In this week s Times Style Section: Breaking news on strappy sandals and skankified feet!

The step between beatification and sainthood: become a David Rees clip-art character. Gotta figure that takes some of the sting out of losing that Sunday op-ed spot.
Get Your Thomas Friedman On [NYPress]
Flathead: The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman [NYPress]

The blogger at The Bruni Digest delights in weekly critiques of NYT food critic Frank Bruni's restaurant reviews. Today, she imagines the scenario that could play out after Bruni said yesterday of chef Laurent Tourondel's BLT Fish restaurant, [BLT Fish] has the flexibility of a yogi master, the balance of a Romanian gymnast":

This morning's media parlor game: can the Observer's Gabriel Sherman get NYT op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd to admit she's pissed that one of her two weekly columns was bumped from Sunday to the ghetto-circulation hell of Saturday in the recent op-ed shuffle? Let's tune in and find out!

Yeah, well, I don't think the advertising is helping, either.

Writing in the Observer, Ralph Gardner Jr. considers the tragic downside of so many famous people dying these days: the excessive real estate they consume on the obituary page:

We've been told that some folks at the Times were none too impressed with The Most Emailed Story Ever, Jenny Eight's treatise on dudes hanging out. (Don't you see? This is what she wants. It's a trap. She loves the attention, yearns for it. Don't give it to her, please. Please stop writing now. Stop. Please. Oh Lord, why can't we stop?)

The tortoise finally comes 'round:

After coming across yet another autism article in the Times (this time in the book reviews), we're genuinely wondering: which came first, the epidemic or its media?

Speaking of inaccuracies, the Gawker Media Ethics Hotline in Pseudo-Journalism has received a flood of tips (okay, one) pointing to another Times writer who makes the occasional fuck-up: TV critic and walking Ivy League advertisement Alessandra Stanley. (At least we think we remember that she went to an Ivy League School. Yale or Harvard, maybe UCLA. Couldn't be bothered to Google it.)

We've been a little worried about the Times apparent lack of concern over the allegations that its intrepid Metro Desk flubber, New Post-New Post-Journalist Alan Feurer, invented a few details in his copy while playing foreign correspondent in Iraq. (Really, what is truth? Does it matter? Serotonin and dopamine dictate everything, that's all you need to know.)

Since the Times isn't prepared to go all Jayson Blair on Alan Feuer regarding his upcoming book — in which the staff writer reveals that he, you know, basically made shit up in Baghdad — Gawker decided to launch its own Independent Panel Review Investigation Review. (Or, uh, LexisNexis search.)

Oh, for joy! It's the Thursday we've all been waiting for: The launch of the Times new Thursday Styles section (or, as we call it, The Metrosexual Nail in Your Coffin). And oh my, what a glorious section it is, featuring spanking new subsections (we dare not call them columns; it's just too soon) certain to delight even Adam Moss. Aside from the Online Shopper, which strikes us as a sweet editorial afterthought for those survivors of the Circuits genocide, we're thinking that Thursday is the new Fabulous. Our favorite features:

From today's New York Times:

Broadcasting & Cable was right! Alessandra Stanley's New York Times TV reviews are loaded with deliciously obscure references that reward only the most erudite readers. Check out her review of NBC's mini-series, Revelations today:

The Politicker got its ink-stained hands on a hot memo from Times maharaja Bill Keller, announcing a brave new effort to keep the Gray Lady's tits from sagging:

We were testing you, really, by making you wait until 3:30 to address the latest from Times reporter-laureate Jennifer 8. Lee, in which she discovers that two straight men can indeed be friends! Just follow the simple rules of man-dating:

This weekend, The New York Times unveiled its newly redesigned Sunday three page Op-Ed spread. All this, just to pack Frank Rich into the mix along with all the other stuff you've spilled your coffee on every Sunday for decades.

Looks like the love match between Matt Drudge and Maureen Dowd just turned into a love triangle. Everyone knows Drudge loves Camille Paglia (and vice versa), but apparently Maureen loves Camille, too.

Ethics? We don't need no stinkin' ethics: