Theory 1: Twilight Is Chocolate
Let's get the obvious, probably-the-cold-bare-truth one out of the way. There's nothing new about young people, young women especially, going apeshit bananas over something that brings a fierce yet chaste smolder to their loins—be it the cherubic young matinee idols like Romeo + Juliet-era Leonardo DiCaprio, the crotch-twirling "baby come back" antics of a boy band (from Beatles to Backstreet), or, you know, the dark brooding eternal prick tease of sexless vampire love (Buffy! And now, sigh, Twilight!). While most boys just hairy palm their way past longings for love and post-in/out/in/out intimacy, many girls get snared and tangled in that brambly bush of idol worship, and any conduit through which they can explore and advance these tinglings is, usually, seized upon with great fervor. And Meyer wrote the perfect conduit for a certain set of young ladies—one about Changes (she moves!), School (she's awkward!), Bodies (she's clumsy!), and Boys (he's alabastery beautiful and dangerous!) Certain little women throw this shit to the curb as the fantasy garbage that it is, but others (whether consciously or not) see some great unspoken wish-fulfillment in it—that you can snare the boy by doing next to nothing, that you can fix a troubled man, that somewhere out there is a place where you and only you are special and it's up to all those other bitches to just look on in awe. Pretty powerful magicks.

Theory 2: Twilight Is Barack Obama
Yes it's true! Published in 2005, just one short year after Obama gave his ground-rumbling speech at the DNC in Boston, Twilight and the president-elect share many qualities. Both had rabid cult followings until they bled and blossomed into mainstream phenomena. Both are about love with utter abandon—to overlook or dismiss the fangs or Rev. Wrights. And both are about potential danger lurking in the periphery—Edward might eat Bella! Obama might pull off his Mission: Impossible mask and reveal himself to be Jimmy Carter, thus hurling the nation into a socialism-flecked doom of poverty and lawlessness. But in the end, both are less than what they seem. Twilight is just pat aspirational shit to please the ladies (see above) and Obama is just part inspirational grit and part just a fairly moderate Democrat who will do fine, if not well, as a two term president (we Hope). The implication here, I guess, is that Barack Obama is a vampire. It would make sense. After all, his daddy was a cannibal.

Theory 3: Twilight Is The Last Gasp Of Chic Religious Conservatism
Remember when John McCain's daughter Meghan said that being a Republican was the last way to be punk and it was really dumb and also a few years too late because the whole thing had been death rattling for a while at that point? Well Twilight is sort of the other side of that. It was timely and it was apt and it was cool, for the subset of Christian America it directly appealed to. In 2005, it was pretty righteous for a Mormon housewife from Arizona to write a long, turgid book about two hot-as-hell young people (well, "young" here is relative, I guess) falling madly in love and kissing and then screwing their brains out... after they get married (and even then they only do it twice)! There's a nice anti-abortion trope thrown into the last book, I'm told (should she carry Edward's demon baby that will probably kill her to term? Yes! Yes she should!) and a comfortable hat tip to the old Mormon idea that women can't get into Heaven without the help of a man. Bella is made vampyr by Edward in the end, and they amble off together into fuckfest eternity. What a sly devil Meyer was to try and couch all this in supposedly lush mod-period melodrama (you know what we would call Twilight in the theatre? Agitprop), trouble is, she's such a spectacularly shitty writer that the light starts to poke through, a few years later. But she got away with it for a while! Don't think she would now.

So which is it? Twilight as female soul-tickler? Twilight as political Daemon? Or Twilight as the last bit of tricky mainstream Christo-conservatism to sneak its way past the lefty sensors? Or, you know, none of the above?

Cocaine-snazzled actress Lindsay Lohan, who is now a gay person dating a gay woman who deejayed at the bash. Odious "actress" and model Mischa Barton (who, OK, was born in England, but she made her money here). Tax-dodging half-vampire Wesley Snipes. Too-bored-to-ever-know-where-she-is fashion plate Mary Kate Olsen. I guess things here in the patriotic old US of A got a bit too messy for them, a bit too elbow-greasy. So they flit on over to some twirling, towering desert city of steel and glass where the champagne still flows and the hotels are tacky and people still have the energy to celebrate it all. Fair-weather Americans if you ask me.

While the country burns—literally and figuratively—these folks spent how much on dresses (and, um, banana-yellow suits in the case of Mr. Snipes), to go fete it up in the Middle East and had the audacity to smile?? Well I hope they like it over there in Terrorist Disney World, because they aren't allowed back here.

