Both actresses got nominated twice for Golden Globes yesterday. As Reuters points out, Bullock, 45, didn't appear in any movies last year and only one in 2007. But The Blind Side and The Proposal have both been hits. Meanwhile, Streep, 60, is the romantic lead in It's Complicated, a heavily-promoted movie opening Christmas day, after recent lauded turns in movies like Julia & Julia and Doubt. Speaking to Reuters, an industry analyst sees a refutation from the conventional wisdom of women onscreen and in audiences:

"Older women is a category Hollywood has written off, but this proves that nobody knows nothing. No matter all the surveys they take and all the focus groups, someone can come along and have their greatest success at this point in life," said Pete Hammond of awards website www.The Envelope.com

Leslie Bennetts' Vanity Fair cover story on Streep delves even more deeply into the issue:

Many studio executives have been privately convinced that it wasn't worth even a modest budget to make films about women, particularly older ones, and they seem stunned that a series of movies about middle-aged women racked up such enviable grosses. "The problem isn't just the fact that studios forget that movies about or aimed at women have an audience-they honestly don't know how to market them," says Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed Julie & Julia. "What they know how to market are movies aimed at teenage boys. I don't think my movie would have been made without Meryl."

Even those who are unimpressed with what Nancy Meyers has to offer women (or audiences in general) can marvel at the change, at least when it comes to Streep: Fifteen years ago she was considered too old to play Clint Eastwood's romantic interest in The Bridges of Madison County. ("There was a big fight over how I was too old to play the part, even though Clint was nearly 20 years older than me," she tells Bennetts.) Now, in what may or may not be Meyers' frothy fantasy (more on that later today, regarding Meyers' upcoming profile in this weekend's The New York Times magazine) both Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are chasing her onscreen.

Whether all this is a sea change or just more indication of Streep's exceptional status as Greatest Living Actress (I don't have an explanation for Bullock, but I welcome theories), proving that women will go to see movies if there's something worthwhile for them to see is a good start. And if It's Complicated is the success it's pegged to be, there will be even less of an excuse for Hollywood to pass the buck on women-directed and aimed films, starring a greater range of actresses.

On a side note, the Vanity Fair piece notes approvingly that Streep is un-Botoxed and refuses to get plastic surgery. So why did they have to make her look like she did on the cover? Streep herself, looking over portraits that Brigitte Lacombe took of her over the years, says this one is her favorite, "because they scraped all the crap off my face." Ours too, but guess Vanity Fair thought newsstand buyers would balk if they saw what Streep actually looks like. Change starts at home, guys.

Something About Meryl [Vanity Fair]

Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock Enjoy New Lease On Career Life [Reuters]

Earlier: Golden Globe Noms: Nods for Precious Actresses, Director Kathryn Bigelow
"Fuck Them": Times Critic On Hollywood, Women, And Why Romantic Comedies Suck

In an interview with BlackBook, Lois's basic beef is that magazines are trying too hard to make their inside pages look like the Internet, and that editors refuse to take chances on "ideas" covers, like the ones he was famous for at Esquire. And he has a point: As magazine's audiences inevitably become smaller with shrinking newsstand and hard-to-sustain subscription models, now is the time to take chances. Doubling down on what print can do with its visual real estate is a start.

We were curious, though, about how and how much Vogue has changed since Liberman's heyday — he oversaw Vogue's look from the early 40s to the early 60s, and then was editorial director of Conde Nast from 1962 to 1994. It is indeed hard to imagine Vogue doing something like this again (from March 1944, with a somber tone befitting wartime, and a Red Cross shoutout):

Or this famous exercise in restraint:

It seems unfair to compare an era of illustration to a photo-obsessed age, so we dipped into the 1960s. It's fair to say that this Irving Penn pop art cover from 1965 is a far cry from what Vogue does today:

But actually, at least when it comes to covers, you could argue that Vogue has often stayed true to form.

The blonde gamine:

The fresh-faced blonde:

The blonde with interesting choice of headgear:

The "I Have No Fucking Clue What This Is Supposed to Be":

Legacy: Protected.

Legendary Magazine Designer George Lois's Last Round [BlackBook]
Related: Vintage Fashion Magazines
Vogue Archives [On Sugar]

• Designer Sophie Théallet has won the $200,000 Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund Award. "Thank you for making my American dreams come true," said she. [Style.com]
• Skating at an outdoor rink in London, Lily Cole knocked over a small child. [Daily Mail]

• Adriana Lima and Marko Jaric have announced the birth of their baby daughter, Valentina. With Heidi Klum's and Karolina Kurkova's babies, that makes three Victoria's Secret newborns, so far. (Gisele Bundchen is due in December — like Jourdan Dunn, who isn't a Victoria's Secret girl but is a damn awesome model.) So, in about 15 years, maybe we should expect an invasion of new models with perfect pedigrees. [People]
• Here are the first pictures of Comme des Garçons' Beatles collaboration line. We are still not sure why this exists. [Racked]
• Says Rihanna: "In the past few months I've done a lot of research in the fashion world because I wanted to work with a bunch of designers that are kinda underground, people who aren't the obvious...My style is very edgy, very daring. I like to take risks — I hate to do the obvious." [Grazia]
• Pascal Mouawad, who yesterday Lindsay Lohan claimed to be working with on a jewelry line, is today unequivocal: "This is not happening." Sorry, LiLo. [WWD]
• Kate Moss's fourth fragrance, Vintage, is not, we repeat not, coming to the United States. [People]
• Chanel Iman says her one-day "internship" at Teen Vogue "wasn't really planned. I was going in for my fitting for the Teen Vogue cover. I just started helping around the office, organizing the closet. It led from one hour to the next, then it was my fitting and that stopped and I started interning again. I'm a girl that loves to keep busy no matter what it is, being paid or not." Real interns tend to do more than just fill the downtime between fittings — and they also tend to prefer getting paid to not. [NYDN]
• Gemma Ward, in an e-mail to an Australian newspaper, clarified that she has not quit modeling, and that she expects to return to modeling and acting next year. Her mother, meanwhile, says the Aussie supermodel is considering studying drama at Yale. [SB]
• Marc Jacobs, on the differences between Paris and New York: "I'm most at home in New York. I have so many friends and such a large creative community that I feel I'm a part of here. So my work in New York is very influenced by my personal relationships and what I'm doing, and what the people on my team are doing, while Paris is a bit of a bubble, a fantasy. It's almost like I'm pretending to be a designer in Paris. I just think, ‘What would a French designer do?'" [WWD]
• Vivienne Westwood held her spring Anglomania show in a carpark outside a Selfridges in London. [Telegraph]
• Didn't spikes and studs on footwear reach saturation point sometime last winter? Our tolerance is certainly pricked. [The Cut]
• Adidas has announced that in conjunction with Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus, it will manufacture shoes for the developing world in Bangladesh. The target price for the final product, which Adidas is making without profit? €1, or about $1.50 at current exchange rates. [Telegraph]
• In our mixed-up, topsy-turvy modern world, why not buy spring clothes in November? Phoebe Philo's debut collection for Céline is already on sale, in a customized space at Dover Street Market. [Independent]
• Donna Karan would not approve. She thinks shopping for clothes during the season they are intended to be worn makes a certain kind of sense, because otherwise those clothes go on sale during the season they are intended to be worn, which from her perspective is much worse. "We're not talking to the consumer, we're talking to ourselves," says the designer. "When it's cold out, let's warm the customer. When it's hot out, let's be able to the cool the customer. This isn't nuclear science. Don't deliver fall clothes until back-to-school — do you remember that old logo, back-to-school? — [in] September, when the leaves start to change. Now the leaves are changing, but our seasons are changing because we're already shipping resort." [WWD]
• Prada's book party was probably the most fashionable book party, ever. [People]
• Miuccia Prada: "When people think of fashion, they prefer to see the crazy side, the clichéd side, and actually I think that is wrong. Fashion is an important part of a woman's life. It's a question of aesthetics and that is in no way stupid or superficial." Also: those black nylon bags Prada became famous for in the 90s cost more than comparable leather ones because it took her three years to "learn how to work with" nylon, OK? [Independent]
• Stella McCartney says she has felt uncomfortable with the notion of working in fashion, too. "I was a bit embarrassed by the word ‘fashion,'" she said at a summit on luxury hosted by Women's Wear Daily; McCartney calls herself "an infiltrator" of the industry. Working without animal products has caused its own set of problems: when Tom Ford, then at Gucci, initially approached McCartney about her becoming part of the company, he said her working without fur would be no problem, but when she replied that she also works without leather, "his face just went white and his jaw dropped to the ground." And then there's the expense: "t costs us up to 70 percent more to make a pair of shoes than any other brand - we take that on the chin; we don't mark it up for the customer. Coming into the States, we have nearly a 30 percent import duty for nonleather goods, which I think of as kind of medieval." Fifty million animals are killed for leather production every year. [WWD]
• Nintendo DS has a game called Style Savvy, in which you play a store manager helping customers find outfits that suit their style and their budgets. (Nintendo: now preparing children for retail drudgery!) Charlotte Ronson's fall 2009 collection is included as an optional download. [SB]
• Renaud Dutreil, the chairman of LVMH's U.S. arm, bicycles to work every day. [WWD]
• The Gap has come under fire from a Christian group that accuses it of failing to use the word "Christmas" in its holiday advertising and mailings. The Los Angeles Times points out the many layers of hypocrisy present in this argument — and the fact that the Gap, in addition to selling Christmas-themed merchandise, does mention Christmas in its holiday TV spot. [LATimes]
• So Oakley has some top-secret cadre of sunglass engineers who are encouraged to come up with the most technologically advanced sunglasses you have never imagined, with cost no object. This is why $4,000 carbon-fiber sunglasses exist. (Unfortunately, they are still ugly.) [BW]
• Evidently Vanity Fair needs some pageviews. So they went to the drawing board and came back with...sexy pictures of supermodels. That'll work. [VF]
• Burberry reported a 24% decline in its profits for the six months to September 30, compared with the same period last year. This was better than expected. [WSJ]
• Meanwhile, Saks enjoyed a profit during the third quarter. Surprise profits must be the best kind of profits. [TS]
• The "Kardashian KCollection," which the sisters K put together for Virgins, Saints and Angels, is reportedly "inspired by their Armenian heritage." Their forebears seem to have liked spikes. A lot. [Racked]

41-year-old Seymour, who married Brant 16 years ago, filed for divorce in March of this year. Seymour alleges that Brant "harassed and intimidated" their three children, ages 5, 13, and 15, and told both domestic staff and their youngest daughter's school not to let her near the kids. For his part, Brant alleges that Seymour took the children to San Diego, where she has family, and then jetted off to Las Vegas to see "a male friend." Brant is apparently also the kind of guy to have commissioned a bust of his wife, from the artist Maurizio Cattelan, that viewers liken to a hunting trophy.

