Historical ghosts ranging from H.L. Mencken to Richard Pryor are weeping up in heaven today, because the nation's premiere combination of journalism and humor, the Washington Post's "Mouthpiece Theater" has been canceled. Dana Milbank is the Icarus of our generation.

It's best to watch this clip without any context or introduction. Just click, and press play, and prepare to be entertained.

In your leaky Wednesday media column: A DC editor accidentally forwards an email convo with a reporter about Blackwater, which we reproduce for you in full; layoffs come to Newhouse; the WSJ ends embargoes; and Jack Shafer abhors The Butt.

• NBC is pulling out all the stops to promote Jay Leno's new show. Don't believe it? Try this out for size: "In early September, NBC will even adopt a portion of Interstate 10 in California to reiterate Mr. Leno's time slot." [NYT]
• Notwithstanding the Leno blitz, NBC is still looking to cut its budget. [NYT]
• No one cares about CNBC these days, in case you haven't noticed. [Slate]
• More on troubles at Condé Nast (revenues may fall by as much as $350 million this year), and the recent round of receptionist-purging. [NYP, NYO]
• The lobbyist scandal goes on. A couple of days after it was revealed that MSNBC's Richard Wolffe is now working for a lobbying firm comes the news that CNN's Bill Schneider has signed up with a D.C. think tank. [HuffPo]
• Related: Wolffe has another Obama-related book in the works. [TNR]
• Experts say the prognosis for BusinessWeek is not good. [DailyFinance]
• As you might expect, the mood has been very upbeat at CurrentTV today now that Laura Ling and Euna Lee have returned from North Korea. [NYT]

He knew what we would do, and now we're doing it. George Sodini, the man who murdered three women in a Pennsylvania gym last night, left a detailed log of his plans online. So everybody is scouring his digital traces.

The New York Times has picked Frank Bruni's successor as holder of the NYT's Sweetest Job: Sam Sifton, currently the paper's culture editor. No successor's been picked for Sifton yet. The full staff memo is below.

Sarah Palin—allegedly accompanied by her family—is in New York meeting with HarperCollins. And she took the opportunity to dispel those internet rumors.

Yesterday we told you that McKinsey-driven Conde Nast was firing all of its receptionists. A blow to the company's editorial glamor, yes. But the dragnet has also seized the New Yorker's whimsical, overqualified "jack of all trades!" [UPDATE: Maybe not!]

Pity poor Gwyneth Paltrow. If being the wife of a rock star, a movie star and a writer of death-cult newsletters weren't hard enough, she's also forced to deal with the stupid "roaches" in the media at Manhattan charity galas.

In your sizzling Tuesday media column: the future of the media is paid, Newsweek fights the power in Iran, another mag mogul kicks BusinessWeek's tires (made of paper), and Dan Rather's madder'n a lake trout with fiery testicles, at CBS.

• Keith Olbermann took Times reporter Brian Stelter to task last night for reporting that News Corp. and GE had worked out a deal to tone down the rhetoric between MSNBC and Fox News. But he didn't disagree with everything Stelter reported. Conveniently, only the bad stuff about him was wrong. [NYM]
• More bad news for Olbermann: MSNBC now admits it made a mistake by not disclosing that Countdown fixture Richard Wolffe is a paid lobbyist. Naturally, Olbermann had absolutely no idea about any of this. [Politico, Salon]
• Condé Nast is shedding more staff. This time around it appears the media giant's receptionists will be paying the ultimate price. [Gawker, NYM]
• Reps for Bruce Wasserstein met with BusinessWeek execs yesterday to discuss a bid for the magazine. Joe Mansueto, the founder of Morningstar and owner of Fast Company, may be a potential bidder as well. [BW]

This could be the unkindest Conde Nast cut of all: A tipster tells us that "as of Monday, Glamour will no longer have a receptionist." And this may be only the beginning.

It's only been a week since Janice Min actually exited Us Weekly. So how's it going now that the magazine's longtime editor-in-chief has left the building and the tabloid's No. 2, Michael Steele, is in charge? Judging by the fact Us is now soliciting cover ideas from its Twitter followers, we're going to say things could be going better. [Twitter]

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon said he was "abused worse than the [Guantanamo] detainees" by Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg's "harsh invective" questioning his masculinity. But the Herald's investigation has cleared her. Suck it, Navy bitch! That's what she said. [MH]

Richard Wolffe used to be a Newsweek reporter, but now he's a strategist at PR firm Public Strategies. On Friday he guest-hosted MSNBC's Countdown. His first topic: how awesome healthcare reform is. Guess what his clients think of healthcare reform?

• Funny People debuted at No. 1 at the box office this weekend, although it was still the worst opening for an Adam Sandler movie in five years. [Reuters]
• Mort Zuckerman is selling shares of his real estate company to pump $50 million into the Daily News to pay for new printing presses. [WSJ]
• Lou Dobbs has become a PR nightmare for CNN. Presumably the fact that Media Matters is airing an anti-Dobbs commercial won't help matters. [AP, HP]
• Is the peace pact between Olbermann and O'Reilly a sham? [TDB]
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple's board of directors. [BN]

Frank Bruni steps down the New York Times' restaurant critic in a couple of weeks, and his memoir, Born Round, debuts on bookstore shelves on August 20. So it was only a matter of time before Bruni finally unmasked himself and showed to the world the face that has been taped to kitchen walls for close to five years now.

Spurred on by his editor, a Washington Post reporter complained over the weekend that we "stole" his profile of a ridiculous "generational guru" when we blogged about it on this site. Our question: where's your outrage at your editors?

Bronzed god Donny Deutsch would like to take Sarah Palin on a date. After the date he would like to bone her, marry her, and rule the nation together from atop a gleaming pile of salmon.