Who is to blame for the lad mag message that women are there to gratify men's sexual urges? "This current generation of young women who believe they will find any sort of satisfaction, emotional or sexual, through allowing themselves to become the sex objects of young men's fantasies are fueling a sorry state of affairs. They want to be taken seriously, but, by behaving like this, no one can blame the young men who treat them like sex objects and little else." [Daily Mail U.K.]

There aren't enough naked knockers in the world to save England's fading lad mags. [Independent]

Hey, it's nearly 1 p.m.: If you work at Stuff magazine, that means you're supposed to be at your desk, according to the HR department. Mass firings are so much easier than one on ones. Sorry, guys. From the mailbag: "Saw that email from a Maxim source, and wanted to comment. One third of the company has not been let go. The Stuff staff wouldn't even make up a fifth of the company, probably... and they haven't been let go. But the passport fears are true. Turns out they fired all the work visa employees first. In fact, the first firing on the edit side happened yesterday afternoon. A couple of designers at Maxim—and Ian Robinson, Stuff's art director and the longest-tenured employee at Stuff, was let go without severance. His visa was for a foreign company on US soil, which was obviously complicated by the Dennis sale (to American ownership). Damian Wilkinson married his girlfriend when news of the sale hit. Now it's even worse. Sitting around waiting to get fired is obviously not fun."

From the mailbag: "A little bird told me today that the Maxim people are freaking. 1/3 of the company's staff has been cut (the Stuff side) and most of the editors who have UK passports have already been informed that their visas will not be renewed."

• Ron Burkle, Eli Broad, David Geffen, Gannett, that old dude from the insurance company: Seems like everyone wants a piece of Tribune. Eat the Press directs you to all the further reading you might possibly want to do in the subject, which, if you're like us, isn't a whole hell of a lot. But, you know, de gustibus and all that. [ETP]
  

• Unattractive Rachel Dratch replaced by considerably more pulchritudinous Jane Krakowski. Tabloid Baby thinks it's a move foisted on juiceless Lorne Michaels by a shallow, lookist business; we're of the opinion that it's nice of NBC to think about its audience for once. [Tabloid Baby]
• A butterfly flaps its wings and Jason Binn is branded a douchebag. Works for us. [Copyranter]
• If you missed last night's performance art piece on the whole Stadtmiller/Dick contretemps, here's the transcript. [BMcB]
• A lad mag progenitor looks back, pines for the days when features could be about bacon sandwiches and house music. Ah, were we ever that young? [Independent]
• Thanks to some goddamn activist judge, fey LES hipster boys will soon be smoking "Parliament Slightly Less Cancery" cigarettes. [AdAge]
• This weekend in Washington Square Park: silent disco! How will you know the difference? [Club free Time]
• Guy comes home from work and says, "Great news, honey, I just won the lottery! Start packing!" Wife says, "Oh, how wonderful! Should I pack for the beach or for the mountains?" Guy says, "I don't care, just get the hell out!" [FishbowlDC]

Never mind the not- actually-visible-from-space enormous Maxim cover that may or may not be in Las Vegas desert. An intrepid Maxim reader (looker? scanner? admirer? lecher?) has picked up the actual issue and noticed something interesting about the big gatefold feature:

Maxim has reached its 100th issue. To mark that achievement, the ur-lad mag has created an enormous version of its milestone cover, featuring Housewife Eva Longoria, and splayed it across the desert outside Las Vegas. The ginormous cover is 75 feet wide by 110 feet long, and the press release brags that it's visible from space. (Certainly it's visible from Google Earth — image at right — but then so is our apartment building.) We don't know if that claim is true, but, if it is, we really hope no Martians are looking right now. If they are, God, we're so embarrassed.

• Now, Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson will take turns joining Elizabeth Vargas on World News Tonight. We really hope they can work George Stephanopoulos into that rotation, too. [NYT]
• CBS Newser John Roberts decamps for CNN. If your bosses told you they had no idea who'll be the next anchor but they're sure it won't be you, you'd leave too. [Public Eye]
• High-ranking laddie Andy Clerkson grows up and moves out. The Dennis Publishing editorial director will leave his job, summer in Montauk, have a kid, and move back to England. [WWD]
• One of the many companies that isn't buying the Observer: Reed Elsevier. [NYP (last item)]
• NYO on NYT: Ric Burns to produce docu on the Gray Lady, and war gets in the way of Jill Abramson and Maureen Dowd's planned trip to Iraq. [NYO (second and third items)]

Yesterday we pointed out a bizarrely stupid request from some lunatic proposing that people meet him on the corner of 42nd and 7th today at 12:30 for some good, clean sumo wrestling. We should've known that in a town where there's more fuckwits that there are cockroaches, someone would take this guy up on his offer.

• Bob Woodward's in truh-ble. [NYT]
• WP's Walter Pincus set to go the way of Judith Miller in the Wen Ho Lee case. Except without the everyone-hates-him-at-the-end part. [WP]
• Need your dose of softcore porn more frequently than once a month? It's looking like Keith Blanchard's prototype for a weekly lad book might see life at Bauer. And thank God for that. [WWD]
• William T. Vollman, Joan Didion win National Book Awards. [USAT]
• Hotshot founders of Penguin's Riverhead imprint bolt for Random's Doubleday Broadway group and a new, yet-to-be-named imprint. [NYP]
• The lucky winner of that fundraising lunch with Rupert Murdoch? Learning Annex chief Bill Zanker. Be you're even happier now that you overpaid for that mediocre lecture. [Guardian]
• HBO still confident it owns Sunday night, Lisa Kudrow's dreadful Comeback notwithstanding. [NYT]
• Speaking at the University of Texas, Maureen Dowd — who, apparently, has a new book out — speculates that Judy Miller will end up with a Fox News talkshow. [Daily Texan]
• Bad things often happen to Time Persons of the Year. [The Media Mob/NYO]