Rupert Murdoch's handmaidens over at the New York Post this morning jumped into a feud between their Fox News shouting head Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC ranter Keith Olbermann. The tabloid's gossip page ran an item dredging up various minor controversies involving Olbermann dating back to his ESPN days, up through an alleged spat between Olbermann and fellow MSNBC personality David Gregory last Tuesday over camera time. It then insinuated Olbermann might soon explode and leave his network. The warmed-over gossip was clearly meant as cover fire on behalf of O'Reilly, a fellow News Corp. soldier, whose feud with Olbermann is detailed in the Washington Post today. In a nutshell:

The New York Post's puns don't beat around the bush. "Temeka Lewis, 32, 'fessed up to prostitution and money-laundering charges and promised to tell the feds everything she knows about the Emperors Club VIP, including a blow-by-blow description of Spitzer's dealings with hooker Ashley Alexandra Dupre, aka 'Kristen.'" More importantly, the Post has the new pictures of the woman who brought down New York's governor. She's photographed making the traditional pilgrimage of suburban whores, leaving her mother's home in New Jersey for the bus ride to Manhattan's sleazy Port Authority.

Sue Simmons, correcting the Post: "I haven't had an alcoholic drink between shows for at least 15 years or more." [Post]

Having bought Newsday for $650 million, Cablevision executives, who pretty much suck at making money on anything that's not a cable system, are now interested in maybe having an actual newspaper company print, distribute and sell advertising into the tabloid. A printing deal with Post owner News Corp. or Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman would make eminent financial sense, since Newsday has an outdated printing plant and both the Daily News and Post stand to cut their own printing costs if they can sign up the Long Island newspaper as a customer. And cross-selling ads could drum up some extra revenue. But if Cablevision were to do a comprehensive deal covering pretty much all business-side operations, it would beg the question, why did Cablevision buy Newsday in the first place? Were the cross-selling opportunities between cable, internet and the newspaper really worth an $80 million premium over bids from News Corp. and Zuckerman? Prediction: Whichever media company ends up doing this deal with Cablevision, and one of them will, is going to end up owning the newspaper in a few years when Cablevision's high expectations are deflated. [Times]

Jeff Bercovici explains why Rupert Murdoch is putting revenue—a planned doubling of the New York Post's cover price—over the circulation war with rival Daily News.

New York Post columnist Charles Hurt's demand is tired and banal: someone "stick a fork" in Hillary Clinton, as she's "done." We've heard it before, Chuck. Fellow Post opinion maven Andrea Peyser (or "Anrea," as her own paper calls her today) makes a fresh and exciting new demand: let's take that same fork and apply it to Vito Fossella, the Staten Island-representing congressman who pulled a Patrick Kennedy in DC last week. "Commandment No. 2: Thou shalt not acknowledge maybe Love Children." Real truth, right there. Forks for everyone! [NYP]

Yesterday the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal suit alleging police racially profiled Leonardo Blair, a black New York Post reporter who said he was arrested and harassed for simply walking down the street with his fiancée. The same day, his bosses at the Post ran an editorial saying there was too much fuss made over racial profiling:

Ruthless press baron Rupert Murdoch has concocted two diabolical schemes to ruin the lives of New York tabloid readers and owners forever. First scheme: Murdoch will raise the price of his New York Post — NO! — to fifty cents, with the extra quarter going directly into a special fund for the eradication of all remaining integrity and decency in American media, starting with the Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch has not yet finished burning to the ground forever. Ha ha, just kidding, the extra quarter will just offset the Post's estimated $50 million per year losses, and you will pay it, because it's not like you can just read Page Six on the internet or something. Scheme the second: is classified. This is a secret scheme. But:

"ON April 23 we reported that the fiancée of Gregg 'Opie' Hughes, one half of the Opie and Anthony radio show, was involved in an X-rated sex video with MTV star Bam Margera. We reported that Hughes was taking legal action against a disgruntled ex-employee of the radio duo who had acquired the rights to the video. We have since learned that this information, supplied by Steppin' Out's Chaunce Hayden, was entirely incorrect. There is no sex tape. Further, Hughes' fiancée has never met the MTV star. The Post sincerely regrets the error." [Post]

The Wall Street Journal has a cartoon called "Pepper... And Salt" which — and I did not know this after 12 years of reading the Journal — has been "edited since 1950 by Charles Preston... [and] is culled from hundreds of submissions each week." Anyway, the 'toon was once in the paper's Arts & Leisure section, and it must have been too controversial (ahem) because it was moved to the editorial page in April 2007. But now Rupert Murdoch is pretty much personally editing the whole Journal, and "Pepper... And Salt" is moving back to Arts & Leisure. Why? Possibly so the right-leaning media mogul can unleash a horrifying "Murdochian brand of editorial cartoon!" Reports the Times :

Rupert Murdoch's 78th year has been busy. With the exit of the Wall Street Journal's native managing editor, Marcus Brauchli, the Australian media mogul's lieutenant now has a free hand to turn the business newspaper into a broader national title. We're hearing this afternoon that Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman has dropped out of the bidding for Newsday, clearing the way for Murdoch's News Corporation to take control of a third newspaper in the New York market. And the New York Post is this week shrinking to allow the News Corporation tabloid to be produced on the same presses as the Journal. But here's the question: why the rush? There are three main reasons: newspaper publishing economics; the broader synergies available to a media group with heightened political influence; and mortality.

Cyanide Death Rocks Park Slope! Yes, it may be a slow news day, but a senior citizen died under mysterious, poison-y circumstances in a posh neighborhood of Brooklyn. With the Pope finally gone, this gives the tabs a pittance of material. [via Gothamist]

Careful readers will have noticed something strange about the New York Post, today: there's less copy on each page, and a disconcertingly wide margin at the top and bottom, as if someone made a mistake. It's not. Rupert Murdoch's New York tabloid is shrinking, tomorrow, in honor of Earth Day; but the dimensions of the printed area were adjusted a day ahead of the actual paper, hence all the the white space. Rewind a second. "In honor of Earth Day?" Corporate America may kowtow to the environmentalists, but the Australian media mogul's News Corporation remains a bastion of planet-destroying bravado, surely.

Rudy Giuliani's legacy is being tagged away. Graffiti is back and more popular than ever &mdash complaints of taggings have risen 81.5% from 2006 to 2007. "It's not art - it's just scribble," said a random dude complaining to the New York Post. But even though graffiti has become more prevalent under Bloomberg's tenure, let's not forget that he has protected the rich from other eyesores like fatties and smokers. [NYP]

The New York Post killed poor PageSix.com after something like ten internet minutes, but now we just discovered this weird new blog they have (we know it's new because it has a big NEW BLOG sticker on it) called, uh, POPWRAP. The internet is running out of names for things that are obvious clones of five other things! Anyway, if PageSix.com was their TMZ-killer, this is their scaled-back Gawker/Daily Intelligencer/maybe-Best Week Ever-copier. The whole damn thing is edited solely by one guy (like us, back in the golden era!)—former InTouch "lifestyle editor" Jarett Wieselman (ten posts today, Jarett—you can get it up to 12 by Monday!). Oh, wait, we remember that name! Wieselman was brought over from InTouch with Kathy Campbell to run PageSix.com. And then that imploded and now they've given him this. Anyway we didn't read very many of the "words" but the pictures look pretty and the headlines are suitably sarcastic-ish. Also there is a caption contest feature because bloggers are for some reason never happy with the captions photos come with. (So far: one comment on this one. Go help 'em out!) Now you have one more source for mildly irreverent takes on celebrity news. [POPWRAP]

Sure, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post slammed Hillary Clinton in a front-page endorsement of her rival Barack Obama two months ago, but what has the News Corp. overlord done to obliterate the Democratic presidential candidate lately? He's rolled out daughter Elisabeth, for starters. The TV executive will host a fundraiser at her London home for Obama later this month. It's become quite the hot ticket: actress Gwyneth Paltrow will be there, along with former VP Al Gore's financier buddy. But Rupe is firing even more powerful guns at Hillary: Post headlines. Here's the one atop a Monday story about Hillary's false claim to have taken sniper fire during a 1996 trip to Bosnia:

Justin Rocket Silverman, once crowned by Gawker as "basically, the only cute straight guy at blogmedia parties," decided to film a funny video for the New York Post about growing a mustache. He had his mustache shaved at something called "Xac Anthony Salon and Spa, though, which sort of defeats the ironic symbol of seedy blue-collar masculinity aspect. It's called a barbershop, Justin! Also it's called "something you should only do because you think it's funny once, while mildly intoxicated," but whatever. We just gave up on shaving altogether, it's simpler. Clip below, in odd and bulky New York Post clip player.

Remember when Hillary Clinton told that crazy lie about flying into Bosnia with Sinbad and evading sniper fire and killer robots or something, and it turned out she just stepped off a plane and heard a poem from a little girl? The New York Post finally tracked down that little girl, who is now 20. And they took a hilarious photo of her looking serious and holding up the poem. Headline: "FROM BAD TO VERSE FOR HILL." What does that even mean? The little girl was just confused by Senator Clinton's crazy story of snipers and werewolves so the Post found some random other Bosnians who were outraged, angered, and disappointed. Representative quotes:

Tabloid newspapers are alien to the Valley. A scandal sheet like the New York Post rarely covers tech — and those are the only days you read it. We understand that it's jarring. Here's how to decode the Post's recent report on Microsoft's attempt to cobble together a Yahoo board.

Okay. I was browsing Page Six online just now when a screamy virus warning jumped up and the page I was reading disappeared. I haven't looked at the Post's website in forever, but this MacBook is only two months old and this is the first virus scare it's ever had. So if there's anything good over there, lemme know, coz I'm not going back. Too scary! [NYP]