AP science reporter Seth Borentstein has either been spending too much time cooped up in the lab, or he just has a thing for hurricanes. Per his report:

Paradigm of truth and accuracy in Britain and abroad, the News of the World, is reporting that Levi Johnston, the intended and future ex-husband of Bristol Palin had been seeing a friend of Palin's, Lanesia Garcia, for three years when Bristol swept in. She's a relationship maverick. Says Lanesia: "I didn't believe it, I never dreamt she was capable of doing that to me. But when I called her she just said, 'I'm so sorry, I couldn't help it. Levi and I are together now and I think he's the man for me.' I put the phone down and have not talked to her since. I was distraught for a year - I missed Bristol desperately but also Sarah, who was like a second mom to me. Neither of them have tried to contact me, though-which says something about how ruthless they can be. The phrase Sarah used comparing herself to a lipstick-wearing pitbull is spot on." [via Perez Hilton]

I really like Meredith. She's leaps and bounds more genuine than Katie Couric. But even she has been shoehorned by her bosses into the "We Need a Blog" syndrome. She is a classy gal, and it's a shame some NBC producer drove her to such depths that she's writing openly about her dog's defecation habits (albeit in a heartfelt way Americans can relate to). She writes:

If you happen to be a commuter train driver, it's probably not a good idea to be texting with a teenager while you chug along. Lots of people might die.

With its crack team of arrows, Newsweek makes sense of this week's natural disaster for you. After the jump, the verdict. Ike=Fail. "Houston, you have a problem. And so might Bush/McCain. Will FEMA redeema?" What? Also, only the hurricane and the Department of the Interior get down arrows. Biden, the Clintons, Obama, Palin, McCain-even 9/11-get sideways arrows. And the arrows point both ways. It seems that if you can't make a judgment using simply an arrow, you're in trouble. Or maybe, the situation is too nuanced and varied to be summed up with an arrow. In which case, go back to words. The Economist doesn't use arrows. The Economist uses words. [Newsweek]

The Republican running mate has been compared variously with a stewardess, a sexy librarian and a moose caught in the headlights-and Tina Fey. The bespectacled star of 30 Rock has a physical resemblance to Palin but she's also a brilliant mimic. Almost makes up for Baby Mama? doesn't it?

I was just thinking to myself the other day that seeing a movie is way too cheap. That it is such a shame that The Dark Knight only grossed $22 billion. I thought to myself, "What can I do to help the ailing cinema industry in its hour of need, while also impressing a special lady?" A theater planned for Orange County, California (where else on God's green earth, I ask you) will charge $35 dollars a head to see a first-run movie. "What do you get for the money? Reclining chairs decked out in suede, a personal attendant, and the chance to see the same movie that's playing at the local cineplex for a 350% markup" The menu includes gourmet black truffle arancini, chickpea croquettes with light tahini sauce, and mini corn crab cakes with chili lime mayo. Additionally, you and your date-no doubt soon to be bedmate-can enjoy a lovely pinot while watching Space Chimps. [O.C. Weekly]

Last Night in Los Angeles, the unthinkable occurred... "No way!" she gasped in her seat when she heard her name called as winner. Upon arriving at the podium, she gasped, "Well, well, well! Here we go again, f-ers. Here we go again!" Looking around the auditorium, she acknowledged some celebs in the audience, adding, "Hanks, Gandolfini - what the f-! I'm not going to tell anyone to suck it. I would make love to this thing if I could." I understand she won in the "Reality Program" category, which is not exactly the Royal Shakespeare Company, but I think this woman is possibly the most grating person on television. Am I missing something? [LAT]

If you've ever had the overwhelming desire to get busy in front of a "professional journalist," now is your chance. Seen recently on Craigslist, a heartfelt entreaty:

Anyone notice the masthead of the latest Vanity Fair? Sir Graydon Carter, the gentleman editor, has apparently made some staffing changes. With all of the journalistic luminares on the VF roster, you'd think the magazine had all the talent it could handle. You'd be wrong. According to the October issue, former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, and Carter pal, is now "Our Man in Kabul," while restaurateur and Waverly Inn habitué Brian McNally is now "Our Man in Saigon." So, in addition to mentioning his cronies in the magazine, Graydon has taken to hiring them (these are assuredly paid positions, not just dilettantes on parade, right?). Fair enough, this is the privilege of power, but, the question remains: Why does the White-Haired Wonder have to sound like he's running Her Majesty's Foreign Service rather than editing a glossy? Nonetheless, one can just imagine Freston (above right), after tea with the mujahideen, riding on the back of a mule high into the Hindu Kush, and maybe, just maybe, finding You Know Who...

Do you ever wonder how to dress for the coming clima(c)tic apocalypse? Fear not. This week, WSJ fashion reporter Teri Agins answered urgent questions from fashion-minded readers. When one fretting citizen wrote in wondering what Agins thought "of the 'rule' on not wearing white after Labor Day," she thoughtfully responded:

A report on "liberal blog" The Michigan Messenger claimed this week that Macomb County (Michigan) Republicans have quietly gathered a list of foreclosed homes in their area and are planning to use it to challenge the addresses—hence, the eligibility—of voters on Election Day. (Macomb holds much of the middle class northern suburbs of Detroit.) There are also allegations of shenanigans between John McCain's campaign and a law firm that specializes in foreclosures. The county chairman says the charges are a complete lie and that his quotes in the original story are fabricated, but the reporter didn't tape the conversation (which is like, Journalism 101, right?) so who the hell knows what's going on? Still, this it brings to mind all the electoral problems that were supposed to be fixed eight years ago and somehow still aren't. This is how elections are rigged won these days. You don't stuff the ballot box or "misplace" one—you close it before anyone can put it a name in. In many ways, Michigan is the swingiest of swing states. It went blue in 2000 and 2004 (narrowly) and has a Democratic governor, but the state has been hit harder than any by recession and unemployment and Jennifer "Aunt Jenny" Granholm doesn't have a ton of fans right now. (She's also Canadian! And not the good moose-hunting kind.) It isn't generally mentioned as one of the key battleground states, but Michigan could easily become the one, especially with the local apparatus in Detroit a complete shambles right now. (What with Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick going to jail and everything.) If Ohio and Florida have taught us anything, it's that it doesn't take much to take away someone's voter card—but did they teach it to us too late? Or is simply no one listening? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s famous Rolling Stone piece was a scathing indictment of local party politics, but it came two years after anyone could do anything about it. So is this the first of many shady stories we'll hear about in 2008? Or is it an outright lie that damages the media's ability to do its one civic duty—keeping people honest? Or will we wake up sometime in December and think, "Gee, how did that happen?" Lose your house, lose your vote [MichiganMessenger.com] GOP won't use foreclosure list to block voters [Detroit Free Press]

Why do we anthropomorphize the weather? The standard convention of naming large tropical storms began as way to simply keep track of multiple simultaneous events, but it also has the unusual side effect of allowing people to believe that the storm is literally out to get them. Hurricane Ike is currently "ravaging" South Texas with his "ferocious" winds and "roaring" floodwaters and will soon spread his "wrath" across the whole Gulf Coast. This time it's personal! Now we obviously don't want to make light of the situation the individual residents find themselves in, because it is personal for someone with a basement that is now underwater. But if you want to tell the human drama of natural disaster, is it really necessary to turn the low pressure system into a sentient being with a grudge? Hurricane Katrina Changed Everything, of course, but a little perspective on "catastrophic" storms might be in order. The death toll currently stands at three (one was a nursing home patient and an other a 10-year-old struck by a tree branch) but, sad as that is, it's still less than the death toll from that California train crash—another disaster that the cable news networks have all but ignored. Oh, and the big Galveston Hurricane of 1900? 8,000 dead and the town was nearly erased from the map. That rain cloud must have been pissed. [Check the local coverage from the Houston Chronicle.]

We just heard—and Jossip confirms!—that exec editor Rob Shuter is OUT at OK!(.) He says "resigned," we hear "fired." Shuter was the hated lying flack who we accused of destroying an honorable craft when he ascended to head the celeb weekly. His "celebrity-fair" style of coverage made his magazine the friendliest and also least interesting of the tabs. OK!'s new GM, Kent Brownridge, is probably behind the shake-up. Also: we were told former Daily Newser Laura Schreffler got canned too. Can anyone confirm?

• Charles Gibson reeled in big ratings for ABC with his interview with Sarah Palin. [THR]

Ab-spirational Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko, who writes books that put Barack Obama to shame, has a new project: to "satisfy the global appetite" for Women's Health. Too easy? [Folio]

Fired Vanity Fair writer Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (movie version forthcoming) chronicled the Manhattan media hellmouth of the 1990s. It would be much more difficult to make it in print journalism today, he admits to WWD. In fact, he says, if he were trying to start a media-career in the aughts, he'd probably be, like, working as a "slave" for this website in particular—and "sleeping on [Brit It Boy] Euan Rellie's floor":

Tina Brown's image as a media power player remains anchored in the 1980s and the 1990s, when she edited Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. She's attempting to change that with an internet venture, the Daily Beast, funded by InterActive Corp. chairman Barry Diller. But an early blunder getting Beast off the ground has left Brown red-faced and more shackled to her past than ever. It seems Brown's big idea for launching her website was — stop us if you've heard this one before — to publish a big list of the most powerful people in Hollywood. "The idea is so 1980s," one source told Nikki Finke. Apparently no one is even bothering to call Brown's staff back as they attempt to report the feature:

Ron Fournier, the new Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief? Definitely a tool, possibly a Republican. Some of the AP campaign coverage this season? Annoying at best, misleading at worst. But recently liberals (led by the usually serious Talking Points Memo) have all but declared the Associated Press an arm of the John McCain communications office. Well we can seek out and link to only the AP dispatches that fit our preferred spin too, guys! Today the wire sent out a remarkable analysis piece on how the McCain campaign just lies, all the time, about everything. And everyone calls them on their lies, and "fact checks" them, but it doesn't matter, because they don't care. And the AP under Fournier has actually done a better job with this fact-checking than lots of other outlets. The AP has no compunction about explicitly reporting that a statement is deliberately misleading, even if they sometimes shy away from the word "lie." Take a look:

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. met with the paper's employees yesterday to reassure them that everything is just fine at the Gray Lady and they have absolutely nothing to worry about even though bad-ass hedge funder Phil Falcone and now Mexican mogul Carlos Slim have significant stakes in the company. Sulzberger also demonstrated that he's totally in touch with what the kids are listening to these days on those newfangled little portable music players manufactured by Apple: His slideshow was set to the background of Coldplay's "Clocks." And some employees describe him as "tone deaf"? [NYO]