Here's a measure of the loss the American reading public has suffered with the abrupt closure of Pagesix.com. The New York Post's round-the-clock gossip site is down, but we still have a copy of what is believed to be the last post ever published on the site. At 1.07pm this afternoon, Jarett Wieselmann (awesome name for a gossip writer, by the way) explained Pete Wentz's affection for Jessica Simpson's shoes, and illustrated the Fall Out Boy bassist's cross-dressing tendencies with this useful exercise in Photoshop. And on that note, Pagesix.com was dead.

History is repeating itself. During the last internet bubble, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation used its Page Six brand to launch a new entertainment website, Pagesix.com. The property has had an even shorter life this cycle: Pagesix.com, which was largely independent of the newspaper's Page Six print column, is being shuttered immediately; it had been live only since December. The URL already redirects to the New York Post's main website, and the site's staff have had their access to email cut off. Managing Editor, David Boyle, told the site's Los Angeles staff. "Given the difficulty in the economy, it was not the right time for this launch," said Jennifer Jehn, one of the site's managers. A total of 18 editorial and support staffers will be let go and three reassigned within the New York Post.

It's practically impossible to make fun of loopy Post gossip columnist Liz Smith, because the outspoken, bisexual 85-year-old beats you to the punch every time. For example, when dining with former Gawker Doree Shafrir for her Observer profile, she managed to work some self-deprecation into her lunch order: "And refried beans. My life is refried, so why not?" Well, we can make fun of her for one thing: despite being one of the investors for new momlady website, WowoWow, she just can't figure out how to work that Internet!

Score another one for Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, which nabbed exclusive photos of outgoing Governor Spitzer's $4,300 date. (Click the thumbnail for a bigger, better look.) It's hip to hate on the Post, as Gawker's Alex Pareene does here. But admit it: If the same pics had turned up first on Digg, you'd all be tripping over yourselves to declare it a victory for social something-or-other 2.0. Me, I wanna know if the Post is hiring.

From moral outrage to "here is a picture of a topless hooker" in three days. Kudos, New York Post. A grateful nation salutes you.

Five years after a visit to the Scores gentleman's club, Australia's prime minister Kevin Rudd is still catching hell. And it's all the fault of the New York Post! (Fellow Aussie and NYP editor Col Allan was the one who took him there.) Now that Rudd is campaigning to curb teenage drinking, his opponents are not going to let him forget about his own foibles. The prime minister has pointed that he is no "Captain Perfect," whoever that is. We're sure he's the only man in Australia to ever have gotten drunk at a strip club! Concludes an AP article, "Australians are relatively tolerant of excessive drinking. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke held a Guinness World Record for speed beer drinking during his days as a Rhodes Scholar." [Associated Press]

Eliot Spitzer is dead and buried. He just promised to never involve himself in public life again, everyone in America knows he's been fucking prostitutes for a decade, we forced our apology from him and now we just hope he'll go way so we can meet our awesome new blind governor. But some people, people who never liked that Spitzer character, are so thrilled about this turn of events that they've become utterly insufferable. Spitzer is a fucking idiot and moral failure. But honestly, some of you are a bit too excited.

Talk about a reversal of fortunes! Instead of reblogging the New York Post's content, today Gothamist had its content lifted by the Post. The paper ran a Gothamist photoshopped picture of Eliot Spitzer without crediting the site. You may think, How sad, New York Post, stealing from a web site. Or how sad, Gothamist, crowing that the New York Post stole from you. Or even, how sad, Gawker, caring about any of this. But one thing is for sure, this Eliot Spitzer scandal has left blood on all our hands.

Both major New York tabloids today went, on their front pages, with a story that everyone knew was bullshit by the time they picked up the papers. If you caught a second of the morning news today, you know that the letters to congressmen saying "WE DID IT" had jack shit to do with that little I.E.D. that went off in Times Square the other morning. The Post didn't know that when they decided to play the story HUGE today. The Daily News went a bit more tasteful, with one line below a story about how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are having a Graveyard Smash, or something. Click to see both covers embarrassingly huge.

Despite early promises that Rupert Murdoch didn't want to "cheapen" the Wall Street Journal by associating it with other News Corp. brands, vendors were doing exactly that at City Hall today, selling the Post and the Journal together for $1, devaluing the Wall Street Journal's street value and its brand 30 percent. [via Alex Balk]

Sad mysteries today, of old ladies looking for love, hospitals craving attention, and drug-ruined pregnancies. But first, a tale of lonely, Hollywood woe, from, fittingly, the Post: "Which red-carpet couple will finally have someone to talk to now that they're new parents? The Hollywood pair are so strange and reclusive, 'they have no other friends.'" Stars, they're just like us. Lonely and miserable and forever warping their children. Three more after the jump.

The New York Post predictably says the IM conversation between Perez Hilton and aspiring blogger Jonathan Jaxson is "sordid". But we think there's something sort of sweet to it. Sure, we don't believe that Perez really has an 8.5" cock and that part about him jerking off to the video at the end was a bit vulgar. But on the other hand, what IM user hasn't hadn't the occasional dirty chat? And Perez shows a touching self-awareness, even calling himself "a fat fucking cow" and announcing that he "finally started working out and shit." Good luck with your goal of getting in shape by next year. We're rooting for you. [Queerty]

In the brotherhood of gossip columnists, there is or at least used to be an unwritten rule: don't go after the personal lives of rivals, because they can always retaliate. So why would the New York Post's Page Six publish sex chats between corpulent blogger Perez Hilton and one of his online admirers? (Yes, he has them, amazingly.)

Over the past week, an extraordinary story played out, in which a married Canadian college professor fell into a three-day coma during a secret jaunt to a bondage club in New York. In the club, he was left alone as he preferred, after being hooked up by a dominatrix to a device called "the wheel," and began to choke when his foot slipped out of a high-heeled shoe he was wearing and the rope attaching him to the ceiling went taut, nearly choking the man to death. The New York Post broke the story Wednesday and Thursday in basically the same tabloidy way it covers any other story it cares about: the man was named, was interviewed in the hospital in an impaired state of consciousness and his wife was phoned by a Post reporter before she heard the news elsewhere. Not terribly groundbreaking by Post standards. But sex writers, plus, kind of randomly, this one guy from Portfolio, are in a snit, with the sex writers insisting, variously, that people not have sex with anyone who reads the Post (crazytalk!) or that people disseminate information about kinky News Corp. executives (tips@gawker.com), all because the Post named the kinky professor, then had their flack say "The Post will happily name every adult caught in a dog collar," and called cheating on your wife a "shameful habit." This is insane.

The gorgeous new New York Times building is not just a rat-infested danger to pedestrians—it's also freezing cold! Exec editor Bill Keller emailed the troops earlier on this freezing, snowy Tuesday: "We raised this with the building services people Sunday when the temperature dropped, and they are on the case. Basically, cold air is leaking into the podium side of the building through the open loading dock and elevator shafts." UPDATE: We hear... that Page Six and the New York Post library were also freezing cold yesterday, with the temperature eventually measured at 39 degrees. Which is a real problem, considering how many staffers there are cold-blooded reptiles (zing!). Please send in any and all additional tales of newsroom frostbite. [Radar]

"David Mamet always sprays the word 'phucque' (the Gaelic spelling) throughout his dialogue. In this production, it's 27 times within the first three minutes. If Mamet ever wrote a religious play, nuns would probably be saying it, too. At the wave of laughter following the line, 'What the f - - - am I going to do with a time share in Aspen? I want to be president,' I toured the whole theater." Cindy Adams—still increasingly mad, still apparently wholly unedited—is under the odd impression that if David Mamet were to write a "religious" play (what is his Faustus adaptation, a sex farce?), it would be about nuns. Cindy! Everyone knows Mamet can't write women! [NYP]

After carefully calibrating the likely interests of its readers, the Post decided to run one of the most servicey stories since it was started by Alexander Hamilton: "HOW MOBSTER NICKNAMES GET 'MADE'.'" It's a nice feature for all those Post readers trying to coin their own mob names, but sadly it tries to find the "funniest" names in an organization not known for its sense of humor, and ends up with examples like "Tommy Sneakers," who likes sneakers, "Bobby the Jew," who looks like a Jew or "Lenny," whose name is Leonard. Those mafia guys: Such crack ups! After the jump, a short video on a mafia name that's at least slightly funny: Big Pussy from the Sopranos.

85-year-old Post gossip Liz Smith tells us that Heath Ledger slept naked, helpfully adding, "I happen to sleep in the nude, and many others do as well." Then she beats you to the "ew" punch by chastising "the infantile titillation and fear of the flesh." [NYP]

As Super Tuesday drags to a middle, it's worthwhile to look at the rising and occasionally falling fortunes of New York Senator Hillary Clinton, our next, cryingest president, among our nation's most unfortunately influential lunatic opinion-makers.

Since January 20— the day the New York Giants won a trip to the Super Bowl— the New York Post has run 281 articles with the phrase "Super Bowl," an average of 20 freaking stories per day. Today, in addition to the daily 20, the Post also published a 32-page special pullout section on the game, and a wraparound cover with a team picture. The Daily News responded with its own 40-page special section that swallowed the entire Sunday paper, covering up other minor news like, you know, the paper's presidential endorsement (spoiler: Hillary). As a serious football fan who is gonna jet out of here pretty soon to go watch the game, I can only say: Thank God this shit is almost over.