Bad: Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff is rumored to be having an affair with his younger employee. Far worse, for Wolff: this gives News Corp (and others) a chance to get back at him.

Look: It's a glorious, bona fide press brawl! Caroline Kennedy's withdrawal from senate consideration touched off the rivalry between New York and D.C. news desks. New York won.

We have some natural sympathy for anybody locked in a battle against Page Six. Although that sympathy recedes when the P6 opponent is Chaunce Hayden, the rad tat-sporting editor of Jersey gossip rag Steppin Out who was denounced by P6 boss Richard Johnson for feeding him bad tips. Because Chaunce's rage is now leading him to send out mass email blasts about "news" that he, uh, just kinda made up! Or maybe he's always done that? Either way, now he's pissed off the Post even more. Here's the full story of one errant shot in the gossip war: Today Chaunce sent out a big email blast that "New York Post, Page Six scribe, Marianne Garvey, has been fired!" Chaunce wrote that Garvey used to write for him at Steppin Out (which she describes as two pieces when she was in college for $40 each), and that she had recently turned down a cover at the mag that instead went to Shallon Lester at the Daily News, so maybe Richard Johnson was so mad about it that he fired her? But definitely, she was fired. According to Chaunce. Actually Garvey left to take a job at In Touch—which she announced more than two weeks ago. By all accounts she left on her own terms, and wasn't fired. When this was pointed out to Chaunce, he sent out a "statement":

Is the New York Times Company trying to buy Metro, the city's freebie daily and the rest of Boston's? Silly rabbits. Running Bill Kristol and buying yet another flagging property isn't going to scare off Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. Don't lets look too desperate and flail-y. [FishbowlNY]