The Tyranny of the Christmas Wish List @1:00 PM
Look, I like some expensive products. It's because I have extraordinarily good taste! Mmm, do I ever. But the Christmas wish list stories everywhere are driving me crazy, because the stuff on them is pricey garbage. Here's a contribution from W Accessories Director Brooke Magnaghi! 27
Cheney, Party of Evil? Now Seating Cheney, Party of Evil. @10:00 AM
In D.C., there's always room for one more. So the news that Mary Cheney wants to go into business with her family at a new firm is unsurprising, because, well why not go face-down into the trough, you pigs? Said a coworker of Mary Cheney's: "It's going to be a firm like Kissinger Associates." (Oh yes, the firm at which Tim Geithner spent the mid-late 80s!) This is amusing, because one has many reasons—eight long years of reasons, including the discovery that Dick Cheney was still a private industry operator even while he was residing in the Naval Observatory—to suspect that the Cheneys, in their marvelous, brash way, most definitely lack the fingerspitzengefuhl of Kissinger. 8
Who's Afraid Of Marty Singer? @10:41 AM
Why do people take Marty Singer seriously? The cage-rattling, form-letter-rewriting Hollywood lawyer spews lawsuits like anxious starlets spew breakfast. Now, in his latest complaint, against Gawker, the New York Times refers to him as "the legendarily pugnacious Mr. Singer." The suit, according to Gawker (we have not read it, and as near as we can tell it has not been published online), asks for damages of $1 million—I know, seriously, what? A whole million dollars? You mean maybe six weeks of Gawker ad income? What a pitiful request!—for their publication of a video which depicted TV actors hanging out in states of undress. I have read and received letters from Marty Singer's office. You probably have too! They are often factually incorrect, distorting to actual events, and they create such a tenuous legal bubble of reasoning that one can barely take them seriously. They are particularly prone to insane misreadings of the texts that they complain about. Less experienced publishers find them frightening, mostly because they are 1. very long and 2. very irritating and 3. because Marty Singer (along with Lynda Goldman, and the rest of his crew) has worked very hard to establish his reputation as a bulldog or a terrier or whatever sort of dog is a tenacious ankle-biter. But the real sign you're in legal trouble with a celebrity is if they hire a lawyer who is not Marty Singer, and Gawker honcho Nick Denton is totally right to mock it on his Twitter. 9
Shocker: Extramarital Workplace Affair Ends In Hostilities @9:12 AM
Oh, people/animals. Don't you hate it when you're sleeping with a married guy high up the totem pole at work—you know, because you have such excellent judgment skills—and then you decide he is a liar and then you dump him and then you suddenly get fired? Because then you get to destroy his life in the press and in court, which is fun, because why shouldn't you? He's a schmuck, you're a schmuck, you can roll around in the schmuckiness together. It's sort of like if seagulls had newspapers and wedding rings. It's all "Squawk squawk squawk." 13
