First, director Spike Lee criticized Clint Eastwood over the absence of black soldiers in his WWII epic Flags of Our Fathers. Next, Eastwood pointed out that the flick is about the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima, which was done by white soldiers, adding that "A guy like him should shut his face." But Lee insists on keeping his face and mouth quite open, casually accusing Eastwood racism and calling him "an angry old man." Says Lee, "First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either. He's a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn't personally attack him. And a comment like 'a guy like that should shut his face'-come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there."

The Guardian runs an outrageously satisfying interview with Clint Eastwood today, in which he was asked to address comments made at Cannes by his perennially malcontented, bullhorn-wielding peer, Spike Lee. In them, Lee suggested Eastwood ignored African-Americans' contributions to the Allied cause in Flags of Our Fathers. (The exact quote: "There were many African-Americans who survived that war and who were upset at Clint for not having one [in the films]. That was his version: the negro soldier did not exist. I have a different version.") And while "a guy like him should shut his face" will undoubtedly emerge as the rant's most pull-quoted phrase—and deservedly so, being eight perfectly chosen syllables that manage to encapsulate everything we love about the shoot-first, dump-the-body-later Eastwood mystique—there's much else to savor in the permagrizzled auteur's verbal swat-down:

A couple of weeks ago, black filmmaker Spike Lee criticized white director Clint Eastwood's World War II films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima for not having any black soldiers, saying, "In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist." Today Britain's Guardian publishes an interview in which Eastwood hits back, and you can practically hear the director peeling off lines like "A guy like him should shut his face" in his low, rough Dirty Harry voice. On to Eastwood's trash-talking:

Looking for a decent excuse to advance his long-simmering feud with Rupert Murdoch and to do a weird Australian/pirate accent, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann seized upon the words of a former News Corp. insider, who claimed in one of our posts this morning that Murdoch fired Jane Friedman from HarperCollins because she canned powerhouse publisher Judith Regan in late 2006, and also because she squashed Regan's OJ Simpson book project. The source also claimed, tangentially and outlandishly, that Fox News chief Roger Ailes will soon be fired as well for his own role in the Simpson book fiasco. Predictably, this amused Olbermann to no end. For the crime of going to bat for the OJ book, Olbermann named Murdoch today's "worst person in the world," an honor previously bestowed to Fox News screamer Bill O'Reilly. He then did a killer Murdoch imitation that will surely put to rest those allegations that he's totally crazy. Clip after the jump.

Ruh roh. A new generation of New York journalists have already begun to turn on one another. After a reporter from the Columbia Spectator named Alexandria Symonds wrote a nasty couple of sentences about Amanda Lorber, editor-in-chief of Cypress Bay High School's The Circuit and star of the MTV reality series The Paper, she got totally Lorbered in an angry email that Amanda sent in response. Go Amanda! Now friends of Symonds are out for revenge against writer Molly Jane Rosen, who originally published Lorber's snappy missive on Daily Intel.

Every summer the Hamptons plays host to any number of absurd feuds between extremely moneyed and extremely territorial neighbors. Christopher Clark, heir to the W.G. Clark Construction Co. fortune, inaugurated the bickering season on Saturday when he called the East Hampton Village Police to complain about all the cars illegally parked outside the mansion of his neighbor, Jana Partners hedge-funder and Forbes 400 listee Barry Rosenstein, who was throwing a birthday party for his 9 year-old daughter. After the po-po showed up, party attendees including Allure editor Linda Wells and designer Nicole Miller had to rush to re-park their cars in the Rosensteins' driveway so they wouldn't be ticketed. Adman Jerry Della Femina had a supporting role in this farce, too, because Crane's wife, Samantha, called the cops on him the night of the parking incident because his son was having an overly rowdy party. So the final tally for the evening: two calls to the cops, three sets of livid neighbors, untold numbers of modestly inconvenienced party guests, and zero offenses legitimately worthy of indignation or police intervention.

Last month, Page Six ran an item about a sex tape featuring Bam Margera Bam-ing the fiancee of radio shock jock Opie. Opie said the whole thing was false, and offered $100,000 to anyone who could produce the tape. A couple of weeks later the Post ran a retraction of the item—but laid the blame at the feet of Steppin' Out editor Chaunce Hayden, who they said gave them the bad info in the first place. Well Chaunce Hayden, unrepentant media whore, wouldn't let such a thing pass without turning it into a feud! And he helpfully forwarded on the snippy emails between himself and Page Six boss Richard Johnson. Watch out for flying spittle!

N+1 founder and sad young literary man Keith Gessen sat down for a Big Think interview last week. He touched on everything from "Dating as a Historical Phenomenon" to "Is political writing political activism?" But the only bit I was curious enough to watch was his response to the question, "Why does Gawker hate you?" According to Gessen, it's because Gawker types once read a lot of books, then we gave up on the value system of books, but we're wrong and we will lose! I don't know, man; I just think it's annoying how much you talk about Harvard. The full clip of this latest volley in New York's most frivolous cultural clash, below:

Rupert Murdoch's handmaidens over at the New York Post this morning jumped into a feud between their Fox News shouting head Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC ranter Keith Olbermann. The tabloid's gossip page ran an item dredging up various minor controversies involving Olbermann dating back to his ESPN days, up through an alleged spat between Olbermann and fellow MSNBC personality David Gregory last Tuesday over camera time. It then insinuated Olbermann might soon explode and leave his network. The warmed-over gossip was clearly meant as cover fire on behalf of O'Reilly, a fellow News Corp. soldier, whose feud with Olbermann is detailed in the Washington Post today. In a nutshell:

We take a moment now to honor the memory of the two biggest bitches in Hollywood history—that would be Bette Davis and Joan Crawford—whose man-swiping, lesbian-overture-rebuffing, Oscar-campaign-sabotaging exploits provided the behavioral template for generations of shock starlets to come. Today's Daily Mail provides a highly engrossing and detailed account of their lifelong rivalry, its poisonous roots stemming of course over ownership of a man—in this case, actor Franchot Tone. (He might not look like much, but trust us—this guy was totally the Joel Madden of his day.) It all came to a head on the set of the 1962 sleeper thriller that would offer both women not only an unlikely comeback, but all the near-fatal accident-rigging they could handle:

Facebook has shut off access to Google's new Friend Connect, citing privacy issues, saying that the service "redistributes data" in ways that users don't "expect or understand," according to a blog post by Facebook developer Charlie Cheever. Google Friend Connect collected and displayed information available through Facebook's tools for third-party web developers to use on their own sites. Funny, Facebook hasn't had a problem with tracking users on third-party sites in the past, but then Facebook just launched a similarly named tool, Facebook Connect.

Click to viewWe really take no pleasure in informing you that two of our idols—early tickle-machine adopter Howard Stern and top-heavy country legend Dolly Parton—are currently at war, but such is the case. To get you up to date, last week, Stern broadcast edited portions of her self-narrated audio book to form several beyond-filthy phrases. (Like, seriously: NSFW. This is the kind of stuff you imagine hearing at a 4 a.m. "Aristocrats" session around Bob Saget's jacuzzi after a night of Tuaca shots and blow. As such, it's hilarious.) Parton has had a listen, and released this statement in response:

Reading the latest in the spat between Wired's Epicenter blog and Michael Arrington over the Washington Post's deal to syndicate TechCrunch articles and the ethical propriety of the TechCrunch editor's investments in startups his blog covers, I noticed that the post was in the category "ButtMunch." The latest post states that "We have nothing against Arrington," but the tag originated last week in a post that accused TechCrunch of pilfering a story angle related to Steve Ballmer's continued tenure at Microsoft in the wake of the Yahoo deal.

Struggling chipmaker AMD has added a new allegation to the company's antitrust complaint against rival chipmaker Intel. In a 108-page document filed in federal court, plaintiff AMD accused defendant Intel of paying manufacturers like Dell not to use AMD processors, citing internal emails and other documents which were turned over through the discovery process in the case. AMD has been struggling, having laid off thousands in the last few months. CEO Hector Ruiz, pictured here, is expected to make a major announcement today in Austin, Texas, possibly splitting up the company into separate chip-design and chip-fabrication businesses.

President Bush's parents George and Barbara just want what's best for their WASPy descendants, particularly on the occasion of the wedding of their beloved, dignified granddaughter Jenna. That's why they don't want David Lauren, son of Ralph Lauren, to attend. See, David has been dating Jenna's cousin Lauren Bush for three whole years, and still hasn't proposed marriage. "Where's the ring, David?" one source near the family told the Daily News. Also, he's an ancient 36 and she's an innocent 22. And, no doubt worst of all for the patrician Bushes, David Lauren is a Jew, and his Jewy-ness might infect precious Lauren:

While promoting her new memoir Audition, famous interviewer and Dick Van Patten impersonator Barbara Walters went on the Oprah show and dished about affairs with senators, adultery, and formerly obese woman Star Jones. She said that Star was "so obese she could barely walk onto The View set." Ouch! And, true! Barbara then went on to confess that, yes, everyone was lying about Star's gastric bypass, respecting her wishes to pass off her sudden, enormous weight loss as the happy result of Pilates and dieting. Fair enough! The truth comes out! But, ruh roh, Star is of course a crazy person and very angry about this. Her nasty "shut up, old lady" response (from Us), plus video of the Barbara/Oprah interview, after the jump.

"During the planning for the [Costume Institute Gala], when honoree Giorgio Armani suggested Eric Clapton as the entertainment, [Vogue editor Anna] Wintour immediately said no. 'It made you think maybe he once rejected her,' said a source. Instead, the hirsute cast from the revival of Hair performed tunes which had nothing to do with the evening's 'superhero' theme." [Post]

Rich Jernstedt, the chief marketing officer of the massive PR firm Fleishman-Hillard, emails us to explain why, exactly, someone at his firm had the bright idea of mocking Fox News as a nasty, bedbug-infested den of disease, and offering Fox guests a free de-lousing in order to get publicity for a pest control client. Rich, Rich, you don't understand: we're with you on this one. Fox News is a nasty, bedbug-infested den of disease. And we like to see a PR firm uncharacteristically attack a powerful media outlet. We're hoping for a full-on war here! But, reading between the lines of Rich's email, it sounds like Fleishman has done some serious groveling since its CEO got mocked by Fox on-air in retaliation last week. His full email about "our friends at FOX," below:

Will cable network Lifetime ruin reality fashion television forever when it takes over Project Runway from Bravo later this year, de-snarking the show on behalf of overearnest spinsters and partnering with a third-tier fashion magazine? Bravo is working hard to make sure it doesn't have the chance. First it sued to stop the show from moving. Now Bravo owner NBC Universal has cut a deal with Runway's longtime executive producers for new shows. The deal would presumably enable Bravo to create something very similar to Runway if its lawsuit fails, assuming the poached producers never signed anything that would prevent a Runway copycat. In any case, the producers are definitely done with their old show. Reports the Wall Street Journal:

Singer M.I.A., featured in the ads for designer Marc Jacobs' spring collection: "The whole time I was doing that campaign I was like, 'Does Marc Jacobs know who I am?' He didn't let me into his parties and stuff six months before.... I have my own label now, which is the only thing I've been wearing recently." [WWD]