Gnomish Tribune CEO Sam Zell has finally deigned to respond to the fact that his own current and former employees at the LA Times filed a lawsuit against him two days ago for, essentially, making Tribune suck. We imagine Zell spent a full day throwing things around his office and carving "F.U!" in his desk with a pen knife before he calmed down enough to make a statement. Though he couldn't help but include the fact that he's outraged, absolutely outraged, at the (motherfuckers) who filed this suit. Read Zell's seething statement after the jump:

You would think that Ron Burkle would lead a charmed life, considering all the perks he enjoys as a billionaire mogul. He flies around on a private jet! He cozies up to starlets! He hangs out with fellow horndog Bill Clinton! He secretly backs Radar, and has the best flacks money can buy to control his press coverage! But no amount of money will allow Burkle to have it both ways; he wants the parties and models, but not the notoriety that comes with them. Sorry Ron, you have to choose one or the other. Because when you're out bothering models and sharing girls with Leonardo DiCaprio, we hear all about it: In the Daily News' Rush & Molloy gossip column today, there was this about Dicaprio:

Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy is here! Half of you are like "GOD, I hate that nonsensical hack and his stupid storyline-lacking Family Guy." The other half of you lie, "Yea, me too." This new project doesn't hide the Burger King sponsorship, but these cartoon shorts actually fit MacFarlane's style better than the TV show; there's only time for one joke, so a storyline is a moot point. Seeing these things all over the web will only speed up the looming (unjustified) MacFarlane backlash, but we'll go out on a limb and predict: It will make him a(nother) shitload of money. The first two shorts are after the jump. Dogs and video games are the stars, naturally:

Fashion tragedy! Halston, the glamorous 70s brand that mogul Harvey Weinstein was planning to revive with relentless sexiness, is not lighting the world on fire just yet. Harvey paid $25 million for Halston last year, but its latest collection got "largely unenthusiastic reviews"—a problem the company decided to solve by reining in its creative director and moving towards design-by-committee. Which always works well in creative endeavors, yes! For Weinstein, Halston so far is just another disappointing investment, along with his "Myspace for Millionaires" and his DVD business. Free solution, Harvey: get them to wear Halston on Project Runway. You can send a check to our office. [WSJ]

CBS bought CNET, the tech-focused online conglomerate, for $1.8 billion earlier this year. Which prompted the general reaction "Really, that much?" And also, "Isn't this two fundamentally boring brands combining to form a larger, still boring brand?" Well one brave man says no, it's much more promising than that: CBS CEO Les Moonves, who engineered the deal! But is he right? It's hard to see why he would be: Moonves is counting on CNET to raise CBS' revenue by two points within three years, which would mean that its online growth would have to offset the "flattening out" of CBS' own TV and radio ad revenue. But CNET is basically a tech news brand, and a pretty unexciting one. CBS is a general interest brand, and an unexciting one. So why try to make CNET another unexciting, general-interest brand?

Now's the time to pre-order your copy of Vanity Fair word-writer and snazzy dresser Michael Wolff's upcoming biography of News Corp. overlord Rupert Murdoch! The book will be out in February of next year. A publisher has already said "I think the subject and the author were born to be put together." Uh, good? "Written in the irresistible stye that only an award-winning columnist for Vanity Fair can deliver," promises the promo. Indubitably! [pic via NYM]

Page Six today brings news of a faaabulous bash in St. Tropez on the yacht of Denise Rich, the Clinton pal and wife of disgraced financier Marc Rich. And to help her bring out the real stars to her party, Denise has teamed up with Erik Wachtmeister, who runs A Small World, the much-hyped "Myspace for Millionaires" social networking site for the rich. How symbolic! Two years ago, fading mogul Harvey Weinstein invested in ASW, which got a bunch of press casting both of them as the vanguard of the Next Big Thing. Now, they're more like a coalition of the washed-up.

Ted Leonsis never spent a dollar he didn't think would somehow change the world. And after generating a few billion at AOL, buying a hockey franchise and dabbling for a while in Web 2.0, it was just a matter of time before he jumped into movies, where change follows the money faster (and certainly more glamorously) than any other industry in which he hadn't already staked a claim. And, like untold scores of entrepreneurs before him, Leonsis's first couple tries — as producer of the documentaries Nanking and Kicking It — flailed in the marketplace. That'll happen.

Lovers of moguls and fashion house revivals pay heed: Halston, the 70s luxury brand that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is attempting to restore to its former glory, has lost its creative director! Marco Zanini, who came to Halston from Versace a year ago to revive the brand, has reportedly been shown the door. Apparently he didn't have the "sexual charge" that Weinstein craves. Don't worry Harvey, you still have Project Runway!

