Whenever he's had a glaring problem in his business, Harvey Weinstein — legendary manipulator of the press — has always been a master at deflecting attention away: No Oscars recently? Just look at how much money the lowbrow genre films his brother Bob have been raking in! No big genre successes? Well, look at our home video business! The home video business is struggling? Well, we've got an Oscar film coming up! The cycle can be repeated over and over, but financial facts always trump spin. And today, the Weinstein Co. laid off 24 of its employees, 11% of its total staff, according to the New York Post, in what will only provide more chum in the water for those not-so-quietly rooting for the final downfall of the Weinsteins.The reason cited today was, of course, "the economy." But all of the bright spots the Weinsteins once pointed to at their company are dimming. The biggest potential break-out movie on this year's slate was Zack and Miri Make a Porno starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks. As a Kevin Smith film, it's done fine since opening over Halloween weekend, with just over $27 million at the box office. But that's nowhere near the kind of return they'll need to convince tight-fisted investors to pump more money into TWC. Their cash-generating Project Runway is tied up in a nasty law suit that will keep it from returning to the air any time soon. And the boring side of the business, the 70% stake in straight-to-video distribution arm Genius Products, is now literally a penny stock, closing on Friday at 4 cents per share, valuing the whole operation, which they once touted as a potential billion-dollar enterprise, at less than $3 million. The Weinsteins are running out of lifelines. But they still provide colorful stories. On Wednesday, some people at the Weinstein Co. were told to clean out their offices because a "special guest" would be coming through on Friday. Those same people learned this afternoon that it was just a ruse to speed their exit when they were told they were getting the ax.

Are you a horrible camera flash-stained, fraying-at-the-edges tabloid media darling who mourns the loss of the recent American rococo decade? Is everyone being poor and complaining all the time just too much for you? Well worry not, dear inexplicably financed friend, because Dubai is waiting for you! Oh you know about crazy Dubai, don't you? Unlike this ailing and needy nation, the Arab Emirate is flush with sandy money and crazy man-made islands and, ooo, brand-new gaudy hotels! Like a beacon or a lighthouse calling to them out of the icky dark, American celebrities who had it better when the world was gold showed up in droves for the huge, $20 million dollar opening gala for the new Atlantis Palms megaresort in Dubai this week. Look who was there partying while we back here in the home country hopped boxcars and ate cold soup thickened with sawdust: Cocaine-snazzled actress Lindsay Lohan, who is now a gay person dating a gay woman who deejayed at the bash. Odious "actress" and model Mischa Barton (who, OK, was born in England, but she made her money here). Tax-dodging half-vampire Wesley Snipes. Too-bored-to-ever-know-where-she-is fashion plate Mary Kate Olsen. I guess things here in the patriotic old US of A got a bit too messy for them, a bit too elbow-greasy. So they flit on over to some twirling, towering desert city of steel and glass where the champagne still flows and the hotels are tacky and people still have the energy to celebrate it all. Fair-weather Americans if you ask me. While the country burns—literally and figuratively—these folks spent how much on dresses (and, um, banana-yellow suits in the case of Mr. Snipes), to go fete it up in the Middle East and had the audacity to smile?? Well I hope they like it over there in Terrorist Disney World, because they aren't allowed back here. All images via Getty

• Michael Jackson is a secret Muslim who is actually called Mikaeel, meaning angel of Allah, after the pop star rejected the name "Mustafa," which means chosen one. In a few days Jackson will appear in London court, where an Arab sheikh is suing him for seriously breaching a multi-million-dollar contract. Related? Who knows. The headline? "The Way You Mecca Me Feel." [Sun]

• Rosie O'Donnell, contradicting Barbara Walters' rosy description of relations on The View: "I'm not saying they loathe each other, but the fact of the matter is, there was not a lot of camaraderie off camera." [LAT]

It sounds like a fun night for Barry Diller: Closeted magazine Details put on a party for Milk, a movie about the first openly gay man elected to office in California, and the InterActive Corp. chairman was in attendance. Designer Marc Jacobs was there with his boyfriend, as was Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford, chatting, for some reason with Taylor Momsen. Topping off the evening quite nicely, fashion executive Diane von Fursternberg "invited Diller... back to her place," according to Page Six, along with designer Valentino Garavani and actress Marisa Berenson. For dinner, of course. Which was awfully generous, considering that von Furstenberg is Diller's wife. Officially, at least. As Diller knows well, mergers take quite some time to integrate, and some components just never mesh at all.

After two years as a reporter at the Portland Oregonian, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger III will return to New York to work at his family's Times, Portland alternative paper Williamette Week is reporting. Sulzberger wouldn't comment for the paper, but his return to New York appears at first glance unrelated to staff cuts at the Oregonian. So what's the 28-year-old son of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (pictured) up to? In all likelihood, trying to help to stabilize not only a faltering newspaper company but a ruptured family.

• Anne Hathaway's new actor boyfriend "went after all the young heiresses" when he was at Brown University, which makes him as terrible for her as jailed fraudster Raffaello Follieri, according to Page Six's tipster. [P6]

Barack Obama, during the Democratic primaries, cited as influential to his thinking the book "Team Of Rivals," about Abraham Lincoln's opponent-stocked cabinet. It would appear this was more than mere campaign puffery: Obama's former presidential rival Hillary Clinton has accepted an offer to join the president-elect's cabinet as Secretary of State, according to a report in Britain's Guardian, carried on the front of Drudge Report. Rather than a thorny problem outside of the Obama administration, in the senate, Clinton will now be on the team, and focused on international problems where political disagreements with the president are less likely to erupt into public view. Of course her appointment could still go spectacularly wrong.

