Remember the story of the terribly racist "humor" column in the Hamptons Independent last week? It upset famed blogger Alec Baldwin! Baldwin wrote about the column earlier this week (and then again!) as an example of "how the Obama ascendancy is playing out in Small Town America." Leaving aside the fact that the Hamptons are "small town America" only if you are a time traveler from the 17th century, the column was idiotic and well worth piling on. BUT! Maybe Alec had an ulterior motive for singling out this particular piece of regrettable small-market bullshit for a very public flaying! Maybe Alec has some personal beef with the gentleman that wrote the column—the paper's editor, Rick Murphy. Maybe because Baldwin is involved with the East Hampton Democrats, who don't particularly get along with Murphy! Maybe Murphy mocked Alec's letters to the editor! And maybe Rick Murphy's wife left a long comment to that effect at HuffPo—a comment which mysteriously failed to appear! After the jump, Alec Baldwin's "Small town" Hamptons intrigue.

Blogging away over at HuffPo, author Erica Jong uses the joyous occasion of her grandson's bris today to complain about how he'll grow up with an Asian fetish and end up marrying Sandra Oh. No, seriously. Because they are going to cut off little Darwin's foreskin, he will become obsessed with big-titted chiksas. And black ladies! "Either they marry you and run around with Diana Ross or Beyonce or Naomi Campbell," Jong explains, "or they marry Sandra Oh or Lisa Liu or Yoko Ono and she converts." G-d forbid! All because they're still obsessed with how, when they were a couple days old, a scary old man took a scissors to their manhood. Someone's bitter! And basically awesome! (Jong, who married an Asian man many moons ago, knows from what she speaks.) [HuffPo]

Thanks, health and public policy journalist Maia Szalavitz, for finally writing some Heath Ledger News We Can Use. Her service-y piece for HuffPo is called "What We Can Learn from Heath Ledger's Death: Don't Mix Downs!!!" In a perfect world, it would run in the crappy health section of every major Sunday paper, instead of "TEARFUL CHILD THANKS DEAD ORGAN DONOR" or whatever. Here's how to avoid dying like Heath Ledger:

23/6 is the political satire website from the Huffington Post and IAC. You know, sort of an Onion for the crowd that goes to College Humor for the biting wit. Now's your chance to get the sure-to-be-valuable commemorative 23/6 t-shirt! Look how excited one recipient is:

Ashleigh Banfield, who used to be a "real" TV journalist and has even probably won some awards, would like you to know that she still cares very much what former professional football player and acquitted wife-murderer OJ Simpson does with his time. Simpson is currently in a Las Vegas jail for reasons unknown. Banfield was fired by MSNBC in 2004 for criticizing Fox News back when Keith Olbermann's ratings were terrible. [HuffPo]

Yesterday, Fox News reported, repeatedly, that former Democratic consultant and current CNN talking head Paul Begala was going to join the Hillary Clinton campaign. He wasn't going to do this thing, but they reported it anyway. Begala emailed his "friend" Major "Square-Jawed" Garrett to correct the story. Garrett promised to take Begala's denial "under advisement." Then continued reporting it, only with a few extra made-up details. Then Hillary won the election and everyone forgot about it except Paul Begala, who angrily wrote a "blog" about it at the HuffPo. Their email exchange, below. [HuffPo]

GQ sent supermodel Naomi Campbell to interview Hugo Chavez. Hugo says Fidel Castro is "the most stylish world leader." Ahmadinejad: snubbed. HuffPo offers: "Keep reading -OR- See pictures of Naomi Campbell's bikini beach vacation."

According to her HuffPo bio, "Linda Keenan worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN. Before that, she worked as a writer/producer for Bloomberg TV." Now she's a mommyblogger. Which makes her more than qualified to present a series of amusing blind items about childish behavior by famous television newsanchors. After the jump, we solicit your guesses and present a couple of ours.

Bonnie Fuller is on a perverted and desperate hunt for men who have had sex with noted hero actor Tom Cruise! For reasons known only to the American Media Inc. editorial director, she is solely searching for "Tom Toppers." ("Top" is a "gay slang" phrase for "the active partner in homosexual intercourse.") My stars, woman! How much further into depravity and sadness can the already-invasive tabloid media delve? STAY TUNED.

