Here's a video clip in which the interviewer had two very simple and specific question for Corrections author Jonathan Franzen, who famously got himself disinvited from the Oprah Book Club for being too ungrateful: Do you regret your run-in with Oprah? And would you be part of the book club if you could do it over again? To these simple questions, Franzen stares at the floor and says things like "What does regret mean?" and then remarks on the magnitude of dividing the world's opinion in two. Maybe this is the nuance necessary to be a literary titan; check out this quote of his at the time of the dispute: "To find myself being in the position of giving offense to someone who's a hero — not a hero of mine per se, but a hero in general — I feel bad in a public-spirited way." No, that's just mealy-mouthed. Yes or no question, Jonathan Franzen. The full clip, after the jump.

Things are apparently a mess at fashion magazine Elle. A terrible reality show is has taken over the office, according to Ben Widdicombe. The show is called "Fashionista," it's produced by Tyra, and it will air on The CW later this year. It documents the search for a new assistant for creative director Joe Zee, even though he has an assistant already, one who is by all reports perfectly competent. So the show's contestants are just running around the office, getting in everyone's way with pointless "challenges," competing for a job they won't get. Meanwhile, an email we received from an anonymous tipster seems to suggest that maybe Mr. Zee, with his star-making new reality show on the way, might be helping to publicize the ouster of the mag's last reality show star, former fashion director Nina Garcia.

Josh Quittner, former editor of the defunct Business 2.0, has extricated himself from his unhappy stay at Fortune by returning to Time, where he previously worked. Tellingly, Time editor Rick Stengel refers to him as a "writer" for Fortune, though he had the ostensible title of executive editor. Stengel's memo is included below. Quittner's new gig is his old gig, covering consumer technology, which takes him back roughly 13 years in the progress of his career. Funny, because we'd heard that Quittner had held serious talks with Michael Arrington about joining TechCrunch, around the same time he wrote a laudatory column about the tech blogger. All that puffery, and no job in exchange? A shame.

American Airlines has been having some PR problems lately, like being picketed by its own pilots and canceling 3,300 flights last week. So the company did what any $2 billion corporation would do: they started a laughable blog! It's hosted on Blogger, and it has 3 posts so far. And if their social media eloquence doesn't save the company, nothing can:

God, Ben Widdicombe—could you be any more obvious in that "blind item" in today's Daily News? Um: "Which inexplicable media star (blame www.Gawker.com for that) likes to boast that she let a certain handsome men's magazine editor, who is also much in the gossip columns, get to third base during a dinner at [downtown eatery] Balthazar?"

Have you heard any wild rumors about anything in the news from any source at all? Why not call New York Post editor Col Allan so he can put it right in the paper! Last Thursday, Col's wife phoned him and said "Elaine died!"—referring to a family friend in Australia. But Allan, with a newspaperman's instincts, naturally assumed she was talking about famous restaurateur Elaine Kaufman. So he set his city desk to work calling all over town, asking her friends about her death. Finally some qualified reporter who should be fired immediately pointed out that, based on actual facts, Kaufman was not dead. Reminiscent of the Post's glorious, fictional splash about John Kerry choosing Dick Gephardt for his running mate, which likely originated with Rupert Murdoch. Ha, reporting for the Post is just like playing a game of Telephone! In Allan's defense, "Mistakes happen, chicken fish monkey pineapple." [Daily Intel]

Being a limp-wristed, knee-jerk environmentalist liberal, you probably thought that Whole Foods' plan to phase out plastic bags in its stores was a good thing. Sure it is—if you love cockroaches. That's the sober warning in an editorial in the New York Post today, penned by Jeff Stier of the conservative "science" group ACSH, which is funded by Dow Chemical, Chevron, and a slew of other corporations. See, cockroaches "prefer paper (bags) to plastic," which logically means that Whole Foods is virtually holding your door open and setting up a nice buffet for the bugs! And it gets worse: they're also trying to give you asthma.

Choire Sicha is getting a new column on the new Wonkette. Observer contributor Sicha of course held intermittent leadership jobs at Gawker, not unlike his new boss Ken Layne, who held intermittent leadership jobs at Wonkette. Sicha and Layne also worked together at shuttered Gawker Media site Sploid. Sicha's new column does not yet appear to have a name. Five words: "Choire And Ken's Live Yoga." Or maybe something about beard maintenance. [Wonkette]

Scandal alert: Barack Obama has been complicit with rappers since at least 2006! He has collaborated with their nefarious aims! It's all there in a sordid report from Human Events, which lays bare the undeniable ties between Obama and individuals who have released albums containing rap music at one time or another. He hasn't rebuked them or repudiated them or even renounced them! Not even "foul-mouthed rappers" like Will.I.Am! Not even when, throughout the rap industry, "folks talk so openly and regularly about b———, n——— and hoes"! Yo Evan Gahr of Human Events, can you please drop some knowledge on these muhfuckas?

Freaknomics author Stephen Dubner says this is "The Best Paragraph You'll Read All Week." Really, Stephen Dubner? Perhaps you could use some more varied reading materials. Am I missing the genius in this standard-issue "I used to be a geek" narrative? Click to enlarge the graf (an intro to a column in the FT), which the superstar economist says is amazing and I, who took six years to finish my bachelor's degree, say is rather pedestrian. [Freakonomics]

Yesterday, we wondered what the hell to do about our taxes. Today, we know: do everything but ignore them, like actor Wesley Snipes! He's been in trouble for a while now, but the latest development is prosecutors are seeking a 3-year jail term. Way harsh, but seriously—dude hasn't filed since, like, '99. What other celebs have totally blanked on their taxes?