All images via Getty

• Use sarcasm to mock the easy life that college students lead: Goodness, I hope these sheltered students will be able to bear the strain of a simulated version of "The stressful task of providing for one's basic necessities and shelter on a limited budget" during the course of "four 15-minute 'weeks.'" That's an entire hour of limited budgets!


• Emphasize the gulf between college students' self-regard and their paltry accomplishments: I bet you feel real accomplished after "experiencing" poverty, eh? Eh?


• Point out that the do-gooding activities of college students tend to help their egos rather than the actual problems at hand: Dartmouth students recently ended world hunger by challenging themselves to survive for one full day on only $2. They also got free t-shirts! Food surpluses are now flowering throughout sub-Saharan Africa.


• Find an example that embodies the simultaneous disconnect from reality and excess self-esteem of the modern student: "Derek Lyon ‘11, who said his experience volunteering in the Ecuadorian rain forest compelled him to eat the $2 dinner Wednesday night, said he believes Dartmouth students are not truly in touch with global poverty and hunger on a daily basis." Dartmouth students outside Derek Lyon '11, that is!


• Quote at least one student whose reasonable perspective makes his peers look that much more ridiculous: “'As a person who lives and sees poverty at home, I think it’s sort of a stupid exercise,' [Zimbabwean Dartmouth student Tanaka] Mhambi said. 'I mean, fasting for a day isn’t going to tell you what hunger is like.'"


• Finally, acknowledge playfully that you yourself may have suffered some of the same defects of the character back when you were in college. (Don't want people to think you're self-righteous): But hey, we all did some ridiculous things back in the old college days, amirite? Can't be too hard on the kids. They're not half as bad as I was! Why when I wasn't getting heavily intoxicated, I was having sex with countless fetching coeds, who were attracted to my "bad boy" persona. Crazy times!

See how easy? And coming after my next birthday passes: "How To Make Fun Of 20-Somethings." [IvyGate]

Are you one of the many talented HFM craftspeople waiting for a chance to showcase your artistry? Be discovered!

At the HFM Holiday Craft Fair, you will have the opportunity to show or sell your craft such as jewelry, accessories, chocolates, knitting and crocheting.

The Craft Fair will be held in the 42nd floor training room on Wednesday, December 10th from 11:30am – 2pm.

This is a wonderful opportunity to both show and sell your crafts and meet your colleagues! To participate, please RSVP to —-—-—- by Monday, December 1st and indicate the craft you would like to sell. (The Holiday Craft Fair is only open to HFM employees. Space is limited and is on a first come, first served basis.)

From the outset, the episode looked pretty good. The quickfire challenge was hot dogs. I, who at this point was actually quite drunk, had just eaten the Chang Dog and the Wylie Dog at PDT (the former, a bacon-wrapped hot dog with kimchi, the latter a "deep-fried Crif Dog wiener nestled against a baton of WD-50 deep-fried mayo with tomato molasses and freeze-dried onions") so was already juiced for wieners. Instead of pimping out the quickfire like some James Lipton-like mac to Oscar Mayer, the segment featured Angelina D'Angelo, an independent Queens hot dog cart purveyor. The hot dogs were okay. Fake Italian Fabio I think won? (Maybe it was the little tattooed blonde lesbian.) Lex Luthor made a stab at a world dog that fell flat. You like that, Thomas Friedman, you jealous ignoble Ionic fifth columnist?

[OH! Before I forget: Did anyone catch that weird mini-segment hidden inside a commercial break where Leah, the lady from Centro, clearly wants to hump Hoseah "Far Side" Rosenberg? She says something like, "I am into relationships. I'm boy-crazy!" and then she is cuddling with him on the sofa and being coquettish? "I want to sit here!" she says. The moment lasted all of thirty seconds then went straight back to some Housewives commercial. Transmission screw up or uncanny foreshadowing of love to come?]

Anyway, ever onwards. Those sadistic and cynical Top Chef producers are, let's admit it, sometimes genius. Their ability to milk, nourish and capture human misery rivals Dante's formulations of contrapasso in the Inferno. In this week's episode, the contestants had to cook for the 50 failed contestant/chefs, the people who didn't even make it on to Top Chef. Needless to say, they were all—save one or two—vindictive anal worms. It was like when corrupt cops go to jail. One upside: The chefs worked out of the restaurant Craft which Chef Tom Colicchio owns so the man was in the kitchen, expediting. It is always a pleasure to see actual cheffery happening on the show. He's no-nonsense, exacting and demanding and at the same time level-headed, doesn't yell and is well-organized.