The two each continue to reside at their large Connecticut estate, which — in addition to Brant's polo team and prized ponies — has several houses. ($500,000 a month in maintenance ought to buy one at least that much.) This has caused problems. Seymour says a security guard in Brant's employ assaulted her; the guard has filed a countersuit saying that Seymour assaulted him. And everyone is fighting over art. Lots of fancy art:

Another filing accused him of spiriting a small museum's worth of artworks from "the marital residence" without Seymour's consent, a haul that allegedly included nearly 50 Warhols-Brant had a long association with the artist-as well as works by Koons and Prince, not to mention some drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat that had hung in Seymour's bathroom and a pair of Cindy Sherman photos allegedly pilfered from her dressing room.

...Yet another filing accused her of making off with her own Sotheby's lot: five more Warhols, another Cindy Sherman, five Tiffany picture frames, and a leopard throw rug. (The filing doesn't say if it was genuine leopard.) But her greatest sin, in Brant's view, may have been that she supposedly loaded the valuable and delicate artworks into the back of her S.U.V. as casually as if they had been soccer gear or lacrosse sticks.

Oh, please. Like that caliber of wealth would have faux leopard anything.

In some ways, the write-around reads like it was composed essentially to offer Vanity Fair a reason to publish these recent Mario Testino shots of Seymour. Which, in the context of a discussion that references assault allegations and, you know, human heartbreak — there are children involved! — really is tacky as all hell.

Gaetano Ferrero, one of Brant's lawyers, takes the ugliness in stride: "Suffice to say that there are a lot of allegations and cross-allegations going back and forth. I don't think either [Seymour's counsel Thomas Colin] or myself would tell you that we know who is right and who is wrong. We have been doing this much too long to simply take our clients' word for it."

First, The Gloves Come Off [VF]

Earlier:
The Supermodel's Household Savings Plan

Mark Bowden tells the story of J, a 42-year-old man who spent a year in jail for using a chat room to set up an assignation with a mother and her underage daughters — except that the "mother" was Detective Michele Deery, the daughters didn't exist, and J swears he was never interested in children in the first place. A lot of things about J make him seem untrustworthy — he was using steroids at the time, which gave him a runaway sex drive. He spent hours in cybersex chat rooms, playing out involved sexual fantasies with strangers while his wife slept. And he was willing to describe graphic sexual scenarios with children. But there's also a lot of evidence to suggest J was entrapped.

J says he had learned from experience that in order to interest women in chat rooms, you had to be willing to entertain their particular fantasies. Deery, masquerading as a user named "heatherscutiepies," seemed to want to talk about someone having sex with her daughters — so he indulged her. When the time came to set up a real-life meeting, he kept trying to make a date with just "Heather," but she kept bringing the girls back into it. She said things like,

-ur flip floppin its confusing me ... i mean it just seems like ur more into me then all of us..thats all

And:

-u say ur not really just into me, but it is still odd to me that you just wanna meet ME..

And:

-here is a tidbit of info ... i can do all that w out you here ... so clearly you are more into me then all of us whch is fine but u should be upfront about that from the get go

As Bowden mentions, these statements could be seen as Deery offering J an out, giving him a chance to say that he was really only interested in adult women so that she could leave them alone. And it was certainly stupid and reprehensible for J to respond as he did — repeatedly reassuring "Heather" that he was interested in her daughters after all. Even worse, he agreed to have sex with all of them — first with Heather alone, and then with the girls when they came home from school. J swears his plan was to flee after sleeping with Heather, but this claim didn't get him out of jail time, the dissolution of his marriage, or a lifetime on a sex offender registry.

It's hard to tell if J is telling the truth. He claims that everything he said about the girls was just an attempt to give Heather what she wanted so that she would sleep with him, but most right-thinking people would probably balk at offering to commit statutory rape just to get laid. On the other hand, unlike most child molesters, J didn't have any child porn on computer, and there's no evidence he ever hurt an actual child. J may be a bad guy, or least a sick one, but he also may have been a waste of a detective's time.

Bowden writes persuasively that the hysteria over online child predators is misguided. Some of it, he says, is based on faulty statistics — like the idea that one in five kids has been sexually solicited over the Internet. Bowden writes,

[H]alf the solicitations came from other teenagers. Not a single solicitation led to actual sexual contact. Violent sexual predators hunting children are out there, as they have always been, yet they remain blessedly rare, and most young people flee such strangeness instinctively. Only 3 percent of the contacts reported in the survey resembled the one most feared by parents, the adult stranger attempting to seduce a child.

And, somewhat disturbingly, Bowden reveals that people like J are "many times more likely to be locked up for approaching detectives than children." Would J have gone on to molest children if Deery hadn't "caught" him? It's possible, but it doesn't seem all that likely, and children face much more pressing dangers than J (Bowden also notes that missing children are more likely to have gotten lost or been kidnapped by a family member than abducted by a sex offender). The image of the online predator is a convenient one — a wholly evil person whose capture and punishment makes children safer. But protecting children is more complicated than that, the dangers they face more various and amorphous than a bad man lurking in a chat room. Unfortunately, nobody wants to stand up for men like J, and so the practice of creating false scenarios to catch sex offenders will probably continue — even if it means making sex offenders of some men who wouldn't be otherwise. But law enforcement energy might be better spent elsewhere, and perhaps we as a society should redirect our attention to problems that actually harm actual children — not men who solicit made-up girls.

Image via Vanity Fair.

A Crime Of Shadows [Vanity Fair]

As everyone knows, when magazines do these "New James Dean"-type profiles, the dude is supposed to be mysterious, introspective and confident. Yet though Peretz describes Pattinson as "an exquisite beauty - with perfectly formed red, red lips and a face that might have been dreamed by the Romantic poets," he says he thinks he looks like "a cartoon character." Oh, and one of his legs is longer than the other, which makes him look "like an idiot."

When Peretz visits his hotel room in San Diego, she finds it littered "with beer bottles, old scrambled eggs, a half-eaten Twix bar, and a dirty pair of jeans on the living-room floor." Instead of embracing his rock-star persona, ignoring the mess and feeling no shame, Pattinson notices that he hasn't made his bed and says: "Oh, God. Sorry about that." Dude! A rebel without a cause never apologizes!

The magic words usually uttered by a "New James Dean"? "I really want to direct." Pattinson just talks about how when paparazzi follow him, he's terrified that his "ass crack is showing." Instead of being psyched about attention from millions of women since the Twilight frenzy is so heated, Pattinson says: "I guess I'm not the type of guy cut out to do a franchise… I'm not much of a crowd person."

As for the rumors that he's shagging Kristen Stewart, Pattinson doesn't give a sly Hollywood answer. Instead he says: "It doesn't make any difference what you say [to the tabloids]. I've literally been across the country [from Kristen], and it's like ‘Oh, they were on secret dates!' It's like ‘Where? I can't get out of my hotel room!'"

Painting the star as a normal guy a bit flustered by fame means reactions to this interview are mixed. VF commenter girlEgirl6 writes:

Its impossible for me to LOVE Robert and SWOON over him anymore than I already do but after reading this interview Oh Lawd! I LOVE HIM EVEN MORE. lol He's soooo scrumptious.

JacyB is not as enthusiastic:

I have looked forward to buying this issue for months BUT now that I've read your article about Rob I WON'T be buying it. You've seemingly gone out of your way to put Rob in a bad light. A drunk, dirty, paranoid, weirdo? Why would you focus on such negative things when there are so interesting things to ask him? I am also surprised you deny that he and Kristen are in a relationship but they don't support it with their quotes. Plus, the quote you have for Kristen is from an interview she did last year with another mag. You've just lost your credibility. I thought VF was a classy mag but apparently you're no better than the national inquirer. I'm sure you will sell a record number of copies because of the pics so you really don't care. However, if I were Rob, I'd never do another interview with you again. Shame on you because he doesn't deserve to be treated so unprofessionally!

Evgenia Peretz on Robert Pattinson: "Twilight's Hot Gleaming", Robert Pattinson: The Bruce Weber Portraits (Part One) [Vanity Fair]

The piece—"The Unreal Rise of Jon and Kate Gosselin"—paints a portrait of Kate as a woman trapped in the gilded cage of fame. And she's loving it. She enjoys that her hairdo is iconic, she's chatting on her cellphone with Kelly Ripa, and she's finally begun to win the media war against Jon, who keeps trying to rain on her parade and destroy her brand. "I'm running a business - hello?" she says.

Sales points out that since March 2009, the Gosselins have been on the cover of the celeb weeklies over 50 times, beating out other celebrities, including Brad and Angelina. She—like most of us—wants to know what "perfect storm made Jon and Kate this year's tabloid obsession." Although Sales met with Kate twice (once in August and again in September), Ginia Bellafante, TV critic at The New York Times, seemed to have a lot more insight into how a tabloid star is born:

It became a show that was completely suited to a multi-platform world. You can't just watch Jon & Kate on television and understand it anymore. You have to participate in it on all these different levels-tabloids, news shows, talk shows, the blogosphere. Jon & Kate became unintentionally brilliant because it demanded so much other consumption to find out what was ‘real.'

Sales' piece is a testament to that. Despite the fact that this story has been in the works for nearly three months, it doesn't appear in the current print issue; it's a web exclusive, which makes sense, seeing that mainly the Gosselin story seems to have a new and dramatic development, each day.

Part of what's propelling this story, as Richard Spencer of In Touch tells Ms. Sales, are Jon and Kate themselves. "Brad and Angelina try to be discreet, whereas Jon and Kate, they serve it daily to you on a platter." Sales also notes that, in this climate of cost-cutting, the Jon-and-Kate story is "cheap to produce; the price of paparazzi shots of the family runs significantly lower than pictures of the latest Kardashian wedding." And you can't argue with numbers. In Touch and Us Weekly almost doubled their sales with each Jon-and-Kate cover story.

With each tabloid story, it seems more and more likely that Kate's children are being exploited. And she tends to agree, but insists that this is the media's fault:

'The ones claiming we are exploiting our children,' Kate says—here referring to the tabloids and other media that have criticized her for putting her kids on television—'are the ones exploiting our children!'

Like many celebs, Kate also seems to have a love/hate relationship with the paparazzi. "They're all sort of bald and fattish, aren't they? They have a look," she says. Yet, while in a car going on a publicist-approved shopping trip to F.A.O Schwartz (because it would make Kate "look good"), "she leans out the window and yells to one of the bike riders, 'Hurry up!' She laughs her whooping laugh."

But perhaps this anecdote is the most revealing about Kate's view of herself, and her future:

A young British paparazzo is clandestinely snapping the transaction, his camera hidden under a stuffed animal. I ask him what he sees in Kate. 'She's a massive story at the moment,' he whispers. When I relay this comment to Kate, she scoffs, 'At the moment?'

Tabloid compilation via Vanity Fair.

The Unreal Rise of Jon and Kate Gosselin [Vanity Fair]

Earlier this year, Cruz became the first Spanish-born actress to win an Oscar when she was named best supporting actress for her role in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. This fall, she'll star in two new films, Broken Embraces, her fourth film with director Pedro Almodóvar, and Rob Marshall's musical Nine, but Vanity Fair takes a look back at her career and reveals that if several directors hadn't realized her potential, she may have never found success in Hollywood.

There are only a handful of actresses who have started their careers in a non-English speaking country and gone on to become A-list actresses, such as Marlene Dietrich, Sophia Loren, and Ingrid Bergman, but Sischy writes:

Like some of those actresses, Cruz isn't cookie-cutter pretty-she even has a bit of a schnoz-but her unusual features come together in a memorable aria of real beauty.

We really can't see any imperfections in Cruz, and Woody Allen seems to agree, saying:

"I don't like to look at Penélope directly. It is too overwhelming."

Almodóvar says the reason Cruz's career got off to a rocky start with films like Vanilla Sky, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Gothika, and other films that were not considered commercial successes is that other people in Hollywood couldn't see past her beauty:

"It was bad luck for Penélope, because some of the movies were very ambitious, but this happens. They only saw her as a beautiful girl. It is the problem with the market, the agents, the studios, the film industry as a whole that labels actors in a way that is not very subtle at all. The problem is that it happened with 10 or 12 movies for Penélope, and it could have been the end." Then he laughed: "But I was there to save her. I'm joking now."

Penélope, who grew up outside of Madrid, was inspired to become an actress by watching Almodóvar's films as a teenager. Seeing his film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! changed her life. She explains:

"That was the day I decided to be an actress," Cruz says. "I fell in love. I'd found what I wanted to do. I really didn't want to have to be in an office. I was a good student, but not happy. I thought, I have nobody in my family and no friends who can make a living out of anything related to an artistic profession, but I want to try. I decided to look for an agent."

Later, after she'd acted in a string of somewhat successful American films and become known as a celebrity, but not a great actress, Almodóvar's 2006 film Volver relaunched her career.

Penélope was born to be an actress," says Almodóvar... "She is someone who is extremely emotional, and if she was not an actress it could be a problem for her. It's luck she has chosen a profession that allows her to express something that would be too much for a normal person. Otherwise she would suffer a lot. And even now maybe she suffers too much." Apparently this tendency goes way back. "I've always been a worrier," says Cruz. "Since I was a little girl I've always felt that if I had a moment of peace I'd wonder: Are you sure you can afford to feel like this?"

Of course, she still refuses to discuss her emotions concerning one area of her life: her relationship with Javier Bardem. She refuses to discuss the persistant rumors that the two are expecting a child. Sischy seems to see it as a triumph that she gets Cruz to let this one little detail slip, writing;

I brought up a U2 concert that she and Bardem had attended in Paris, mentioning that I'd heard she was playing air guitar during some of the songs. She squealed with delight, saying, "Javier is even better at air guitar!"

The Passions Of Penelope [Vanity Fair]
OMG! Penelope Cruz Feeds Pregnancy Reports; Visits The Ob-Gyn Clinic [N.Y. Daily News]

• Mickey Rourke, at Max Azria: "I really don't like Max that much. He's a short little guy with a good looking wife. Maybe I'll steal his wife." [WSJ]
• Tom Ford to close-talking columnist: "Are you trying to smell me?" [NationalPost]

• If you care about who People thinks is the best-dressed, their annual list is out. Kate Winslet, Reese Witherspoon, Vanessa Hudgens, and Freida Pinto all made the cut; on the men's side, so did Brad Pitt, Robert Pattinson, and Bradley Cooper. [People]
• Audrey Tautou, currently playing Coco Chanel across multiple platforms, has a print ad for Chanel No. 5 out. [People]
• Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz is to address the UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries in Italy next week. [WWD]
• Lauren Conrad presents her fall collection for Kohl's in this video. It's very cute how she pretends to have seen it before. [People]
• Avril Lavigne presented her collection for Kohl's in New York City on Monday night. It includes a hoodie with earbuds in the drawstring. We must have missed this one for the Snuggie show. [People]
• Ralph Lifshitz and Calvin Klein grew up in the same part of the same neighborhood of the Bronx, Norwood's Mosholu Parkway, and both attended Public School 80, four years apart. Former Bronx borough president Fernando Ferrer says, "These are working-class guys — they were neither poor nor wealthy, and it's interesting that their clothes are aspirational. Ralph Lauren designs preppy, polo type clothes. That wasn't his experience then. So does Calvin Klein — elegance, simplicity." [Cityroom]
• Anya Hindmarch believes in "speaking up for bespoke" objects in a time of mass-production. Naturally, she also believes in charging £500 for a wallet. [ToL]
• Meanwhile, for the rest of us, Zara has plans to start selling its clothes online. [FT]
• Georgia May Jagger: "I really don't get it, to be perfectly honest. I still don't have that firm a grasp on why me being my parents' daughter is so interesting." Being your parents' daughter is the only reason you have a career, dear! [Style.com]
• It's certainly the only reason Vanity Fair is talking to her. "Modeling is always something I've really admired because I've seen my mum and sister do it," says Jagger. [VF]
• David Lauren: "We created the first 24-hour shopping experience on the windows of our mansion on 72nd St. You can literally walk up to the glass, press on the glass, and shop the product that's in the store. You can touch your credit card to the glass and buy it." [The Cut]
• Will lazy writers ever abandon the canard that Lara Stone — a model with stated measurements of 33"-24"-35", entirely within the tiny range of straight-size modeling — is somehow "curvy" or represents "change" on the catwalk? Stone — who is incredibly good at what she does, and well established in the business because of it — has not been "opening everyone's shows." In fact she has yet to be spotted anywhere in the lineup at a single show this season. [Telegraph]
• Halston, that long-rudderless brand, had a spring presentation that was a bit of a train wreck. The clothes looked very similar to each other, and the mannequins were weird. [WSJ]
• Barneys New York has now operated for 14 months without a C.E.O. Wracked by debt, the retailer is the subject of rumors alleging its inability to even pay its invoices. The head of Istithmar, the investment fund that owns Barneys, says "We have stood by Barneys and will continue to stand by this company." Words you never want to have to hear from a C.E.O. [WWD]
• Nina Garcia's third book about personal style is naturally all about the recessionista, not the fashionista. [Reuters]
• According to an online survey of 61,000 teens, teenagers are spending less money, because their parents are giving them less money, because their parents have less money. Thanks for getting to the bottom of this important recession conundrum, social networking site Habbo Hotel. [Reuters]

Vanity Fair's clearly milking this interview for all it's worth, as evinced by the beefcake "behind the scenes" video below. Watch "advisor Tank Jones" help Levi put on his suit! Watch him suggest that Levi pose for Playgirl (according to Tank, models for said publication cannot be "lacking in the johnson area")! Basically, Tank's discussion of different Playgirl models' johnson endowments steals the show here.

The actual article promises more, um, substance. In the few tasty tidbits doled out by VF's website (full text hits New York and LA newsstands today), we learn that Sarah and Todd Palin didn't cook, and let their kids fend for themselves. The Palin brood even had to do their own laundry (shame!). Levi also says Palin was "pouting" after her failed vice presidential bid, and that she wanted to exchange her governor's seat for a book or TV career which would be "triple the money." According to Levi, Palin actually said, "I want to just take this money and quit being governor." "But," says Johnston, "she didn't know how to do it." Guess she figured that out.

Perhaps more sordid than his claims about Palin's media ambitions is his account of her "great idea" about Bristol's pregnancy. He says,

Sarah told me she had a great idea: we would keep it a secret-nobody would know that Bristol was pregnant. She told me that once Bristol had the baby she and Todd would adopt him. That way, she said, Bristol and I didn't have to worry about anything. Sarah kept mentioning this plan. She was nagging-she wouldn't give up. She would say, "So, are you gonna let me adopt him?" We both kept telling her we were definitely not going to let her adopt the baby. I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn't want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid.

So remember all that stuff about Trig really being Bristol's baby, whom Sarah just passed off as her own? Apparently it wasn't that far off. That is, if you believe Levi. And with a face like that, how can you not?

Levi Johnston: "Me and Mrs. Palin" [Vanity Fair]
Vanity Fair Publishes Levi's Story: 'Me And Mrs. Palin' [Politico]
Behind The Scenes With Levi And Tank Jones [Vanity Fair]

The list reinforces some familiar tropes: Men are the innovators and trailblazers of industry. Women, well, we're generally entertainers or being lauded for our social skills.

I must admit, I am perplexed at a lot of this list. Glenn Beck made the list alone, Angelina Jolie had to share the spotlight with Brad Pitt. There were more women of color on the list than I expected (normally, we only see Oprah) but the Obama Administration is directly responsible for the two new entrants. And while many of the listmakers are grouped together by what they have in common, it seems that women are disproportionately tied to men.

Here are the women on the list:

At number eight, Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie. She is technically the first woman to appear, but she and Brad's accomplishments are bundled together, Bill and Melinda Gates style.

At number fifteen, we have David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and Pete Rouse. Again, in a bundle with the other politicos.

The first woman to get her own entry was Desirée Rogers.

28. Desirée Rogers
White House social secretary

NEW ENTRY.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Bringing glamour and energy to her role as White House social secretary, the Harvard M.B.A. sees herself as keeper of "the best brand on earth: the Obama brand." She has infused what she calls "the people's house" with a younger, hipper, and artsier spirit through a flurry of events such as its first-ever "poetry jam." She made room for a dance floor in the State Dining Room so the nation's governors-and the president-could join a conga line as Earth, Wind & Fire performed.

FASHION SENSE: Elegantly attired in Chloé, Jil Sander, or Thakoon, Rogers, 50, was profiled by Vogue-and sat next to its editor, Anna Wintour, at New York's runway shows.

FITNESS REGIME: Jumping rope, yoga.

WOMAN-OF-THE-PEOPLE MOVE: Using the Internet to distribute more than 30,000 tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll instead of forcing the masses to wait on line outside for hours.

ROOTS: The New Orleans native is a descendant of a Creole voodoo priestess-and she has been queen of the Zulu Mardi Gras krewe.

(Side note to Vanity Fair: Don't encourage the birthers!)

Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg clock in at number 36.

The next woman to get her own billing is the ever-formidable O.

38. Oprah Winfrey
Harpo

LAST YEAR: 43.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Oprah is still the single most popular, and powerful, TV host in the world, able to steer millions toward whatever book, diet, or self-help philosophy she embraces. Her highest-profile endorsement to date: fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama. Its partial payoff: she scored lots of camera time during his Election Night victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park. And while there is continual chatter that her appeal may be dimming, no challenger has come close to catching her.

COOL NEW PAL: Former Viacom C.E.O. Tom Freston, whom Oprah, 55, describes as her "business soul mate" and who has been helping her staff the new Oprah Winfrey Network, with hires like Christina Norman, the former president of MTV (and former Freston employee).

LATEST BIG GET: The Queen of all Media will open her 24th season with pop diva Whitney Houston, in what is being billed as "the most anticipated music interview of the decade." The singer, who's had a tumultuous several years, hasn't given an interview since 2002.

LATEST ENTHUSIASM: Oprah gave trendy Web service Twitter a boost in April by signing up and introducing her audience to its co-founder Evan Williams. (She had a million followers in 28 days.)

THORN IN HER SIDE: In August, Oprah and her medical guru, Dr. Mehmet Oz, filed suit against more than three dozen companies to stop them from using the two's images to sell dietary supplements online.
YEAR AHEAD: ↗

And the rest of the women are as follows.

40. Meryl Streep
Actor

NEW ENTRY.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Everyone adores the regal Streep, who at age 60 is undeniably Hollywood's most skillful actress (her performance as a tough nun in Doubt earned her a record-breaking 15th Oscar nomination and 23rd Golden Globe nod) as well as one of its top-drawing female stars, as witnessed by The Devil Wears Prada ($325 million worldwide gross) and Mamma Mia ($600 million). The Wall Street Journal described her buoyant turn as Julia Child in this summer's Julie & Julia as "a grand comic performance" from "a fearless actress," and The New York Times wrote: "By now this actress has exhausted every superlative that exists, and to suggest that she has outdone herself is only to say that she has done it again." Critics and audiences alike felt Streep's culinary giant upstaged Amy Adams as the present-day blogger Julie Powell.

FAMILY RELATIONS: She took a year off after the birth of each of her four children, who are now aged 18 to 29.

LEGEND HAS IT: She was a mousy teen before she dyed her hair blonde, switched to contact lenses-and was named homecoming queen of her New Jersey high school.

YEAR AHEAD: ↑

44. Miuccia Prada
Prada

LAST YEAR: 30.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: After opening 34 new stores in 2008, the famed designer and her C.E.O., husband Patrizio Bertelli, negotiated an extension on payment of some $650 million in debt, a move which will aid her burgeoning fashion empire's ongoing expansion. (She now has 238 stores worldwide.) Last September, the awful economy forced the company to call off its long-in-the-work plans for an initial public offering of stock. But Prada reportedly turned down investors who were interested in taking minority stakes, and is still looking to go public eventually.

BOLD MOVE: Despite the pressures of the economic recession, Prada, 60, has remained committed to her patronage of the arts beyond her work in fashion. April marked the debut in Seoul of her new exhibition pavilion, "Transformer," a 180-ton, 66-foot-tall structure of steel supports and translucent polyvinyl skin, designed by starchitect Rem Koolhaas.

69. Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett
CNBC

NEW ENTRY.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Bartiromo, 42, is still the queen bee over at CNBC, but Burnett, 33, is coming on strong. The women are the only two CNBC personalities who anchor solo hours while the stock market is open. A new, five-year deal Bartiromo inked with her bosses at the end of 2008 means the original Money Honey isn't ready to relinquish her crown yet, so Burnett had better steel herself for a long fight. (Burnett signed a three-year deal in mid-2008.)

BRAGGING RIGHTS: Bartiromo scored the first post-firing interview with John Thain of Merrill Lynch. Burnett was invited inside Herb Allen's Sun Valley mogul retreat this year-which is notorious for forcing reporters to remain at arm's length.

MEASURING STICK: The currency of the television interviewer is the "get." Bartiromo is on a roll: then Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. But so is Burnett: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley's John Mack, and Bank of America's Ken Lewis.

WORLD-DOMINATION WATCH: In the never-ending battle for primacy among CNBC talking heads, Bartiromo was ahead in one noticeable regard for months: it was her face staring down from a giant billboard on the southbound side of Manhattan's West Side Highway. "I was flattered and honored by it," she says. "But it was a little Big Brother, considering how huge it is."

FOOT IN MOUTH: In November 2007, on MSNBC's Morning Joe program, Burnett, while looking at footage of then president George W. Bush flanked by two other world leaders, called him "the monkey in the middle."

YEAR AHEAD: ↗

82. Stephenie Meyer
Author

NEW ENTRY.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: The Mormon housewife's Twilight teen-vampire romance novels sold nearly 29 million copies in one year, capturing the top four positions on the USA Today best-seller list for 2008, making her the first author ever to do so. (J. K. Rowling came close with Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 5 with her Harry Potter titles in 2000.) The movie version of Twilight grossed $191 million in the U.S., and the film adaptation of her second book, New Moon, opens in November. Meyer has also inspired hundreds of Web sites from fans who call themselves "Stephen-ites" or "Twi-hards."

MARITAL RELATIONS: Her husband, Christian, quit his job as an auditor to look after their three sons.

DAILY HABITS: Drives fast but doesn't consume alcohol or caffeine.

LEGEND HAS IT: Meyer, 35, began writing as a 29-year-old Phoenix housewife in 2003 after dreaming of vampires one night. She wrote 10 pages the next morning before driving her sons to swimming lessons. She moved a desk into the living room and finished her 130,000-word first novel in only three months.

THORN IN HER SIDE: Stephen King, who said that "Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn."

NEW THORN IN HER SIDE: Jordan Scott, who has alleged in a lawsuit filed in August that Meyer stole ideas from her 2006 vampire novel The Nocturne, and used them in Breaking Dawn, which Meyer published in 2008. Meyer's publisher has said that the claims are meritless.

YEAR AHEAD: ↑

86. Meredith Whitney
Meredith Whitney Advisory Group

NEW ENTRY.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Financial analyst Whitney's star continues to rise 17 months after her "sell" rating on Citigroup sent the market into a tailspin and helped cost Citigroup C.E.O. Chuck Prince his job. After more than 15 years of working for other people, she set up her own shop in February, the Meredith Whitney Advisory Group.

FITNESS ROUTINE: For several years, Whitney, 39, and her girlfriends have attended a fitness retreat in Mexico called
Bikini Boot Camp.

MOGUL RELATIONS: Despite the fact that Merrill Lynch and Wachovia were two of her biggest short positions in 2008, ex-C.E.O.'s John Thain and Bob Steel still came to a party she had in June to celebrate the opening of her new office.

THORN IN HER SIDE: The Wall Street Journal's David Weidner, who wrote in April 2009 that Whitney's reputation as a Wall Street oracle is overblown and undeserved.

