Nah. It's probably just going through a bear phase.

A mass e-mail recently forwarded to us:

For the record, we're going to beat this Gay Thursday Styles into the ground (image at right being all the justification we need). With that in mind, today's edition is perfectly timed (what, with Pride Week and all) and tightly focused on the most important of details: what one wears to the airport. Increased security makes your clothes all the more important — but how to maintain style and not set off the metal detectors? Grosgrain belts, flip-flops, and Hard Tail pants (circa Greek Week 2001) are advised, as are dress shirts with a front pocket for your boarding pass and pocket protector. Detailed, no?

In its ongoing but inexplicable campaign to prove that people in flyover states have no idea what they're talking about, the Chicago Tribune has for the third consecutive year published a list of the 50 best magazines in country as chosen by the paper's arts-section staff. Some of the confounding findings:

Throwing convention to the wind, the cowboys of Star magazine cast the lone vote of doubt regarding the Union of Parises while simultaneously crafting a headline so evil — so magnificent — that the Post can do nothing but merely fall to its collective knees and weep.

• Finally, media industry set for solid financial growth, says PricewaterhouseCoopers. Oh, wait. Newspapers and book publishers are still in trouble. So cancel that celebratory lunch at Michael's. [IHT]
• The TomKat whirlwind violates all the rules of celeb journalism — and could therefore spell the end of celeb mags. God forbid. [Slate]
• More high-ranking folks out at the News. Or, as the Post's computer system calls it, "shift-F4." [NYP]
• Syd Schanberg endorses sharing profits with sources in some cases — and is promptly banned from the crusty-old-media-critics clubhouse. [VV]

• A special report from New York's Greg Sargent: "The photographer who took the picture in Edward Klein's new book, The Truth About Hillary, catching Bill Clinton in a moment of P.D.A. with someone other than his wife, says that the book's use of the photo is a 'huge misrepresentation of the event.'" [NY Mag]
• Still, The Truth About Hillary is a huge big deal: "The furor over the new book could eventually make Sen. John Kerry's swift-boat veterans nightmare last summer look as inconsequential as Saddam Hussein's junk-food menu," says Jon Friedman. [Market Watch]
• Unless it's not a big deal at all: "[I]t will not, as has been hoped or feared, do for any Clinton presidential campaign what Unfit For Command did for the Kerry one. This clip+paste job by a former editor of the New York Times magazine is unlikely to change a single mind, let alone vote," says Sara Nelson. [Publishers Weekly]
• Plus, the reviews suck: "The super-hyped new book aimed at derailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's hopes for the White House has been widely panned by independent reviews," note the Post. [NYP]

Surprisingly, it's not.

Do you have what it takes to be an associate lifestyle editor at Life & Style magazine? Here's the L&S writing test we reported yesterday:

An announcement from last night's Publisher's Lunch:

You already know what we're going to say: Another week, another issue of the New York Press, which is growing dangerously thin. We've had "fun" comparing its page count to that of The Onion, but the gap between a formerly hot alt-weekly and a satirical free paper has grown so very small that to even compare page counts would make us irrationally sad.

TVNewser has been flooding the the Fox News-insecticide zone, and he notes today that (a) Fox News brass have had nothing to say about it, (b) the insecticide didn't work, anyway, as the newsrooms in the News Corp. building are teeming with termites (which makes us suddently reconsider all the Spicy Chicken Sandwiches we've had in the Wendy's in the basement), and, finally, (c) the insecticide in question also "is highly suspect in one of the female producers here having a child with Down's Syndrome." Those damned whiny liberals.

A writing test administered by Life & Style magazine showed up in our inbox this afternoon:

Click to enlarge, whore.

The way we've been able to tolerate living in this increasingly neo-fundamentalist country is by viewing the Hudson as an impermeable membrane, comfortable that on our side, at least, lies that pleasant muck of atheism, decadence, and iniquity in which we all wallow. Then we heard Billy Graham was coming. But, on more reflection, we figured that's OK, too: We have characters of all sorts in this city, and if New Yorkers can tolerate Jocelyn Wildenstein and Al Goldstein and John Rocker and the Naked Cowboy, why not tolerate some evangelically religious dude for a few days? But now the Times tells us that there is actually a "varied, vibrant, and, by many accounts, growing population of evangelical Christians" living within the city. Which totally freaks us out.

• Gruner & Jahr is set to close today on a deal to sell Inc. and Fast Company for $40 million, a fraction of the $550 the publisher bought the two titles for five years ago. It suddenly seems very clear why these people should not be publishing business advice. [Folio:]
• The New Yorker's cartoon contest gets 7,000-10,000 entries a week. For a winner, cartoon editor Robert Mankoff suggests: keep it short, don't combine elements, don't overthink. Because they hate overthinking at the The New Yorker. [Newsday]
• Ed Klein's Hillary book goes on sale today; 350,000 copies have been printed. [WP]
• And you thought PBS was boring? Ha. Secret spies, partisan intrigue. Also, Big Bird worked for the Russians. [NYT]

Is there anybody Steve Florio likes? WWD's hulking Jeff Bercovici gets a peek at the proposal for the former Conde Nast president and CEO's memoir and management guide, and he passes along Florio's putdowns of everyone from Ron Galotti (who gets his own chapter) to Bonnie Fuller to Mr. Shawn to the GQ sales staff.

When you're down and out and looking for help, there's only one place to go: the MediaBistro job listings.

· On Tina Brown's never-ending dinner party duties: "Tina Brown herself slogs through this muck, week in and week out, voluntarily—that's how much she cares about the news, about getting the story. For us, her readers. We are blessed." [Weekly Standard]
· Just who is "Howie the Sleepless Dad" who used to listen to nothing but rap? Why, Hillary ClintonBot Howard Wolfson! [NYM]
· Just because Jennifer Aniston isn't talking about whether or not Brad Pitt cheated with Angelina Jolie doesn't mean she won't express her discontent with the UN and a certain goodwill ambassador. [Swift Report]
· New Yorker cinema critic Anthony Lane is a poet, and he didn't even know it. [NYer (last item)]
· Did you know they still make Zagat's city guides? Yep, they do, and even the Sun thinks the whole operation blows. [NYS]
· Shockingly enough, Spin's list of the top 10 albums of the past 20 years does NOT include the Bravery. [Brooklyn Vegan]

If we're reading David Carr right — and, to be fair, we're not at all sure we are — Tom and Katie gave a press conference immediately after getting engaged because Michael and Catherine sold the rights to their wedding pictures to a British gossip mag a few years ago.