So dishes and mistakes were made by the dozen. At the end of the day, Gail Simmons looked bad but made up for it by calling Jersey housewife Arianne Aryan. Aryan, for her part, totally blew it with her "cherry surprise" (Trust me, I've had a lot better cherry surprises—some courtesy of James Lipton!). It was so sweet even Padma (as seen above) expectorated the sweet load from her mouth into her napkin. It takes a lot to laugh, a train to cry, and one overly-sweet bite to make Padma spit. Strangely, it wasn't Aryan who went back to Jerz but rather it was the female Stephen Malkmus who was sent packing back to B-more [(Do you want to see her in a bikini? Click here) Maybe there'll be a sixth season of the Wire and it'll be about illegal kitchens and she can have a second career. Here's to hoping.]

To sum up: I'm really excited for this season. I think it'll be great. It is already pretty wonderful. It's true, I despise Toby Young who replaces Ted Allen as judge and everything that he does. He'll be cruel and witty because that's what he does and he'll do it for the camera and without the slightest thought that what he says actually has consequences for the contestants, so deep is his narcissism. But Padma will be there to be drunk and cute and slurry and Tom is always there to slice through the bullshit with his limpid eyes. As far as the contestants go, Emile from Ratatouille, the guy with the horrendous facial hair, might actually be sweet. Fabio and Stefan actually seem to be in love. Urkel—though to be fair, she more closely resembles Where's Waldo?—is crazy town and God Bless Her for it. And shorty-wanna-hump Leah is so clingy that one wonders if she was brought to us by the makers of Glad. All in all, the ingredients are there for a well seasoned season. Let's just hope Bravo doesn't fuck it up too much.

Hobos smoking funny-smelling cigarettes everywhere. Hobos of all sorts! Young street punks, 60's washouts, black people. They're all shambling around, scaring people with babies with their open-mindedness and crazy un-Christian idea of not judging people. And, um, we were just there. It ain't that way. It all seems pretty nice to us. With fancy condos and well-heeled folks and hipster coffee shops out the wazoo. Though, I guess that's probably equally terrifying to the suburban boy. Watch his Greenwich Village stereotyping and San Francisco bashing (it's srsly hilarious) above.

They have some legitimate policy grievances with Obama, of course, because while the Bush strategy was to use the 9/11 attacks as a pretense to go ahead with a pre-planned invasion of non-al-Qaeda secular dictatorship Iraq, the Obama plan is to go back into Afghanistan—and Pakistan!—and kill all of them. (Bush thought this plan so clever he secretly instituted it himself at the very, very end of his presidency.)

Still, even with the threat of ramping up that particular war, Obama is simply not a very good recruiting tool for Islamic Extremists! So they are kinda reduced to just needling the President-elect, with this Malcolm X talk. Obama, of course, has written at length of reading Malcolm X: "Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me." Who knew al-Qaeda seconds-in-command were reading Dreams From My Father?

But, of course, their invocation of Obama as a "house Negro" is a total misreading. As Malcolm said:

This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about "I'm the only Negro out here." "I'm the only one on my job." "I'm the only one in this school." You're nothing but a house Negro.

And a pivotal part of Obama's story, of course, is his seeking out and finding a Black community, and creating a role for himself in that community. And Malcolm himself, as we all know, developed more nuanced views of race relations shortly before his untimely death, demanding black people have self-determination within their own communities and pulling back from strict separation from white people. He distanced himself from the Nation of Islam too, making these terrorists look even more foolish. It's almost as if al-Qaeda leaders don't have a complex understanding of the roots of black nationalism and the civil rights struggle and how it informs contemporary discussions of race!

Anyways, Obama hasn't responded to the provocation but he's totally bombing some caves come January.

• Dupre had no idea her client Spitzer was the governor, on account of his clever alias "George Fox," Dupre's professionalism ("I was there for a purpose, not to wonder who [he] could be") and Dupre being "not really a TV person... I was wrapped up in my family, my music. I knew the name, but [not] the face."
• Spitzer wasn't chatty like some clients: "It was more of a transaction. Strictly business."
• Dupre has been in "intense" psychotherapy since March.
• She ran away from home at 17 and was soon in Florida "drinking a bottle of Grey Goose vodka at a time and partaking in a "'lot' of marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine." During this period, she was raped.

Despite the seemingly coordinated burst of publicity, Dupre does not indicate she has a book or any other such project to promote, telling People (for publication in Friday's issue) she wants merely to "get on with my life." Maybe the new publicity will finally temper public interest in Dupre — or maybe it will spike and shape that interest in a way more appealing to book publishers and other media dealmakers. It's entirely possibly Dupre will have some options in how she "gets on" with life.

(Image from ABC)

[The Smoking Gun]

Neither the Clintons or the Obamas seemed to show much favor to the foreign press during the campaigns, and no UK paper, let alone The Guardian, was handed a scoop of this magnitude over the domestic press. So why now? As Wolff points out, the Europeans love Bill Clinton much more than we do, here where he used to run things, because we had to see his shouty red face so much during the primaries. So maybe it's just wishful thinking?

But now the speculation has lasted days, without denials from anyone, so, yeah, it seems like the SecState gig is Hillary's. The trial balloons been floating out there for a while now, and no one's yet come up with a great argument against the nomination that doesn't boil down to "the Clintons are a headache."

We are probably happier with her than with, say, hilarious clown Bill Richardson or old man Richard Holbrooke, but we were kinda warming to the John Kerry idea. That guy's been in the Senate way longer, and is clearly way more sick of being there, right? He was investigating Iran-Contra when Hillary was in Arkansas doing whatever she was accused of doing in that Whitewater thing! (Remember that?) Both of them were dead wrong on Iraq, obv, but we're probably not going to sell anyone on Secretary of State Russ Feingold. At least she's smarter than Condi Rice.

Still, Clinton's rehtoric on foreign policy has always seemed more resolutely, defensively hawkish, in that "Democrats can be war-mongering badasses too" way we deplore, than that of genuine old-timey liberal John Kerry. Of course, Obama's language has been similar, so we probably shouldn't expect the doves and peaceniks to run the foreign affairs department in an Obama administration.

Which means it's disappointment season! Turns out the new politics of hope might involve some hopeless old politicians! Because, hey, the only Democrats hanging around Washington with any experience in the executive branch are old Clinton people (there might be some Carter guys, at Brookings or something, but no one talks to them). So the faces of triangulation did not melt, Raiders of the Lost Ark-style, when Obama won the nomination. It is a great excuse for us Coastal Liberal Elites to Hate America Again, for the very first time.

Just keep Mark Penn far away from 1600 Pennsylvania, Barry, for the sake of the country.

Where we started: Jenny was mostly a hobo who was staying with gravelly-voiced Erik; Blair was mad still about her mom's new main squeeze, Wallace Shawn; Serena was still inexplicably drawn to little Fievel the mouse; and Nate was poor and having the-police-are-after-papa problems. Luckily EVERYTHING was resolved by the end of the episode (well, almost everything) because that is the way that Thanksgiving ends: with everyone happy and loving each other and not sitting alone in a darkened room of the house, gulping wine, still reeling from when your brother-in-law smacked your nephew right at the dinner table and your mom threw the fucking turkey out the window and your father yelled "all right! all right! all right!" as he banged the dinner table, which made your nephew cry more, and your sister wouldn't stop shrieking and shrieking and shrieking and somewhere in all of this your younger brother disappeared and for some reason you feel like he might be gone for good this time, I mean he took his guitar, and fuck your flight is going to be delayed if it snows and you can't believe you'd rather be at that miserable shitpile you call work than be here right now. That's never how Thanksgiving ends.

Anyway! Jenny was trying to get legally divorced from her parents, because her crusty old rockstar dad just didn't understand her love of fashions and irresponsibly stupid haircuts. Erik was at the meeting with her because I guess they are best friends now and Jenny was shocked—shocked!—to hear that she'd have to, you know, like tell her parents that she was dibborcin' them and not just like mewp off into the fashionz sunset with nobody's feelings hurt. Well eventually Pa Humphrey found out that Jennifer had been staying at van der Bass Acres and he and Lily hatched a plan to get her back into the comfortable fold of warehouse Brooklyn where she belongs.

Erik got dinged by the 'rents for harboring a fugitive, but not before Bart Bass ominously (and cattily, meow Miss Thang!) said that Erik best to check up on his mans, who may or may not have been jeepin' with the captain of the swim team. Were I a high school geigh, I'd probably have to stick with the captain of the swim team rather than a little Christmas elf who consistently scores highly in the Overly Earnest Voice Olympics. But that's just me! Erik was sad and curious as to how/why Bart knew such bitchy info, so of course he gushingly went to stepbro Chuckles, who showed him Bart's safe, which was full of gold bullion and richly embroidered hats and strange potions and elixirs and eye of newt and the lost Shakespeare play and Snow White's heart in a little wooden box and a single red apple and, most importantly, secret files. Ever the curious kitten, Erik read his and was shocked. "I'm gay???" he bellowed.

