• Byron "Barney" Calame's term as Times ombudsman will not be that paper's last. No word yet on a successor, but we understand that this guy is not in the running. [WWD]
  

We'd worried that Post finger-wagger Andrew Peyser had lost her touch since finding love. Her last few columns felt decidedly phoned-in—c'mon, "Send Naomi To Jail"? But today, the Peys is back in the saddle, challenging preconceptions and writing more vividly than anyone would like.

We fully copped to the fact that some of our bad boss stories were sometimes a little lame, but they were lame for good reasons. For one thing: lawyers. For two things: even more lawyers. When the Post undertook a similar effort today, they did things a little differently: they didn't name names. Maybe they thought that would help them get the juicy stuff! Did it work, though? Well, here's this story from Person X, who worked for a mean magazine editor. "She had a big red pencil, and when they'd give your manuscript back to you your heart just exploded from fear, because her comments were completely evil... She used to make sure we were at our desks every night until 6. I remember New Year's Eve, sitting at my desk at 5:59, knowing she'd be watching. It was a very sick work culture." Appalling. Who could this insane slavedriver be?

It's time once again for everyone's favorite game, Rewriting the Post! In this installment, please enjoy this article about a Center for Science in the Public Interest report noting that Chinese food is full of calories and sodium (no shit, eggheads, that's why we eat it). Here's the Post lead: "The food police have a Mongolian beef with many meals served at Chinese restaurants." We've got a few rewrites, but we're sure the perfect opening pun is still out there. After that, we will all have fortune cookies.

Naomi Campbell reported for her first day of community service at the Lower East Side Sanitation depot yesterday, and she wore some clothes! As the 90s supermodel expiated her phone-throwing sins, the Post reports that she maintained a luxe look: "Campbell wore green yoga pants, stiletto boots, a black empire-waist coat, diamond-studded earrings, a newsboy cap and large, black sunglasses on her first day of real work." Someone who knows things about fashion would probably be able to find a bunch of errors and omissions in that sentence—even our untutored eye can discern a Chanel logo on that newsboy cap and Louboutin-red soles on those boots, and that's no empire waist. But more importantly, anyone who has ever seen an episode of any modeling-themed reality show knows that the "first day of real work" thing is bullshit. You've gotta work. Everyone knows that.

Each Monday, Intern Alexis uses a rigorous scale to rank the happy pair-bonds cemented in the Times wedding announcements. But surely, the Times can't contain all the nuptial bliss to be experienced in the metro area. Ergo, the Post's weddings section, where the couples require a more flexible scale that can take into consideration differences in, say, life experience, and body type.

• Oh, how we love the Fug girls: "I always have fun with Chloe Sevigny and Sienna Miller. When fashion magazines or insiders revere someone whose choices are completely baffling to me, I tend to enjoy fugging them the most. Because really, what's so brilliant and visionary about wearing sandals tied around the outside of a pair of jeans?" [Zulkey]
  

• Bear Stearns has a bone to pick with the Times Gretchen Morgenson, as do most people with a background in finance who read her columns. [NYP]
  

Each Monday, Intern Alexis uses a rigorous, super-scientific scale to rank the happy pair-bonds cemented in the previous weekend's Times wedding announcements. But surely, the Times can't contain all the nuptial bliss to be experienced in the metro area. Ergo, the Post's new weddings section! As one might suspect, though, Post couples don't quite lend themselves to the same sort of, well, systematicity as the Times crowd. It's almost like there are real Americans living amongst us in New York! Thus, a more flexible scale is in order—one which takes into consideration differences in, say, life experience. And body type.

"I seriously hope this is an opportunity for the public to see the real Star Jones, the one that has the law at the core of her being," Star Jones told the Post today, in an article that was accompanied by a stunning, nearly wasp-waisted photograph. Let's turn back the clock, and compare to a recent photo—say, one taken back on January 31st. The "real" Star Jones has something at the core of her being, that's for sure.

Christ-crazed director James Cameron isn't the only one who's been fondling holy relics lately. Post goss dowager Cindy Adams was recently up to her wizened elbows in Annanicolania, and she wants to tell you about every last speck of methadone-scented pocket lint. "I have just seen Anna Nicole Smith's diaries. I held them in my hands... I leafed through a brown leatherette book stamped "Business Cards" that held her Vickie Lynn Smith driver's license in Texas. I rifled through canceled checks and receipts..." She goes on to describe the diaries' contents—Anna drank with Mom and mispelled lots of words!— and then starts asking the tough questions. "And why must the players in this drama all have three names—Anna Nicole Smith, Howard K. Stern, Dr. Robert....?" Maybe there's a clue at the bottom of Anna Nicole's purse, Cindy.
Anna Nicole's Diaries Found [NYP]

Here's how the Post chose to headline the story in which "Edward Cardinal Egan pulled a fast one on a lower Manhattan parish pastor yesterday, summoning the priest to meet with him—then dispatching security guards to permanently lock the cleric's church doors." So it's time once again to play everyone's favorite game: Rewriting the Post! Today we're just going to focus on that headline. We'll give you a couple of our attempts, and then you can take your shot in the comments.

We won't belong to any club that will have us as a member. (Hi, Soho House!) And we definitely won't shop in any store for which one would need to make an appointment first, or one that requires us to submit to inspection by a "stylist" who makes sure we are "right for the store." So there's very little chance that we will ever darken the door of Caravan, whose newly-opened third location (one of the others is a converted Winnebago—class !) has that stringent policy, which helps it keep out the undesirables. Unexpectedly, thought, that category doesn't include 'Survivor' survivor Jeff Probst. "He liked that he could try on a million things and have the store to himself," Caravan co-founder Claudine Gumbel told the Post. Don't all start clamoring for appointments at once, now!

Snoots Only [NYP]

So that poll that the Post touts on its cover today? Pretty interesting, given what seemed to be the national mood during the recent elections. Still, you can't argue with an impartial survey of the American people, right? We want to thank Public Opinion Strategies, the firm that conducted the poll, for clearing things up. Also, we'd like to learn a little more about them. Like, what's on their home page right now?

• Holy crap, Ian Urbina did a lot of work in this piece on kids who just want to sell magazines but wind up hanging out with meth-addicted prostitutes. Only 11 months and one week until the next Pulitzer deadline! [NYT]
  

Hey, remember 2004, when Britney Spears hung out with her mom-jeansed assistant Felicia Culotta all the time? You know, Felicia! FE! The lady immortalized in Britney's genius Honeymoon Poem:

"Former President Bill Clinton helped his wife, Hillary, secure..." Wow, who would have thought that Bill and Hill would be the ones who finally tracked that Osama guy down! GO TEAM AMERICA! Oh. "...secure a key endorsement from an African-American leader who was being courted by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama." So it's just yet another Obama/Osama typo—one at least, we see, corrected in later editions. But we had our little flags all ready to wave and everything!

Well, we all got a good cringe out of the Times's front page story that poked a gaping hole in the Daily News's coverage of 9/11 hero Cesar Borja. (He died of a lung ailment on the day that his son was Hillary Clinton's plus-one at the State of the Union address. ) Unfortunately for the News, it didn't take the Times much research to reveal that Borja hadn't actually been "on the pile" until the Christmas Eve after 9/11. Today, the Post does their predictable fun gloaty thing. Now, to be sure, the News did a MAJOR face-plant. But it's not like the Post covered itself in glory either. And then we got this totally impartial [and anonymous] email.

The tabloid T.V. get of the week is Howard K. Stern, Anna Nicole Smith's lawyer and potential baby-daddy—already Entertainment Tonight has him locked down.

The Post ruined all our breakfasts with their cover this morning (seriously: "Judi gushes as Rudi rushes in"?? Ewwwww!!!) Because we're very considerate, we waited until almost lunchtime to bring you our analysis of the article inside, which features excerpts from the Judi Giuliani interview that will appear in March's Harper's Bazaar, as well as the scintillating non-news that Rudy has filed some important papers that bring him one step closer to officially declaring his presidential candidacy. Exciting! But not as exciting as the Giulianis' marriage. Praising Rudy's "testosterone factor," Judi crowed to HB,