New York Times Associate managing editor William "Bill" Schmidt just sent an email around the paper begging people to accept buyout offers, for the good of everyone else. "Each buyout we record before next Tuesday reduces the number of layoffs we will have to seek." Retire! Earlier today, Radar media critic Charles Kaiser named a couple people who might take buyouts, but none of them were people we want to see leave. None of them are responsible for Thursday Styles, after all. Though we suppose the idea is for old people to leave, right? Can Clyde Haberman take one? Wait, is Clyde Haberman still alive? Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Dan Barry can stay as long as he goes back to investigative reporting and not writing columns about quaint happenings in quaint places. Oh, and COUGH COUGH ALESSANDRA STANLEY? Your further suggestions are appreciated. Full memo after the jump.

First, they came for photoshop, and I said "good luck putting a magazine together." The American Society of Magazine Editors may put together a panel that will brainstorm some "best-practice guidelines" for digital manipulation of photographs in our glossies. Not that they'd ban it, of course! They say they just don't want readers to be misled. We say SLIPPERY SLOPE. Because now, in France, they're taking this to its logical conclusion: they're banning pretty people. Or skinny people, anyway.

Not that we're merchants of gloom, the latest figures for magazine advertising are dismal. Tallies of the number of pages carrying advertising in the first quarter, an early indicator of publishing woes, are down by double-digit percentages at news weeklies such as Time and business magazines such as Business Week. The only surprise is that Keith Kelly, who published the figures in today's Post, didn't tweak Mort Zuckerman, proprietor of a rival tabloid. Zuckerman's pet news magazine, US News & World Report, fell 37.5%. One perky spot: Martha Stewart's Everyday Food, now the last best hope of the magazine industry, as well as frustrated cookie-bakers.

Have you signed the petition against Guillermo "Habacuc" Vargas yet? He's the Costa Rican artist whose latest big exhibition featured him tying up a starving dog "without food and water under the words 'Eres Lo Que Lees' - 'You Are What You Read' - made out of dog biscuits while he played the Sandinista anthem backwards and set 175 pieces of crack cocaine alight in a massive incense burner." Some reports say the dog starved to death during the display; the gallery director says that's not true. Either way, Vargas is not a popular man with animal lovers. By now, more than a million people have signed a petition (you can sign here, if you're so inclined) urging that he not be allowed to recreate the work, and the cause continues to draw media coverage and generate new outrage. But the artist calls his opponents hypocrites. His defense, and a video of the exhibit in question (which is pretty heartbreaking), after the jump.

Hillary Clinton will do her awkward, vaguely joke-ish all-in-good-fun routine with Stephen Colbert this week, which might be more entertaining than her last 500 talk show appearances, as politicians are rarely able to figure out how to be "in" on his joke without saying something regrettable. The news was broken during Colbert's interview last night with Hardballer Chris Matthews, who seemed, honestly, a broken, beaten-down, exhausted shell of his usual self. Seriously. He barely got a word in edgewise and at one point, when discussing his boyhood dream of being a Senator, he looked on the verge of tears. Did last Sunday's amusingly embarrassing Times Magazine profile... actually embarrass him? Nothing else ever has! We think there are serious, fundamental problems with Chris Matthews' world-view and imagine he's probably irreparably damaging the way we conduct democracy but obviously we have nothing against him personally, so we hope he feels better soon! The uncomfortable interview is after the jump.

Something that our modern age is not equipped to process: a man paying millions for a high-profile sex tape of a famous star, only to keep the thing secret. No special downloads available for $29.95. No DVDs, Cinemax licensing fees, or posters. But that's exactly what an anonymous and principled oddball memorabilia collector did this week when he paid $1.5 million for a 15-minute tape of tragically deceased starlet Marilyn Monroe giving a blow job to an unidentified man—who just might be tragically deceased president John F. Kennedy!

Bad timing waits for no man, and the book industry is particularly vulnerable, due to its long lead time. The idea of a book called Damn It Feels Good to Be a Banker: and Other Baller Things You Only Get to Say if You Work on Wall Street probably seemed great a year ago. Now, it's doomed to come out in the wake of the Bear Stearns debacle. Nevertheless, Hyperion has no choice to but go ahead and publish. As they say in a press release: "Remember: the economy may fall, but bankers never do." But wait: it's a satirical book, based on Amit Chatwani's Leveraged Sell-Out blog.

"An article in today's Herald regarding comments purportedly made by Vice President Dick Cheney was inaccurate and should have noted that it was based on a blogger's satire and was not provided by the Associated Press."—correction in the Boston Herald today, explaining why the paper picked up a fake story by well-known humor person Andy Borowitz about Cheney challenging Hillary Clinton to a "Hunting Contest" and ran it as a real story. Hey, no need to be overly explanatory in the correction, guys! [via HuffPo]

The Atlantic is a magazine about news and culture and stuff. It has been continually published for thousands of years—its founding editor was Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar. Now, though, the internet, which has made Americans forget how to read, is killing it. They struck back recently by putting on their cover a woman who is famous for being mentally disturbed, and now they've gone so far as to bring on brand consultants. Folio reports that Atlantic Media hired "an integrated marketing agency to handle its rebranding." They're redesigning the magazine and relaunching the website! Next fall they will "roll out of a full-scale marketing campaign to communicate the brand message." This is "something the Atlantic has never done" because it is a thing that was invented by marketing agencies ten years ago. [The Atlantic]