"Brooklyn in general is not a fun experience for me, because I look and act nothing like Zooey Deschanel." This according to the Twitter account of parallel universe First Daughter and MSNBC Chief Mental Fingerpainterist, Meghan McCain. Are you going to take this lying down, America's Dorkalicious Fantasy Girlfriend and/or the planet's Coolest City?
Larry Ellison doesn't much care if you know he sleeps with employees, fabricates advertisements, or taunts people with his wealth. But what the Oracle CEO doesn't want you to hear is a presentation from a guy he invests in and who worked for him for 13 years. Especially if Ellison has the power to cancel that guy's speaking gig, humiliating him in the process.
In your hot wet Friday media column: Keith Olbermann vs. the NYO, Instapaper vs. Business Insider, everyone in America hates the media, Pinch Sulzberger's birthday party, and Time International's new editor.
For a "despicable," "slimy," "scummy," "lousy," "irresponsible," "treasonous," "dying," "sweatshop" of a web site that you'd never invite to your child's birthday party, Gawker sure does supply a lot of material for Fox News! Last night, RedEye picked up our item on a forthcoming New York Times story about how Barack Obama haz a sad.
Has the AOL civil war descended into a sad, juvenile battle for WordPress admin privileges? An angry blog post was mysteriously deleted from the company's hotly contested TechCrunch blog, leaving "Page Not Found" at the top of its list of most popular posts.
This morning, Conde Nasties and passersby on 42nd St. were greeted by Scientologists handing out copies of the new issue of their Freedom magazine—which is a spoof of The New Yorker. Stick it to the man, Scientology!
In your resplendent Monday media column: an NYT ombud feud, News Corp loses its education contract, NY1 rules, government spending can't save print media, and the world's oldest grudge against Romenesko.
Hey look! The good folks on Fox and Friends did a segment on Gawker this morning, for no apparent reason at all, claiming (falsely!) that our traffic is down 75%.
Sean Parker, immortalized in The Social Network as a hard-partying playboy, was up early this morning. Around 6 am, the former Facebook president posted a quote to his profile concerning "the deaths of our enemies." It's hard to escape the conclusion that he was referring to Steve Jobs. (Update: Parker responds to this story below.)
Droopy renaissance man Zach Braff wrote a new play called All New People that's currently running off-Broadway, and New York Magazine's theater critic Scott Brown really did not like it. His review was scathing, but hilariously so! Everyone loved it! Well, almost everyone. Braff's friend, Scrubs and Cougar Town guru Bill Lawrence, is not happy about it at all.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have responded to Larry Summers, the former Harvard president who earlier this week said of his first encounter with the litigious dyad (famously dramatized in The Social Network), "One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o'clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they're looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an asshole. This was the latter case."
Larry Summers, the loudmouth former Treasury Secretary, knows from blowhards. So when he says Facebook losers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were some of the most arrogant "assholes" he met at Harvard, that's really saying something.
In your sweltering Wednesday media column: the NYT repays Carlos Slim, the global advertising market is back, a columnist is canned for plagiarism, a book review feud, and the media's most ineffectual lawyer says goodbye.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in the process of writing rules to protect manatees, the fat monsters who occasionally get lost and dominate media coverage for weeks, from boating and other "activities" that constantly kill them in Kings Bay, Florida. So, is the local Tea Party chapter okay with this? Ha ha, no, not at all.
Last week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie quietly used his line-item veto powers at the last minute to cut about $1 billion in Democratic spending from the state budget, items which state Senate President Stephen Sweeney says were conditional to his support for the deal. Sweeney, in response, has been calling Christie a "mean old bastard," "rotten bastard," "bully" and "punk" whom he wants to "punch... in his head." This must be doing serious damage to New Jersey's reputation as the most polite state in the union.
