[Taking a cue from Laramie, WY, wing-clad citizens line the procession route for the funeral of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, killed in last Saturday's Tucson shooting spree. The wings are meant to block any potential protest. Photo: Getty]

In your odious Thursday media column: Russell Simmons has friends in low places, Virginia Heffernan's out at the NYT Magazine, Brandon Holley has literary plans for Lucky, and Demand Media will now take your money.

American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer and Star, is freshly emerged from bankruptcy, and already cutting costs with layoffs and mandatory unpaid furloughs. Now, we hear AMI's beleaguered employees are on the verge of total revolt.

Oprah consoled depression with the biggest mac 'n' cheese binge in history. Kelsey Grammer likes to wear women's panties. Johnny Weir realized he was gay while watching Pretty Woman. Keira Knightley is single. Thursday gossip eats its emotions.

[A man in Brisbane, Australia paddles to safety on his surfboard as the flooded Brisbane River peaked at just under 15 feet today. Image via Getty]

If a normal person finds a normal person's dead body on the side of the road in Los Angeles, that's a blurb in the police blotter. But if Peter Fonda finds a dead body, that's a TMZ post.

Facebook thinks it can become a trillion-dollar company, two sources tell Business Insider, or twice as valuable as Apple and Google combined. That will require very clever exploitation of private user data. But if anyone can do that, it's Facebook!

Julian Assange says he has loads of cables on Rupert Murdoch and Murdoch's News Corporation that will be automatically released if he meets an early demise. It's nice to see that the Wikileaks founder hasn't lost his melodramatic touch.

[Jesus might have died for our sins, but who is going to help stop the flooding in Australia that has gone on for days and resulted in nearly two dozen deaths? Image via Getty]

A 32-year-old man from Palm Springs, Calif., has been charged with making death threats against Washington state Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott over the tax cuts deal passed last month.

We should thank delightful Rep. Louie Gohmert, in a way, for bringing this post-Tucson spree of hastily conceived legislative proposals to its natural conclusion: He's drafting a bill that allows members of Congress to carry guns on the House floor.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has declared that the Taliban are losing in Afghanistan. No word on whether that means we're winning, or when the war will end. Oh, and he wants more troops.

America's most famous burlesque sister act, the Kardashians, will launch a Kardashian Kollection at over 400 Sears stores this August. Sounding Palinesque, Kourtney said, "There's a Sears right near our house." But have you ever been inside? Didn't think so.

After reading Julian Assange's infamous OKCupid profile, Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger has declared the Wikileaks founder a bitter, underminey seducer who will make his lovers as miserable as he is, and be tortured by them. You don't say.

Probably not. But it's fun to think about! The rapper/headphone entrepreneur told his 3.8 million Twitter acolytes to buy stock in a company called H&H over the weekend, causing a buying surge that earned him $5.2 million.

According to the number crunchers at Forbes, one-woman Vaudeville revue Lady Gaga will earn about $100 million in 2011 thanks to concerts, endorsements, and profits from her new album. But did they account for her considerable wardrobe budget?

Gay magazine The Advocate used its own formula to assemble a list of the most homotastic cities in America and published the results today. You may be shocked by which city is the gayest, and which ones don't even rank.

Howard Kurtz has quite a correction today! It seems that Howie mistakenly believed he was interviewing a Congressman, when in fact he was speaking to the Congressman's spokesperson. Weirder: Kurtz waited more than a month to correct the story. [Updated]

John Travolta sings show tunes to his new son. Kate Hudson is pregnant. Tia Mowry is pregnant. Olivia Munn's see-through panties are getting people worked up. Wednesday gossip is all babies, all the time, with a side of sex.

Day three of the Arianna Huffington Unsafe Airplane Blackberry-ing Scandal: in which Ellis Belodoff of Plainview, Long Island recounts how he yelled at the rich lady on her Blackberry, "What is wrong with you?!"