Patrick Waldo, the Huffington Post's video guy, is also an out and proud vegan. Vegans are people who don't eat or use anything that came from animals, so obviously they hate Thanksgiving, the holiday that celebrates our Puritan forefathers' victory over the savage turkeys of The New World. Vegans refuse to exploit animals in any way except to use them to try to make the rest of us feel bad for wanting some honey in our hot toddy and wanting our hot toddy in a leather mug. So yesterday Mr. Waldo wrote a little HuffPo Blog about how he took a trip to a very special kind of turkey farm.

AMI EVP Bonnie Fuller does some ethical backflips to justify the redeeming value of Star magazine and its ilk in a HuffPo blog post: "Now, gossip high priestess Liz Smith wrote in her November 13 column that "celebrity madness fueled by instant technology" is her top choice for Time magazine's "person" of the year. And I have to second her choice." Whoa, way to bite the feeding hand! "But while Liz may agree that celebrities and celeb newsweeklies like Star serve the purposes of entertaining us, informing us about popular culture, fashion and style," —wait, what?—"I bet not even she understands that celeb mommies play an all-important role as guilt-evaporators." She goes on to tell her "frazzled compatriots" to "give yourselves permission to pat yourselves on the back for a change. You may not be the perfect mom, but you ain't Britney." But where are we to turn to expiate the guilt we feel over reading Star? [HuffPo]

Should striking WGA members really be writing on the internet over at HuffPo—in other words providing free content for new media? We say no, mostly because the majority of the striking writers blogging over there are so God-awful boring compared to the drama on the streets of Hollywood. [HuffPo]

Here's HuffPo's Rachel Sklar on making friends down in Boca at the American Magazine Conference: "We're pleased as punch to report that [Portfolio blogger] Jeff [Bercovici] was enthused about the notion of cross-posting from Portfolio to HuffPo, saying that he was always happy to increase his traffic. Well, now, see Jeff? Compensation comes in many forms, and rich indeed are those who blog within our warm, happy embrace. Arianna was happy to give Jeff a mini-scoop which may or may not be showing up on his blog soon (free content for Jeff!)...." [HuffPo]

One of Al Gore's boys from Current TV got waterboarded. I'd issue a disclaimer about the video but really any of you who've ever set foot in a leather bar (which is most of you!) have seen much worse. [HuffPo]

Because "something you complained to your husband about" is now considered interchangeable with "something Arianna Huffington will pay you to write on the internet," Tatiana Boncompagni wrote a column today about someone who "vaginablocked" her access to a VIP at a recent bash, which we're thinking was Kate White's recent book ladylunch at Michael's.

• The artist currently known as Prince is "in talks to develop a musically themed magazine." We can't w8 2 read it! [WWD]
  

There are many ways we'd rather not start our day, but reading hirsute, temperamental actor Alec Baldwin on the Huffington Post, as he tries to get himself re-worked up over political injustice by using graphic sexual metaphors, might top the list:

The HuffPo's virgin media blog Eat the Press has an entertaining new time-waster: the People Ranker, which charts the levels of buzz in the blogosphere. Just enter a string of names, and the fun little gizmo spits out popularity contest-style results. We love it — it's so much easier to be snotty and judgmental when you have concrete data.

It's been nine days since George Clooney supposedly entered the blogosphere as a proud liberal, seven days since The Envelope broke the story that Clooney did not actually author the blog post that bore his name (and the subsequent removal of the offending fauxblog), and five days since Arianna Huffington apologized to her readers for ClooneyGate. Still, the scandal that won't die refuses to...die...as The Envelope today once again challenges Huffington on her version of How George Clooney's Unattributed Quotes Became A Blog. Their report is long and complicated enough to resist easy blockquoting, but here's a taste anyway:

The disappointingly short-lived ClooneyGate is more or less over except for the hysterically overblown graphics and our desperate attempts to stoke the feeble flames of semicontroversy for another fifteen or so seconds, but we nonetheless note that the HuffPo has removed Clooney's entry (excerpt still available here) from the site. According to an update on scandal-breaker The Envelope, Team Clooney didn't ask for the deblogging, but responded to Huffington's explanation thusly: "This wasn't a misunderstanding. It was misrepresentation." As of this posting, however, Clooney's rather lengthy contributor bio is still up at HuffPo—just an oversight that will soon be corrected, or a subtle signal that Arianna's door is always open should Clooney ask his publicist to whip him up a blog post? Developing...