Will the Times find another token conservative to fill Bill Kristol's shoes? Yes, duh. Tho editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal wouldn't say who!

Ben Widdicombe wrote his last Gatecrasher column for the Daily News last April. Three months later, he replaced Julia Allison as Star's gossip maven. Is he already leaving? [UPDATED BELOW: Yes.]

Both Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan and Washington Post columnist Gene Robinson had special dates with Barack Obama this week. Do their columns today reflect this new intimacy with the president-elect?

In 2005, Matt Taibbi wrote a takedown of NYT mouthbreather Tom Friedman's unique idiocy that remains the greatest thing ever written about the mustachioed private-jet-frequent-flyer. Now Taibbi has a new piece; top ten anti-'stache material.

Barack Obama had a lovely dinner with a bunch of creeps at head creep George F. Will's creepy house, and now they all love him. Larry Kudlow is in lurrrrve!

Repellent-to-a-humorous-degree Post columnist Andrea Peyser is an example of someone who, ironically, arrived at populism by way of xenophobia and overall distaste for mankind. Today she properly directs her venom at Graydon Carter's stupid school.

From the least surprising news ever file: Maureen Dowd flirted with the guy from the FX show Damages, which sums up everything about her, maybe?

Idiot manchild Jay Mariotti, who quit a highly paid job as a Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist in order to find work at one of these "web sites" he's heard so much about, has a job!

Professional loser Mark Penn—the strategist who can tell you exactly how to become disliked by each individual microsegment of the population—has a new book ad WSJ column. Let's talk about how stupid it is:

Bill Kristol's very first New York Times column ran on January 7, 2008. It seems like only yesterday! Thankfully that means his contract is now just about up.

Michael Sneed, Chicago's own Liz Smith, isn't letting the fact that she was revealed to be the preferred press mouthpiece of disgraced Guv Blagojevich stop her from continuing to weigh in.

Former newspaper mogul and current jailed columnist Conrad Black says that Michael Wolff's book about Rupert Murdoch was all wrong, and furthermore, that Conrad Black is a heroic innocent man:

Slate columnist and randy ex-governor Eliot Spitzer showed up at a Slate party last night at—get ready for this, guys—Happy Ending, a former rub-'n-tug spot. Oh, you! Then he gave this soulful quote:

Nick Kristof, the Times' most earnestly boring columnist, has started a Twitter feed. Finally. Here's the single most interesting thing he's said so far: "Here's my fave word of the week: 'leporine.' Apparently it means rabbit-like. Great word, no? I'll try sneaking it into a column. —ndk." Nick, you sly devil! I feel like I am literally standing on the set of All The President's Men.

Eliot Spitzer has a new job! John Koblin reports that starting tomorrow, the scandalized ex-guv is going to be writing a column for Slate called "The Best Policy." It will be about "the financial crisis and fixing financial markets and the economy generally," and will almost certainly be very informative (Spitzer was once a populist hero, remember!) and very boring. Because really, do you think Spitzer's going to run down his hooker stories (which is what everyone actually wants to hear) in Slate? He's saving that for the book. They should have gone after Ashley Dupre as a columnist instead. "THE SEX POLICY." It's a win-win. [NYO]

Times columnist Bill Kristol went on Fox back in June and told the world that this governor from Alaska named Sarah Palin would be the best Vice President ever! He loved her, very much, because she was a maverick. Five months later, she is a national joke, and he is a sad, sad man, trying desperately to salvage his credibility. "I met her for the second time in my life. I know we're supposed to be such great friends, but the truth is I've met her twice... I've spoken to her on the phone once. For all our great closeness," he tells The Observer, "I barely know her." Too late, Bill. You're all washed up! Since time immemorial the New York Times has kept its rich old conservative readers slightly satisfied with some token conservative voices in the Op-Ed section. For many, many years there was reliable old Bill Safire, the Nixon speechwriter, a member of the smart old educated class of Republicans who were able to write up support for disastrous policy implemented by the corrupt and incompetent with smart, almost plausible-sounding arguments. He left, replaced with John Tierney, a libertarian-leaning sort who didn't last long on the op-ed beat and now writes "researchers say a counterintutive thing" features instead. And there is David Brooks, a quietly doctrinaire Republican who fancies up his usual party line with armchair sociology. But Brooks broke with the party this year, calling Sarah Palin a cancer, leaving only poor, dumb, Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol, who tried to sell America on Sarah Palin, and ended up repeatedly embarrassing himself, over and over again, and losing John McCain his election. Now he just mumbles about hating the mainstream media, to all his mainstream media friends, in the pages of the New York Times. Already the vultures are wondering who'll replace him—you can be terribly wrong and stupid and remain a Times columnist indefinitely, but you must be terribly wrong and stupid in the service of the conventional wisdom. So Tom Friedman's Iraq columns get a pass, as does Maureen Dowd's constant stream of nonsense. But Kristol is no longer merely just a hack, he's a failed hack. No one bought his line this year. So maybe someone nutty and anti-Palin like, say, David Frum is next for the Affirmative Action Conservative Slot?

LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein used his blog yesterday for the entertaining purpose of viciously mocking Variety and its Hollywood fixture editor, Peter Bart. Mocking them for being poor! This column is awesome for the following reasons: because media outlets don't usually air their dirty laundry like this; because Peter Bart and Variety certainly deserve the mocking; and most of all because Patrick Goldstein seems totally unconcerned that his own paper does the same exact thing he criticizes Variety for, and that that very thing keeps him employed. Ha: Peter Bart wrote a column of his own (Headline: "Will fiscal funk trip kudo contenders?" WTF) bitching about the lack of Oscar-related ads from the studios in Variety. Patrick Goldstein appropriately tells him to shut it:

Breathy, doubletalking word-stringer Peggy Noonan knows how to explain the import and danger of Obamamania out to simple Americans: with football metaphors. Though she herself obviously doesn't watch football. "if he fumbles at this high-stakes time, more than a game is lost," she notes. "If Mr. Obama doesn't catch the pass and cross the goal line, it will mean this election marked a moment, not a movement." Are you feeling her, Red State middle Americans? She's speaking to you in a plebeian language you can understand. Try this: "There is joy to be had in being out of power. You don't have to defend stupid decisions anymore." See the benefit of having the black football fella win is that you can talk bad about him straight out, not just when you think your microphone is turned off. Peggy Noonan is morally and intellectually bankrupt. [WSJ]

One of the best parts of that juicy NYT story yesterday about all the infighting in the McCain- Palin campaign was the fact that a huge chunk of the story was given over to exploring who was leaking to sniveling conservative columnist Bill Kristol—a Times columnist! It's pretty unusual for a paper to start digging on its own columnist's confidential sources, but hey, it's Bill Kristol and nobody at the Times likes him, so they just went for it. That prompted some further review by the Daily Beast, which concluded, yep, Bill Kristol is basically just a lackey for political operatives:

New York Post attack columnist Andrea Peyser is a vocal fan of both cocks and pussies (but not whores). Why is it always about sex, Andrea Peyser? "With kabbalah, you learn how to turn on the 'light force' - kabbalah-speak for, say, taking out the garbage without expecting sex from your husband in return." Hm. I'm sensing a theme in your work, Andrea Peyser: