There seems to be no role left in book publishing that an author can't outsource. Ghost writers are commonplace. Laura "JT LeRoy" Albert pioneered the use of a surrogate in book-tour appearances. And judging by the Craigslist ad after the jump, writers are even hiring forgers to affix their autographs to new releases, because signing books is just way too much work. With all the celebrity titles in circulation, this surely can't be a brand-new phenomenon, but has anyone ever been quite so cheap and brazen about it?

As first noted by the tenacious John Edwards-hounders at Deceiver.com, it seems Times readers are mighty interested in the philandering Democrat, even though many journalists said they simply shouldn't care about the scandal. As shown in the screenshot above, "John Edwards" is the most popular search term over the past week on nytimes.com. If the newspaper was crass enough to actually shape coverage around such reader-interest metrics, it might admit as miscalculation the assertion by the Times' campaign coverage editor last week that while the Edwards scandal was "fair game for journalism," it wasn't a "high priority" because "there are a lot of big issues.... and we have finite resources." After the jump, CNN congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin on why her viewers neither wanted nor needed Edwards scandal coverage:

Hip hop radio queen and Method Man enemy Wendy Williams' morning TV show was originally planned to just be a temporary thing in a few select markets. But then she started with all the penis talk and the Omarosa-fighting and the advertiser-and-publicist-wooing, and now she's going to be going national. It's a loud, gossiping American media success story!

Hey, nice back cover of New York magazine this week—a shirtless athlete! Not just any shirtless athlete would be appropriate for their refined demographic, however. With rowdy soccer players often thought of as being low-class (and a populist sport to boot), and with Michael Phelps being a little odd-looking, it's only natural that classy New York's contribution to male pinups would be Rafael Nadal, a tennis player. Sports that usually require money or horses—like tennis, rugby and polo—are the ones whose players are more acceptable for refined ladies to fall for. (Nouveau riche footballer David Beckham doesn't count; he comes from a humble background.) For NY Mag to venture into the perilous category of totty, it's either the "classy sportsman" route or the faux-serious, artistic homage (Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe.)

Last month the New York Times announced it would be raising its cover price from $1.25 to $1.50, and there were several alarmed articles full of ominous grumbling. But the increase didn't actually come into effect until today, and there appears to be not even a peep of outrage online from readers who are short a quarter. Have we all grown 20% more appreciative of the Times in the last month? Or-more likely-is it just that no one who owns a computer has bought a copy of a newspaper today?

You may have exclaimed "Uhhhhhhh!" when you heard that New Orleans' favorite musically atrocious bounce rapper Master P is planning to launch a new cable network called Better Black Television (BBTV). P says it will be "a family-friendly network" with "positive subject matter," meaning it's designed to be a kick in the balls to BET, which has been knocked forever for having a trashy programming lineup. Master P jokes aside, could this thing actually work-and should it? We, the opposite of his target demographic, will tell you the answer: BBTV's announced show lineup so far includes hip hop video and interview shows with only "appropriate" music included; a comedy show; a kids' show called Gee Gee the Giraffe; a bilingual soap opera; a cooking show; a financial literacy show; a "behind-the-scenes" celebrity show; family-friendly black movies; and profiles of historical black figures. If you've spent much time watching BET, the lineup sounds awfully familiar. BBTV is essentially saying that it will be what everyone hoped BET would be before it degenerated into lots of infomercials, Juice reruns, and endless repetitions of, um, Master P videos. (Although BET has made a bit of a comeback with original programming recently, it hasn't been enough to resurrect its reputation for embracing stereotypical lowest-common-denominator black programming). So yes, the irony of Master P running a positive network is not lost on anyone. But give the man some credit. He went from selling tapes of his terrible music out of car trunks to running a business conglomerate that probably makes him worth more the Puff Daddy, his more glamorous NYC counterpart. BET has long had the "black cable network" idea to itself, which allowed it to get away with selling such crappy programming for so long. So P, we salute your business sense and your commitment to positivity, if not any of your 15 albums or your son's equally grating music. Master P could easily be the next black billionaire; he just needs to remember not to go so heavy on the music censorship that he blocks exposure for the next coming of himself. Uhhhhhhhh.

In the most recent issue of ESPN: The Magazine, 15-year sports journalism veteran Stephen A. Smith responds to the torrent of hate mail he received following his inaugural column for the magazine. The basic thrust of the criticisms is that Smith is an angry black man who doesn't understand any sport besides basketball. Smith defends the work he put in to earn his byline: "See, contrary to popular belief, ESPN didn't hand me the privilege of working here overnight. That opportunity arrived after years of blood, sweat and tears. A lot of people choose to ignore this. Fine! Especially now that I've got the last word. Or the last word of the first round, anyway." His column is immediately followed in the magazine by a story on the Buffalo Bills authored by a young up-and-comer named Luke Russert. Sigh.

Seth MacFarlane's plan to take over the internet is even grander than we thought. In June we told you about the Family Guy creator's new project, Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, which will be an internet show syndicated through Google AdSense. Each episode will only be two minutes plus an ad, and he gets a cut of ad revenue, so he looked to be positioned to make a boatload of cash. But one single boatload obviously wasn't enough for the intermittently cool MacFarlane; he's going to do all the freaking ads himself: Burger King is the chief advertiser, and-in a cartoon marketing move the likes of which have not been seen since Homer Simpson started eating Butterfingers-MacFarlane will be creating the ads, like so:

"Whatever I do next—and it very well could be in public service— I want to be passionate about it. " [NY Mag]

MSNBC is still not comfortable with the idea that it is the liberal counterweight to Fox News. Executives at the cable news network bristle at the comparison, claiming that while individual "point of view" shows like Keith Olbermann's Countdown skew leftward, the network as a whole has no unifying ideology, as at Fox. But demographics may be making such a bias inevitable. The Times points out today that, amid heightened political activity among young, mostly liberal voters, MSNBC has added nearly 40,000 18-to-34-year-old viewers during prime time, far more than either Fox News or CNN. It is now number one among the young in those hours, while Fox News is dead last. That makes sense politically: Republicans are, as a group, significantly older the Democrats. Perhaps most revealing are the news nets' seemingly bizarre choices of internet partners.

Dan Rather's contract with Mark Cuban's TV network HDNet should not be up until nearly a year from now, assuming the terms Rather disclosed just before he inked the deal still hold. But would the contract prevent the former CBS Evening News anchor from contributing in some way to Tina Brown's forthcoming news website The Beast? Perhaps that's what Brown and Rather were discussing during a "very long lunch" at The Park on Tenth Avenue, as reported by a Post spy. Though Rather's work at HDNet has garnered some positive recognition, it's not nearly as visible as his work for CBS was. A Web gig or partnership would give Rather a shot at regaining more of the attention he once had — and that any veteran TV newsman would crave. Perhaps the skilled lawyers working for Brown's business partner Barry Diller can work something out on the proud old newshound's behalf. [Post]

New York is stoking a rivalry between Nina Garcia of Project Runway and Marie Claire and Anne Slowey, Garcia's TV stand-in at Elle and star of the forthcoming reality show Stylista. It's hard to imagine either of the two fashion editors terribly minded New York's in-depth article on their differences — which, disclosure here, was written by our own Moe — considering they both have shows to push, Slowey's being brand new and Garcia's in the midst of a controversial jump to Lifetime. But it's hard to imagine Slowey, who desperately needs to put Stylista's embarrassing trailers behind her, is thrilled about the particulars of how she looks.

The glow from Olympic victory is notoriously short-lived. Prudent, then, that champion swimmer Michael Phelps is moving quickly to convert his Olympic buzz into sweet endorsement cash. Over the next week, Phelps will promote his existing sponsors. Then he's off to London and, several days later, New York, reports the Wall Street Journal. The athlete is estimated worth upwards of $40 million to Nike alone, assuming he switches to their swimwear from Speedo, and his agent estimates he can take in $100 million over the course of his lifetime. That aggressive number still values each of Phelps' 14 gold medals (eight this Olympiad alone) well below the going rate for top celebrity babies. And reaching the payday has been infinitely harder for Phelps, not to mention more tricky. Look at all the sometimes wacky and ill-considered endorsement possibilities he'll have to carefully navigate, lest he tarnish his brand:

The National Enquirer is having an amazing week thanks to its coverage of John Edwards' philandering, but the supermarket tabloid is probably still going to die along with troubled parent company American Media Inc., the Times' David Carr reports for tomorrow's paper. It doesn't seem to matter that three of the best papers in the country all ran stories about how the Enquirer was right about Edwards and they were wrong or that the tabloid still owns the probably-not-finished scandal. AMI is so deep in the hole — nearly $1 billion! — that most analysts aren't even keeping track of the Edwards coverage or anything else about the company because they've written it off. One gave this fairly devastating quote to Carr, anonymously:

Okay, clearly I am going to milk this crush theme until I'm asking you all to post daguerrotypes of pre-Victorian stage performers and ballerinas. But we're not there yet! The 1960s is recent enough for all of us to have seen lots and lots of its movies and TV shows and to have developed childhood-or childlike-crushes on its many attractive stars. So, who's your fave? Mine after the jump. If you can pull yourself away from Michael Phelps for two minutes!

God help us all. Warner Bros. has decided to bring back the single most frightening children's show that was ever made-The Banana Splits. That's the Hanna-Barbera psychedelic Saturday morning mind-fuck that scrambled the brains of innocent youngsters starting in the late 1960s and continued to terrorize for more than a decade before some angel of mercy finally pulled its evil plug. It was created by hippie Satanists with the aim of building an army of plushy zombie warriors and it damned well nearly accomplished its task. And now some madman is bent on bringing it back? Stop them! Won't someone please, please think of the children?!

Whiney song-boy John Mayer poured his heart out to a group of paparazzi in the street about why he dumped America's sweetheart, Jennifer Aniston. "I ended a relationship because there is no lying. I ended a relationship to be alone because I don't want to waste somebody's time if something's not right. I don't waste people's time," he rambled. "I don't do 'the taper.' I guarantee you [that] 20 percent of the people on this street right now who are in a relationship wish they could get out but they don't know how. And I'm going to be honest on the way in to my relationships and I'm going to be honest on the way out of my relationships." He explained that he just had to break up with the awesome Aniston-if he hadn't, you see, he would have had to cheat on the lady. It's just as simple and innocent as that!

It takes a lot of people-and assorted creatures-to stage an epic war between the forces of good and evil that spans an entire galaxy. Sadly, most of the minor players are long forgotten thanks to scene stealers like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Darth Vader. But these obscure warriors are being properly celebrated today. More after the jump.

Swim demon Michael Phelps won his 8th gold medal of the 2008 Olympics last night, his 14th overall. How does he do it? It's that crazy 6'4" bod of his! "Generally, a man's arm span equals his height but in his case it's 6'7"-three inches more than his height. Naturally his arms work as powerful propulsive paddles, giving him a clear edge over others. His lower body, interestingly, is shorter than that of an average man of his height. His relatively short legs result in less drag or resistance. In short, Phelps has an upper body of a 6'8" person but his lower body seems to be of someone who is only 5'10", which also make the perfect plane in water." More science after the jump.

Last night, a mob of dangerously dancing hipsters armed with boom boxes and dressed as terrifying pandas marched from Union Square to Williamsburg, where the NYPD met them in force. Apparently, dancing and loud music on a hot August evening can lead to any end of mischief, so our boys and girls in blue twisted arms, threw people down, and destroyed at least one portable stereo.