It's hard to read the Observer's profile of Taylor Momsen without comparing the Gossip Girl star to Miley Cyrus. Both celebrities are 15, and both must strategically handle the news media's desire, however subtle, to examine them as sex objects. The game is especially tricky for Cyrus, whose audience is heavily pre-teen and whose show lives on the Disney Channel. She must disavow racy photo spreads in the traditional media even as her underwear cell-phone pictures leak online. Momsen has an advantage: Gossip Girl is about teen sex, and high school kids otherwise acting like adults. So the actress, who plays Jenny Humphrey on the show, doesn't have to feign outrage when the Observer talks about her "coltish beauty," or says "her legs are epic, long and stretching out from here to forever," or runs a picture selected, it would seem, to illustrate the latter. The adult positioning also draws to the child star a bankable, cultlike adult following, as illustrated in the profile:

Sorry, celebrities, the paparazzi is everywhere now, because we are all paparazzi. Also, we can see through your disguises! The photo at left was snapped Saturday by "Malliser" at the All Points West music festival in Jersey City, where Radiohead played. Malliser and friend swear it's actress Marisa Tomei, next to some similarly-disguised person (who??). The photographer is from Brooklyn, so of course this ended up on a Tumblr. Maybe someone can tell Jimmy Kimmel about this nefarious Tumblr thing so he can yell at David Karp! [I Love Pat Kiernan]

Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner just confirmed to the Times that he's shrinking the once-groundbreaking magazine to a distinctly ordinary format. And already, in that same story, the magazine mogul has allowed himself to sound insecure about the change. "I myself was kind of torn about it," Wenner said. He's right to be worried. Rolling Stone's large format stirred a certain nostalgia. And not just among readers, as the Times noted, but also among a more important group: The celebrities who still trip over themselves to appear on the magazine's iconic cover, despite the fairly humdrum content within. That magnetic draw will surely be diminished now that the publication looks so thoroughly contemporary, and 1967 so very far in the past. After the jump, Wenner pulls off a similarly-self-defeating trick in a year-old Charlie Rose interview by saying the key difference between rollingstone.com and Facebook is that the latter is "kind of a teen thing."

"Then he suddenly stood up and said, 'Lemme go find out something, hold on' and, inexplicably, went to lunch." [LA Times]

And that doesn't include the cost of fact checking! " In addition to being the driving force behind one of the music industry’s top bands for nearly 40 years, the singer and songwriter has a personal comeback story to tell, having overcome a heroin addiction." [Crain's via Observer]

Mary-Kate Olsen WINS. Twice law-enforcement authorities have tried pressuring the dopey lil' actress into telling what she knows about the death of close personal friend Heath Ledger, and twice now she has successfully beaten them back — the only person connected to Ledger to successfully do so. Federal sources told first the Daily News and now the Post that U.S. prosecutors have withdrawn their investigation into the death of actor Ledger, forcing the Drug Enforcement Administration to drop demands to interview Olsen. That's a fairly humiliating retreat for an agency that just two days ago implied it would use a Grand Jury subpoena to force Olsen to tell what she knows after word leaked of frustration in its offices over Olsen's demands for immunity. Especially because the feds really did have a subpoena. Reports the News:

"It doesn't spoil a thing to say that [Tropic Thunder] is worth seeing for Mr. Cruise's performance alone, or that we hope this might usher in a new era for the strange, secretive actor." [Observer]

Harper's Bazaar's much-discussed photo spread of Tyra Banks as Michelle Obama is finally online, and my but is it ambitious. Also, cringey: Model-industry booster Banks is depicted behind the desk in a (poor) imitation Oval Office, in a strapless gown at a formal state dinner and even, as pictured, laughing at a newspaper story about fat white bitters with President Barry Hussein, presumably after making elitist love in Harvard sweatshirts. Wasn't it just yesterday that it was politicians acting like fools in hopes of stealing some celebrity buzz, rather than the other way around? Presidential candidates were appearing on Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show and even professional wrestling matches to promote themselves. Barack Obama always seemed the most aloof in this process, and now it's clear why: He has as much to offer the celebrity-industrial complex as it offers him. [Harper's Bazaar via Wonkette]

Remember how John McCain mocked Barack Obama by comparing the Democratic presidential candidate to Paris Hilton, implying both of them were vapid celebrities and royally pissing off Hilton's McCain-bankrolling family? It turns out Paris has a sense of humor about the whole thing, and made an actually-pretty-funny video about it for Will Ferrell's Funny Or Die. It's after the jump. And it's funny because Hilton implies she has a sophisticated knowledge of an important geopolitical issue LOL! Also, protocelebrities take note: This is a example of how you take some mildly negative PR and spin it so masterfully your image ends up better polished than ever.

Apparently we're now at the stage in the James Frey career trajectory where the once-disgraced writer can stop pretending he's sorry for lying in his memoir and on Oprah, because he's a bestselling author again now, and in case you forgot Norman Mailer once had his back, that's right God damned Norman Mailer. "He is beyond unrepentant," the Times of London writes. That's actually putting it mildly. In an interview with the paper, Frey basically promises to lie some more, punch everyone in the face and finish the bible like the second, ballsier coming of Moses.

The Associated Press now has its own law-enforcement source stating that Mary-Kate Olsen is demanding immunity before she will talk with federal agents investigating the January death of actor Heath Ledger, as the Post reported this morning. The immunity request is now all but confirmed. Olsen's attorney didn't bother to deny it in a statement addressing a number of other questions raised by the Post story, such as whether Olsen helped Ledger procure OxyContin:

In the heated days of confusion and mourning immediately following the January death of Heath Ledger, many of the actor's admirers loudly proclaimed it absurd to raise questions about the role played by the actor's friend Mary-Kate Olsen in his death and aftermath. New York police concluded their investigation into Ledger's death without even interviewing the elfish young actress, even though, as the Post repeatedly pointed out, she was told of Ledger's death before emergency responders and even though her bodyguards may have arrived at his apartment just before paramedics, who Olsen did not bother to call. Having stayed on the story, the Post today reports that federal drug agents are pressing Olsen hard to cooperate in their investigation into how Ledger obtained the powerful painkiller OxyContin without a prescription — and into what happened to the bottle:

"I think we need a change." [Post]

Have you had the traumatic experience of seeing Madonna without her makeup recently? The lower left thumbnail gives you a taste of the dreadful experience. But despite this sometimes ghastly visage, Madonna's face is considered something of a model for rich and vain women of a certain age, and New York magazine this month tracked down perhaps the most acclaimed sculptor of their flesh, Dr. David Rosenberg. Just to give you some idea of the pride he takes in his work: Rosenberg nearly weeps when he is informed that many divas have begun referring to one of his signature looks as "the Rosenberg nose." The key to his technique — and to what New York calls the "new new face" — is not the old stretching upward of the entire facial skin, but instead an under-skin lifting of the muscles of the lower face, preserving essential facial "architecture." A regimen of injections of fat and collagen and whatnot supplements this work by creating the appearance of baby fat. Even the young Olsen twins are maybe having some of this work done, the magazine artfully implies!

Just as we suspected, the Hilton family is pretty pissed they donated money to John McCain only to have him make their little Paris out to be some kind of trivial celebutard in an anti-Obama attack ad. Between Paris Hilton's parents and her grandpa, the family has donated close to $60,000 to McCain and a Republican party senate fund over the past few years. And yet they apparently got zero corrupting influence in return! What's the point of even being a Republican plutocrat? The Hilton patriarch has dispatched a series of angry telegrams to McCain headquarters demanding answers:

Ebay is not just for auctioning off books related to obscure literary feuds; it's also a good place for members of the working class to hustle mementos of the humbling moments when celebrities crossed their paths and acted like jerks. One item that you just missed bidding on: a receipt from an Atlanta-area restaurant signed by Outkast rapper Andre 3000. The meal cost $46.01. Andre's tip: $0. But the receipt sold for almost $15, so the waiter came out ahead. That said, let's segue into THIS: a look back at some other fabulous celebrity-related items that appeared on eBay in the recent past:

People magazine has won the heated bidding war for the new Brangelina baby pictures, according to a report (unconfirmed, so far) on JustJared.com, who puts the winning bid at "between $10 million and $15 million." Rumors of a $15 million payday for the tot photos surfaced almost two months ago. People was bidding against OK!-where publisher Richard Desmond was reportedly so determined to land the rights that he was leading the negotiations personally. If People really walked away the victor here, they will have succeeded in staving off (temporarily) OK!'s ominous ambition to corner the baby picture market. [JustJared]

Remember Anthony Pellicano, the thuggish Hollywood private eye recently convicted of racketeering and wiretapping? He worked frequently with attorney Bert Fields, Fields' celebrity clients and other lawyers at Fields' firm. And he reportedly worked for Tom Cruise. But now that Pellicano is lost to the justice system, Cruise, still represented by Fields, has a private investigator named Paul Barresi defending his interests. And Barresi just did a strange thing: He provided to the Daily News federal court papers accusing Cruise of helping lead misdeeds by the Church Of Scientology, including harassment of this lovely sort:

She'll embrace her status as a queer icon, show up at the GLAAD awards and even host the gayest flight into Australia, but D-lister and reality show star Kathy Griffin does not appear eager to jump into bed with Manhunt, the notorious site for convenient man-on-man hookups. The site was hoping Griffin might be willing to join a marketing event for their newer, slightly less naughty site, ManCam, in which men merely ogle one another via Webcam and, uh, so forth. But she's totally not returning their calls! So they're just going to go ahead and use her likeness in a ManHunt online ad banner anyway, thus getting some nice free advertising. Sure, she could sue, but then that would mean free publicity! The banner and an excerpt from a Manhunt email on Griffin after the jump.

In model-heiress Lydia Hearst's self-manufactured feud with Paris Hilton, Hearst positions herself as the more upscale socialite. Her sidelines constitute a "legitimate career," her poses those of a "supermodel" rather than the pedestrian kind and her family lineage is somehow more distinguished. Of course she's pretty much wrong in all regards about all that, but that doesn't mean she'll stop trying to make it true through endless repetition. So when the 23-year-old decided to flash some more skin (outside of bra-optional parties), she didn't do it in an endless series of nipple flashes, Paris Hilton style. She did it with her first lingerie campaign, for "upscale" brand Myla — and got coverage in the sorta-classier New York tabloid, the Daily News. Listen to how she says "ogle my body!" — and, optionally, ogle her body again via a remarkably stiff picture — after the jump.