This is the single most important story of this terrible summer Friday. RUPERT MURDOCH LOST HIS WEDDING RING. Seriously! He got drunk (Australians!) at a lodge bar in Sun Valley (where this week's mogul summit is being held) last night, and after all the other moguls went back to their rooms, Murdoch hung around the lobby looking for his ring. "So began a frantic 15-minute scramble among reporters hungry to please the mogul," Reuters reports. But alas, it's still missing. Idaho readers: find it and, uh... send it to us so we can give it back to him. [SiliconAlleyInsider]

Megamillionaire investment banker and New York magazine owner Bruce Wasserstein (currently under attack from our advertisers) is reportedly getting divorced from his wife (#3) Claude, and taking up with "a young Asian beauty with whom he may already be planning a family." The scandalous tale of wealth, sex, and power will be splashed all over New York magazine next week, in Imaginary World. In the actual world, you probably won't be reading about it there. More interesting than the rich-guy divorce story, though, is the angle that the gossips are hinting at oh-so-delicately: What's the deal with all these old super-rich moguls hooking up with younger Asian women these days? Interracial dating amongst the rich, incredible and noteworthy!:

"I don't want to die. I love what I'm doing," said Viacom chief Sumner Redstone on CNBC yesterday. My, what a positive and also extremely sad quote! Coming from an old, old man like Redstone, it's more of a last-ditch prayer to Father Time than a peppy statement of on-the-job satisfaction. After the jump, a complete guide to the top five elderly figures in media moguldom. They're a cast that could end up having spent decades in power—probably because the younger counterparts who should be overtaking them decided to go into the tech industry on the West Coast instead (except Nick Denton). May these old men all live, um, a lot longer:

So, David Carr has gone and pulled the curtain back a bit on Fox PR-the single most vicious PR operation in all the media. Good for him. So let's do our part by zeroing in on the one flack who is the face of Fox's feared, vengeful media relations operation. Her name is Irena Briganti. She's the female alter ego and mouthpiece of Fox boss Roger Ailes (pictured). She's been described as bubbly and charming in person. But she's the one holding the bloody hatchet that Fox regularly brings down right on reporters' heads. Here's everything you need to know about the scariest flack in mediadom:

A deliciously bitter ex-NYT reporter named John Darnton, who worked at the paper for more than 30 years, has a book coming out called Black and White and Dead All Over, which is murder mystery set at a thinly veiled version of the Times. The terribly-titled (but maybe well-written!) volume features a bunch of obvious allusions to real Times people, including a standards editor who gets murdered (take that, standards). Droopy-faced News Corp. overlord Rupert Murdoch figures prominently as an ominous character named "Lester Moloch." But this isn't the first time Murdoch has been flogged in fictional works. Oh no!

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has always resented the fact that peers made more money than him with what he deemed to be inferior films. These days, he's obviously overcome this problem by milking reality shows for millions to prop up his more artsy products; but he couldn't always be so sanguine. Here we have a priceless and EXCLUSIVE classic from the archives: a recording of a phone call between Weinstein and Disney exec Joe Roth, taped shortly after Michael Ovitz-a spectacular failure as head of Disney-was paid more than $100 million to leave the company in 1996. Weinstein is galled beyond belief (and perhaps a bit envious). "Let's quit today!" he jokes. Why, he works his ass off and what does he get? A fucking lecture. "Joe, you're a success, so therefore you're a failure in this business," Weinstein complains. Then he insults his fellow moguls: "Between Peter Guber and Mike Ovitz and everybody who fucked up...Everybody got wealthy on failure." Weinstein just cares too much about the films, you see; "We have character flaws that must be overcome," he sighs. Thanks to Project Runway, he's done so. Click to listen to the titan of Hollywood in all his expletive-spitting glory.

$8 million. Does that seem like a lot of money for a company to pay to have mediocre models use their hair products on a mediocre cable show for a few seasons? It kind of does. But that's how much The Weinstein Company, run by entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein, is trying to squeeze out of L'Oreal for three seasons of sponsorship of Project Runway. Of course, Weinstein has a long history of pimping out the fashion reality show to every company on earth willing to pay a dime to be on it, using it as a profit machine to support his company's less sure-thing ventures. And he's still milking it for every cent. How do we know? Because he left all the evidence in a public trash can:

Think of how easy it might have been to understand Arianna Huffington's bloggy animus toward Tim Russert if there were a book out chronicling all the sordid details of their decade-and-a-half-long secret feud. (There is.) Every gossip-mongering gadabout should know the full backstory on every spat, falling out, and long-running mutual antagonism in media. Below are the volumes no shelf should be without.

After decades of sprinkling his virile mogul seed on lots all over town, cultivating muscular sprouts along the lines of Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dawn Steel and others, inveterate media pollenator Barry Diller offered these wrenching words about Hollywood at this week's D6 Technology conference in Carlsbad: "It's a community that's so inbred it's a wonder the children have any teeth." Ouch. He must have forgotten about decidedly toothless Sahara director Breck Eisner, whose father Michael got his start under Diller during his years at ABC. That said, we weep for the third generation, whose inability to type or mouse-click with their beflippered limbs will sink Diller's digital empire once and for all. [Fortune, Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Sam Zell, the crazy old man who bought some newspapers recently, is a champion of free speech, which is why he swears so much. So it's odd that he is suing some lady for defamation, right? Especially because the lady is not associated with us, and we have called him all sorts of things! Oh, the lady is Dianne Jacob, who represents the Second District on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. Sam Zell also owns a trailer park company that has four parks in her district. Recently, they started raising rents. Dianne Jacob said some very mildly defamatory things about them!

"Both real estate moguls, [Tribune Co. head Sam] Zell and [U Michigan atheletic director Bill] Martin got to know each other as competitors. Each year, Zell sends out small statues - each about a foot tall - that play songs the Chicago businessman wrote himself. Martin insisted on showing them off. For example, one is a replica of the torch from the Statue of Liberty with a rolling ticker that displays the entire Declaration of Independence and a recording of Zell's new lyrics to 'This Land is Your Land.'" [Michigan Daily]