Rosie O'Donnell is one of the few celebrities to create a truly successful website, selling advertising, generating free publicity and keeping her fans busy between her gigs. Now the comedian and former TV host is trying to use the site to draw in her longtime obsession, Britney Spears. O'Donnell has admitted "I leave [Spears] stalker-like messages" and said she wants Britney to come live with her; now she's using the "Ask Ro" section of her site to trash the most important people in Britney's life, one by one, in a longshot attempt to lure her into Rosie's waiting arms. She started with Britney's mom and dad, then moved on to Sam Lufti, her recent hanger-on-turned-crutch:

Another day, another celebushoplifter. But this time it's Britney, y'all! She was spotted on Saturday leaving Fred Segal's in Beverly Hills wearing a $200 black long-sleeved shirt she hadn't paid for. But just when when we were about to accept her into the Winona Ryder School of Hard Knocks (as opposed to the more pedestrian Bai Ling School of Batteries), we read the article a second time and came across this disheartening detail: "She has previously been accused of swiping a disposable lighter from a garage last December and a wig from a sex shop last year." This got us thinking. While we know that we already made a Hedy Lamarr joke last week in reference to Bai Ling's arrest, we think it's high time to to compare and contrast Britney's falling and Hedy's fallen stars.

• Britney Spears is finally on the right path. Model Heidi Klum made her look a bit more sane by offering to fix all of Spears' problems for her, an offer that of course succeeded only in making Klum look as crazy as Dr. Phil and Courtney Love. Then Spears took another step down the path toward appropriateness and normalcy by going clubbing with her father. Everything was going so well that Spears decided the time was perfect to try on wedding dresses and steal a blouse. She ended up very glad about not wearing a bra.

Those gossip magazines, they seem to cover female celebrities a lot more than their male counterparts, noticed the Times. And in their defense, magazine editors bravely blamed their readers. "If Britney weren't a mother, this story wouldn't be getting a fraction of attention it's getting," said People's managing editor. The Times also gathered from him that "women are fascinated by the challenges facing a young mother." Women, said Fox News reporter Roger Friedman, are "more emotional and open;" US Weekly EIC Janice Min pointed out that female readers are "more sympathetic," in the Times's words, toward "young men in crisis." So gossip magazines are harsher on women because female readers sympathize more with women, and because female readers sympathize with men.

• Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel is, or will soon be, fucking Ben Affleck. Or at least he kind of wishes. [NYP]

• Britney Spears asked California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, through like 10 intermediaries, why he couldn't free her from the mental hospital like he did with Sarah Connor in the second "Terminator" movie, all because Maria Shriver was accidentally nice to her in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel and now Britney thinks they're all friends. [Gatecrasher]

Now that he's been with Britney Spears for a while and maybe secretly married her, Adnan Ghalib seems none too happy with his former comrades in the unruly paparazzi mob following Spears. Yesterday in Los Angeles, he was involved in some sort of incident with a photographer, then met with the cops, then delivered a stern lecture to the assembled camera hounds, captured in the video after the jump. "It sucks being a public figure, doesn't it?" one of the paps said in response to Ghalib's scolding. But perhaps Ghlaib knows he's being an obvious hypocrite. If his goal is to get closer to Spears and her remaining piles of cash, there could hardly be a better way than by, in one fell swoop, creating a shared enemy and disproving the notion that's he's trying to become her photo pimp. Adnan's lecture:

One day, probably not any time in the immediate future, we'll look back at the period known as Britney Spears's Turbulent Quarter-Century, and chuckle. A pushing-60 Britney will by then have squandered whatever fortunes she made as an adolescent musical-sex-doll, plus any additional income amassed from her 7-year engagement at Reno's Grand Sierra Indoor Water Park Resort and Casino. That will directly lead her to a stunning rejection of everything that came before:

Star magazine is positing that crazy, bewigged former (let's be honest) singer Britney Spears secretly married paparazzo main squeeze Adnan Ghalib when the two darted off to Mexico last month. But, Adnan is still technically married to his first wife, AzLynn Berry, so any marriage with Spears would be null and void. (But symbolically totally romantic). To that end, it's been rumored that Spears gave Ghalib $250,000 to give to Berry so she would hurry up already with the divorce proceedings. Gossip maven Ben Widdicombe calls this "the only logical reason" for Britney's sudden trip south of the border, which is sort of funny because at this point she could ride down the street on a flaming bicycle, followed by a small parade of koala bears and it wouldn't seem out of the ordinary. "Logical" is not a word that really ever factors into the Spears equation. [Daily News] After the jump, part one of an Entertainment Tonight interview with Ghalib.

The noble profession of documenting Britney Spears' every Starbucks run is, apparently, facing a crisis, as accusations are flying that some photo agencies are so desperate to get the best shot of Spears launching a frappucino at her camera-wielding tormentors that they're allowed themselves to be "infiltrated" by the Crips and Bloods. In response to reports about the ganging-up of his trade, X17's owner says that no real banger worth his colors can be bothered to chase the frequently hospitalized pop star around, and that the mainstream media ruffians protecting their red carpet turf are far more dangerous than any pap: "'They may dress like gang members with large pants and tattoos, but to say they're gang members right now, well, real gang members are not into Britney Spears,' said Frank Navarre, a Frenchman who owns the X17 agency. 'I think red carpet is worse. I used to do red carpet myself, and one guy broke my camera.'" [Rush & Molloy]

• Probably panicked that Britney Spears might, through some miracle, actually become a sober functioning human being, the paparazzi started heckling her and her parents, literally making high-pitched jungle animal noises. Some editors thought the paps were infiltrated by actual Crip and Blood gang members, as if that could somehow be worse than their actual behavior.

It sounds too ludicrous to be true, but unfortunately it is very real: financial news publisher TheStreet.com just launched a site that takes tabloid celebrity stories, gets your attention, and then segues into financial advice. The front page of the site, at MainStreet.com, recently included stories ostensibly about Shaquille O'Neal, Tom Cruise and Jason Biggs, but really about rolling over your 401(k), saving money on a motorcycle and buying a wedding ring. TheStreet.com cofounder Jim Cramer may have developed a taste for a large audience at his popular CNBC call-in show Mad Money, but this hardly the way to build one. The warmed-over celebrity news will not draw gossip hounds, while the financial advice would be better off on its own, for easy Googling when you need that sort of information. After the jump, how the site treated Heath Ledger's death, and other insane excerpts from this misguided mashup.

The writer who profiled Britney Spears for last week's Rolling Stone just cannot believe the audacity of Spears' handlers. One handler tried to sell her Spears access for $2 million, editorial control over her article and the right to name the cover photographer, the writer said on CNN today. This handler is called Klaus, and the Rolling Stone writer, Vanessa Grigoriadis, thinks he is "just really naive" and doesn't "understand the way that United States media works at this point." After the jump, Grigoriadis' full description of the cash demand and why she is, of course, dead wrong about the American media.

We can't remember the last time we actually bought a hard copy of Rolling Stone. But with all the buzz surrounding this issue's Britney Spears cover story, we found ourselves dashing to the newsstand first thing this morning and tearing through the issue as we drank our morning coffee. Needless to say, the piece does not disappoint. What follows are some of our favorite slices from Vanessa Grigoriadis' fascinating look of the person she describes as having "the most public downfall of any star in history."

Something for Britney Spears "manager" Sam Lutfi's new publicist to get right on: According to Blender, Lutfi met his best friend Danny Haines on MySpace, got Haines to give him X-rated pictures which he later sent to his family, borrowed $18,000 from him and never paid it back, expressed hope that Haines' sister would get "raped to death," and finally advised him to kill himself. Nice. [Radar/ Blender]

Remember that little tidbit about Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears that the The NY Daily News declared just yesterday to be "too vulgar" to print? Well, as everyone who wrote us this week to complain about our Sarah Silverman Is Fucking Matt Damon headline will attest, we're not above (or below) getting our occasional vulgar on. While the tale of Britney and Justin tale pales in comparison to the legend of the Butterscotch Stallion, we'll at least do you the service of burying the fingerlickin' details after the jump.

Some free PR tips for Britney Spears manager and tormenter Sam Lutfi: If your new publicist has a logo that looks like he stole it from "The Colbert Report," he is not legit. If your new publicist has an aol.com email address for professional use, he is not legit. If your new publicist bills his one-man shop as a "Worldwide Public Relations Company," he is not legit. And, especially, if your new publicist advertises himself as an "actor, model, and entrepreneur (C'est Cheesecake TM)," he is not legit. Then again, Sam Lutfi's not very legit either. They'll make great media together. After the jump, his new PR professional Michael Sands expounds on the circumstances of his hiring, and compares Britney's crazy medication troubles with those of his ex-wife. Pure class.

Bonnie Fuller, the salacious former editor of US Weekly and the woman responsible for the Star magazine revamp, is now trading in her pap card and getting all motherly toward the ailingest of ailing pop stars, Britney Spears. In a piece on the Huffington Post, Fuller is upset about Britney's treatment. She suggests that if Britney wasn't famous she never would have been released so soon. (Well, that's probably true.) A great injustice has been done to the bewigged pill popper, she argues, and someone must take action! "...message to Jamie and Lynne Spears: If you love your daughter, now get two 'neutral' conservators," she writes, "and since a hospital won't hold her, see if you can get a 100% Britney sympathetic psychiatrist/babysitter who can treat her." This is all pretty rich coming from the queen of the rags. Bonnie are you feeling pangs of guilt about this whole celebrity experiment? Or are you just looking for a new angle? After the jump, an interview with Fuller from last summer. [Huffington Post]

Why would Marc Jacobs personally invite K. Fed to his impossible-to-get-into show tomorrow night? Because he's the cleverest fame-whore of them all, that's why! With Britney making more headlines than ever but, um, unavailable for public appearances at the moment, Marc knows something the other designers don't: the sheer presence of Kevin Federline will catapault his name into the headlines during what has been an unusually slow Fashion Week. The kicker? The appearance happens on the same day as, you guessed it, Britney 's bombshell profile in Rolling Stone hits newsstands!