So what are you working on? If you're tax-cheating media-gatecrasher Priyantha Silva—known more for your sweaty drinking exploits than your fictional producing career—it's where things might go wrong. That's probably why he's chatting up aspiring actresses and sending them these upcoming "film projects." "Legend of Black Tom isn't a real [politically correct] title, but I believe some studio would throw it out," snarks the gal who sent them to us. We've also been deluged with memories from others: "He's had it in for me ever since this," said Star's Ben Widdicombe. "I saw him trying to get into the Calvin Klein 40th anniversary party during Fashion Week, and more recently at a Vanity Fair party for St John. He was trying to chat up Lauren Bush before the alert event organizer separated them. He has been in and out of prison and is more dangerous than just a harmless party crasher." Oh, great!From yet another lady:

Nature's front and back covers. Really now. Coincidence? Or RACISM and ELITISM and possibly SPECIESISM at work? It does, however, raise a good point about dogs' noses and the candidates' positions on them, and how that relates to science. [ATO via AnimalNY]

Gandhi is my homeboy. And yours! Let's figure out this ad campaign together. The slogan: "Life is easier if you don't speak up. Debate." Naturally you can see how the whole theme develops from that point. You can't see (I'm willing to bet) what the hell this campaign might be promoting, but hey, that's something you can "debate." After the jump, see Gandhi cookin' out, Mandela chillaxin', and the Dalai Lama ready to hit some serious slopes, screw the politics yo!

♦ Rachael Ray's mammogram is scheduled for tomorrow. And you'll be able to watch it go down if you tune into her show. [NYDN]
♦ The New Yorker just issued its endorsement of Barack Obama. Bet you're really surprised. [NYer]
♦ CNBC hit an all-time record the day the Dow dropped 777 points. [MCN]
♦ ABC's lineup of new shows isn't off to a very good start this season. [THR]
♦ Why Microsoft's ads with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld was a flop and Apple's "I'm a PC" ad has been a success. [AdAge]
♦ Newark's Star-Ledger is hanging on, but barely. [AP]
♦ As the economy turns south, marketers are turning up the volume and going after their competitors. [WSJ]
♦ Donna Tartt is leaving Knopf for Little, Brown. [Galleycat]
♦ The new, ad-covered subway cars... revealed! [NYT]

When the newspaper industry is crumbling along with the American economy in general, the smartest people in all of journalism are the Northwestern J-school professors who packed up and decamped for Qatar. They left dreary Evanston, Illinois for beachfront condos in an oil-flush Middle Eastern paradise. There, they have only 39 students in total. And they don't talk back, because no one in the country really knows what journalism is all about:

The monster $700 billion plan to fix America's broken credit markets passed the senate by a wide 74-25 margin and is set for a House vote by the end of the week. How was the reviled, once-vanquished bailout resurrected? By becoming more bailout-ey! The federal government will still spend most of the money taking distressed mortgages off the books of poor, sad Wall Street firms like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. But also, as we mentioned before the vote, everyone with insurance now gets therapy and meds! The upper middle class gets an adjustment to the Alternative Minimum Tax. Corporations get a tax break for "research." Oh, and also, no big deal but probably companies don't have to play by basic accounting rules anymore (search for "mark to market" here). But the bailout became less bailout-ey in one regard: In the lead of the Wall Street Journal story (bottom example above), it's called a "rescue," the nomenclature preferred by the Bush administration. In the Times it's still a bailout. And what do you know, the papers have sharply diverging editorials (the Journal quotes Alexander Hamilton!) to go along with their positions.

For American presidential campaigns, the run-up to any televised debate is nothing so much as an exercise in managing expectations. Your opponent is fearsome and will probably crush you. Your own candidate will be lucky to form a single coherent sentence. Then, after the debate, you can spin a weak performance as a come-from-behind victory. In this little game of flackery, Sarah Palin could not be better positioned for tonight's face-off against Joe Biden. The Republican vice presidential nominee is up against a respected lion of the senate. Severe economic anxiety has put her ticket nine points behind in a new poll. The debate moderator has a big crush on Barack Obama. And, most importantly, a series of disastrous interviews with Charles Gibson and especially Katie Couric has made Palin look like an uninformed, inarticulate embarrassment. You can watch the complete lowlights in the attached video, including Palin's failure last night to name a single Supreme Court decision other than Roe vs. Wade. But keep in mind that the worse Palin looks now, the better she'll likely appear, to some key voters, tomorrow morning.

Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, had some amazing stories to tell Fox News' Greta Van Susteren Tuesday. He might have even impressed viewers with the one about how his late wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, called President George H.W. Bush in 1988 to complain about the destabilizing influence of Osama bin Laden, with whom Bush was supposedly unfamiliar. But Zardari then shot his credibility to hell by following up with a story about how Lt. Col. Ollie North, ringleader of the Iran-Contra scandal, also warned about bin Laden in the late 1980s, in testimony to the U.S. senate. Very not true!

Page Six thinks it has figured out why Bill Clinton gave such a tepid endorsement of Barack Obama on The View and David Letterman last week. Not that anyone was really scratching their heads, befuddled, as to why the ex-president couldn't get past his wife's bitter loss of the Democratic primary to Obama. But Page Six gets specific: Obama supposedly refused to promise Hillary Clinton a Supreme Court nomination as she demanded, so Bill exacted revenge. Clinton on the high court is not exactly a new idea. And her people deny the new version of the rumor. The timing of the gossip is interesting, though. As the Obama ticket battles it out with Sarah Palin, star of Thursday primetime TV, for former Clinton supporters, painting Hillary as shrill and demanding makes Obama look a bit more sympathetic. And celebrity gossip sheets may be nearly as good a way to reach Hillary Democrats as The View.

Less than four months after he "broadened" the Wall Street Journal's Page One desk, promoting P1 editor Mike Williams to deputy managing editor and giving him oversight over investigative re porting, Journal editor Robert Thomson is again reorganizing the storied team. Williams, a pre-Thomson veteran once rumored to be in the Rupert Murdoch lieutenant's crosshairs, stays in place. But his deputy Mike Allen is moved to a new job where he will "nurture investigations" in foreign bureaus, under the title Page One Projects Editor. Allen was recently billeted to the international desk for a stint assisting another Deputy M.E., Nik Deogun, so the change isn't entirely out of left field. Moving up: Alex Martin, a Newsday veteran at the Journal just three years. Thomson's full memo on the changes is after the jump.

Ben Eason, the CEO of alt-weekly chain Creative Loafing—which declared bankruptcy this week—has a vision for the future of his publications. And that vision is to be like Huffington Post Chicago. Huh? Here's what he wants, and here's our free quality advice to him, before he fucks up some of the nation's best alt-weeklies for good:

Dadgummit, porn ruins corporate strategy! CBS is learning the hard way that if you give people a "branded mobile platform" to "upload" their "user-generated content," the "content" they will "generate" is "nekkid womens." The Tiffany Network started a site called CBSeyemobile.com where you, the idiotic consumer, can upload photos. And now they're shocked, shocked to find out that it's full of filth, loose women, and inappropriate public demonstrations of lesbianism! Ad Age broke the story in a Pulitzer-worthy feat of journalism, causing them to (modestly) publish this rather NSFW picture, which we are prepared to say is the most newsworthy photo that has ever graced that august publication's pages:

Sam Zell is the gnomish CEO of Tribune, a company with a bunch of nosediving newspapers and one valuable parking lot. Luckily the Tribune Co. is owned by the happy employees themselves, leaving Zell with enough liquidity to throw himself huge, circus-like birthday parties. Did you miss your invite for his last one? Check out these pics of the frugal decor and musical guests!:

♦ Now that Tina Fey is suddenly cool again, publishers are falling over themselves to sign her as an author. The bidding is up to $6 million. [NYP]
♦ Katie Couric: She's back! [AP]
♦ Footage of Elisabeth Hasselbeck feuding with the other View gals over Sarah Palin this morning. [MollyGood]
♦ Norman Lear is teaming up with HBO on a drama series about "the world of 1970s pro wrestling." [THR]
♦ NBC has picked up a remake of the Partridge Family. [THR]
♦ TV's fall lineup has been a ratings disappointment. [WSJ]
♦ Solid ratings for House and Fringe elevated Fox to No. 1 on Tuesday. [TV Decoder]
♦ Citizen journalism has its dangers. Just ask CBS! [AdAge]

Sarah Palin was kind of embarrassed by her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, so she sought out the more comforting company of Secret King of All Hacks Hugh Hewitt for her most recent solo media appearance. Hewitt, who is really indefensibly hacky, interviewed her like a child he was particularly fond of. And she responded like a particularly slow child. Above, the very first question from Hugh and Palin's very first answer. You will not be disappointed in either of them! (Because you should be incapable of disappointment by now, haven't you been paying attention?)

The New York Times is quite concerned about this economy and this "bailout" that is probably going to pass the Senate today in the most complicated form so far presented to the American People. They note, today, that its fate as political poison was probably set when it was labeled a "bailout" from the beginning. But just maybe, institutionally, as the voice of the moderate liberal establishment, the Times needs this bailout to work! So they spend a great deal of time trying to explain it, and they also seek to explain the effect of the bailout and The Crisis on You, the Little Guy on Main Street. And every other street! Join us, won't you, as we tag along on the Times Bailout Tour '08. First: it's not a bailout!

The New York Times launched its "social networking" feature TimesPeople months ago for no particular reason, and with no particular effect. Back then even top editor Bill Keller wasn't using it. But now he is! You know what this means, don't you? It's one more way for suckup Times reporters to track who the boss is favoring. Almost as good as looking at the front page! So what is Keller recommending? Let's see:

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is in severe financial distress, of course, because it is a newspaper. It was sold (at a loss) by McClatchy in 2006 to a private equity firm, and has reliably lost value ever since. Though it still "makes money" in the strictest sense of the term! The paper has already laid off 100 newsroom people and put its headquarters up for sale, but now the company has hit on a new strategy for saving money: not paying the bills! The paper announced that it won't be paying creditors this quarter.

That was fast. Four of the business writers said last week to be hunting for Wall Street crisis book deals have found publishers — the same publisher. Penguin Group swears it wasn't bumbling when it hired the authors in rapid succession, at a cost of more than $2 million, to basically compete with one other. What does Penguin look like, some kind of investment bank? "I would rather be publishing all three of the best books on the economic crisis than to be competing against any one of them," Penguin's president told the Observer. OK, but who's going to buy these tomes?

As if creating 30 Rock and archly hosting Weekend Update all those years didn't make Tina Fey enough of a nerdy "it" girl, along came Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin to really put the former Saturday Night Live head writer's celebrity over the top. Fey's star is now burning so bright that bidding on her vague, unwritten proposal for a book of "nonfiction humor" started at $5 million and is now close to $6 million. And that's without Fey doing any meetings — her agent's been handling it — because she just doesn't have time for such trivialities. Reports Keith Kelly at the Post: