Hah! You write three little items about how blog mistress Arianna Huffington is a terror to work for and suddenly you're off the blogroll at the Huffington Post. Seriously! We've had a place on that long list since day one, but today... nothing. And after all we've done for you, Arianna! Need we remind you of that party Nick threw for you when you launched your goofy blog? (The funny thing here is that we've made fun of the content, business plan, other contributors, comments, and tone of the HuffPo for years with impunity, but now it is apparently personal?) Anyway in retaliation we're going to retroactively unpublish all the times Balk mentioned Rachel Sklar's rack. [HuffPo]

Lies! Today, they spread everywhere instantly thanks to the internet, that wondrous web of computers full of lies. That's how a fake rumor about Steve Jobs having a heart attack can momentarily cost Apple billions of dollars in market cap. But don't blame the internet—blame the inherently wicked hearts of mankind. Because people have been running these same types of media scams to manipulate financial markets for at least 144 years:

Is People magazine totally in the tank (like Pareene) for John McCain and his non-English-speaking VP lady? We hear that some staff members of the nation's leading smiling-coverperson mag are grumbling that People is giving too much positive press to the Republican candidates—for example, this feature where they ask readers to submit questions for the Palin family, without once mentioning they engage in moose-killing and other scandalous activities! Or this, with a headline quote that will make you exclaim "Har." Besides, doesn't People know that only Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston are qualified to appear on celebrity magazine covers? Science has proven it!: Forbes did an actual pseudoscientific study of a year's worth of celebrity mags and found that Angelina and Jennifer are the two most successful coverpersons. Britney Spears: nobody cares any more. These conclusions could have also been obtained simply by sitting quietly with your thoughts. In any case, the real question is: Is People in the tank? Feel free to email us if you're an employee who thinks so. Though we would remind you of this:

NBC political correspondent Andrea Mitchell is one of the network's news stars, so it's only natural that we've been seeing a lot of her lately. Even when the topic turns to the government's and the candidates' responses to the current financial crisis. But you will not see her, supposedly, when the discussion turns to "past economic decisions" that led up to the crisis. Because Mitchell is married to Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman who many say is basically responsible for the housing bubble. And that is their conflict of interest compromise: Mitchell will report as usual until the reasons we got to this point are discussed, at which point she'll quietly disappear from your television without explanation. Unethical! Or, you know, the standard way of doing business in political journalism. DC is an incestuous town and everyone knows and is basically friends with everyone else. The media-political complex has lots and lots of intermarried "journalists" and "operatives" and everyone has politely agreed to assume that everyone else is totally professional about it. So they get a bit tetchy when the Columbia Journalism Review is all "disclose your relationships or just be more independent or something" because what do those kids know? If Tom Brokaw wants to play golf with John McCain that is his business (note: we don't know if John McCain can play golf but the two are still definitely probably friends). The standard argument is that one has to find concrete evidence of "bias" before one can claim these chummy relationships are no good, but honestly the "bias" is so ingrained in the process that it's a useless task and one is best served by appyling a gimlet-eyed suspicion to everyone one sees on the TV and then voting for Ron Paul.

Here's a bright ray of sunshine piercing through the dark skies of the newspaper industry: Bingo Gossip. It's thriving! Could Missy Mouser, the 26-year-old founder of this free bimonthly tabloid chronicling the lighter side of the Texas bingo world hold the answers for what ails the publishing business? YES, if the predilections of elderly Texas bingo fans are any indication!:

Noted Bush-supporting former Trotskyite Christopher Hitchens has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president! In Slate today, the beloved British alcoholic raves about how Obama isn't a sad old man, like McCain, or an offensive joke, like Sarah Palin. Hitch, like a Nader voter, declares that there are no substantial differences between the candidates, but McCain's temperament is too unstable, and Obama's is much more reassuring. This is basically the argument of a number of noted conservative intellectuals who have, in recent weeks, either endorsed Obama, resigned themselves to an Obama presidency, or simply unendorsed McCain. As the intellectual conservatives abandoned Bush, now they find themselves abandoning the GOP. Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan was once a very prominent, very influential conservative. As recently as last year, even as he largely abandoned Bush, he was still complimenting McCain. Now, not so much. Times columnist David Brooks scarcely deserves to be called an intellectual, but as we're using that term strictly to mean "East Coast elitists who write about politics professionally" he'll have to do. This "I'm disappointed in McCain but he'll be a good president" column was but a prelude to Brooks' statement during an interview that Obama was a perceptive intellectual surrounded by impressive people and Sarah Palin is a cancer. Christopher Buckley was hardly a doctrinaire conservative. As a satirical novelist and a smart-ass, one imagines he's not too pleased with the rise of creationist rubes in his beloved GOP (his dad made that fucking bed, obvs, but that's neither here nor there). And Chris claims he wrote in George H.W. Bush in 2004 rather than vote for the son. But that's far different from explicitly endorsing a Democrat, as he did last week. Once again: Obama's temperament and obvious intelligence sealed the deal. Charles Krauthammer is basically a reliable party hack, always willing to subvert his own intelligence for the good of the party. But the once-influential psychiatrist can't help but see that his movement is not served by the buffoonery of the McCain campaign. He wrote this mild quasi-endorsement of Obama this month:

Nate Silver is the crazy kid who invented PECOTA for Baseball Prospectus and now he's made good in the political prediction world! Can I get a "Woop woop?" Baseball fans? Anybody? Well look, Baseball Prospectus is like The Bible to stat geeks, and PECOTA is like a particularly important passage in that Bible (John 3:16, for example), so the fact that this 30-year-old guy who made it up is suddenly the hottest thing in political polling is unlikely and heartwarming to sports fans and political obsessives alike, to say the least! Nate Silver started writing about how wrong polls were in a little Daily Kos diary, and lo and behold, he ended up predicting the primaries better than anyone! Then all the pros were like, who is this kid? When he revealed himself as a Baseball Prospectus writer, a very thin slice of stat geeks were all like, "ZOMG unbelievably awesome!" Imagine if you found out that Richard Lawson had been selected as the new announcer on Monday Night Football. That's the level of thing that I'm talking about here, people. So of course New York did a big story on this kid, what with his acceptable level of quirk. He's basically the smartest pollster in America now, amazingly. And we'll cut through all the technical mumbo-jumbo and give it to you straight:

In recent months, new online business sites like Clusterstock and Slate's The Big Money launched—and what timing! The current meltdown of all things money-related is the biggest business story in a generation or more. But therein lies the quandary that is currently fucking with most of the big business media brands. Understand this, and you'll understand everything (about business media): Market crashes are, almost without argument, the biggest business stories there are. They're the wars of the financial world. Bull markets, runaway successes, and bubbles are all well and good from the reader's point of view—and they do tend to spawn new titles—but they lack the element of tragedy and fear that mark truly great stories. Ten years from now, business outlets will be judged by their coverage of this meltdown in the same way that the New York Times was judged by its 9/11 coverage, or the Littleton Independent was judged by its Columbine coverage. That said, the business side of business media should be booming, right? Audiences are up! Everyone is addicted to CNBC! The Wall Street Journal has been unmissable for a solid month! And it's fair to assume that readership and viewership is up across the board for business outlets, to varying degrees. Fear makes people extremely interested in information. Here's the quandary: The biggest story for business media always comes along at the same time as the worst ad market. By definition, unfortunately! Market crashes are great from a reporter's standpoint. From an ad salesman's standpoint, they're horrible. So a site like The Big Money, which would seem to have had the good fortune to launch on the wings of a massive story, is actually getting choked by the very same conditions it's reporting on. There's already speculation that Portfolio, Conde Nast's $100 million business offering, is on shaky legs. We know that the Great Magazine Die-Off caused by this shitty economic period is already underway. And ironically, mags like BusinessWeek or Fortune could be likely candidates for severe cutbacks, if not actually death. And hey, the publisher of Fast Company—actually a good magazine!—was just forced to lay off 20 people. That's a lot for a mid-sized place like that.The publisher, Mansueto, is also ending free snacks, gym reimbursements, and, worst of all, closing its Events division. That's a terrifying sign, since there are lots of business publications out there that (shhh!) make more money off their events than they do off their publication. In some cases, a shitty magazine is just a loss leader for a moneymaking side business of awards shows, seminars, and other branded events that companies will shell out for in order to "network" and have allegedly independent awards to use in their marketing materials. But when the businesses themselves tank, the business media tanks harder. It's as if Sports Illustrated saw all of its ads evaporate at Super Bowl time. It sucks, but it's a fact of media life. The survivors will come out stronger than ever, and can feast on the carcasses of their dead competitors, picking off choice talent at low prices. Journalism!

♦ Barack Obama locked up 17 newspaper endorsements over the weekend compared to just two for John McCain. [E&P]
♦ John McCain will make an appearance on Letterman on Thursday. [CNN]
♦ Don't mention the recession to Tina Brown: Her new site will burn through $18 mil. over the next three years and most staffers are making more than 100K. [AdAge]
♦ Is the tween magazine over? [AdFreak]
♦ Jon Stewart's Daily Show is heading to the Middle East. [THR]

Newspapers are freaking out left and right. They can't hire anyone. They can barely afford to cover anything. And some of them are so paranoid they're looking to sue their own employees. Like an alcoholic dad who beats his kids and blames the god damn factory that just laid him off, newspapers' problem is that they just can't make any dang money, because the internet ate up their market. Their only real hope: increasing web revenue to make up for what they've lost in print ads. The problem: their web revenue is now stalling. The solution: Batman. Ha, no really it's just "more death":

When the whole Wall Street meltdown thing was first breaking last month, some ad execs waved the whole thing off, saying the market might be a bit "soft" momentarily but that it would surely spring right back into shape. So, how's it looking a month later? Well it's all good, except for how nobody can sell TV ads and ad agencies are laying off hundreds of employees and media sellers are trying to figure out how they can politely start asking for all payments up front. Let's take a brief look at the sunny indicators, shall we?:

Everybody, quick, open an office in Abu Dhabi! The oil-rich desert metropolis is opening a new "media hub" consisting of bizarre, bubble-like office buildings, and major news outlets are rushing in. CNN is opening a whole new bureau there! And they'll be joined by the FT, the BBC, Reuters, and some book publishers. How the hell did a city that got its first paved road in 1961 suddenly become the place where news networks simply have to have their Middle Eastern headquarters? By offering reporters more cool futuristic offices, and fewer car bombs: Abut Dhabi took its billions in oil wealth and, through sheer force of will and money, made itself into a default location for news outlets to situate themselves. CNN, for example, can now cover the Middle East exclusively from the Middle East, while staying safely in the lap of luxury. Invest more in Baghdad, where the news is? Or invest in a state-of-the-art new facility in Abu Dhabi, which has far more world-class restaurants and fewer I.E.D.'s?

Asian and European stock markets are posting gains of 4 to 10 percent this morning thanks to a coordinated effort among several governments to recapitalize banks and insure interbank loans. The futures market is predicting a similar rise for U.S. stocks. For a few precious hours, at least, you'll be able to imagine that the worst of the crash is behind you. But heed the all-knowing Web photo editors, who time and again this morning have selected only slightly less terrified stockbrokers to illustrate their market recovery stories (see left). Maybe their enthusiasm is tempered by that story in the Wall Street Journal this weekend in which 18 economists said we've been doing the bailout all wrong:

Andy Martin is the habitual politician and "researcher" who created the original smear of Barack Obama as a secret Muslim in a 2004 press release, begetting a mutating series of email forwards still coursing through the internet. Last week, he was featured in a Fox News special that, in the words of the Times, "allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government." But, hey, Martin isn't just worried about Obama and Islam, he's also deathly afraid of the Jews! The Times' Jim Ruttenberg dug into Martin's anti-Semitisim in this morning's paper after Martin tried to deny and brush off the issue last week:

Those people making Barack Obama monkeys and booing John McCain for saying Obama is a person "you do not have to be scared of?" Some of them have blogs! Which means they are free to put all sorts of terrible things on the Web, like the virtual poster at left, the one with Obama, a noose, and the headline, "Asphyxiation/The Fucking Solution." The gent who made that lovely thing, and posted it to his website Sunday night, said he did so in retaliation for comparably nasty images of Sarah Palin (also at left), apparently created by anti-Sarah Palin artists and spread by conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. Want to guess how long his over-the-top act of revenge stayed on the internet?

