The New Yorker's Joan Acocella explains in May's Smithsonian what effect living in close quarters, often in public, has on the behavior of New Yorker. "They act on the street as they do in private. In the United States today, public behavior is ruled by a kind of compulsory cheer that people probably picked up from television and advertising that coats their transactions in a smooth, shiny glaze. New Yorkers have not yet gotten the knack of this." She also totally knows why we ignore celebrities when we see them in the street (no, it's not 'cause we're jaded):

Everybody listen: Scarlett Johansson is saying stuff. About men. Heroic men! Iconic men! Men she would like to honor! The blonde actress, who insists on putting out an unwanted record, reveals the five guys she considers her "dads": Woody Allen, Bill Murray, Tom Waits, Barack Obama, and Bob Dylan. Suck it, actual dad! While a waggish type might be tempted to point out that none of these "dads" saved her from looking like an alien albino on the cover of Paste, a wiser person would examine her dad choices and ponder the question: Aren't these just a bunch of random old guys that probably don't even know her that well?

You know that Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty," which featured women slightly less skeletal than the average model, and therefore demonstrated that Dove is the greatest, most big-hearted company ever in the world? Well now there's a scandal about it! A new New Yorker story about Pascal Dangin, the world's "premier retoucher of fashion photographs," contains this tidbit on Dove's campaign, which ostensibly celebrates authentic, unadulterated womanhood:

TV Guide, one of America's biggest magazines, was sold a few days ago. Now it's for sale again! Well, not the parts of the brand that have some actual value (the website and the cable program guides and on-demand technology). Rather, new owner Macrovision is looking for a sharp business entity that would like to take the print magazine off of its hands. Cheaply, no doubt! And to the skeptics who might say that buying the money-losing print version of TV Guide without the accompanying web brand would be like buying a cow without milk, consider this: the new editor is looking to achieve "topicality and newsiness, urgency." By doing things like reviewing YouTube videos!

Because I didn't grow up with rich, famous New York media figures for parents, who could use their connections to insert me into a choice job in the media world, I've always been in favor of banning people who do have such parents from holding those good jobs. It would make the competition for them more meritocratic, and (bonus) wouldn't affect me personally. Sure, some of those legacy kids are smart and qualified for their positions—but then again so are dozens of other, less connected people. Prime example: Nathaniel Rich, son of Times demigod columnist Frank Rich. Nat is an author and associate editor at the Paris Review, and, by all accounts I've seen, intelligent and capable. But still, I think we should ban him from writing out of pure spite and envy. It just seems like the revolutionary thing to do. In the clip below, Nat talks about how growing up in the Rich family has affected his career. "I don't feel I need to respond to it. People refer to me a lot worse ways (than as a Rich boy)," he says. Such as?

Soldiers are fighting back against a government attempt to take their men's magazines away! Stars and Stripes talked to a bunch of our military men at a base in Germany, and they voiced universal opposition to a proposed bill to ban "sexually explicit" magazines—including Playboy, Penthouse, Maxim, FHM, and the like—from Army bases. They're good for morale, the soldiers say. And besides (everybody together now), they read them for the articles!

We get all types of PR pitches around here, and, as you might imagine, many of them suck. So we're going to list the three worst ones we've gotten so far this week, and ask for your considered judgment on which is the worst of all. The winner may be specially ridiculed in a future post! Our three entrants: The aforementioned New York Dance Parade pitch, urging us to publish a story on "socialdancing" lest we lose our job; a pitch for Time Out New York's sex issue, which opened with "Feeling hot and bothered? So are we, and we've got the boners to prove it," and touted its "interactive pole, I mean poll"; or a pitch from the Brooklyn Paper promising "Breaking News," reading "Here we go, folks — a hot one (with video!). Enjoy." Which was, disappointingly, for this inane video of two dudes sitting in an office discussing marginal news. Don't overpromise! Cast your vote below:

So Tina Brown has lost the design superstar who was supposed to be sprinkling magic dust over her benighted news aggregation website. The former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor-whose internet project is backed by Barry Diller-said she'd hired Ian Adelman, well-regarded design director of New York magazine's website when outsiders first got wind of the new venture. Now Keith Kelly reports that Adelman is back with his former employer.

"During the planning for the [Costume Institute Gala], when honoree Giorgio Armani suggested Eric Clapton as the entertainment, [Vogue editor Anna] Wintour immediately said no. 'It made you think maybe he once rejected her,' said a source. Instead, the hirsute cast from the revival of Hair performed tunes which had nothing to do with the evening's 'superhero' theme." [Post]

The Photoshop Monster never sleeps. In March we brought you possibly the five worst Photoshop distortions ever. But it's clear that lessons have not been learned among those who wield the program's horrific power. Must all consumers be forced to live in a world in which perspective and continuity do not exist? It doesn't seem fair. After the jump, five more abominations of our modern media world, culled from the multitudes at the Photoshop Disasters blog.

Graydon Carter, the rotund Vanity Fair editor and undersecretary of the celebrity-industrial complex, weighs in on the magazine's controversial Miley Cyrus photos in a video message: "She seems like a girl with a head on her shoulders," he says. Right-o! "But parents, rest easy. We think Cyrus is going to make it through adolescence. And this issue." [VF]

OK, this is way worse than Candice Bergen not crying at her mom's funeral earlier tonight: "Gourmet editor in chief [Ruth Reichl] told attendees... that her mother 'was everything I didn't want to be, and to this day I wake up every morning grateful not to be her...' Penguin Press, inspired by Reichl's speech, has signed a contract with her to write a tome about the meaning of motherhood past and present." [WWD]

Dave Zinczenko of Men's Health has ceded the American Society of Magazine Editors honors to his Rodale colleague, David Willey, the industry association's incoming president. But that's not all the editor and best-selling author has given up. Willey, editor of Runner's World, appears to have been acclaimed the new hot magazine editor. Women's Wear Daily gushed that, at the ASME's awards event last week, Willey's looks prompted female editors to giggle "like teenagers." (The reception given by mag fags such as Adam Moss was not deemed fit for publication.) But it's confusing: Zinczenko and Willey both work on Rodale fitness titles, they're both good-looking by the low standards of the magazine industry, and they've both attracted the attention of that fame diviner, Star magazine talking head Julia Allison. Here's how to tell the two magazine hotties apart.

"Jack Flack" at Portfolio.com is one of a small handful of bloggers who writes things that are interesting and intelligent about corporate PR. One of his trademark constructions is "Parsing XYZ," where he takes some statement or speech or press release full of corporate doublespeak and decodes it. I identify him so closely with that stuff that I even gave him credit the last time I used the word "Parsing!" But not so for the Wall Street Journal, which ran a column last weekend with a premise virtually identical [see update also, below] to an earlier Jack Flack column:

The Economist, the smartest magazine in the world, may not be the smartest magazine in the world any more. Oh, the articles are just fine (we assume. We haven't read it since that free trial subscription ran out). We're basing our judgment on the magazine's new ad campaign. Which is utterly baffling. What, exactly, is the message here? Is the clown-and-stuffed-animal motif too clever for me to comprehend? Quite possible, but the campaign still reeks of a weeded college student breaking into the ad agency one night and replacing the real ads with these. Disturbing. Two full-sized pics of the inexplicable things [via Copyranter], below.

New York asked top magazine editors what they thought of the recent Topless Miley Cyrus Scandal. Surprise! Out-of-touch elitist magazine editors did not see the problem with Vanity Fair sexualizing that 15-year-old tween star. "Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko: 'I think it's a tempest in a teapot. I don't think it goes anywhere. It's manufactured hoo-ha.'" And he should know! Next month's Men's Health has a great feature on how to manufacture your own hoo-ha at home in 30 days. [NYM]

Is Conde Nast building a breast-pump station at 4 Times Square? According to someone, "Just heard that [they're] building an office for their lactating mommies to breast pump and gossip." Is this true? Email sheila@gawker.com. We need more info!

When I saw a tall, dark-haired, model-esque woman sliding through the pre-awards crowd at the National Magazine Awards in the Rose Ballroom on 60th St. last night, my canny journalistic sixth sense kicked in. "She sure doesn't look like a magazine writer," I thought. Later, she strode out on stage during the awards ceremony. It was Padma Lakshmi, supermodel. "Fiction. It can...raise fire in the loins," she purred. Half of the audience shifted in their seats. "The sharpest weapon an editor has at her disposal is her pen. (Pause). Or her tongue." It really drove home the primary question in everyone's minds: Isn't this supposed to be, like, a magazine thing? What the fuck are all these famous people doing here? And Julia Allison? An attempted explanation, and some terrible, terrible cell phone pictures to sum up the night, after the jump.

Here are two Good Reads, officially crowned as such tonight at the National Magazine Awards: Top feature story "You Have Thousands Of Angels Around You," from Atlanta magazine, is about "how one young woman lost her family, survived a war, escaped two continents, and through the kindness of strangers found a lifelong home in Atlanta." It was also endorsed as "pretty fucking amazing" by commenter lizzybennet. There's also "China's Instant Cities," which won the reporting prize for National Geographic, and is about "the entrepreneurial frenzy behind China's dramatic economic growth." As the Times noted, the award was groundbreaking because the magazine usually wins prizes for its photography. If any of the other winners have thrilled you, feel free to post in the comments (or email tips@gawker.com).

Wired editor Chris Anderson tonight came face-to-face with the "Long Tail," his oft-cited metaphor for low-grade internet fame, via an encounter after the National Magazine Awards with fameball Julia Allison. Star Editor-At-Large Allison worked Anderson hard, no doubt as part of her relentless effort to take the "proto" out of her protocelebrity — to be more than tail, basically. She reports on her blog that she chatted Anderson up for 20 minutes and ended up "bopping him enthusiastically." Wait, Julia. Didn't you just tell the Times you were going to stop using your "pink-encased loaded weapon" this way?? Anyway, alternate photo captions for the picture above are totally welcome after the jump. Even if you're drunk. Especially if you're drunk. [Julia Allison: 1, 2, 3, 4]