Just because Treasury Dept. Bailout wonderboy Neel Kashkari gets to play with $750 billion in taxpayer money doesn't mean he actually has a good job. He came in looking peppy enough to bore holes in a taxpayer's forehead with only the power of his laser eyebeams; now, he's haggard. His eyes are dazed, plaintive even, and he's putting on classic stress-related weight under his chin. Congressmen yell at him. Old high school teachers talk shit about him. Internet jerks mock his awesome senior yearbook page. And he's really just a front man, taking all the heat for Hank Paulson's decisions and the mistakes of a million greedy Wall Street traders before him. We feel more sympathy for him than any other Ferrari-loving overconfident Republican ski bum Wharton grad in America. Keep on truckin, Neel.

Big ups to everyone who made it out to VH1 Classic Rock Autism Celebrity Bowl Off at Lucky Strike Lanes last night. You can browse a gallery of them here, a Malta Summit of Z-lister statesmen and royalty including Corey Feldman, Bachelorette dumpee Jesse Csincsak, and Gretchen Bonaduce and Tiffany—posing in the same photo. (Denis Leary couldn't make it, but sent along a message saying that "knocking down pins with a big heavy ball is about as backwoods retarded as your stupid, lazy-ass kids.") But it's attendee Billy Morrison who most caught our eye, less for what we now know are his musical contributions to The Cult and Camp Freddy, but rather for channeling the unmistakable essence of a certain superproducer headshot worshipped 'round these parts like a Shroud of Defamer Turin. Click for your full, glorious view of what Grazerhead hath wrought. [Photo credit: FilmMagic]

Henry Blodget, the Wall Street analyst returned to journalism, wrote that Michael Lewis' (last?) Portfolio article on short-seller Steve Eisman and the collapse of Wall Street generally is "pure pleasure from start to finish." It's true; it's the sort of piece that will keep you up late, assuming you're remotely interested in the ongoing collapse of the modern financial system. But the article's most compelling section deals not so much with finance as with the eternal tension between writer and subject, i.e. fucking over your sources. '

Right before he was busted on fraud charges, Rafaello Follieri decided to go house shopping with celebrity girlfriend Anne Hathaway. They wanted four stories: the first two controlled by Follieri, for his con-meetings and fancy con-parties, the top two under the charge of Hathaway, the actress told In Touch. But now Follieri is in jail,on his way to prison, far from his dream-home fantasy. There's poo and rats everywhere, and the Italian high-lifer is complaining, via his lawyer. The Smoking Gun has the documents:

Jean-Claude Van Damme has always expressed himself by using the, how you say, the kicking? The kicking and the doing the splits? But now that he has the weirdly thoughtful meta-meditation JCVD in the offing, the Muscles from Brussels has been making the American press rounds, attempting to beat the English language into submission like it was Dolph Lundgren's high-cheekboned, Aryan face. We've already enjoyed the actor's "fruit-opening" secret to acting, but let's all marinate in his latest, greatest interview (with BlackBook) and attempt to figure out just what the hell he's saying. Join us, won't you?

Is Matt Drudge completely over in the wake of his ill-advised hyping of pro-McCain propaganda?If you're even bothering to ask the question, the answer is self-evidently "No," it can always be argued. It was thus inevitable that someone — Slate's Jack Shafer, it turns out — would emerge to swat down the greatly exaggerated reports (from Media Matters and so forth) of Drudge's demise as an influential blogger. He works too hard and has drawn too much traffic to go away so easily, Shafer argues:

Starbucks may be awful at traditional advertising but the company seems to be just ingenious at tricky guerilla marketing campaigns. Witness its big election-day coffee giveaway: It was a massive PR victory for the company. Starbucks spent maybe $350,000 on a single ad during Saturday Night Live, then kicked back and watched as the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Newsweek etc. gave the promotion tons of free press. And the cost of the coffee? Oh that's the best part: It was practically free! Reports Ad Age:

What's the deal Sarah Palin? Is Alaska too small-time for you to bother dolling up your hair all nice like you did for the media elites? The former Republican VP nominee's locks are, in case you didn't notice, way messy since she got back to Alaska; see the photos above, taken at her Anchorage gubernatorial office and at the Anchorage airport. Why is this terrible thing happening and how do we stop it from destroying us all?

Britain's Guardian profiled Jared Kushner, and while the Observer owner makes some positive noises about his company, the salient facts are as follows: After two years and a purported 40 percent revenue increase, the paper is still losing about $2 million per year. Kushner said he is " definitely scared about newspapers" and compared the industry to "a falling knife." And despite having Ivanka Trump on his arm, Kushner was recently turned away from fading nightclub Bungalow 8:

Barack Obama and his "good bride" Michelle are set to meet the First Family at the White House Monday. This will be unavoidably awkward, what with Obama having spent the last two years talking about how terrible the Bush Administration has been and all. It certainly doesn't take the edge off things that Bush seemed deathly afraid to touch That One at their first meeting four years ago. Fox News tracked down the relevant passage in Obama's second memoir, the Audacity of Hope:

These are the men and women Barack Obama assembled today to advise him on how best to fix the cratering economy. They are a largely respected group, and though they ain't perfect—so many CEOs and so much Larry "Women Be Unable to Learn Math" Summers!—they are certainly more reassuring than the ideologues and incompetents our last guy surrounded himself with. We've identified them for your benefit and their brief bios are below.

Sure, Kendra Wilkinson's brand of well-endowed spunk might not go over so well with Tom Brady or Hugh Hefner's new, face-kicking twins, but this Girl Next Door alumna only has eyes for the man she's supposedly been seeing since August, football player Hank Baskett. Now, Baskett has popped the question, and only E!'s typically incomprehensible Ted Casablanca has the story of how it went down: