"I'm just happy to have a place that's as good as Radar for the kind of writing I want to do. I've never been good at judging a publication's longevity." [Observer]

Tonight might be a very important and momentous occasion, with a black man securing a major-party presidential nomination for the first time in history and all, but Anderson Cooper isn't going to let that stop him from being outrageous and giggly. The dreamy CNN anchor was interviewing Donna Brazile, strategist for a long string of failed Democratic presidential candidates, when he said something complimentary that made her blush and declare, "you're not my boo." When Cooper replied that "I want to be your boo," everyone got a little flustered and giddy and, probably, confused. Anderson, clearly lost at sea, asked everyone to explain what the word "boo" means to him at some later time. In the meantime, Cooper should be thanked for ensuring that tonight really was an important time for bridge-building and new directions in America. Clip after the jump.

Guess who's on the cover of the new issue of Steppin' Out, the odd little celebrity magazine produced by Jersey gossip gadfly and Page Six enemy Chaunce Hayden? It's recently arrested former child star Tatum O'Neal! The interview obviously happened before her arrest, making this by far the most fortuitous coincidence of Chaunce Hayden's career. There are several questions about drug use in the interview, because that's what people always talk about with Tatum O'Neal. But she told Chaunce at the time that she felt "good, comfortable, and clear":

The most beautiful cable news anchor of all time ever is 41 years old today. Maybe his mom will come by the studio to sing to him? Or maybe mean Mrs. Clinton will ruin his party by making him report "news." Sigh. [HuffPo] (After the jump, we'll share some birthday wishes for Anderson from HuffPo commenters.)

A pitch to a reporter from the serially incompetent 5WPR begins: "Almost 100 years ago, before the Spanish conquest of the Andes, the Incas created an agricultural paradise." Wait, did she just leave off a "0" there? No, because the Inca empire's pinnacle came in the 15th and 16th centuries. It's just pure stupidity.

Music superstar R. Kelly's criminal trial for taping himself having sex with an underage girl has been so bland and subdued, we've just been waiting for a newsworthy reason to cover it. And now we have it: there's a legal issue in the case that affects a member of the media in some way! Why, this is almost as exciting as a music superstar's kinky child sex tape scandal!

Retailing Death Star Wal-Mart is launching its own classified ad service. Slate, of course, thinks this could be a good thing for local newspapers, which could theoretically all join together with Wal-Mart to battle the Craigslist menace. Of course, Wal-Mart itself is bad for local newspapers, because it doesn't buy enough ads. Replied Slate, in my imagination: "We always say the opposite of everything, though." [Slate]

The media has lots of unwritten rules. Many of them are followed more closely than the written rules. After the Times ripped off a year-old Wall Street Journal story with no credit last week, we realized the need for a complete explanation of the powerful rules governing a time-honored and fundamental practice: Stealing stories. Every media outlet in the world does it—after all, there's much more space to fill every day than there are exclusives. Done the right way, it's perfectly acceptable; done the wrong way, it can be the start of an undercover war. After the jump, we explain everything you need to know to be an honorable, thieving hack. Memorize it:

We told you before how to make your pecs look ripped before getting all up in the club: rub yourself down with Preparation H! (It's the gayest thing we've seen straight men doing in a long time.) Today, a dermatologist and Rob the Bouncer discuss with Mike & Juliet this disturbing trend—and the potential side effects of the hemorrhoid cream's off-label use.

The question that has kept an anxious nation on tenterhooks for the last two days—"Did stoner movie star Seth Rogen light up a real spliff on stage at the MTV Movie Awards last weekend?"—has finally been resolved. According to the AP, the stunt was a big fake; but they also say that Rogen and Pineapple Express costar James Franco weren't supposed to do it at all! Is anyone here telling the truth? Such a web of deception!

Bill Clinton has become an embarrassment to his party, friends, and family, with his tone-deaf angry tirades and bizarre rhetorical missteps and also his habit of globe-trotting with scummy over-sexed billionaires. But if you tell him this, he becomes quite angry! Todd Purdum, who, despite being married to a former Clinton staffer, has written a number of negative things about Clinton over the years, is now the target of a raging tirade by the former president. All because he insinuated some untoward things using dozens of unnamed anonymous sources in Vanity Fair! Now Purdum has responded (clip attached). So. What did the article do wrong? And what did Clinton get wrong? And, uh, what the hell happened to the guy?

Rob Walker, who writes the "Consumed" column in the New York Times Magazine every weekend (a sweet "job"), has a new book out in which he draws the sad—but unavoidable—conclusion that we are all a bunch of sheep blindly obeying a world of marketing messages. You think you're able to use your education, morality, and philosophical beliefs to rise above advertising? Ha! That's what all the sheep think. Walker's not a gung-ho Corporate America kind of guy, which makes his thesis that much more depressing. But it's hard to argue with him. Go drown your sorrows in PBR like the hipster that you are. Your chosen brands make up your very soul:

"When [the protagonist] makes haste to a downtown sex club, it's no surprise that he spends an inordinate amount of time folding his clothes into neat piles and comparing the claustrophobic buddy booths to the fitting rooms at Bergdorf Goodman." [WWD] (Photo via PhilipGalanes.com)

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's unborn twins are worshiped by the entertainment press as a sort of double celebrity messiah. Bidding for exclusive first pictures has reportedly reached $15 million and is poised to rise further. So it was with no small measure of elation Friday that Entertainment Tonight delivered news that the twins had just been born in the south of France, a big scoop. But People and Us Weekly soon reported denials from reps for the couple. Brad Pitt attended a Grand Prix event across the border in Italy, which would be an odd decision for a new father. The celebrified Associated Press, which obtained a denial from Pitt's manager, asked, "Was Entertainment Tonight punk'd?" Maybe not. Maybe it is the victim of a MASSIVE ANGELINA JOLIE CONSPIRACY.

Like an old, scorned lover, Scott McClellan can't quite fully betray and repudiate the man who made him do awful things, George W. Bush. The former Bush press secretary has written a fairly extensive and blunt tell-all book about his time with the president, but he's still splitting hairs about what happened. So when McClellan found himself on the Daily Show, discussing the administration's hushing of the economic cost of the war in Iraq, he couldn't help but insist the cover-up was not "willful deception" but was the common practice of selective disclosure. Host Jon Stewart wasn't having any of it: "Somebody made a willful decision, 'don't talk about the price [of the war]...'" McClellan: "I don't think it was like that."

Audio emerged tonight of former President Bill Clinton calling Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum a "sleazy... dishonest... slimy... scumbag." Former Times reporter Purdum, of course, is the guy who wrote the just-released article about how Clinton is running around the world on private jets, including one called "Air Fuck One," with billionaire scuzzballs like Ron Burkle, Steve Bing and Jeffrey Epstein. Clinton told a Huffington Post reporter Purdum was awful, and that the Vanity Fair piece has "five or six blatant lies," but then added he had never read it. But that didn't stop him from continuing to trash it, nor did the fact that Purdum is married to Clinton's former press secretary Dee Dee Myers. Audio after the jump, along with a text summary.

HarperCollins hopes the whiff of scandal will push sales of Tatum O'Neal's memoir higher, based on the line (OK I'll stop now) the publisher is selling in a new press release touting the three-year-old book. The oh-so-tasteful bit of flackery leads with the "BREAKING NEWS" of O'Neal's arrest Sunday night for attempting to buy cocaine near her Lower East Side apartment, and concludes with a not-entirely-freshened-up bio: "... this talented, spirited young woman has endured and triumphed over everything from childhood neglect and spousal abuse and heroin addiction, only to suffer a recent heartbreaking relapse from hard won sobriety... Tatum's life story is the ultimate victory-in-the-end tale." Tatum's life can be a victory in the end, especially if you buy her paperback, which via the magic of royalties will literally provide the fallen actress with microseconds of legal services, drug rehab or cocaine ecstasy. Full press release after the jump.

Some secret Japanese government files have emerged about Tadamasa Goto, the Yakuza gangster boss who's threatened the life of American reporter Jake Adelstein and his family. And—we hate to say it—but it really sounds like Goto is not a guy you would want to be threatening your life. The file notes that he both pays off reporters and "will seriously and relentless threaten whoever is responsible for unfavorable coverage." Duh! Well uh, he's not really brutal, is he?

As we told you earlier, Jewish people love buying books and eating Chinese food. They are also voracious consumers of web media: we'd even go as far to say that Jews run the Internet! We've rounded up the Jewiest websites. Click for our list. (A user's guide: if a website's index is 200, that means it has twice as many Jewish readers as would be expected from their percentage of the web population.) For example, Zagat, at 651, has users six times more likely to be Jewish than visitors to the average site.

The PR industry loves to get riled up any time someone takes what might be construed as an unjustified shot at its awful reputation. This is because there are already so many perfectly justified criticisms of PR that any argument not directly linked to a huge public scandal gives the industry a rare chance to get on its high horse. That's precisely what's going on today, after CBS analyst Andrew Cohen went on air yesterday with a scathing but overbroad rant calling the entire PR industry dirty liars, in the wake of lying former Bush flack Scottie McClellan's book. How dare CBS be so mean! The Public Relations Society of America fired back with a mealy-mouthed letter declaring "truth and accuracy are the bread and butter of the public relations profession." This is the same PRSA that didn't feel the need to say anything about McClellan's admitted lies themselves. So we have an ill-considered commentary, and a hypocritical response. A perfect embodiment of PR! Video of Cohen's rant, after the jump.