• Lindsay Lohan has returned from India!

While there, she visited the Sanlaap women's and children's shelter outside Calcutta. She spent about 3 hours with people there, and watched dance performances by the children. With her was a four-person camera crew from the BBC, and, at one point, Lindsay wore a bindi. Of course. [People]

• If you have $300, you can buy a "Marc Jacob" bag from LohanHouse.com, where Lindsay and her family are selling gently used clothes, shoes, hats, bags, and "collectables." [Page Six, Lohan House]
• Chris Brown is pissed that stores are not carrying his new CD, Graffiti. He wrote on his Twitter: "im tired of this shit. major stores r blackballing my cd. not stockin the shelves and lying to costumers. what the fuck do i gotta do... WTF... yeah i said it and i aint retracting shit. im not biting my tongue about shit else... the industry can kiss my ass." He said of a Walmart in Connecticut: "They didn't even have my album in the back… not on shelves, saw for myself. the manager told me that when there are new releases its mandatory to put em on the shelves.. BUT NO SIGN OF GRAFFITI." [MSNBC Scoop, Twitter, Page Six, Gatecrasher]
• Lily Allen may have smoked a cigarette during a concert last week; and if the Liverpool City Council can prove she was smoking, she and the venue could be fined. The council is asking "witnesse" to rat Lily out. [BBC News]
• Jude Law and Sienna Miller: "In love" and moving in together in the new year. As you may recall, their romance began on the set of Alfie; then Jude cheated on her with his children's nanny. Forgive but not forget? [The Sun]
• Playgirl has turned down alleged nude photos of Tiger Woods — apparently taken by Tiger himself. The magazine's spokesperson Daniel Nardicio says: "They were impossible to 100 percent verify, hence the unwillingness to go there." [People]
• Tiger Woods' wife, Elin Nordegren, is not in Sweden, despite some reports. She is in the guest house, which, while large, is not another country. [TMZ]
• Consulting firm Accenture is the first corporate sponsor to officially drop Tiger Woods. [NY Post]
• Tiger Woods' wife will reportedly dump him after Christmas and is talking to a divorce lawyer. As for Tiger, he is seeing a therapist. Allegedly. [Radar Online]
• This report claims that Elin Nordegren wants a trial separation. but that Tiger Woods wants to take a cruise on his yacht with her and convince her to stay with him and have another baby. (?1?!) [NY Post]
• Here, Cori Rist, who hooked up with Tiger Woods, is called a "spectacular escort." [Rush & Molloy]
• According to this report: Tiger Woods and Rachel Uchitel are both in Palm Beach, Florida. But he's on his yacht; she's with her family. [TMZ]
• "Tiger Woods Cheated As Dad Died. Star Bedded Jamie Jungers As Father Lay Dying In Hospital." [Radar Online]
• Gerald Posner reports that Tiger Woods had a "separate team handle his trysts," and that Rachel Uchitel could be getting $5 million to stay quiet. [The Daily Beast]
• A source says Uma Thurman's ex-fiancé was too controlling: "It seemed like he always wanted to run the show… He wanted to bring in his own chef and his own security. He'd talk about redesigning her house in the city and knocking down buildings at her place upstate." [Rush & Molloy]
• Russell Brand was seen spotted shopping for diamonds at Cartier, fueling speculation he's going to ask Katy Perry to marry him. [Daily Mail]
• Is Prince William a "shadow King"? [NY Daily News]
• Jay-Z is well-loved by his Rocawear employees, whose Christmas gift to him was a video spoof of his hit single, "Empire State of Mind." [Page Six]
• Behold: Lady Gaga and Cyndi Lauper in the 2010 MAC Viva Glam ad campaign, shot by Ellen von Unwerth. [The Life Files]
• Susan Boyle says he life hasn't changed that much: "I have everything I had before – it's just a little more interesting now." She hasn't really splurged on too much: She bought "a red couch and some cushions." And, she says: "To anyone who has a dream I say follow that dream. You are never too old. It is never too late. And dreams can become a reality." [People]
• What do we think of Carey Hart's Day-of-the-Dead-style tattoo of Pink? [The Life Files]
• Guy Ritchie is thinking of opening a branch of his London pub, the Punch Bowl, in New York. [Daily Express]
• Sad face: Grizz from 30 Rock is suffering from severe hypertension and has to be on a dialysis machine three times a week. He's on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, but need to lose 75 pounds before he's considered a viable candidate. And the wait is 5 years. He talks about all this on Dr. Oz's show on Tuesday. [NY Daily News]
• The Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Boston Society of Film Critics agree: Mo'Nique's performance in Precious and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker were some of the best moments in film this year. [People]
• Lots of Kerry Washington's favorite places in New York are food-related. [NY Post]
• Candy Spelling, a panelist on E!'s new series, Bank of Hollywood — produced by Ryan Seacrest — says: "I don't have to work. I'm not putting up my own money! We all contributed our salaries, but I wasn't going to pay [the contestants] to be on TV… I love giving of my time and money — I'm very charitable and sit on three nonprofit boards and two city boards as commissioner — but… then I would just be donating money and leaving it up to the contestants as to how it's spent. We all felt a strong responsibility about how they would spend the money." Yeah, I don't know either, but it sounds snotty. [NY Post]
• Sarah Ferguson, ex-Duchess Of York, says she's going to start a historical novel, starring an aristocratic redhead and set in the eighteenth century, "sort of like Pride and Prejudice meets 24. It's actually me putting myself in the eighteenth century… I can just imagine how it would be, and I have such fun!" [New York Magazine]
• Groan: Spencer Pratt now owns a music company, King Spencer Music. Be afraid. [TMZ]
• Entourage's Kevin Connolly says he thinks Rex Lee didn't really mean it when he said he was made fun of on the set because of his ethnicity and sexuality. Pardon? [TMZ]
• At the link, an obituary for Natasha Richardson by Ralph Fiennes. [Guardian]
• Add Kid Rock and Dave Grohl to the list of musicians suing bars for playing unlicensed music. [TMZ]
• LOL: 21-year-old Ekaterina Ivanova is calling ex-boyfriend, 65-year-old Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, an "evil goblin." [Telegraph]
• CSI Miami's Jonathan Togo was arrested Friday for allegedly getting violent in a fight with his girlfriend; he was booked for felony domestic violence. [TMZ]
• A year after being rejected on TV, Bachelor contestant Melissa Rycroft got married. But not to a guy from TV. [Us Magazine]
• "Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood Celebrate Anniversary at McDonald's." [People]
• The Princess And The Frog was number one at the box office with a modest $25 million. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Bentley Meeker is a celebrity lighting guru and you are not. [Page Six]
• "I don't want to talk about him, except that I like him… I think everyone needs an adventure buddy." — Holly Madison on Benji Madden. [People]
• "Whenever anybody say they are going to give me some kind of award, I'm always a little stupefied by the notion. The first thing I say is 'why?' I just go to work like anyone else, except my job happens to be a little stranger." — Johnny Depp, when receiving a career achievement award at the Bahamas International Film Festival. [AP]
• "It makes certain cities impossible to live in. Like Sydney, it makes it impossible for us to live there… We certainly don't get that treatment in Tennessee. But it goes with the territory. It's just, we have to be careful, just to maintain some sort of semblance of a normal life for our child." — Nicole Kidman says attention from photographers is the reason she won't live in Sydney. [News.com.au]
• "I don't have a personal vendetta against Nicole Kidman… These are Machiavellian games that are being played and they are just not right. If she doesn't want to be photographed she should change her profession and become a butcher." — Paparazzo Jamie Fawcett, whom Nicole Kidman has requested a restraining order against and also took to court for placing a listening bug outside her home and following her in his car. [News.com.au]
• "Breaking up the band was a mistake because I think it broke trust with the audience. You had an audience that was very invested in that idea - whether they were invested in the people or the idea or the songs, I don't know. Like a relationship that you break off from and then try to pick back up, it's never quite the same. It doesn't mean it can't be as good, but it has to be different. That beautiful original feeling got lost in the interim of being away. If we had said, 'We just went away for seven years,' it would have been similar, but somehow breaking up, there's a violence to it." — Billy Corgan, on the Smashing Pumpkins. [WENN via Spinner]
• "If I didn't act, I'd be a nutcase. Some people have to do it. They have a lot of emotion they have to get out." — Rachel Weisz, who's in The Lovely Bones. [News.com.au]
• "My body is falling apart. The only way that I could do it is if I played a character who gets shot in the left leg and the right shoulder in the opening scene." — Kenny Rogers says he is too "decrepit" to be in Christmas In Canaan, the movie based on the book he wrote. [Daily Express]
• "Sometimes when I watch the show back I think we've gone too far because I see the pre-story beforehand, I can then see the audition from their perspective and there are times where I think I could have handled that better or I was in a bad mood and I was too rude. At the same time... no-one is sort of dragged kicking and screaming onto the audition set." — Simon Cowell. [BBC News]
• "A journalist went up to my  husband once and said 'did you know that dating anyone more than three years younger than you is considered pedophilia?' [Peter shot back] 'Really? My wife is seven years younger.'" — Maggie Gyllenhaal. [Gatecrasher]
• "Angry African-American women, you know, thought that it would be the image that people would associate with them. Virginiaca is definitely art imitating life, but I understand where they're coming from, and I don't have to project that onto mainstream America. What's funny is funny. This place is well known for getting angry letters — Lorne keeps 50 of them outside his office. It keeps you grounded in the fact that in late-night comedy, you're going to have to burn somebody." — Kenan Thompson. [New York Magazine]
• "I say 'Be Italian' many times in the song, but it was important to me that every time I say it, it have a different meaning, because there are so many different things about being Italian. There's love of life and food and sex and drink. There's love of dancing, love of singing. So it was putting all that into it." — Fergie, on her song in Nine. [NY Post]
• "The negative stuff is crazy and the positive stuff is crazy… I actually see all the discussion and controversy and, you know, 'Is it Smurfs and Dances With Wolves in space?' and all this crap, as good. It fuels interest. All those people that go online and repeatedly dismiss the movie day after day, I know they're going to be there watching it." — James Cameron on Avatar. [NY Post]
• "I think every little girl should be able to feel themselves the princess. I think every little girl is worthy of having a princely young man, and vice versa. It's really thrilling that Zahara will never have a moment where she didn't see herself in that light. She's Ethiopian. She comes from kings and queens. She should certainly know herself as a princess." — The Princess And The Frog's Anika Noni Rose, responding to Angelina Jolie's claim that she's ecstatic that daughter Zahara has a role model. [Ok!]
• "I'm working out again. I'm going to make the sequel to 300. My pecs will be glistening. I'll have a codpiece. I'm going to blow your mind." — Alec Baldwin. [Rush & Molloy]

In the clip above, Joy asks Levi if he believes that Sarah Palin loves him, as she said on Oprah. "Sex on Skates" tells it like it is: "You've seen her on TV so you can tell she's fake if you're paying attention." (Exactly!)

Joy tries to get Levi to say whether he and Bristol ever had sex in the Palin home. He refuses, but the answer is written all over his face. (In fact, don't you think they probably did it in Sarah and Todd's bed?):


Levi "I ain't ever seen a gay guy in Wasilla" is open-minded about his gay icon status: "They're people too. It doesn't matter to me. More fans, it's great":


This kid and his handlers really need to hurry up with Levi's Book of Palin Secrets, but they probably don't have a release date yet because they're seeing if Palin will run for President in 2012, when a book like Levi's would get the most traction (and do the most damage.) Every time Sarah Palin drives me nuts (lately, several times per day) I'm just going to remember that Levi has explosive secrets yet to share. I just hope that kid kept a diary.


Here's the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, who has been obsessed with - some would say unhinged over - Sarah Palin and the former Governor's uterus for over a year at this point. He continues his line of questioning as to the circumstances surrounding the labor and delivery of Palin's youngest son, Trig. (All political conspiracy theories apparently start in Dallas.) "No one does that," he says of Palin's choice to fly home to Alaska while in labor. "No one ever does that." (We love it when men assert knowledge and mastery over female reproductive systems!) Then, he summons the wisdom of Judge Judy.

• Dina Lohan is pissed that Michael Lohan keeps leaking recordings of Dina and Lindsay's phone calls to him. "The tapes were from a long time ago, and for a father to stoop this low is unforgivable," she says. And:

"My ex-husband has been in and out of jail for 10 years. My children and I gave him a chance to get to know them again, and he clearly blew that chance!" And: "I have had a criminal order of protection from the domestic violence sector since 2005. He was not supposed to even be harassing me by phone." Lastly, if you're still listening: "My heart is breaking for my children that he could do this. He has no visitation anymore and is six months behind in child support. The authorities have been alerted!" [E!]

• Hey, guess what? Michael Lohan has released another recording of a phone conversation between himself and Dina Lohan. She blames him for Lindsay cutting herself, and says: "It's bad." And Dina believes that "something's gonna happen" and it'll be all Michael's fault. [Radar Online]
• Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Fox are afraid of Angelina Jolie. Kristen Stewart says she doesn't want to be like Angelina Jolie. This column asks, Is Hollywood turning on Angelina Jolie? Eh, do you think she gives a shit? [MSNBC Scoop]
• This daytime noir Donnie Darko-esque promo for James Franco on General Hospital is kind of fucking awesome. "Anyone can die at anytime!" [NY Magazine]
• Miss J says of his 7-year-old son: "He insists on wearing nice shoes. I think somehow my fashion genes must have slipped in there." [Us Magazine]
• Kate Hudson is "pushing" A-Rod to elope. Because that's what women do! [Gatecrasher]
• Rihanna spent more than $50,000 to fly her family to New York from Barbados for the Glamour Awards. [Page Six]
• You can watch Rihanna's speech from the Glamour Woman of the Year Awards at the link. A snippet: "Maya Angelou, I love you, but you make this terribly difficult for me." [YouTube]
• LOL headline of the day, via Russell Brand: "Katy Can't Do Your Show… She's Doing Me Instead." [The Sun]
• Kristen Stewart on those who ask whether she and Rob are an item: "The only way that I'm able to stay sane is to protect myself, and like, I know that it doesn't matter how you answer a question, it's going to tip. Someone's going to say, 'She's totally with him,' or, 'No, I don't think she is,' so it's sort of like, I don't care. You just have to seriously be like, have it, have it all. Take my, you know what I mean, just like, you want my shoes? Here you go, what size do you wear?" [ET]
• The 40-year-old women following Zac Efron around were just trying to get his picture for their daughters. No, really. [Page Six]
• Emma Thompson made some comments about her adopted Rwandan son had been subjected to racism at the University of Exeter, and now the Culture Secretary has said: "Miss Thompson is a great actress, but her comments about Exeter… are insulting… Any incidence of racism is one too many, but Exeter comes top or near top in every survey of places for friendliness and quality of life." [Telegraph]
• Sharon Stone was at a fancy Madison Avenue salon and used a private room; Queen Noor of Jordan was also there to get her hair done, but sat in the main area with the plebes. [Page Six]
• The David Letterman blackmail case is "all out war." [NY Post]
• Michael Jackson's funeral bills are in. Total cost: $855,730.31. [TMZ]
• Janet Jackson, called here "the only Jackson who was flush with cash," fronted $49,000 for Michael Jackson's funeral. She'll be reimbursed via his estate, which will also pay the remaining balance. [TMZ]
• Joe Jackson, who was trying to object to Michael Jackson's will and executors, has been shut down by a judge. [TMZ]
• An Andy Warhol portrait of Michael Jackson sold for $812,000 in an auction last night. [NY Post]
• "Winona Ryder and Barry Pepper have been cast to star in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story." It's the true story of the co-founder of Al-Anon and her alcoholic husband, who lived the high life in the 1920s but a downfall by the 50s. [Variety]
• Playgirl wanted to shoot Levi Johnston in the penthouse of a certain downtown hotel but didn't have enough cash to pay the fee. [Page Six]
• Dominique Swain, who once posed for PETA, has reportedly been "caught" dumping unvaccinated puppies at an animal shelter. [ONTD, Fox 411]
• Heather Locklear's return to Melrose Place is a desperate attempt to get people to care. Is it working on you? Then check out this clip from the show in which Heather — playing Amanda — says, "When I hired you to give this place a makeover, I didn't mean smear it with lipstick and turn it into a five-dollar hooker." [People]
• Celine Dion is adding a "pool complex" to her home in Jupiter Island, Florida — with "two giant pools, waterslides and a lazy river, much like an amusement park." One neighbor complains: "Distasteful is what it looks like - the whole thing sounds like a Michael Jackson fairyland to me." [MSNBC Scoop via Life & Style]
• Some dude is suing Bon Jovi, Time Warner and Major League Baseball for $400 billion, yeah, BILLION, dollars. He claims that he wrote an ode to the Boston Red Sox entitled, "(Man I Really) Love this Team." During the 2007 playoffs, Bon Jovi released a song, "I Love This Town," and the guy took the case to court. One judge dismissed it, but the guy is appealing. [Reuters]
• George Lopez's new late night talk show debuted with strong ratings. Did anyone watch? I found it only mildly funny, with too many race jokes. But I didn't watch the whole thing. [Reuters]
• Steven Tyler supposedly quit Aerosmith, but last night he showed up at an NYC club for Joe Perry's show, announced he wasn't leaving Aerosmith, and joined in on "Walk This Way." My friend Matt says: "If anyone can save the future of Aerosmith by settling the feud between Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, it's got to be Tyler Perry." [Roger Friedman's 411.com] 
• Shakira hugged and 11-year-old fan and it is news. [Page Six]
• Sir Ian McKellan mocked Jude Law at a charity event; Jude swore, "I go home religiously every night after Hamlet." Sir Ian joked, "I guess the night I saw you, you went home via [popular NYC nightclub] the Box." [La Dolce Musto]
• Julianne Hough and Chuck Wicks have broken up. [People]
• "A rare collection of Beatles autographs and photographs, given to a 14-year-old who traipsed across Salisbury plain in the rain to catch a glimpse of her heroes on the set of Help!, sold for £2,200 at auction in Berkshire yesterday." [Guardian]
• Rod Stewart, father of seven, is trying to have another baby with wife Penny Lancaster. Forever young? [People]
• Whatshername will be on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here but arrive late and earn five times more cash than other contestants. [The Sun]
• "I think there's a lot of persuasive and powerful people around Obama. For a president to make his own decisions, I think that's a rarity. Even someone who we think of as our guy — this is a guy with integrity, a guy who cares, for the first time in a long time — in the Oval Office, even with him we don't really know who's pulling the strings. I think of every president as being a marionette. Whether he's any different, I don't know. Certainly his military advisers all want him to prosecute this war to the end, just as they did in Vietnam with LBJ. It's just too depressing, I think we're going to have to hit the streets. Obama has the chance of becoming JFK or LBJ. I think JFK was one of our last great presidents, although I thought Carter was pretty great too. LBJ could have been a great president if he hadn't gotten bogged down in war, but that was quite a war to get bogged down in. Notwithstanding the fact that the war was wrong and they were talking about the Red Scare and the domino effect, if you go and read the Pentagon Papers they were also talking about rubber, tin and oil. They killed two and a half million people. What was it all for? In Korea they killed four and a half million. Like, we're liberating these people?" — Woody Harrelson plays a soldier in his intense new film The Messenger and, at the link, has lots of thoughts about war, death, the military and President Obama. [Salon]
• "They got in trouble because my children are riding their dirt bikes through the whole trailer park, going crazy, doing flips — and everyone's concerned for their safety. And mom's like, 'Oh, they've been riding the whole weekend, they're having a blast!' I was like, 'They're not allowed to ride their dirt bikes in the trailer park!' They terrorize the neighborhood the whole time." — Pamela Anderson's sons — 13 and 11 — are tiny terrors. [Contact Music]
• "I don't have to play scenes with actors standing on buckets." — Sigourney Weaver, 6 feet tall, says that she doesn't believe her height has ever intimidated leading men. [Telegraph]
• "I had a great time with Hef and the girls when they came to see Peepshow and hang out in Vegas.  I don't watch the other episodes though, because it kind of makes me mad. The girls need to focus on what makes them unique and not doing the same things Bridget, Kendra and I have already done on the show.  Even camping in the backyard was an idea I had for an episode that we never got around to shooting.  And guess what they just showed? The girls camping in the backyard.  I don't want to look behind, I want to look forward." — Holly Madison is annoyed by the new Girls Next Door. [Fox 411]
• "I don't know that [Oprah] and Gayle are necessarily doing each other, but I think they are the emotional equivalent of.. [a gay couple]. When they did that road trip, that's as gay as it gets, and I don't mean it to be an insult, either. I'm just saying, listen, if you ask me, that's the couple." — Rosie O'Donnell. [ONTD via Times Of The Internet]
• "These jeans are a few days old, but the top is probably fresh because it gets to the point where even I can't stand the air around me. I don't know, my personal hygiene - it's so disgusting! Really it's just that I have very few clothes that I like and I'm travelling all the time, so I can't really get any more." — we get it, Robert Pattinson, you're filthy. [MSNBC via New! magazine]
• "I love clothes, and fashion is a great art form. Being a woman and my femininity are very important to me. But with my work I have to check my preferences at the door and personify the character I am playing as best I can. Your character isn't who you are. That's the great thing about my job. I get to step into somebody else's shoes – whether that's a pair of flat brogues or some stilettos." — Hilary Swank. [Daily Mail]
• "I'd love to have kids… But I'm much to young to get married." — Shakira. [Gatecrasher]
• "The funny thing is that I was very open and honest about [my bisexuality] from the very beginning, and everyone was acting like it was some new trend. Go back four or five years, people, and you'll see the same answer. I've been very honest with him from the get-go. I think women are beautiful. I've had a lot of fun with women, and I'm not ashamed of it. The problem is that I also love a well-endowed man. But just because I enjoy women doesn't mean I'm allowed to have affairs in my relationship. I learned through talking with my therapist that it is still cheating even if it's with girls, so there is a rule there." — Fergie. [Us Magazine via The Advocate, Page Six]
• "Lady Gaga stole your act." — President Obama to Cyndi Lauper. [La Dolce Musto]

In a recent Daily Beast interview, ex-party promoter Daniel Nardicio said reinventing Playgirl was like working on "the Coca-Cola of porn." Why did the magazine lose its way? "They didn't admit that there were a lot of gay men reading the magazine and gay men don't want to see guys with flowing long locks looking like they came from the cover of a Danielle Steel novel," he told The Daily Beast's Jacob Bernstein.

But former Playgirl managing editor Jessanne Collins, writing at the Awl, disputes that version of history. She says the magazine was staffed by young women who weren't particularly drawn to Fabio types, but who were under the thumb of the magazine's ownership—whose stable included titles like Purely 18 and Finally Legal. And they had their own ideas about what was sexy:

The men in the boardroom had no idea how to market or appeal to either women or gay men-never mind to both at the same time, an unattainable magic act, in my opinion, but one the company insisted on attempting for years. The tragicomedy of Playgirl's particular aesthetic failure starts to make a lot of sense if you consider that it wasn't constructed by anyone who professed actual physical interest in the male physique. If would-be Fabios were standard, that's because "musclebound with a ridiculous mane" is a comfortable caricature of what women find sexually attractive as doodled in the minds of out-of-touch old dudes.

The Internet may have helped kill Playgirl's regular print edition, but it's also brought both women and gay men choices of titillation that don't have to be cleared with any boardroom. And it's brought us this, for anyone who wants all of that and Levi at the same time.

The Truth About Playgirl And Levi Johnston [The Awl]

Related: Can Levi Johnson Save Playgirl? [The Daily Beast]
Fantasy Levi Johnston Playgirl Covers [BWE]

The shoot will take place on November 16 (the same day Sarah Palin will appear on Oprah). Levi added, "I don't want people to look at it as somebody who's getting naked for fame," but then didn't clarify why he's getting naked, if not for fame. But who cares? We get to see him naked! Seriously, he's hot—and he knows it, and enjoys the attention from women. Levi said that when he visits his mother in prison, all the inmates go wild, and hold up signs saying that they want to be his "cougar".

Governor Palin responded to Levi's two-day interview on The Early Show, during which he reconfirmed claims he made in Vanity Fair. Palin said:

Levi's Going 'Full Johnson' for Playgirl [TMZ]

According to Michael Winerip of the Times, Hefner fille is a mover and shaker among Illinois Democrats, having donated $201,000 to Democratic causes over the years. She apparently got Barack Obama to speak at the 2005 Magazine Publishers of America conference, and Gloria Steinem invited her to be on the board of Voters for Choice. Victor Navasky, the former Nation editor who recently tried to recruit Hefner as the publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, says,

She's certainly a liberal feminist and a liberal Democrat. People would say, ‘so what's she doing putting out a magazine and running clubs catering to horny men?' But she found a way to make it work consistent with her values, to serve Playboy and her father and give them an opportunity to do socially useful things.

But it's hard not to see Christie Hefner's position at the head of her dad's sex empire as a little creepy. While he dated women half her age (she's 52), she rebuilt his business. It was in shambles when she asked to take over in 1982, and, she reports, "Hef said, ‘I felt like I had this incredible birthday party and you had to come in and clean up the day after.'" Cleaning up after your dad's birthday party — especially a dad whom you call "Hef" — doesn't seem like the most empowering career.

Then there's the issue of hard-core porn. Winerip writes, "while Hef bragged about not crossing the line into hard porn, she did, buying Spice TV and Club Jenna and defending the move as business." Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors questions whether Spice TV is really "consistent with Christie Hefner's values," and if so, how feminist those values can really be. The answer to this depends on what you think about porn, but it is worth noting that Playboy Enterprises represents a very corporate end of the porn spectrum. Annie Sprinkle they are not.

But Hefner's "values" may be a whole lot simpler than the can-porn-be-feminist debate implies. The words "networking" and "networker" appear over and over in Winerip's article, and it's clear that Hefner has been very successful in making powerful friends. Her job tidying up after her pajama-clad, twin-banging dad may not be particularly enviable, but she's leveraged it to create a high-profile political and entrepreneurial platform. She's appeared on CNN, Fox, and CNBC, she'll be working with Navasky to create a for-profit arm of the Columbia Journalism Review, and she's collaborating with Canyon Ranch on a line of health products. Whether or not she's a feminist, she's certainly doing well for herself.

Winerip's emphasis on this success makes his profile kind of depressing. Bartow goes a little far when she calls it "sycophantic," but it's certainly not critical, and Winerip takes claims of Hefner's feminism at pretty much face value. It's popular lately to claim that any woman who is very successful is somehow a feminist icon (The Onion skewered a similar sentiment in the classic "Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does"). But doing well as a woman doesn't necessarily mean you're doing good for women. Hefner may support liberal causes in her personal life, but where her business is concerned, it seems like her most important "values" are monetary ones.

No Silk Jammies For Her [NYT]
The NYT Adulates Christie Hefner, Delicately Refrains From Substantively Mentioning The Hardcore Porn That Generates Most Of Playboy's Revenues [Feminist Law Professors]

1. The Feather Duster
Is it a mullet? Is it (shudder) a shag? Wait til you see this angle:

Didn't Alyssa Milano have this same 'do on Who's The Boss? Thanks to Fey Friends, you can see this guy naked. NSFW, obviously.

2. The Fabio
There's not enough Pantene Pro-V in the world to fix those split ends. Only a pair of scissors can cure what ails this gentleman. (You can see this guy naked too. NSFW.)

3. The Dorothy Hamill

Fey Friends calls this one the Kate Jackson, but it's clearly a Dorothy. This shaggy look is actually making a comeback, on teenage Disney Channel stars and that one guy on Bravo's Million Dollar Listing. Be afraid.

4. The Soul Glo
A Jheri curl on steroids! The faux commercial from Coming To America was so solidly based in reality it almost wasn't funny.

5. The Lace-Front Man-Weave

John Travolta has one. So does Brendan Fraser. Lord only knows what is up with Nicolas Cage's hair these days.

Oh! Here's a close up of Revolta:

6. The Long-Ass Combover

Joe Biden's hair-plug and comb-over combo is a desperate attempt for you to listen to his words and not look at his scalp. Why are some guys so afraid of going bald? It doesn't sap your strength! Ask James Carville.

7. The Silver Scrub Brush

Jay Manuel is the only one who knows what the hell this is all about.

8. The Electric Shock Treatment Therapy

This is the dude, yes, dude from Tokio Hotel. I hate to sound like my mom but: Kids today are crazy.

Want to nominate a dude with wretched hair? Feel free to post pix in the comments!

The Way of the Bro Coiffure [Radar]
Inexcusable Hairdos on the Nude Dudes of Playgirl [WOW Report]
The Worst of Playgirl: Tresses Messes [Fey Friends] (NSFW)

[Celebrity images via AP.]

Kane attributes the problem to a magazine that had its resources slowly taken away a publisher on high. Gone were the days of interviews with Keanu Reeves or the ability to get anyone remotely famous to pose. After the "notorious experimental year without willies" in the eighties and a few rounds of using gay models and gay photographers whose sensual sensibilities were slightly different than the female readership that Playgirl was supposed to be attracting (think: spread ass-cheek pictures), the magazine began to be thought of as a periodical closet case. Kane puts it this way:

I disagree that only gay men would ever want to look at pictures of naked men. This was a half-baked conjecture I heard over and over when I met new people and the subject of my job came up. To me it came off as a careless denial of women's sexuality; it was equivalent to saying that women don't fantasize.

In Kane's analysis, the magazine succeeded when it successfully projected the image of catering to women and what at least some of us want to look at (hot naked dudes) and read about, rather than a magazine in which a woman is wondering why she's staring at some naked guy's asshole and flipping through ads of dudes blowing each other. It succeeded because some women wanted to buy it, and the kinds of famous people that could get women to buy it could tell themselves they were appearing in it for their female fans and put out of their minds the legions of gay men pleasuring themselves to the same pictures.

But those days are long since gone, and so Playgirl withered on the vine as porn for not-women rather than a magazine for women that happened to have naked people in it — the tune Playboy has been singing for a while now. And all Kane's got to show for it is a bunch of naked pictures of hot naked guys. Well, I mean, that actually doesn't sound so terrible. Being unemployed with a huge stash of porn isn't the worst trade-off. Normally I just end up with some extra pens.

Goodnight, Sweet Hunks [Radar]
Related: Playgirl Comes to the End of Its Road (Sorta NSFW) [Best Week Ever]

• Commenting on an Eliot Spitzer whore scandal is vaguely as exciting than reading about the intricacies of trade negotiations — and also, somewhat less important — but I had to point out this quote from a source close to Kristin "Billie" Davis (who "hails from a rough-in-tumble California trailer park.") "She personally interfaced with Spitzer a number of times." Wow, "interface." That used to be corporate jargon for "talked to" and now it is being used to denote... bareback anal. [NYP]
  
• "His sex appeal lies in being a successful businessman and politician. Women like a guy who is in control, and a man who knows what he wants." That's the editor-in-chief of Playgirl on why she'd like to land Eliot Spitzer for a cover shoot incorporating a young woman in a Girls Gone Wild T-shirt. I know; you're creaming just thinking of interfacing with it right? [US]
  
• Wait, speaking of: raunchy outtakes from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog are now being sold as a $200 "art" book. [NYP]
  
• Wait, no, really speaking of, Barack Obama was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo, who tried to paint him as some sort of Hugo Chavez character by baiting him with a question about the Fed's bailout of Bear, to which he said, "Well, I wasn't privy to Bear Stearns' balance sheet." He doesn't sound like a socialist! [CNBC]

• A fifteen year old in the UK has been found guilty of beating a woman to death because she was goth. [BBC]
• Oh, great, now the enemies decide to register their discontent with the our invasion of the Iraq in a peaceful manner? What's next, hunger strikes? [NYT]
• Foreigners on the election: Germany wants the "Black Kennedy" because they are "romantic" that way; Mexicans like Hillary because NAFTA was good for them, Chinese like HIllary because NAFTA was good for them too, Israelis distrust Obama and Muslims in the Middle East think he can't win because "his middle name is like mine." [WSJ]
• What cocktail will be the Next Cosmo? The cognac industry is hard at work on it. But it won't be easy. "Brand promotional pamphlets and in-house recipe books are cemeteries of forgotten drinks." Ah, life. It is such struggle. [WSJ]
• Gubernatorial corruption etc.: now also in Puerto Rico! [NYT]
• So that was "ten days that changed capitalism," we just don't really know how exactly. [WSJ]

Men's magazines have nipples, so why don't women have a magazine where men show their penises? If there was a magazine like that I'd buy it. Nudity's not a big deal to me.

We're sick of reading profiles in which Scarlett Johansson and Lindsay Lohan sound like they're these awesome empowered articulate hypersexual uberconfident dames when, um, duh, they're 21, so like, what they have going for them can pretty much be summed up as "perky tits." Sayin!

Jessica Alba Has Never Heard Of Playgirl [Fleshbot]