When Barack Obama was 10, his grandfather would take him over to ole Frank Davis' house, where the two older men would drink whisky out of jars and play Scrabble. Sometimes Obama would help the men compose dirty limericks, or listen as Davis read poetry. This went on until the Democratic presidential nominee was 17, and during that time Davis acted as a mentor, according to Obama's memoir. It later emerged that Davis pseudonymously wrote a "hard-core pornographic autobiography" detailing his sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. This was all known in August, after a widely-blogged report in Britain's Telegraph, but the National Enquirer is now reporting it as an "Exclusive OBAMA SEX PERV SCANDAL," because Obama should be ashamed of almost being molested, or something:

Two years ago, after Ed Norton was chivalrous to a New York waitress, we wondered if his career was on the ropes because "Quality celebrities would never be nice to you." Well, the film star must have let the financial success of the Incredible Hulk go to his head, because now he can't buy groceries without pissing off Hollywood insiders with his insolence. Witness the attached Missed Connections ad on Craigslist, already pulled, which firmly establishes that Norton does not take kindly to being complimented while buying frozen shrimp. (Frozen shrimp? Those are tricky waters for a self-professed environmentalist!) Consider yourself warned the next time you see Norton at the Spotted Pig or whatever! (Click the thumbnail to view the original post.)

The Great Depression wasn't all bad! There was jazz, big band, cabaret, Irving Berlin and tops and tails! Art deco and modernism! So as we slide toward economic catastrophe, let's all nostalgically embrace the elegance of the era so we can stay in denial about the hobos, soup kitchens and fascist and communist rebellions that will soon be upon us. We've already suggested staging rent parties and carrying flasks, plus some songs about hard times and various relevant movies. But nothing quite says "Great Depression fun" like Weimar-era cabaret, which is probably why Max Raabe and a Berlin orchestra are again traveling around America and calming the former middle class with pop songs remade to sound at home in 1930s Berlin. Raabe's Depression-ey cover of Spears' "Oops, I Did It Again" is just the thing to put on your "turntable" when friends gather for some moonshine in your Victory Garden. It's like Wall Street is serenading you! Sample the song after the jump.

Ah, the Burbs. So many good times. Sadly, with the collapse of the economy, they'll probably disappear along with the middle class. The rich will live in inaccessible luxury high rises like in Land of the Dead, or on well-guarded manses like in a Philip K. Dick novel. The rest of us will hunker down in urban hell-zones, disaster-prone trailer parks, and underground bunkers. Actually, no, that won't happen. But, still, the suburbs figure so prominently in so many fine movies and TV shows that they deserve a dedicate clip-fest. I'll get us rolling after the jump.

Cosmopolitan (I'm assuming the British version because Gordon fucking Ramsey made the list too) says that 21 Jump Street star Johnny Depp—who's also in movies—is the hottest male on earth. Usual suspect George Clooney is runner up. And (what?!) Jake Gyllenhaal comes in third place. Gyllenhaal? Like, from Bubble Boy? The rest of the list after the jump. Spoiler alert: Manshark Michael Phelps didn't make the cut. 1 Johnny Depp, 45 2 George Clooney, 47 3 Jake Gyllenhaal, 27 4 Daniel Craig, 40 5 Brad Pitt, 44 6 James McAvoy, 29 7 JustinTimberlake, 27 8 Will Smith, 40 9 David Beckham, 33 10 Wentworth Miller, 36 11 Christian Bale, 34 12 Jonathan Rhys Meyers, 31 13 Take That: Gary Barlow, 37, Mark Owen, 36, Howard Donald, 40 and Jason Orange, 38 14 Ashton Kutcher, 30 15 Dermot O''Leary, 35 16 David Tennant, 37 17 Patrick Dempsey, 42 18 Clive Owen, 44 19 Pierce Brosnan, 55 20 Mark Ronson, 33 21 Gordon Ramsay, 41 22 Russell Brand, 33 23 Pharrell Williams, 35 24 Ryan Reynolds, 31 25 Olivier Martinez, 42 (ANI) [TopNews via OhNoTheyDidn't]