Kate Spade turns 47 today. Hedge fund manager Jim Chanos is turning 52. Former Observer owner Arthur Carter is 78. Jonathan Benno, Per Se's outgoing chef who will soon be opening a restaurant of his own, is 40. Annette de la Renta, the wife of Oscar de la Renta and a charity gala fixture, is turning 70. Ryan Seacrest turns 35. Ricky Martin is celebrating his 38th. Author Mary Higgins Clark is turning 82. Heiress Marylou Whitney is 84. And actor Mekhi Phifer is 35. A few people with Christmas birthdays are listed below.

Karl Rove couldn't get on Twitter's watch list; Julia Allison was unable to broadcast a portion of her life and a comedian was unimpressed with comically large food. The Twitterati felt out of character.

• The next top editor to fall victim to budget cuts at Condé Nast, at least according to Keith Kelly: Architectural Digest editor Paige Rense. [NYP]
• The first guest on Jay Leno's new show on Sept. 14: Jerry Seinfeld. [THR]
• Jay, Conan, Jon, Jimmy, Jimmy, or Craig? Now more than ever, celeb (and their publicists) are being forced to choose between late-night hosts. [THR]
• At least a dozen advertisers have abandoned Glenn Beck's show now that he's established himself as the most vile human being on television. [NYT]
• A big group of media companies—including CBS, NBC, Disney, News Corp., and Viacom—have teamed up to give the Nielsen ratings a run for its money. [NYT]

Are you moving to Washington, DC? You won't need to worry about finding a place to live! Karl Rove's house—featuring an oil portrait of George Washington, a stag head, and "a couple of yellow floral sofas that would make chintz queen Mario Buatta wet his pants with glee—is currently on the market for $1,585,000. Enjoy! [Real Estalker]

"Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was deposed Tuesday by attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee" in connection with his role in the US Attorney firings and politicized prosecutions by the Bush Justice Department. Hooray!

Supporters of George W. Bush's torture policies flacked so hard in recent days, it was impressive to see the Daily Show sifting through the avalanche of spin and plucking the most demented examples.

Did you know that the prosecution of criminal Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano was an attempt by Karl Rove to derail Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign? It's true, if you're crazy!

Senator McCain has his inconsistent and deeply personal conceptions of "honor" and "justice," which means that occasionally he fights for completely symbolic things that we nonetheless approve of wholeheartedly, like this. Free Jack Johnson! McCain is a huge boxing fan, of course, and he's teaming up with Peter King and Ken Burns today to urge President Obama to pardon Johnson for his 1913 violation of the Mann Act.

Who says there aren't jobs out there for J-school graduates? Thanks to a tipster, we learned today that Columbia J-school alum and fame-seeker Sheena Tahilramani now works (worked?) for evil Republican vizier Karl Rove.

After the friendly transfer of power from the worst president ever to our Hope King, Bush folk fell back into the old habits, telling reporters that Obama hates America and will cause all the terrorism.

Did you hear Twitter is now bigger than Digg? That's because you can't vote on Obamanaugural headlines by text message. More OMG Barack!!!!!!1!1!! tweets from the media elite:

The left's Great Satan, former Dubya advisor Karl Rove, uses Twitter, the microblogging service. Smell the outrage, 140 characters at a time!

Karl Rove wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. The best present he got this year was a photo of some "bearded and scruffy" Navy Seals.

A Christmas gift for lovers of political intrigue: Was the death in a plane crash of Mitch Connell, Karl Rove's technology guru, really an accident? And why aren't all the Rove-hating newspapers writing about it?

It can't be fun to have your birthday fall on Christmas, although if you're Jewish—like youthful financier/media mogul Bruce Wasserstein who will be celebrating his 61st birthday tomorrow—we're not sure it matters much. Others who can proudly proclaim they were born the same day as Jesus: Republican sorcerer Karl Rove is turning 58. Helena Christensen will be 40. Annie Lennox is turning 54. Dido is turning 37. Jimmy Buffett will be 62. Literary agent Esther Newberg will be 67. And artist Louise Bourgeois will be celebrating her 97th birthday.

Oh, the fun they have on Fox & Friends. Karl Rove is brandishing a shoe and screaming "DOOCY!" and then he makes a joke about when Bush met Putin, and everyone is just having a ball.

"Dude, I just talked to Karl Rove on my fucking phone. You think I’m fucking with you? Mike Huckabee called me, like, three hours ago." [Observer]

♦ The Ashley Dupre press bonanza begins: In her first print interview with People, which hits newsstands on Friday (the same day she'll appear on 20/20), Dupre says she's just a "normal girl" who has "a lot of depth," and that she feels sorry for Silda Spitzer, but doesn't blame herself for Eliot's downfall. [People, NYP]
♦ Are Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin splitting up? The two have spent very little time together since this summer, and now she's become "very good friends" with Fontainebleau hotel owner Jeff Soffer. Gwynnie reportedly spent time with Soffer (and his Bentley and yacht) this past weekend in Miami. [P6]
♦ Britney Spears is supposedly dating a 27-year-old model named Marco D'Angelo who she met through friends in Las Vegas. [Star]
♦ It looks like Anne Hathaway is attracted to lovable losers, since people who know her new boyfriend, actor Adam Shulman, say he's an "opportunist" who "went after all the heiresses" when he was a student at Brown. [P6]

It's already been suggested by some that Karl Rove handed the Democratic Party its playbook for this month's election win. Since Rove needs all the good press he can get, he's grabbing the "I Got the First Black President Elected" meme with both hands and holding on until his next lucrative consulting gig. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Rove takes a break from crafting a Palin-Bush hybrid for contention in 2012 to make himself look good:Deborah Solomon's painfully, quippy interviews usually reveal more about her than about the interview subject in question, but it looks like she hit a nerve with ole KR:

Somewhere when John Kerry was in the middle of a run-on sentence, psychologist Drew Westen wrote Message Handbook for Progressives From Left to Center, a how-to guide to change liberal rhetoric to make in sound appealing to people in the center of the country. With Republicans perched on wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion more than ever, the book redefines how to con people into having dinner with Bill Ayers. Westen's strategies might be making a difference in close races across the country.Emory University professor Westen crafted Message Handbook for Progressives From Left to Center because, he says, he wanted "to rebrand progressives using language that's as evocative as the language of the other side, and stop using phrases that just turn people off." If the resulting document — which the Times reports is a must-read for all Democratic operatives — makes you think of Karl Rove's taint, that's probably a good thing: