This morning the Today show interviewed Maria Dahvana Headley, the woman who once decided for an entire year to say yes to every man who asked her on a date. The experiment resulted in a happy marriage and, more recently, her new book, The Year of Yes. After the interview, Matt Lauer asked Katie Couric about the range of men she had dated, and whether they were particularly good or bad:

• CBS News chief Sean McManus won't say that Katie's his dream anchor, but he does say that the next anchor will be named within a year, will be a solo anchor, will not come from within CBS, will be a known persona, and will have covered a lot of big stories at a network. Later, he added that the new anchor, while not necessarily Katie, will be female, perky, and willing to undergo an on-air colonoscopy. [NYT]
• Why are guests willing to go on O'Reilly? Masochism, clearly. [Boston Phoenix]
• Huh. Turns out James Brady has done a whole hell of a lot more than just those inane celebrity interviews in Parade. We had no idea. Cool. [Forbes]
• In the latest twist of the ever-amused saga of The Source, the board fires co-founders Dave Mays and Benzino. [NYP]
• OK! encourages its staffers to go on all-expense-paid junkets. Shit, now we kind of want to work there. [WWD]
• New chief at Time4 Media. [NYP]

• Katie Couric hires crisis manager Matthew Hiltzik to manage her "charity endeavors." Though this can't possibly have anything to do with Couric's rumored talks with CBS, we're having a hard time imagining what sort of charity work necessitates a crisis flack. [Page Six]
• Is George Clooney possibly banging Teri Hatcher? More importantly, is he feeding her after they finish? [Scoop]
• We can't even feign interest in Ted Kennedy's purported love child. Maybe it's because we can't fathom how the now-grown son — who resembles Kevin Federline — would ever blend in at the family compounds. [R&M]
• Not long after Sean Lennon looked for a date through the romantic artistry of Page Six, Rachel Hunter tells the column that she's looking for a good man. Since when did a gossip column become Nerve.com? [Page Six]
• Asbestos at the Waldorf! Quick, protect the salads! [Lowdown]

• What's truly heartbreaking about Brad Pitt's forthcoming spawn, currently festering in Angelina Jolie's womb, is what the new baby will do to Jolie's two adopted children, Maddox and Zahara. Kids, say hi to your new, gorgeous replacement! [NYDN]
• Katie Couric's contract with the Today show isn't up until May, and she can't even negotiate with CBS until then. So she'd appreciate it if you'd just shut the fuck up about what's next and focus on her legs. [Lowdown]
• Why did Jessica Simpson and her boyfriend/father Joe get angry when George Lopez cracked jokes at Nick Lachey's expense? Was it because Lopez just doesn't have good delivery? [Page Six]
• Kate Moss' ex-boyfriend Pete Doherty pleaded guilty to cocaine and heroin possession. Hasn't this happened already, like, seven times? [R&M (last item)]
• Macauley Culkin is preparing to marry actress Mila Kunis. We salute her bravery. [IMDb]
• So who was the weepy blonde crackhead trying to crash an event at Alain Ducasse at the Essex House? Here's a hint: She's on this page. [Page Six]

• James Risen's State of War — the impending publication of which forced the Times to finally publish the domestic-spying story — also makes Judy Miller's WMD excuses fall apart. [NYO]
• Still, the domestic-spying articles were better than the book is, says Jack Shafer. [Slate]
• Lunatic talking head Bill O'Reilly promises to "get into the lives" of Bill Keller and Frank Rich if (perhaps imagined) Times attacks on him continue. We really hope he does, because Keller would be so much sexier if he were a little less earnest. [Media Matters]
• Yesterday was CBS's first day as its own company. Well, except for all those all days as its own company. [WP]
• New Oxygen show features middle-aged women partying with college guys. We're pretty sure we saw that same show on Cinemax once. [NYT]
• Not-quite-victorious — but still really good — GMA staffers get cheesy commemorative trinkets. [NYO]
• Jon Friedman is clearly smoking crack, as proved by (among other things) his prediction that MSNBC will beat CNN and Fox News in 2006. [MW]
• Latest Q-ratings study shows Katie Couric isn't as popular as she used to be. Clearly not in the polling sample: Les Moonves. [WWD]

• Arianna: "The qualities I look for in a man are the qualities I look for in a blogger: passion, relentlessness, risk taking, and a light touch." [Esquire]
• Mags remake Katie Couric's life. Because she could never afford to do it on her own, of course. [WWD]
• Valerie Plame is a MacGuffin, says Frank Rich. [LA City Beat]
• Ford cannot say no to the gay mafia. [NYT]

• Murdoch, Newhouse, Philbin, and friends: Meet the city's media Power Geezers. [NYO]
• CBS wants Katie so badly that they're offering her a pay cut. [NYP]
• Food and the City: HBO buys rights to Ruth Reichl's memoirs for a new memoir. [WWD]
• A new front in the War on Christmas: Plano, Texas, where the school district bans kids from wearing red and green, according to Defender of the Faith O'Reilly. Except for one thing: It's not true. [Dallas Morning News]
• LAT to shutter national edition, ending its print presence in Washington and New York. Yeah, we're as surprised as you are to discover it had a print presence in New York. [NYT]

The Today show just had a brief, boring segment on various artificial sweetners — Splenda, Equal, and other such evils. In the accompanying aspartame expert interview, co-host Katie Couric began as follows: "I personally asked for this segment because, well, it's all about me."

• French Vogue and its editor Carine Roitfeld are, of course, the hotness, which is why they didn't back down from letting Kate Moss guest-edit their December issue. You can't keep a hot bitch down. [The Daily]
• You can, however, keep her on-and-off boyfriend, Pete Moss, under arrest for posession of Class A drugs, a category which includes all the good stuff. [AP]• Because 50 Cent is into having sex ain't into making love, he plans on creating big, blue dildos in his own likeness. How thoughtful. [FemaleFirst]
• How to deal with the loud late-night Disneyhell that is the LES? Says one Curbed reader: "I'd suggest that instead of an earlier last call, they simply stop PATH train and Staten Island ferry service, and increase the bridge/tunnel tolls to $100 at 2 AM." [Curbed]
• As it turns out, Elaine Van Hoorne — the much-photographed hipster carnie and partner of One-Half NelSon — is just another damn Cornell grad. Figures. [Cornell]
• Who's really stealing Christmas? The politically correct, godless freak-monkeys, that's who. Praise Christ and his Mas! [Zulkey]
• Do we believe that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes would really have their wedding registry at Neiman Marcus? And that the most expensive item is only $430? [Just Jared]
• The breakup of Nick and Jessica leaves no man unscathed. [The Post Show]
• CBS is wooing Katie Couric with promises of that which makes a morning show host truly great: body oil and Manolos. [LAT]

We haven't watched the Thanksgiving Day parade on television for probably a solid two decades, but when we glanced at this morning's papers we began to regret avoiding the broadcast this year. There was, it seems, a "Holi-Daze" "Lights Out" at the parade yesterday, a "narrowly avoided" disaster that was caused when a giant (and, apparently, angry) M&M careened into a lamppost in Times Square and sent a 30-pound lighting fixture falling onto two sisters watching the parade below.

We sometimes wonder: what, exactly, does one have to say to no longer be welcome on our television sets? Especially before we've had our coffee?

A private moment displayed on network television.
This morning the Today show reached whole new levels of painfully awkward. Jazz trumpeter Chris Botti came on to promote his new album and was introduced by Katie Couric — who just happened to famously date Botti after the death of her husband. Um, how about some disclosure, NBC? That would, you know, help to explain why he put a $2 million dollar diamond necklace around her neck before his performance. Then Katie cut to commercial, breaking Botti's heart all over again.

• People is Ad Age's magazine of the year, and Wired's Chris Anderson is editor of the year. [NYP]
• Post-Koppel Nightline will feature multiple stories nightly, and three anchors, Martir Bashir, Terry Moran, and Cynthia McFadden. Only Moran will stay in Koppel's home base of Washington; Moran and McFadden will report from ABC's Times Square studios. We can't wait for the wacky fans-on-the-sidewalks antics. [ABC News]
• But, even without Koppel — and Brokaw, and Rather, and Jennings — Jim Lehrer doesn't think the age of the anchorman will ever end. [Baltimore Sun]
• Having gone behind the scene at a SportsCenter-like TV show and a Clinton-like White House, West Wing creator and noted druggie Aaron Sorkin has a deal with NBC for Studio 7, behind the scenes of an SNL-like comedy show. [LAT]
• Is Katie Couric considering a move to late night? That's what she might have told some dentists. [B&C]
• Potentially sexy men don't want to be on People's sexiest-men list. [Radar]
• Think your boss is invasive? Channel 7's Eyewitness News crews now have their every move GPS-monitored by the company. [NYM]

The Today show featured Katie Couric on a leisurely horseback ride with child actress Dakota Fanning, who instead of playing with Barbie is forced to promote her new movie, Dreamer. Fanning is cute enough in her interview, but what truly made us sputter was the utterly absurd lead-in to the segment, in which Couric introduced Fanning's reel by earnestly annoucing it as, "Dakota Fanning, the early years."

• Did Jon Stewart kill magazines? Would anyone notice? If he didn't, would he consider killing Vogue, please? [Folio]
• Did Rick Kaplan get fired today or what? We stopped paying attention around noon or so. [Jossip]
• Does Rush Limbaugh call Daryn Kagan his "mistress in Georgia?" Yes. Eeeewww. [MMfA]
• Does every journalist in the country just envy Judy? Fuck yeah, they do — she's rich, bitch! [Times-Herald]
• Finally: Katie Couric gets a mammogram — watch free. There would've been a screengrab posted earlier, but the segment destroyed the Gawker Media television. [Today Show]

It's a big day for Today co-host Katie Couric, as she's the big fat feature in the latest issue of AARP magazine. (Unable to win the hearts of functional Americans, has she taken to endearing herself to helpless retirees?) And how, you may ask, does the psychotically perky Couric make herself relevant to the Early Bird Special crowd? By using the word "malarkey." And who the hell actually talks like that besides your grandpa?

Thanks to the efforts of NBC News, Habitat for Humanity, and Warner Music Group, Rockefeller Plaza has been renamed "Humanity Plaza," as hundreds volunteers toil for the Today show cameras, working around the clock to build homes for families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Katie Couric shouts intermittent words of encouragement in between segments, but just now her cheerleading became more disturbing: "Hurry up, guys!" she growls. "We've got to get moving!" She turns back to the camera, her voice uncharacteristically shrill, her face a bit more pink than the usual orange. She looks just. So. Happy.

For those of you growing beyond tired at the sight of Today co-host Katie Couric's increasingly tan, puzzlingly pinched face morning after morning, there's some news on the speculation front. While Couric has not announced any plans to vacate her grip on Matt Lauer's lapels, we can all dreamily wonder who might fill Couric's chair when that fateful day finally comes. According to U.S. News & World Report, the lucky lady just might be Campbell Brown:

The Today show got genuinely compelling for a moment this morning, as Lunar Park author and creepy-fantastic contemporary lit legend Bret Easton Ellis sat down with Katie Couric's legs for a brief interview. Couric, being a concerned, motherly type, naturally asked Ellis about the graphic violence and exaggerated bloodshed of his harrowing American Psycho. A paraphrased transcript:

After plugging an upcoming wedding segment, Katie Couric notes that one might want to hide the bridesmaids, because Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee is in the studio to discuss his new reality show Tommy Lee Goes to College. "He scares me," Couric coyly notes. But you like being scared, don't you, Katie? Oh yeah, Katie, you're giggling now. We get it. You like getting all caught up in the moment, grabbing Tommy's big strong arm, being bad but feeling so good...