When CNN interviewed former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey about the Eliot Spitzer mess this morning, they kinda left out the bit where Coffey resigned in disgrace back in 1996 after he bit a stripper. Quoth Coffey: "This is not survivable." [TVNewser]

Times headline update: from "weighing" a resignation this morning to "expecting" same this afternoon to "HOW MUCH DID YOU PAY TO FUCK AROUND WITH US FOR TWO DAYS, ELIOT?"

Jared Massey got pulled over by a cop while he was driving through Utah. The cop tasered him because, well, I guess he kinda wrinkled his face a bit, and took a step in a certain direction, so he had no choice, or something. Jared put the video clip of his arrest on YouTube and got close to 2 million hits. Now, he's won $40,000 in a civil suit [The Lede]. Is this story going to get much more play than it should because it is further evidence of YOUTUBE and the INTERNET changing EVERYTHING? Yes it is. The full video of Jared's very bad traffic stop, after the jump.

Producing The Office is just not as profitable as building engine rings for billion-dollar bombers or constructing vast Superfund sites—that's the sad fact of being a huge corporate conglomerate. So it's been rumored that General Electric will sell NBC, possibly after the Olympics. But GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt, liberally employing exclamation points, told shareholders that he is planning no such thing: "Should we sell NBCU? The answer is no!" They're the only multinational defense contractor with an in-house propaganda wing and they're gonna keep it, dammit. [NYT]

The New York Times broke the Spitzer story. They learned of it on Friday and forced his announcement yesterday. But their editorial board, and their Sulzberger family, love the governor soooo much. They love him, but they are also self-appointed guardians of middle class morality! And honor! So what to do? Write the most ridiculously mealy-mouthed editorial ever? Sure! While every other New York paper howled for Spitzer's head, the Times felt that he probably should maybe resign, or at least that it would be perhaps a bad idea not to resign, or something. That is the argument of the lead editorial of the most influential opinion page of the Upper East Side.

A judge in Ireland has decided that newspapers there do have the right to publish negative restaurant reviews, overturning an earlier ruling that awarded a Belfast pizzeria $50,000 for a bad review. The ruling pleased champions of press freedom, but it also means that there is now no reason for NYC restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow to move to Ireland. [Breitbart]

Richard Martin, the crazy old super in Bay Ridge who enjoys posting abusive signs about his tenants and filling his lobby with garbage to teach them all a lesson, is now aiming his strongly worded sign-based commentary at the free press. The newly minted media critic has taken aim at Daily News reporter Matthew Hysiak, whom Martin accuses of being "shit" for misquoting him in an article. Already, Martin has achieved a more insightful level of press criticism than Howard Kurtz. In further news, somebody has stolen Martin's umbrella! Did he post a sign about it? You bet! Photos of his news critique and his arch rejoinder to the umbrella thief [via BeehiveHairdresser], after the jump.

Dallas Mavericks owner and well-known billionaire blogger Mark Cuban has banned bloggers from the team's locker room. Hypocritical? Cuban says there is simply not enough room, explaining "I am of the opinion that a blogger for one of the local newspapers is no better or worse than the blogger from the local high school, from the local huge Mavs fan, from an out of town blogger." Right-o! For a rich, supposedly savvy blogger guy, Cuban obviously doesn't know what the fuck is going on in the media these days. One newspaper editor challenged him by saying that blogging is part of newspaper beat reporter's job now, and Cuban responded like so:

We would be remiss if we let this one get lost in the whoremongering hubbub: George Bush, President of the US and foe of Eliot Spitzer, sang a song at the annual Gridiron Dinner this past weekend [WP]. To the absolute delight of the assembled Washington press corps/ slavish DC whoremongers to power. Clips have surfaced on YouTube, and two videos are after the jump: the first records the actual, self-referential song that Bush croons; the second records the deafening positive reaction of the press corps to the spectacle. Fuckers.

We realize that former mag queen Tina Brown is still a "name" and Hillary Clinton's last week was a compelling story (resembling though it did so many of her previous weeks) but isn't there a wee bit of favoritism involved in a newsweekly running a front page story on a presidential candidate written by a woman who needs that candidate to become president in order for her forthcoming book to actually sell? [Newsweek]

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What happened to ed2010? The website that promised to help bright young things land their NYC editorial dream jobs has been down for a while now. Did they just become reasonable and give up? Email us with any info. [UPDATE: Turns out they got so popular that their service provider shut them down for "over access" Well, make some money, you socialists!]

What's going on in our nation's capital? I'll tell you what: Bloggers! Four young, liberal bloggers occupy a single row house in DC, meaning that a major paper is contractually obliged to cover the phenomenon as a trend. A slow-moving, couch-based trend. We learn that the roommates in "the Flophouse" send IMs to each other when they're all at home; that they write about stuff that goes on the house on their blogs; and that "These bloggers are the cool kids who know they're smart, like some Seth Rogen character with a Ph.D. from Harvard's Kennedy School." Sure! This antisocial scene reminds me of nothing so much as the current incarnation of THIS:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain plays the press well. They love him because he makes them feel wanted and invites them over for barbecues! But then sometimes they get embarrassed and snap back with passive-aggressive attacks like almost saying he fucked a lobbyist. And then Senator McCain gets mad. He gets sooo mad! On his plane today, John McCain yelled at New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller for a full minute-and-a-half for daring to ask him about a 2004 quote to the Times. The most telling exchange came at the end: "Can I ask you about your, uh... why you're so angry?" Aggressively leaning in, McCain replies, "pardon me?" "Nevermind," Bumiller mumbles. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the "John McCain can't keep his temper in check" meme. You'll be seeing a lot of it! Video of the incident after the jump.

Village Voice Media owes the San Francisco Bay-Guardian $15.6 million damages for predatory probing. Trying to put another company out of business is apparently illegal in San Francisco! We're just forced to wonder how this will affect the VV's smug billboard campaign on the Bowery about how New York is played out because there aren't junkies anymore and also its most respected lefty alt-weekly is owned by some libertarian assholes in Phoenix. [MaggieShnayerson.com]

A morning show (or perhaps The Morning Show) is looking for someone whose sexual dysfunction originated from childhood spanking. Cheaper than therapy, more hurtful than an anonymous letter about a secret affair, telling the nation about your sex issues is the chance you've been waiting for to get back at your parents. [Craigslist]

Steve Friedman, a director who recently departed the Shelley Ross-terrorized CBS Early Show, is teaming up with another ex-CBSer to show needy clients how "the crazy quilt world of new media and old media work together." And you know that you're dealing with experts, because they have a wacky, new media name for their firm: Vir2L Media. That's the way these internet types spell things these days, seriously! They should have great success as consultants telling clueless corporate types what to do, as long as nobody uses The Google and gets them confused with Vir2L Studios, which already existed before they picked their name. Such a wild, wild media world. [TVNewser]

According to Jeff Bercovici, Maxim no. 2 A.J. Baime "quietly returned to Playboy, from whence new Maxim editor in chief James Kaminsky poached him." Maxim is suffering from declining newsstand sales and also that whole flap with the Black Crowes review they made up before hearing the album. Meanwhile, we hear... that former Page Sixer and current Maxim deputy editor Chris Wilson either got canned last week or is the kind of dude who uses the "I just got fired" line to pick up ladies at Beatrice. Update: According to Chris Wilson, Chris Wilson still works at Maxim. "Your spies must have misheard. Maybe I said I'm tired, because it was late."

Click to viewWe count six recording devices in the hands of the woman on the right. Why? Is she covering for five colleagues on a smoke break? Is she presenting them as an offering to Press Corps God Barack Obama? Do some of the devices pick up secret messages spoken in registers too high for normal humans to hear? Is one of them a tricorder? And what's up with her arms? Can human fingers even do that? Please speculate wildly in the comments. [Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images, Via]