On the other side of the same side of town, or somewhere downtown who the eff knows, Serena was feeding bits of cheese to her mousy little friend Aaron Rose. He had big news for her. He had decided to make it exclusive. This was good news for women everywhere, because previously Serena had been spouting some seriously messed up stuff about how she couldn't win him if she wasn't in the fight and all this stuff and you just wondered why this particular creature was so worth it and then you found out why: because he's a boring, super judgmental, Sober prick! Whee! Yeah, he doesn't drink because it really helps his "work," because, oh yeah Aaron. Because it must be completely impossible to put random shit in a pile and then play a movie on it when you're canned. Good on you. So Serena decided that she would lie and say she was a teetotaler when she is, in fact, anything but. So, awkward!

Luckily for no one involved, Dan ran into Aaron at a little gourmandy Brooklyn greengrocer's, and like the big-mouthed idiot his character has never been on the show until this episode, he started gabbing about how Serena is a total drunk and probably killed a dude and how Aaron's mama was like a hardware store, three cents a sc—

Whoa whoa whoa! It was all to much for Aaron. He looked puzzled in a "sometimes TV writers think that acceptable relationship obstacles are when someone thinks that their lover has done something bad in the past and they would completely break up with them if that was in fact true and that's supposed to be totally OK when it is in fact shitty and judgy and like, you should never date someone who is that condescending and boringly principled" kind of way. But whatevs, Dan took the blame for lying to save Serena's narrow, blonde little behind but then she felt bad. So—after Lily confronted Bass about the secret files (she was in a mental institution!! why??? we don't know!!) and the van der Woodsens left the manor—S took her secret file to Aaron because it is never weird when your girlfriend hands you a dossier of her life and says "read."

In the end they had a talk and everything was OK. Much like the other two plot points that involved Blair being upset about her moms shutting her out of the whole I'm-dating-a-Sicilian plotline of her life. So she dragged dutiful Dorota (who is so sweet and pretty in real life, I met her this weekend, she's fab!) around town when all poor Dorota wanted to do was go feed the ducks. She understands simple pleasures, ones that don't involve oyster stuffing (ick, oysters) and fancy fancy gay dudes from Paris who just happen to be your dad. Anywayyyyyyy, Blair's mom ended up caring in the end and her dad made a surprise visit and new, happy, awkward family traditions were formed and everyone was so happy for these mind bogglingly wealthy people.

Nate's dad came back and Nate was going to run away with him to a magical island where no one arrests you and the Archibald family has money and maybe, just maybe there is a SCUBA instructor from Australia with a nice toned, tawny physique and crinkly blue eyes and hair the color of hay and maybe his name is like Legolas or something and maybe he and Nate could be, uh, friends. But no! All was a lie! The Captain was going to hold Nate and his weak, dimwitted moms for ransom money! Which is the silliest thing I've ever heard! What was he going to do? Hold them at gunpoint? Tie them up? Bah. So instead Nate ended up asking dad to turn himself in, watched wistfully as he was carted off , and thought about how lucky his dad was to be going to a place where men to do each other what they do. Then he made up with Vanessa and had fun limo drinks with Chuck and he was happy again!

Jenny came home!!! Storyline over!!! She was tired and poor and didn't want to divorce her parents because divorce means having to say you're sorry and that your parents were negligent when, in fact!, they were the opposite. So the Humphs and the van der Snitsens (minus artist-boning Serena) all had dinner at the Brooklyn brokedown palace and were joined by sad minority orphan Vanessa, who made up with Jenny... but then found an unread letter that Nate had sent that said "Jenny, I totes love you! What should we do, omigod!!" that had hearts over the i's and a picture of a bumblebee doodled in the corner. She stole the letter! Wicked Vanessa!

Meanwhile Bart lurked outside and said "yes, bring me the head of Lily van der Woodsen." Or, rather, just the history of her head. He wanted to know why she was in that asylum. Um, because, yes, oftentimes it makes sense to ask a PI "give me only half of the information. I want the what, but ohhh mercy no, I don't want the why." Sure.

So there this week's tale ends. Happy disjointed families eating meals and entertaining and feeling warmly dulled by wine and the crisp air whipping its way around the corners of the buildings all here in this big twirling glittering city, so brimming with love and mystery and all the other pearls that form the rich adornments of their lives, and meanwhile the rest of us will be choking down dry turkey somewhere cold and unpleasant while the steady whine of family members fighting in kitchens and living rooms and porches and guest bedrooms fills our ears and drowns out what we're saying to ourselves over and over again in our heads to make us forget:

"xo, xo, xo, xo, xo, x....."

• Wintour famously passed on the chance to cooperate with the launch of Project Runway four years ago; by September Runway partner Elle was well on its way to passing Vogue in total ad pages, growing while Wintour's magazine was shrinking.
• Vogue's belated (but semi-successful!) reality show response, Model.Live, was masterminded by worried Vogue publisher Tom Florio, not Wintour.
• Those hussies at Elle launched their own cable show imitating an imitation of an imitation of Wintour. And she's not even getting royalties and whatnot!
• Vogue this year was beset by a series of ill-advised covers.
• Wintour was publicly snubbed in Europe for being an arrogant cultural imperialist.
• Men's Vogue fell in the Great Magazine Die-Off and, according to Page Six, Wintour didn't even have the energy to mount a vicious internal turf war. Sad!

Worst of all, the Times not two months ago profiled one of the bevy of smart young Euroskanks angling to push Wintour out the door (an elegant Russian with a Ph.D.), so when Wintour goes to recommend a replacement to Conde Nast boss Si Newhouse, as Page Six said she plans to do, he might just ignore her and go off in his own direction. (Maybe the editor of sexy Vogue India?)

Vogue's people deny everything, but leaving the magazine makes so much sense for Wintour: She gets to exit while the magazine is still on top; she doesn't have to learn how to effectively publish on this cesspool they call the internet; and Wintour will finally have time to close the deal on one of her many crushes. If the editor hasn't considered these positive aspects of retirement, she ought to, because someone at Conde Nast thinks she should!

The plodding pace of Huffington's delivery was at least as tough on viewers as her accent, but her pronunciation was, admittedly, often odd, and also often kind of hilarious: "Connect-icuit," "Philly-buster," "Newer mayor" (for "Newark mayor") and, best of all, "the biggest wiener of the election season." (They're all in the clip above.)

Huffington did make the most of her Greek background in the last minute of the show, when she talked about her kids' "ya ya" (that's for grandmother, mind you!) and life in Athens. (That's also in the clip above.) But going forward she should probably stick to guesting — or hire a voice coach.

Also noteworthy: Huffington's especially warm chat with rumored sometime rumored lover Cory Booker, the Newark mayor. Watch their eyes (and notice Booker's effusive compliment) in the clip below.

To find an example of an embarrassing breakdown between a president and his Secretary of State, one need go back no further than the current Bush Administration. Colin Powell was, by most accounts, slowly frozen out of key decisions after voicing early dissent over the Iraq war. His office became a source of leaks. And after leaving at the end of Bush's first term, Powell spoke publicly about his regrets.

Luckily for Obama, he's already gotten the "bitter public disagreement" phase of his relationship with Clinton out of the way! And his alliance with Clinton, combined with recent efforts to build bridges to former Republican presidential rival John McCain in the senate, could help him avoid the bruising Congressional battles of Bill Clinton's first year.

Mark Cuban would be just another rich guy except for his penchant for saying whatever pops into his head. He constantly criticizes the NBA, which is a no-no by owners. The flipside is he gets great PR. Although half of it is bad! Oh well. He also has a blog that is sometimes hilarious and not well thought out a bit.

At the moment, Cuban wants to buy the Chicago Cubs from Tribune Co., which needs to sell the storied baseball franchise to raise cash, which it will burn in a vain attempt to save its newspapers. The idea of Cuban—a maverick—owning the Cubs absolutely kills traditionalists, who think he would totally ruin all the great Chicago traditions, such as having ivy on the outfield walls and losing constantly.

So is it possible that there was some shady conspiracy that caused this allegation from 2004 to surface just in time to (likely) torpedo any chance Cuban has of buying the Cubs? You would have to be a crazy conspiracy freak to believe this, for which there is no evidence whatsoever, so please don't sue us.

Thanks to Blakeley for the CBS footage. You could hear Michelle Obama's exuberance as she discussed scouting her new digs:

Kroft: What was it like going through there?

Michelle Obama: Well, first of all, Laura Bush was just so gracious. She is a really sweet person. And couldn't have been more excited and enthusiastic about the tour. So that was wonderful. And her entire team, their team has been working closely just to make us feel welcome. But the White House is beautiful. It is awe-inspiring. It is. What I felt walking through there was that it is a great gift and an honor to be able to live here. And you know we want to make sure that we're upholding what that house stands for. But I couldn't help but envisioning the girls running into their rooms and, you know, running down the hall and with a dog. And, you know, you start picturing your life there. And our hope is that the White House will feel open and fun and full of life and energy.

Mr. Obama: Sleepovers.

Michelle Obama: And sleepovers.

You can read the full transcript of the Steve Kroft interview here.

Three days before his first inauguration, George W. Bush sent a message to 42 friends and relatives that explained his predicament. "Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace,” Mr. Bush wrote from his old address, G94B@aol.com. “This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you."

So sad. Wow. Bush didn't handle this well — in fact, he was so upset that his administration decided to toss out the entire Clinton e-mail system and not replace it. As a result, National Journal recently reported, we have no records of communication at the highest levels of government over the past eight years.

As for Obama, he spent time on his computer editing speeches, and was up late responding to e-mails. That won't continue, as David Axelrod suggests Obama won't even be able to use his phone in a read-only fashion. "The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him," scholar Diana Owen says. That is so weak.

Say Goodbye to BlackBerry [NYT]

Beyoncé's sketch with Paul Rudd brought back fond memories:

The above pic was taken at the New York City protest, and is by Amelie McDonell-Parry. So was this one, and it's our truly joyous winner. Congratulations New York.

Gotta dig this outfit as snapped by Chicago flickr user mjkmjk:

Also from mjkmjk:

From Carles Frances' flickr in California, this one really hit home for me:

I know you saw better ones — break 'em out in the comments.

Deborah Solomon's painfully, quippy interviews usually reveal more about her than about the interview subject in question, but it looks like she hit a nerve with ole KR:

Do you see the election results as a repudiation of your politics?
Our new president-elect won one and a half points more than George W. Bush won in 2004, and he did so, in great respect, by adopting the methods of the Bush campaign and conducting a vast army of persuasion to identify and get out the vote.

Ah yes, Karl. The idea to get more people to vote. You came up with that in the early 1500s when you were working as a blacksmith in a small Scottish village. Next, Solomon unravels the terrifying web that connects Barack to Karl:

Have you met Barack Obama?
Yes, I know him. He was a member of the Senate while I was at the White House and we shared a mutual friend, Ken Mehlman, his law-school classmate. When Obama came to the White House, we would talk about our mutual friend.

Are you going to send him a little note congratulating him?
I already have. I sent it to his office. I sent him a handwritten note with funny stamps on the outside.

What kind of funny stamps?
Stamps.

Do not lick the stamps, Barack. That's the least Bill Ayers can do considering what a pain he's been over the last few months.

Google has plenty of business in Washington these days, from the Federal Communications Commission to the Department of Justice. Convenient, then, that CEO Eric Schmidt endorsed Obama weeks before the election, joining his board of economic advisors and appearing in Obama's primetime infomercial. Schmidt doesn't need a government job — he's clearly volunteering to be America's CTO in his spare time.

Schmidt is savvy enough to realize that YouTube's growing prominence as a media outlet could help the company become a larger political player — which is why the site sponsored two campaign debates. Traffic? Come on. YouTube hardly needs the help. Schmidt — who attended one debate with a mistress on his arm, like an old-school power broker — orchestrated the events to maximize Google's political influence.

The outgoing administration has not been friendly to Google, whose management team tilts strongly to the left. The Department of Justice's threat to sue Google if it proceeded with a deal to sell search ads for Yahoo may have been, at least in part, politically motivated.

Google mostly wants a free hand from Washington to cement its lead in online advertising — but it also wants help bullying telephone and cable companies into letting its services and ads flow unimpeded on high-speed broadband lines and cell phones, a cause it has dubbed "network neutrality."

Network neutrality is an abstract issue. But YouTube, helpfully, makes it very concrete to politicians, who have long understood the power of the moving image to influence the public. It's easy to picture Google lobbyists pulling up a politician's YouTube videos, and asking them, "Now how would you feel if Verizon slowed down your videos? Wouldn't it be wrong if AT&T didn't let customers view them on their cell phones?"

Even in its copyright enforcement, Google can club politicians. The McCain campaign complained about YouTube's takedown policy, which has a mandatory waiting period before videos whose rights are disputed can be reposted to the site. Will Democratic politicians — or any politician who votes the right way on network neutrality — find that a YouTube account manager is glad to make that kind of problem quietly go away?

It's a symbiotic relationship, to be sure. Google helps politicians reach young voters on YouTube and hosts their videos for free. YouTube benefits from the free content and the traffic political videos generate; even if it doesn't sell ads directly on the pages, it's estimated that it could make $1 billion a year on search ads — and in that business, merely cementing YouTube's traffic lead helps Google make money.

In that light, isn't there something that stinks about handing the president's weekly addresses to a single commercial outlet controlled by a political ally of the president? Obama's YouTube chats amount to a large, unspoken, behind-the-scenes government kickback. Every election has something dirty about it. And there's no question Google won this contest.

Our tipster is somewhat less sure of this part, but has also heard:

[That] dupre was paid a large "consulting fee" and for "archival footage" — the standard way interview subjects are paid by the networks. (how outrageous, to pay a hooker that much money and only get an interview!)

This would be standard, of course, because none of the news networks "pay" for interviews. Just for services rendered, so to speak, haha. If you have any more info on the Dupre interview, email us.

Entourage
HBO could cross out the lines on the budget for fancy guest stars and location shootings that dimly buoy this sad, tired old alpha dog of a series. The current season, about resident movie star Vincent Chase being not quite on top but not quite on bottom, has been boring and slow, with only hints of humor (Werner Herzog joke!) peppered in between lame Johnny-is-dumb, Turtle-likes-poontang jokes. Pushing Daisies has the arty design and defiant oddness to flourish on the premium cable net. Over there, 6.6 million viewers (which the show is averaging this season) is a lot!

Private Practice
Well, this is probably on its way out too. But for the time being, it remains. It's a really irksome, forcibly "sexy" show about rakish beachside California doctors and the various genitals they fall onto or have fall onto them. Ick. We understand giving creator Shonda Rhimes, who spun this show off of her ludicrously popular Grey's Anatomy, a pat on the back and a sweet new series deal, but this... this is just a punny lady joke nightmare. ABC should stop forking over what I imagine are pretty hefty salaries for Kate Ward Walsh, Tim Daly, and Taye Diggs and spend it on advertising Daisies a bit more. Send supporting star Audra McDonald back to Broadway where she belongs. Yes, Kristin Chenoweth belongs on Broadway too, but whatever.

The Office
Yeah, we said it. This once-great series is languishing under the "stretch it out!" studio mandates that the creator of its British inspiration, Ricky Gervais, so deftly avoided by insisting on only making two short, neat little seasons that were wrapped up with a heart-swelling Christmas special. We used to really like this show, but now it's weighed down too heavily by big Plot Points—Dwight and Angela, Jim and Pam, Michael and Sadness. One of the greatest ensembles on television is no longer allowed to play like they used to. NBC could use a little creative jolt, so why don't they lovingly put this show to bed and bring Daisies into their fold. Ever-tarnishing wunderkind that he is, top Peacock exec Ben Silverman has typically been really good about supporting critically-beloved but low-rated shows. Daisies could be one of those low-rated shows!

What else would you nix to keep Ned and the gang safely out of the ground?

Quoth Tripp,

"That said, I believe President-elect Obama possesses an instantly recognizable purity of soul that, coupled with his brilliance, and, of course, his eloquence, brought quite unimaginable and long-awaited magic to the country, transforming red and blue states, quite literally, into ‘The Color Purple."

That is all one sentence, folks.

Obama's people have been repeating the mantra "One president at a time" over and over, like some sort of magic political talisman. Barack has no desire to get too involved at the moment, because politically that would mean taking on lot of responsibility without technically having any power.

And Bush is just sleepwalking through his last few months. He's not just a lame duck, he's a lame duck who everyone despises. He couldn't get anything accomplished even if he wanted to. Which he doesn't. He wants to play with Barney and keep quiet enough to maybe land that Commissioner of Baseball gig a few years down the line.

Neither of those things would be all that bad if we weren't mired in a financial crisis of epic proportions. Because when a crisis happens somebody has to be in charge. And if Bush isn't, and Barack isn't, you know who is? Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson! John Crudele has already taken to referring to him as "de facto president of the US." Which is not too far off the mark!

And hey, maybe it's not such a bad thing to have a guy like Paulson in charge of all the most important decisions, considering they're in his field of expertise? Psht! This is the same guy whose original idea for solving this mess was to give all power to the Treasury to do whatever it wanted, with no challenges permitted. Paulson changed the focus of the bailout package for the third time yesterday. Third time! It doesn't inspire confidence, nor should it.

In conclusion, our fake-elected bad president has no desire or incentive to do anything. Our actual president-elect: the same, until January. Our de facto presiden