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• WSJ's Weekend Edition launches Saturday, with nearly 100 advertisers. [NYP]
• Will Bush's popularity meltdown hurt Fox News? Nope, Fox News will just be less Republican, bets The Tina. [WP]
• Arianna loves blogs, and Adam Penenberg loves Arianna, and it's all just so lovable. [Wired News]
• John Tierney says he's not a contrarian, which is contrary to what we expected he'd say. [Reason]
• The hangover continues from the worst merger ever, and Time Warner is now in talks to sell AOL to Microsoft. [NYP]
• Google gives Technorati a big fuck you, launching its own blog search engine. [PC Mag]
• Christopher Hitchens debates British MP George Galloway in Manhattan, and we can't figure what's going on — except that Hitch was boozing at Denton's pad, and trading limericks, till the wee hours. [Times]

The Reuters caption:

• Martha Stewart to launch fashion mag. Oh, the endless opportunities for orange-jumpsuit jokes. [NYP]
• New Orleanian Doug Brinkley, who made his pundit name on his pal JFK Jr.'s death, unsurprisingly signs first Katrina book deal. [MSNBC]
• Hearst and Hachette — gasp! — work together on an ad deal. [NYT]
• What's new about the new Paris Review? Um, what isn't? [NYO]
• Michael Kinsley leaves LAT editorial page after a little more than a year; no one was considerate enough to leave news of his firing in a Xerox machine so he could learn about it in advance. [NYT]
• Wenner Media redecorates, and Jann isn't happy with the paint colors. [NYO, second item]
• NYT, WP give each other sneak peaks of their front pages. Sputters E&P's scoopy Joe Strupp: "Are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? They'll see everything, they'll — they'll see the Big Board!" [E&P]
• ASME barely slaps The New Yorker on the wrist for Target single-advertiser issue, and crazy columnist in Chicago bursts a blood vessel. [CS-T]
• The lowest blow: In wake of Katrina, public dislikes Bush more than it dislikes press. [E&P]

• Are things as bad, business-wise, at Dow Jones and the Journal as you've heard they are? Yes. Yes they are. [NY Mag]
• Inc. mag looks at how it got sold. [Inc.]
• What will the Times of the future look like? Tabloidical, quite likely. [Ad Age]
• Once again, soft news beats hard news: Celeb mags see good newsstand numbers, and the newsweeklies don't. [Mediaweek]
• Jack Shafer hates TV news. [Slate]
• Simon Dumenco calls AMI chief David Pecker stupid. [Ad Age]
• Poppy Bush criticizes the media for picking on his son. [E&P]
• Coming to a Sirius receiver near you: Cosmo on the radio. [WWD]

Editor & Publisher points us to a choice Barbara ("The Old One") Bush quote from public radio's Marketplace over the weekend, about the New Orleans evacuees at Hoston's Astrodome: "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

The lesson of the weekend? That we were wrong. Way wrong.

Simultaneously:

• New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on local radio: "After 9/11 we gave the president unprecedented powers to take care of New York and those other places.... You mean to tell me that a place where thousands of people and thousands more people are dying, we can't figure out [how to get them help]?" We'd be pissed he's appropriating our disaster, but the thing is: The dude's completely right.

It's a tough week for all Americans. And it's a particularly tough week for braying Bush-apologist rightwing nutjobs — like Post columnist Andrea Peyser.

Of course we adore the Times — we tease because we love — but we usually skip right past the editorials, because they're boring. (We're bloggers; we like our opinions face-paced, sarcastic, and ideally obscenity-laced.) Which is why it was fun this morning to notice that the editorialists now hate Bush so much they can't even be stentorian any more.

The multifaceted terribleness of the hurricane is sad and breathtaking. Most of it, while truly awful, is at least comprehensible — we know hundreds are dead, we know tens of thousands are refugees, we know the levees are breaking and supplies are running out and things are getting worse and worse. What we can't quite get our heads around is this: New Orleans's mayor is saying the city will have to be abandoned for several months. An entire American city, evacuated. The mind boggles. It's apocalyptic, it's third-world, it's heartbreaking.

Some vetter from the White House Counsel's office is getting fired right about now, we imagine.

Yahoo! provides a certain screen-grabbing reader's homepage with thumbnails of the site's most-emailed photos. Her observation on visiting the site this morning?

Get ready for the Supreme Court battle royale to begin. The AP reported a bit ago that President W. will give a statement tonight announcing his nominee to replace Sandra Day, and he'll even be accompanied by said nominee.

· A few celebrities walked out when the band played "God Bless America" at Miramax's Oscar pre-party. [Page Six]
· Page Six on being disinvited to the Oscar parties: "It started to dawn on us reporters that we were like U.N. weapons inspectors. We knew the celebs were out there, but they were being moved around, out of sight." [Page Six]
· Salma Hayek on eating: "Listen, don't think I don't eat. I always eat. If I'm happy, I eat; unhappy, I eat. If I'm nervous, I eat. Not nervous, I eat. I eat alot." [Cindy Adams]
· Director John Waters thinks President Bush needs new writers: "I mean 'shock and awe?'...It sounds like one of my movies.'" [NY Daily News]
· Tom Wolfe's next novel "about college life" will be published next year. Tina Brown had her booker call around town, looking for "hot war photographers" for her talk show after the war in Iraq began. [The Word]

In case you missed Michael Moore's speech last night at the Oscars, A.O. Scott chronicles the events: "...Michael Moore, who won for best documentary for Bowling for Columbine, asked the four other nominees in his category to come up on stage with him. 'They are here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction, and we live in fictitious times,' Mr. Moore said.

Actress and uber-activist Susan Sarandon's mom, 79-year-old Lenora Tomalin: "I am a conservative. I voted for George W. Bush and I simply agree with most everything he has said...It's not that I'm pro-war. It's just that I think that I trust my government more than I would empathize with the government of Iraq." On Sarandon's activism: "That's a given. That's the way she thinks. That's what Hollywood thinks. We don't agree, but I respect hermore than she does me." The Reliable Source suggests that "surely Sarandon respects her mother's opinions": "Wanna bet?" she scoffs. One more peace rally and she's grounded for a month!
Susan Sarandon's rabid Republican mom [WaPo]

Tina Brown highlights a growing phenomenon that may be prompted by one too many AA meetings: the tendency to act "as if" nothing's wrong, both collectively and individually. (Recovering alcoholics are told to act "as if" they are "punctual or committed or hardworking or polite people.") In Tina's view, we're all acting "as if" the economy isn't going to get worse, President Bush will continue to act "as if" he's playing the hero's role in a badly-scripted western, and we'll all continue to act "as if," metaphorically speaking, wearing a Superman costume would allow us to fly. In the meantime, I'll act "as if" Tina's political commentary is as interesting as her sociological observations, if only to keep myself from falling asleep.
Bush is at the helm of one of the few businesses that still works: the US military [Times]

Floridian sex therapist Amy Demner on President Bush's "love code": "He learned his view of love and lust in a family filled with love, security, playing, and concern...He knew what it meant to belong. He saw parents who deeply cared for one another...In the sexual area, President Bush appears to be a man who would be able to connect intimately with another person very easily. He most likely would be able to be playful, spontaneous, passionate, and concerned for his partner's positive response. This is a man who aims to please."
The French Disconnection [Reliable Source - WaPo]