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Remember the Tarantino/Rodriguez camp-fest that was From Dusk Til’ Dawn? George Clooney killed a bunch of south-of-the-border stripper/hooker-vampires using holy water-loaded Super Soakers. That was in 1996, and it should’ve been the end of vampire-cool. Now look where we are.

Vampires are the worst. They’re not evil-evil, anymore. They’ve been rendered powerless by True Blood and Twilight and now, The CW’s The Vampire Diaries from fucked-up, baseless monsters who are honoring a timeless tradition of being terrifyingly rapey psychopaths who do nothing but sleep and kill, into very, very, very pretty people who are super-horny about their weird fetishes and yeah, I guess they want your blood, but what they really want is your girlfriend, homie. If you put fangs on everyone in The O.C. and set it a little further east, all it would take now is one “Welcome to the Transylvania, Bitch” to set off a cultural touchstone, now. It’s cheap, stupid bullshit. Vampires—male and female alike—have been castrated of their fear-factor. Christopher Walken performing “Poker Face” is scarier than Twilight, the most famous vampire franchise of our time. Hell, Twilight fans are scarier than the vampires in Twilight. Just ask Robert Pattinson.

In this month’s GQ, Tom Carson penned a essay sharing my distaste for what now passes for scary, compelling, and sexy, titled (naturally) “There’s A Sucker Born Every Minute.” While he enjoys True Blood for what it is, Carson closes by arguing that even zombies, undead as they are, are a smarter buy than vampires:

No wonder the bloodsuckers’ main competition in pop circles is a renewed craze for zombies, the ultimate fantasy of mindless egalitarianism turned comic nightmare. Funny enough, they were always American: Defined a scant forty years ago by George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, they could be the only genuinely original contribution to monster lore we’ve ever made. As a given-we may be dumb, but we’ve got working brains-zombies feed on their superiors. But I can’t think of a vampire tale in which that’s been true, which is the sickest reason we can sneakily imagine ourselves being one. Not exactly a pretty picture of our secret lives in 2009, is it? Go vampire or go zombie, America: It’s your choice. Just don’t say this great country doesn’t offer you one.

Remember when teenage girls loved the Backstreet Boys in a narrative where Lou Pearlman was the villain? Anything that can remotely make those seem like The Days absolutely blows. Vampires are not the new gays. Vampires belong nowhere near the word “tampons.” Vampires should not be a clever narrative eye-wink joke to those who adopt them as “bloodsuckers.” Vampires are the most boring, dumbed-down, unsexy, overplayed, ridiculous narrative device out there. This used to be the stuff of good literature! Holler back, Vampire Archives scholar Otto Penzler:

All (teenage girl Twilight fans) are in love with the vampire. Why is that? Because he’s cool. He has got good manners. He’s good looking. He’s thoughtful of his girlfriend. Whereas most teenage boys are lame. They’re at the mall with their baseball caps on backwards and they act like idiots. Girls are looking for someone a little more sophisticated and a little cooler.

Right, well, that guy doesn’t exist in 8th grade. And soon, when Twilight fans grow up, they’ll realize that vampires’ sense of “romance” was just the long-con to get in their pants; male, female, doesn’t matter. But forget the perceptions, forget the implications on teenagers, forget the literary device. Forget all that stuff. There are just better stories out there. Bottom line. We’ve got better scaries in Rabbi Boteach and Glenn Beck and 3/4ths of Murray Hill past 2AM on a Thursday night than any vampire can ever give us.

Give me a break. Vampires are fuckin’ stupid. I hope they die. Forever.

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Why’d Scientology unveil their new Washington D.C. “Ideal Org” on Halloween, of all days? ‘Guess the wide public perception of Scientology being spooky-sketchy hasn’t taken. Whatever the incentive: it’s pissing off commuters, being protested, and—naturally—has Anonymous spies inside.

After causing a ruckus in Rome, and stirring up chaos in Nashville, the Church of Scientology came down on D.C. today to reveal their new “Ideal Org” building, which is apparently like Scientology’s version of the special McDonalds that serve all the new special things that the rest of America has to wait for first, or something: it’s a special super-awesome Scientology outpost.

To help assist the citizens of D.C. welcome it, they shut down a huge street, hung giant sheets, and tried to scatter and rid themselves of protesters. Via DCist:

Police are out in full force around the humongous 50,000-square foot building, and security is tight — a ten-foot tall white temporary barricade is blocking off 16th Street; there are huge draping banners reading “SCIENTOLOGY” and “DIANETICS”, though, in case those walking by on their Saturday jaunts to the 14th and P retail corridor were wondering what the hell was going on with this big white thing in the middle of the street.

Ohhhh. That’s why those people are creepily going through that gigantic white sheet. Wonder what’s on the other side of it? I know! It’s a small man with scary eyes named David Miscavage. He’s the head of Scientology and he talked to his Scientology followers today.

There’re way fun things in this picture! See if you can spot the guy in the anti-psychology jacket. And important Scientologists! And the guy in the peach-colored shirt who looks like he’s missing his head. And here’re more people ready for Miscavage to rock their faces:

There’re also the people waving French flags outside this joint in honor of France’s recent ruling against Scientology “fleecing” followers. Fleecing, indeed.

Looks like they keep on keepin’ on after the awful week they just had, between Tommy Davis’ freakouts and Paul Haggis’ resignation from the church. So, basically, your typical Scientology shitshow. If you have any reports from what was said on the inside, let’s hear ‘em.

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UK Guardian reporter Ed Pilkington went to Anchorage to interview the 19 year-old babydaddy of Tripp Palin, Levi Johnston. There’s audio, and some fairly interesting insight from Johnston on the Palin family and his Vanity Fair article, which was “retaliation.”

Let’s go straight to some quotes from the interview:

On the Vanity Fair piece: “I stand by it and I’m cool with everything I said. The route I chose to pick was just because they wouldn’t let me see my kid. So I didn’t really think that there was another way. That was the huge thing that made me do this. I don’t want to (say it was retaliation)…I mean, I guess. If they would’ve let me see my kid, everything’s fine, I never would’ve had to do any of that. They were gettin’ scared. They know I know a lot. I still know more than what’s out there. Then it got bad again and I said screw it, Vanity Fair article.

And on the custody issues Levi’s having now: It’s startin’ to get bad again. They’re making it kind of a pain in the ass again (to see Trip). I know I’m gonna end up (going to court). There’re a lot of secrets and a lot of things that I haven’t put out there that are bad…so I don’t know if I want to. Some of the stuff I got, kept in, would either really hurt her or really get her in trouble. So, I really don’t want to say anything else. I’m not that kind of person, no matter how much she pisses me off. I don’t want to leak anything huge on her.

Okay, so, questions:

1. Is Levi Johnston screwing with all of us? It’s entirely possible. An interesting way to gauge this would be to figure out the timeline on the Vanity Fair piece? Did Levi approach VF? Vice versa? Was there a lag between an offer and the acceptance of the offer? Despite all of the custodial trauma Levi’s claiming, you’ve gotta wonder if he isn’t enjoying his time in the limelight. I can’t imagine he isn’t. On the other hand, walking around L.A. with the same big guys he was seen at Monkey Bar with have been the most egregious extent of his famewhoring. He could, theoretically, be doing much, much worse.

2. What the hell isn’t he talking about? And why isn’t he? Sure, Levi’s claiming principles as the obstacle we’re facing to knowing everything he’s got on the Palin family, but this 19 year-old kid from the sticks is either as innocent as he’s assumed to be, or is far, far savvier than anyone could ever imagine (or at least savvy enough to listen to good advice). Hanging on to whatever he knows and leaking info out in droplets could maybe, possibly, profoundly scare the shit out of Sarah Palin and her oft-projected 2012 run’s potential. Then again, maybe she isn’t running, maybe she actually is done, and maybe a cost-benefit breakdown of what Levi’s leaks could get him as opposed to the trouble it could cause for Palin’s entire family really isn’t worth it to him. He’s a 19 year-old father, though: so what, exactly, is?

3. Will the threat of a lawsuit do anything to the Palin camp? And what could a lawsuit mean for them? Either way, we’re gonna find out, and with it, the weight of whatever Johnston may or may not have, and the character of his balls if forced to move it forward. [Ed. Oh, we'll definitely know that soon enough. Intimately.]

Listen to the audio. We read and read about a lot of bullshit. We watch it on TV and in movies. But just the audio track? It’s different. There’s that dumb line from a movie: the truth just sounds different. Well, man, it does.

‘Could be that there’s another way for him to earn a buck that doesn’t have to do with being in the spotlight—he remembers at the beginning of the interview his prospects in hockey or as an electrician—because Levi sounds down, out, and tired of dealing with all of this shit. Maybe he just wants to see his kid, and move forward with his life as something other than Levi Johnston, Asspain to Sarah Palin.

Or he’s an underdog genius who’s playing the media and the entire Palin narrative to his liking. At this point, pick one: the odds are about the same. More highlights:

On Sarah Palin’s Vice President nomination: “Didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t care. I didn’t think it was that huge. I’m just gonna sit here and not say a word.”

On Palin’s personal interaction nature: “You can catch her in a lie a lot of the time. She don’t read the newspaper. A lot of the things she’s sayin’, I know she’s lying.”

On the outdoorsmen nature of the Palin family: “I’d say (Sarah’s) definitely stretchin’ it big time. They’re not a big hunting family.”

On racism in the Palin household: “No, not (Sarah Palin)..no. She never said anything like that. She’s not the racist type.”

On Palin’s loss: “After the election, she didn’t want us to get married, really. You could tell that they’re all sad about everything. I don’t know, just her attitude towards everything was pretty down. I don’t think she had much care for anything for a while. She hung around in her room a lot. I think she just wanted to be left alone for a while. She just went through a big depression, I think. She was bummed out bad.”

On his breakup with Bristol: “There’s no one to blame for it. I mean, if it didn’t work, it didn’t work.”

On what he thinks of Sarah Palin now: “I still don’t think bad about her. But…You know, just some of the shit she pulled on me—encouraging Bristol not to let me see the kid and everything else, from her acting like she liked me for four or five plus years, and then going on saying that stuff, is just ridiculous how fake they are…it’s just ridiculous.”

Again: the truth just sounds different. Is this it?

[Photo of Levi in "happier" times via Getty Images/Robyn Beck]

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Julia Allison has broken up with her unlikely boyfriend, Christopher “Toph” Eggers. Yes, that Eggers: the younger brother of author Dave Eggers written about in Eggers’ breakthrough memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

It was an odd pairing, the shameless blog-and-video fameball, with a contributor to the famed Eggers line of elaborately precious and self-consciously-old-fashioned written products. But then, judging from the Twitter account Allison, 28, set up for young Eggers, 26ish, there were mutual benefits to the relationship. Toph, reportedly developing a feature film, was determined to make Allison school him in the tricky art of internet self promotion:

Allison, meanwhile, got the high drama of a tantalizingly secret relationship with the mysterious “TK” to write up for her various revenue-generating “lifecasting” endeavors.

More surprising than the pairing was how it ended: At Allison’s behest. We hear that Toph had an ex-girlfriend who wasn’t ex- enough. With the breakup and its slow leak into public view, Allison is feeling “teary” and old and “the world would be a much better place if we were all more honest.”

Hard to imagine this fairy tale romance went awry, given how sweetly it started:

Awwwwww.

(Top pics: NonSociety, Facebook)

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This Halloween weekend there are going to be plenty of horror movies both in the theaters and on TV. Why bother? Save yourself the trouble and check out this compilations of the worst ways to get killed.

Eaten by a shark? Check. Deadly alien? Check. Killer Snowman? Check. Creature crawling out of the fridge to pull you in? You betcha! Gore-obsessed video intern Brad Clark scoured countless horror movies to find the most creatively campy, disgustingly delirious, and just plain shitty ways to die and condensed it to under a minute. Now you have your whole weekend to do productive things like make a costume or figure out how to put razor blades into apples. You’re welcome.

The films these moments came from are:
Deep Blue Sea
Chopping Mall
Final Destination (A whole bunch of ‘em)
Friday the 13th Part 8
Scanners
Deadly Friend
Dead Alive
Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child
Jack Frost
From Beyond
Ichi the Killer
Slither
Cube
Day of the Dead
Parasite
House of Wax

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Yesterday, we told you about Anderon Cooper’s catch of a boyfriend Benjamin (Antoine) Maisani. We asked for more info, and all we got was pictures, but they are more than good enough. Hello, Ben.

While we keep waiting to hear more reasons to be jealous of this muscled business owner who gets to go on lavish vacations with Anderson Cooper, we can console ourselves with some yummy images.

Being the co-owner of Eastern Bloc, a popular divey gay bar in the East Village, there must be even more party pictures of Mr. Maisani lying around. Please, email them in!

This is the promo shot for Eastern Bloc with the three owners. Maisani is on the right along with Gabriel Beaton and Darren Dryden. Yeah, we wanna hang out with them.
Here’s Maisani working hard behind the bar. [Image via Twerking]
Check out those guns! No wonder he reeled in a silver fox. [Image via Twerking]
Well, if you own a gay bar, there are going to be pictures of you making out with boys floating around, now aren’t there. Let’s hope this was before Anderson! [Image via Twerking]
Ditto on gay bar owner=pictures of you with drag queens. This picture is sort of indicative of Cooper’s public persona: it’s fuzzy and he has his hand on a lady’s boob, but everyone knows the person in the dress is really a guy. [Image via Twerking]
The back patio of Eastern Bloc sure looks like a fun place to hang. [Image via Twerking]
Here he is with Cooper this June. Matching outfits! Cute. [Image via PCN]
Here he is getting close to the DJ. It’s so Lindsay and Sam. [Image via Next Magazine]
Hey Ben, any time you want to share a beer, let us know. It’s on us. [Image via Twerking]

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Every day at this leftist gay gossip site, Gawker, I write a “Recessionomics” column, which is like John Maynard Keynes after a massive head injury, but before he learned anything about economics. Finally, Rush Limbaugh has endorsed its econometrical findings.

Media Matters found Rush reading this item on air today and agreeing with it, somehow. We’re thrilled to hear we’re on the same page in terms of made-up economic theories, Rush. Do you want to go bowling some time? Email us.

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Project Runway is all about vision and delusion. The vision to have a vision. The delusion to repeat that vision with a new vision. The vision of inspiration, the delusion that vision can be your inspiration. Ah, so confused!

Yes, this challenge on our favorite NASCAR sewing race left us totally befuddled. Our hapless designers had to use their past winning looks as inspiration for a new look that would accompany them. So, it’s kind of like take a winner and try to do it again. That makes sense. However, if the winner looks are such duds, that they don’t't really make for such great touchstones to launch into the future. And Logan’s wasn’t even a winner. It was the only piece of his clothing they actually like that isn’t the tight, shiny pants that he wears that make his little tush look so tasty! Then guess what happened? They gave them some money, told them go to Mood and make whatever the fuck they want. Way to really mix it up and get them out of their comfort zone by having access to the exact same materials they had access to before and telling them to make something just like something they made in the past. This isn’t about innovation, it is about regurgitation.

Things We Hated:

• There Are No One-Trick Ponies This Year: Well, actually, there are plenty but no one is getting called out for it, because we don’t have the same judges two weeks in a row! That’s right, Queen Tangerine was fighting the Great Bronzer Uprising of 2009 in her home kingdom last night and could not be on hand to judge the challenge. So, Carol Hannah is all “I shouldn’t make a dress, they’re going to notice that I only do dresses.” No they won’t! They don’t even know your name, how can they know your design aesthetic. This infurates me, because it means that good designers—Epperson, Shinira, Spell Check (ha, just kidding)—have been kicked out for having a bad week when we have people like Logan, Gordana, and Christopher still hanging around like that button on your winter coat that you know, just know, is going to fall off any day now and every day it annoys you but you think, “I can get rid of it tomorrow,” so you just leave it there to dangle indefinitely until it falls off in a cab or the gutter somewhere never to be heard from again. They’re just like that.
• Althea Hates Bras: Apparently part of the inspiration she took from her first look was letting her models titties just flop around like ADD toddlers in the back seat of a station wagon. Just because you’re as flat as the pre-Columbian world doesn’t mean that your model is. Get her an undergarment!
• Not Knowing What Is Good and What Is Bad: Usually when the six final winners and losers are called to stay on the runway, there is some idea about who is good and who is bad. Last night, everyone got to stay, but we had no idea what the judges were going to think, because they were all pretty shitty and uninspired. That makes us sad like the death of a kitten from swine flu.
• Heidi’s Motherfucking Outfit: What the fuck was Heidi wearing at judging? (If you want to, you can click on it below. It’s number 7, and it is the scariest thing you will see this Halloween). We had to rewind to make sure that we saw it correctly, because at first we thought she was Liberace’s houseboy who washed up on shore after doing too much meth during the costume party of a gay cruise. Let’s break it down. First, there is a blue blazer, that looks Ralph Lauren Polo enough, until you notice that there are random patches of sparkle on the sleeves. Did a bunch of Bob Mackie’s sequin shit rub off on her when he was a guest judge? Then, she is wearing a pink, printed, ruffled, tuxedo shirt. This points out the problem of conjunctions in fashion. Just imagine the difference between a stylist saying “Wear that with pink or a print or a ruffle or a tuxedo shirt,” and saying “Wear that with a shirt that is pink and a print and a ruffle and a tuxedo!” And then, and then, we have to discuss the sparkly Bermuda short situation. Now, fetish gear can be great to spice up the bedroom, but please, do not wear it outside the house, especially when it looks like something Team Rainbow might have worn in the Las Vegas AIDSRide in 1999. Does Heidi realize that the show she hosts is about fashion! Did nobody realize this ensemble before it sashayed down the runway like a hooker looking for its pimp? What did Nina Garcia Fashion Director of Marie Claire Magazine say? Why didn’t Nick speak out? And why do they continue to let this woman continue to judge other people’s clothes!
• Using the Model’s Names: Just because they have their own show now does not mean we care about them, their personalities, or their feelings. Please stop using their names. They are not people, they are the help.
• “Celebrities”: One of the positives of the move to L.A. was supposed to be that we would get celebrities on the show. Who have we gotten? Rachel Bils-who? Milla Jovo-who? Lindsay Lohan (we know her), Christina Aguillera (her too, but we forgot about her for awhile), and Kerry Who-shington? Remember when Sarah Jessica Parker was on the show in New York? Just saying.
• Neutrals: Does the palatial L.A. Mood not have a color aisle? Why is every outfit every week either grey, black, white, brown, beige, or something else that is the color of emu vomit. At this point navy blue would be so bright that it would burn up the retinas of all the designers like a film strip left in the projector too long. If someone wants to differentiate themselves, why not make something out of bright yellow neoprene with a giant octopus jizz stain on it. Oh, Ra’Mon. How we long for your apostrophe-riddled days of yore.

Things We Loved:

• Nick Verreos: What a delightful surprise! Nick was kicked off way too early in season two and was one of the most talented and likeable designers in Runway history, and he filled in for Ms. Kors last night. Rather than a shrill, orange gay in a dumpy outfit, we got a witty, naturally olive gay in a dapper ensemble and it made us weep nostalic tears of joy. We’re starting a campaign right now: for the upcoming L.A. seasons, replace Ms. Kors with Mr. Verreos. He’s smart, knowledgeable, funny, and he knows exactly what the designers are going through on the show. He may not have the name recognition of Michael Kors, who is well know to all TJ Maxx shoppers the world over, but all the Runway diehards know who he is, and that will go a long way toward making us kinda sorta deal with this Lifetime bullshit.
• Gordana The Kung Fu Mom: She may murder Smurfs with her hands and the audience with her boring clothes, but Gordana actually made us laugh last night when she made a funny and said she was going to kick everyone’s ass like a “kung fu mom.” Oh, the delicious delusion! And how cute were her baby pictures in Bosnia or Serbia or wherever her and Uncle Gargamel are from. Aww.
• Althea Sees Past Logan’s Sparkly Tight Pants: “Just because he’s cute, he thinks he can do whatever he wants.” Yes, Althea, he can, but don’t you let him get away with it. You go and win this challenge and show him who is the homely boss!
• Mean-a Irina: This is what the designers call her, and as much as we hate anyone who says “I’m not here to make friends,” we love her for being the only one interesting enough to watch on live television. If only she know how to make something that wasn’t the color of baby diarrhea.

In the end, we were spared ever having to look at our former crush Logan and his droopy condom of a hat again. Althea won, for some strange reason, but no one deserved to. Althea’s winner looked like something Daniel V made and then euthanized, because it was too ugly to live. Logan’s loser would be the butt of every joke Jay McCarroll ever made. Carol Hannah’s was some boring babydoll thing that Santino Rice could poop out in 26 minutes. Christopher’s looked like the best thing that Wendy Pepper ever made, which means it deserves a special medal of disgusting. Irina’s was actually like the first dress that Laura Bennett ever made when she was 15 and paired with a sweater she bought at Goodwill. And Gordana’s was the visual equivalent of Ambien.

We’re going to snore our way through the videos now to see Althea and Irina accuse others of theft, and to see everyone just laugh at Christopher. It will be worth the journey, but just remember this is a monster at the end of this book, and it’s name is Heidi.

Turn Down the Volume
Context: Christopher decides to buy as much cheap fabric as he can to make a giant dress. Logan thinks he’s nuts. He’s right, but that doesn’t mean that Logan isn’t going home anyway!
Vision: To take a perfectly nice, original party dress, and make a giant version of it that looks like “one dress throwing up another dress.” Thank you, Irina.
Delusion: That there is no such thing as too much of a bad thing. More is not better, you size queen.
What Would Nina Say?: “Heidi (snicker) where did you get those knickers?”
Dramometer: 3

Under the Gunn
Context: Carol Hannah is clueless, as she usually is the first two hours of a challenge. Tim Gunn comes over and inspires her to create a “fabulous textile moment.”
Vision: To put a colored fabric on top of a black fabric, to make it black. And then design a kind of cute, but ininspired dress. With pockets!
Delusion: That green and black doesn’t make black. Black will not set you apart unless you are Christian Siriano and actually have some design talent.
What Would Nina Say?: “Hey, Heidi. I don’t think your (hehe) jacket is sparkly enough.”
Dramometer: 2

The Heart of Darkness
Context: Althea thinks that Logan is using her “zipper collar” idea from the Christian Aguillera challenge. She asks Irina if she should say something. Being the resident bitch, Irina tries to blow on the spark to make a towering blaze. We love that Irina is bringing her down with her.
Vision: To call someone out for stealing your vision.
Delusion: To think that Althea is actually strong enough to stand up to anyone.
What Would Nina Say?: “Hey, Heidi. Who made your shirt? The Bozo collection?”
Dramometer: 7

Runway Arrogance
Context: Althea watches her winning outfit walk down the runway.
Vision: Something nice and safe inspired by the nice safe thing that won her a challenge the first time around.
Delusion: That she doesn’t need to give this girl a bra. Seriously. Her boobs like like the eyes on a hammer head shark.
What Would Nina Say?: “No, Heidi. You really look great. Right Nick?”
Dramometer: 3

Back Talk
Context: Heidi calls Althea out for her outfit looking like Irina’s. Althea defends herself honorably. Irina goes for the bitchy gusto and says that Althea is copying her look from last week. Althea is still to classy to bring up the Logan thing.
Vision: Irina steals Althea’s idea of accusing another designer of stealing her ideas.
Delusion: That this tactic will work. Mr. Verreos is having none of it.
What Would Nina Say?: “Why don’t one of you make a look based on Heidi’s outfit instead. That wouldn’t bore me.”
Dramometer: 8

The Cruelty of Life as Illustrated by Models of the Runway

The Legion of Klum!

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The success of New York Times business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin’s tome Too Big to Fail has provoked a debate in the fractious newsroom: is he a plugged-in wunderkind or an in-over-his-head cub reporter who mooches off his veteran colleagues?

The 32-year-old Sorkin, the paper’s chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, is quickly becoming one of the paper’s most visible personalities. In the Times‘ byzantine network of loyalties and alliances, this makes Sorkin a divisive figure: Some old-guard investigators regard him as a callow and inexperienced note-taker for powerful interests. “He’s the classic definition of an access reporter who wouldn’t know a document if it hit him in the face,” says one Times staffer. “He goes to drinks with these guys, they give him tips, and he puts them in the paper. He’s a deal junkie.” For evidence of his coziness with the people he covers, look no further than the book party for Too Big to Fail—hosted by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter—which was attended by a seemingly endless roster of the Wall Street barons he’s nominally charged with holding to account, from JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon to Morgan Stanley’s John Mack.

He’s also a rising star, and is said to be a favorite of business editor Larry Ingrassia’s for his tireless reporting and excellent sources among Manhattan’s privileged financial elite (cf. the aforementioned book party). With his assiduously maintained public profile—Sorkin is an easy booking on cable news shows—and role as editor of the Times‘ popular Dealbook blog, he is a face, for better or worse, of the future at a flagging and exhausted newspaper.

So it’s not entirely surprising that knives were drawn by some of Sorkin’s more experienced and established competitors and colleagues in response to slights, real and perceived, in Too Big to Fail. CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino got the ball rolling earlier this month by calling Sorkin “incredibly stupid and sloppy”—and having his lawyer write Sorkin’s publisher an angry letter—after Sorkin quoted Goldman Sach’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein calling Gasparino a “rumormonger.” A Goldman representative later disputed that quote.

Too Big to Fail is expected to debut at No. 4 on the Times‘ best-seller list next week. The rancor it has caused within the Times newsroom is no doubt a function in part of Sorkin’s success, favor with top editors, and visibility at a time when 100 editorial positions are in the process of being eliminated. It’s also a reaction against the notion that an upstart reporter who has made his name by greasing wealthy sources for access is presenting himself as a hard-nosed investigator—especially because Sorkin asked his paper’s more experienced reporters for copies of the “secret” documents that he’s now holding up as key sources for his 600-page tome just two weeks before it went to press.

As Keith Kelly first reported in the New York Post on Tuesday, some of Sorkin’s Times colleagues are incensed at Too Big to Fail, Sorkin’s best-selling new bailout narrative, accusing Sorkin of piggybacking on the reporting of his Times colleagues Don Van Natta and Gretchen Morgenson without giving adequate credit.

The allegations are being taken seriously in the building: The Post’s Kelly reported that “senior editors” are investigating the matter, and we’ve learned that those senior editors are none other than executive editor Bill Keller and managing editor Jill Abramson. We also hear that public editor Clark Hoyt is looking into examining the matter.

At issue are two documents that Sorkin posted on his web site as “source documents” for the book, cited prominently in his endnotes, and has repeatedly claimed as vital parts of his reporting during his publicity tour: A September 17, 2008 ethics waiver that Paulson received from the White House allowing him to work closely with Goldman Sachs in managing the financial crisis, and Paulson’s call logs from 2008. Here’s Sorkin on CNBC flogging them:

The Paulson waiver is described on his site as “Paulson’s Secret Waiver,” and Sorkin excitedly recounted how he discovered it to Charlie Rose last week: “I will always remember one of the sources for the book said to me, ‘Do you know about the waiver?’ And I said, ‘What waiver? What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘The Paulson waiver on Wednesday.’”

That sort of “plugging” is inciting apoplepsy among Sorkin’s antagonists at the Times. “He’s making these central to what the book supposedly discovered,” one Times staffer says.

That’s because both documents were central to an August 9, 2009 investigative story by the Times‘ Van Natta and Morgenson detailing Paulson’s handling of the crisis and his entanglement with his former employer Goldman Sachs. Van Natta and Morgenson obtained them via the Freedom of Information Act in July. The idea of FOIAing call logs of a cabinet secretary isn’t exactly a brainstorm—it’s a routine way of figuring out what’s going on inside the federal bureaucracy. And the existence of the waiver was revealed by Paulson himself in congressional testimony on July 16, 2009. Neither document was a state secret, but Van Natta and Morgenson got hold of them and were the first to write about them in the Times in August. Both documents figure prominently in Too Big to Fail and its publicity campaign, but Sorkin’s book makes no mention of Van Natta and Morgenson’s story.

Sorkin says he FOIA’d both documents on his own, independently of Van Natta and Morgenson’s reporting, and that he will include an endnote crediting their story with revealing them first in the book’s next printing. And there’s a pretty good reason that the story wasn’t credited in the book: By August 9, when the story appeared, Sorkin’s book was in the very final stages of editing. Even if he could have inserted a credit to the Times for first unearthing the documents, it would have involved a last-minute change to a massive project. We can understand how it would slip by.

But the issue over credit is in part a proxy for what really has some Times staffers ticked off: Sorkin called Times Sunday business editor Tim O’Brien on July 27—after he’d filed his draft of the 600-page book and two weeks before it went to the printer—and asked him for copies of the Paulson call logs. In other words, Sorkin was asking the Times for help on his homework at the last possible minute. And sources at the Times say some in the newsroom, including Van Natta, suspect Sorkin learned about the Paulson waiver during that conversation—he was, Sorkin’s detractors say, “pickpocketing” the Time’s reporting for his book. O’Brien didn’t give up the logs, and Sorkin says he obtained both the logs and the waiver via FOIA—with an extremely rapid turnaround—after that conversation with O’Brien. “We never spoke about any details of what story the paper was pursuing,” Sorkin says, “nor did we discuss Paulson’s waiver.”

Whether he came up with the idea of getting the waiver and the logs on his own, or tried to grab them from the Times once he learned about them—and there’s no evidence for the latter accusation—it’s clear that Sorkin didn’t lay hands on what he calls the “source documents” for Too Big to Fail until he was in the process of fact-checking the book that he’d already written. In the introduction to his endnotes, Sorkin writes that “I tried to rely as often as possible on the written record” and that “Henry Paulson’s…calendars helped provide key dates and times.” How can that be if he didn’t actually have that written record until after he finished the book?

Sorkin says he had the information in Paulson’s call logs, he just didn’t have the actual logs themselves. He’d been allowed to view them and take notes, he says, over the course of 10 months he spent reporting on the book. “My sources made me privy to various documents and information in people’s calenders, including Hank Paulson’s,” he says. Same thing with the waiver. He first learned of it from a source in June of 2009, he says—before Paulson referred to it in congressional testimony—and had been shown a copy in the course of his reporting. He just wasn’t allowed to take it home. So his last-minute rush to get them, he says, was a good-faith effort to fact-check the information he’d already reported.

Sorkin says he had previously filed FOIA requests for the logs and the waiver, but they had been denied. When he heard through his reporting that Treasury was releasing the logs, he called to ask for them. The Treasury said they’d already given them to the Times, and that he could either get them from the paper or file a new request. So he called Ingrassia, who told him to ask O’Brien. “When I reached Tim,” Sorkin says, “he said there was no way for me to get them given my time constraint to have the fact-checking complete within days.” So Sorkin filed his own last-minute request and got the documents in time to check some facts in the book against them, insert a photograph of Paulson’s waiver, and put them up on the book’s web site.

Sorkin, however, says everything has been smoothed over. “This has all been resolved,” he says. He also provided a statement from Ingrassia praising his book as a “reporting tour de force”:

We’re all very proud of Andrew Ross Sorkin and his new book, Too Big To Fail. Throughout the financial crisis, Andrew worked closely and tirelessly with the Times team of colleagues to provide the paper’s readers with exclusive news and insight about this historic event. His book is a reporting tour de force about the financial meltdown and contains a wealth of original material and undisclosed details about what transpired. As attested by 40 pages of end notes and acknowledgments, it also generously credits Times colleagues and journalists at other publications for things they reported about the crisis. And as Andrew has already said, he intends to include yet another citation in future editions to an article about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson by his colleagues Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta.

The grand irony of this flap is that much of it would have been rendered moot had the Times simply done what Sorkin did so effortlessly: Put the documents at issue online. Had Van Natta and Morgenson’s story been accompanied by images of Paulson’s call logs and waiver, it probably never would have occurred to Sorkin to claim ownership over them in his publicity campaign for the book. But that’s another Timesworld disconnect between the youthful web-focused culture and the old-school diggers—after Van Natta and Morgenson spent months working to get access to the documents, they apparently didn’t think to push their editors to share the originals with their readers. Others did: Talking Points Memo got hold of the waiver on August 10, the day after the Times story, and put it up in their document collection without much fanfare. And you can read Paulson’s call logs—”actually see inside what Treasury was doing,” as Sorkin put it on CNBC—on the Department of Treasury’s web site.

Original post

Rachel Maddow: Her heart is in the right place. It just turns out that place is extremely unfunny. Consider tonight’s comedy (?) bit on Sarah Palin’s mysterious business, “Pie Spy”. Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: It is terrible.

Writer/performer Kent Jones (Who Wikipedia tells me works for something called “Air America”) picks a good target to satirize. As everyone on the Internet has already noted, “Pie Spy” is a pretty funny name for a thing. And Palin? She put the “old chest” in “that old chestnut!”

It was at the “satirizing” part that everything went horribly, horribly wrong.

Consider the following sentences aimed at eliciting laughter. (You must never refer to them as “jokes”):

EXAMPLE 1

According to recently revealed financial records, during Palin’s last agonizing months of lame-duck-itude as Alaska Governor, she started up a small marketing business called “Pie Spy”. Just what are we talking about here, Governor? Lemon meringue? Jason Bourne? Some weird combination of the two!?*

*This is supposed to be funny because the name of Sarah Palin’s business contains the word “Pie” and the word “Spy”. These are two things that are not usually thought of as complementary. Also, “lame-duck-itude” is a made up word.

EXAMPLE 2

Is this some kind of complicated espionage network infiltrating international dessert cartels? After all, she can see Russia from her house!*

*This is supposed to be funny because, during the 2008 presidential campaign, Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house. You could not, and still cannot, see Russia from Sarah Palin’s house.

EXAMPLE 3

According to documents filed w/ Alaska’s Department of Commerce, Palin’s business is described as involving services for the elderly and persons with disabilities. And so she called it “Pie Spy”!? MMMM-KAYYY!!!*

*This is supposed to be funny because “Pie spy” in no way suggests services for the elderly and persons with disabilities. An “edgier” joke would have referenced the fact that Sarah Palin’s running mate was extremely old, and that she has a developmentally disabled son—both of whom could have benefited from Pie Spy’s services.

EXAMPLE 4

There’s an eerie silence around this whole “Pie Spy” situation. And as an American I want—no, I demand—to know the truth about Pie Spy. Before it explodes in our faces!*

*This is supposed to be funny because, kill me?

Read the rest here