Liz Smith, the post-post-menopausal gossip columnist, filed a column for her website WowOWow.com, and boy is it insane. There's the part where the Postie explains how gossip would suck if it was about tyrannical dictators who ruled our lives like Kim Jong Il, or where she says gossip would change in a nuclear apocalypse, or how "gossip culture" would be different if an asteroid hit the earth, or if everyone ran out of electricity. But the two craziest parts are definitely the racially-caricatured, pseudo-Confucian caption under Smith's photo, and also the part where Smith decides the gossip biz is shit:

Just this week, Liz Smith, the bisexual, outspoken Post columnist admitted to being "completely daunted" by the internet. Mocking people who don't understand Google is so much fun. But in a promotional video for Wowowow, the website for "women on the web," she describes herself as the "tech guru" among the old ladies. In the valley of the infertile, the one working ovary is queen. I would commend say Liz Smith for opening herself up to ridicule to get attention for the site, but the joke's on her. The only post-menopausal women who read this site are our moms.

In a candid interview befitting her 85 years of Earthly service, gossip matron Liz Smith holds forth in the Observer this week on subjects ranging from the good old docile days of entertainment reporting, her loyal ghostwriters "longtime assistants" Mary Jo and Dennis and the hippie scum that devastated her club-society utopia in the late '60s. Oh, and she's horny:

Liz Smith writes in the Post today that a TV person she recently spoke to complained that "There's nothing going on in celebrity land. There's no news, no gossip, no scandal. The Oscars showed how dull things are. People are only interested in politics." Yes. There's been a mighty sea change and finally Americans are taking an active interest in government and nothing else. Ninth grade civics teachers everywhere are rejoicing. After all, there's only one blind item today (after the jump.) At least it's about gayyyy people.

Five old media blondes are launching a website for women over 40 and enlisting their closest celebrity friends to contribute! The site is called WowOWow.com, which is supposed to refer to "Women On The Web," and should launch Saturday. It sounds a lot like that other celebrity website, the Huffington Post, except more like The View and less tech savvy — a good deal of the content is submitted via telephone calls, faxes and probably dictaphone cylinders that are then transcribed into digital bits by pitiable lackeys who "speak cyber," as one editor put it. The founders, who contributed $200,000 each, are Post columnist Liz Smith, 85; former advertising execute Mary Wells, 79; 60 Minutes reporter Leslie Stahl, 67; former Simon & Schuster President Joni Evans, 65; and Wall Street Journal Columnist Peggy Noonan, 57. They have wisely recruited contributors like Lily Tomlin, Candice Bergen and token-non-white-lady Whoopie Goldberg. But how can this thing take of with an address like "WowOWow.com?" After the jump, a number of more descriptive and accurate domain names, all still available at the time of posting:

85-year-old Post gossip Liz Smith tells us that Heath Ledger slept naked, helpfully adding, "I happen to sleep in the nude, and many others do as well." Then she beats you to the "ew" punch by chastising "the infantile titillation and fear of the flesh." [NYP]

"During [the American Society of Magazine Editors Awards], I sat between two of my all-time favorite people - one was Tina Brown's husband, Harry Evans; the other was the young writer Christopher Buckley," writes 85-year-old NY Post gossip columnist Liz Smith. "Young" Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You For Smoking, is a fresh-faced 55 years old. (The Post's other gossip columnist, Cindy Adams, is just 82 77). [NYP]

The inexhaustible octogenarian has been a fixture on the gossip scene for decades.

Citing no sources, Liz Smith is reporting in Variety today that Quentin Tarantino is planning to remake Russ Meyer's graduate thesis on the complex and intertwined relationship between heaving bosoms and ultraviolence, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! For all we know, Liz might have forgotten to take her meds and made the whole thing up but, just this once, let's pretend that her sources aren't make-believe. Keeping that squarely in mind, the rumoured leads of the rumoured movie that QT is rumoured to be making "even raunchier" than the original are Eva Mendes, pride of the E! network Kim Kardashian and, gulp, Crossroads' Britney Spears. Hmmmm. That sounds positively terrible. We would've done it differently.

Gossip gal Liz Smith chats with Michael's owner Michael McCarty over at Radar. (What goes into a $35 burger? Uh, "Really good meat," allegedly. More accurately: "The price of real estate in Midtown Manhattan?") And then Michael gets to finally knife Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff over his boycott of Michael's.

I was hoping that former synergy-enthusiast Tina Brown's next job would be something really odd. Such as finding a way to monetize alligator-wrestling or inventing the next internet. (WHEN WILL we get the next internet? This one is so over!) But her "first-look deal to bring projects and story ideas to HBO" works too! We expect some shows like "The Tudors" meets "Hannah and her Sisters" set in Lagos. Very cool. Very, you know, chattery. Very high coastal appeal! The smart set! Quality eyeballs over quantity! Unexpected juxtapositions! "K Street" do-over!

Former First Lady and potential POTUS 44 Hillary Clinton backed out of a Vogue photoshoot last minute, reports aging Post doyenne Liz Smith, for fear of appearing "too glamorous" and "too elitist." The photographer was going to be Annie Leibovitz, whose last big project was a series of portraits of Queen Elizabeth II; the writer was slated to be Julia Reed, the "staunchly Southern" author of Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena. Guess it's understandable if La Clinton was leery of being described in Southern terms of endearment: "Hillary Clinton was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it...."

"Can it be true that, as Charlie Gibson seems to prove at ABC's "World News," the news audience likes getting 22 minutes from older gray-haired men?" Eww, Liz Smith. Just eww. [NYP]

It's tempting to view yesterday's commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 30-month prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice as the moment the wheels finally came off this administration, as the sign that George W. Bush has totally lost control over a process that he's spinned and gamed for so long without repercussion. But we've felt that way before, and we've been proved wrong. Even our cynicism has been overwhelmed by how much these people have gotten away with. We're assuredly part of the problem: As Liz Smith so eloquently declaims this morning, "If all of us who love gossip and celebrity so much only loved history more - with all it has to tell us - I know we'd be better off." Sing it, sister!

On the holiest day of the Gay Year—the announcement of Tony nominations—a conflict has broken out that threatens to rend the community into deeply opposed warring factions: supporters of Rufus Wainwright and supporters of the poor maligned ghost of Judy Garland! At least, that's how Liz Smith, who is a gay man, sees it.

Perhaps the saddest example of not going gently into that good night comes from today's Liz Smith column in the Post. Smith, recently reduced to three days of meandering on about celebrities of the fifties by that paper, at least, ends today's ruminations with the following:

We heart Michael Gross, the gossipy author who works the Alex Kuczynski beat nearly as hard as we do. And so, apparently, does Liz Smith, who sends a mondo air kiss Gross's way in today's column:

• The Chandler family, former owners of the Los Angeles Times, are unhappy with the way Tribune is selling itself off. [NYT]
  

Here's this morning's Liz Smith review of Dreamgirls:

The New York Post's twin pillars of biddy gossip, Liz Smith and Cindy Adams, each have their own particular style. To the average reader, though, it can be hard to discriminate between the elderly pontifications of Smith versus Adams — and what if you only have the time and inclination to choose one of these fine specimens? It may be next to impossible to directly compare Adams's prose ("Trust me, a dress shop on Madison is a college course on life.") to Smith's wit ("Speaking of diamonds, consider Sharon Stone."). Best trust to science and statistics. After the jump, Intern Mary plumbs the last ten columns from both ladies to track the frequency of jokey turns of phrase, celebrity name-dropping, and backhanded or overt bitchy comments.