip Girl on the Upper East Side ... Michelle Williams reading a magazine while crossing the street ... Heather Graham standing on the sidewalk ... Amy Adams posing for pics outside Letterman ... Katie Holmes crossing the street with Suri in the East Village ... and Ivana Trump and Star Jones standing outside La Goulue on Madison Avenue.

Ever since Don Rickles appeared in the middle of the most painfully awkward Emmy ceremony ever and brought the house down by making fun of it, we've looked forward to the day when he would bring those same powers of incisive cruelty to The View. Today was that day.

The other day, The View's resident conservative/pirate couture expert Elisabeth Hasselbeck chose to assail Deepak Chopra not with any of the clear, New Agey ammunition at hand, but with the ethnically questionable order, "Go light a bowl of incense!" This comment, er, incensed some Indians, who saw it as a potential slur.

Though Elisabeth Hasselbeck has offended many during her tenure on The View, she's never quite had what could be called, in the show parlance, a "Ching Chong" moment. So named for Rosie O'Donnell's Asian language impression in which she shrieked, "Ching Chong Ching Chong!" and stopped just shy of declaring, "That was me, Rosie, playing an Oriental!" the gaffe is the type that incurs the wrath of an entire race, and Hasselbeck may have had her own in this morning's episode.