MORTAL ENEMY: Whitney's 2007 "sell" rating on Citigroup put an end to Chuck Prince's career just four days later. She
says she has yet to run into him in a dark alley but keeps an eye over her shoulder just in case.

BRAGGING RIGHTS: In July, Whitney made a midday call to buy shares in Goldman Sachs, turning a down day into a feverish rally.

QUOTE: "The funny thing is, in your twenties you try and look serious, and after your twenties, you just try and look hot. I'm not an old white dude, so I stick out."

YEAR AHEAD: ↗

88. Arianna Huffington
The Huffington Post

LAST YEAR: 90.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Her eponymous Web site, which recently linked up with Facebook and launched sections devoted to sports, books, and technology, hit its stride during the 2008 election, when its mix of lefty bloggers and news stories culled from other publications resonated with an ever increasing audience. After Barack Obama's victory, it raised another $25 million from investors, then swapped out C.E.O. Betsy Morgan for venture capitalist Eric Hippeau.

SILENT PARTNER: Huffington gets the headlines, but Huffpo co-founder Ken Lerer, a P.R. hotshot who also put in time at AOL, has at least as much influence on the site's strategy.

LABOR RELATIONS: Huffpo pays nothing to the bloggers and publications it "aggregates." Huffington, 59, says her contributors should be pleased to get the exposure, and that other sites she points readers to should be happy to get the traffic. Very often, she's right.

QUOTE: "I did not single-handedly kill newspapers. I had a lot of help from Craigslist."

YEAR AHEAD: ↗

100. Lauren Zalaznick
NBC Universal

NEW ENTRY.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: One of TV's most influential curators, Zalaznick runs NBC Universal's Bravo and Oxygen cable channels and fills both with highbrow takes on lowbrow reality shows: Top Chef, NYC Prep, Real Housewives. One show you can't see on her networks: Project Runway, which started out on Bravo but has been moved, against the network's will, to Lifetime.

PREVIOUS LIFE: The Brown semiotics major spent years in the indie-film world, producing serious fare such as Swoon and Kids.

CRIB: Manhattan's East Village.

PREVIOUS CONTRIBUTION TO MASS CULTURE: As an executive at VH1, Zalaznick, 46, championed Pop-Up Video, which helped pioneer a meta-commentary perspective that today's media consumers take for granted.

SIGN OF OBSESSIVE BEHAVIOR: Once had her family pose for a photo every day of the year.

YEAR AHEAD: ↑

In addition to the main feature, there were also two side articles. The first showcases hall of fame inductees, who are lauded for leaving an "indelible mark on the world of business". Women on that list include: Annette De La Renta (listed with Oscar); Diane Sawyer (listed with Mike Nichols); Melinda Gates (listed with Bill); and Barbara Walters.

Only one woman made the Pit Stop: Donatella Versace.

After reviewing the three lists, I am reminded of why I like to seek out niche publications like Black Enterprise and Pink to see what African-American and women entrepreneurs are doing. Whenever I read a list like this, or the Forbes Most Influential list, an island in their sea of financial power coverage, it stands to reinforce the view of the dominant power structures in society. Women and minorities still do not have a fraction of the power and influence that the men on these lists have attained. And, despite all of our advances over the last forty years, it is exactly as I said in the beginning of the piece: the New Establishment is still taking notes from the Old Establishment.

The 2009 Vanity Fair 100 [Vanity Fair]
The Hall Of Fame [Vanity Fair]
The Pit Stop [Vanity Fair]

Earlier: Why Does Forbes Measure Women's Influence, Not Wealth?

Note: This post has been updated to reflect the oversight of Stephanie Meyer and Meryl Streep at the original publication time.

In the article "Killer@Craigslist," which appears in the magazine's October issue, Orth explains that while Markoff and murdered masseuse Julissa Brisman both arranged their meeting through a series of temporary email addresses and texts in an attempt to remain anonymous, their electronic trail wound up helping police expose their identities. Orth writes:

Few Americans, even those from the younger, Internet generation, seem to understand how easily their clicks and text messages can be detected, and how little privacy any of us have anymore. Every search, every posting, every text message or Twitter, leaves a cyber footprint. The content of every e-mail sent by any one of us is kept by the Internet service provider and stored for a period of time, usually six to nine months. Google and Gmail used to store e-mails indefinitely; now they claim they're within the same range, but all the e-mail we choose to keep until we delete it can also be accessed by the provider.

Markoff responded to Brisman's Craigslist ad by sending emails from AMDPM@Live.com, an address he'd set up a few days earlier, using the name "Andy." Brisman advertised under the name "Morgan" and had messages sent to massagesbymorganboston@yahoo.com, an account that was being monitored by Mary Beth Simons, who owns the tanning salon where she worked. Simons screened offers for Brisman and even pretended to be her during a call with Markoff, who used a disposable Trac phone. Hours after her murder, when Simons hadn't received a text from Brisman to say how the meeting went, she contacted the police, who were gathering forensic evidence from the crime scene. Simons gave police the emails she had exchanged with AMDPM@Live.com and called Mark Rasch, the former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Department of Justice, who she knew was an expert in computer forensics and could help the police.

After obtaining a search warrant, Microsoft, which owns Live.com, gave police the I.P. address used to access the account. Police found the I.P. address was linked to two similar robberies that had occurred recently in Boston and Rhode Island.

Craigslist was able to see what time and date the user of the Live.com address responded to each of its postings-when he clicked Morgan's or the other two women's ads, for instance. "People who use Craigslist leave more of a trail than people who just use the phone," says Rasch. [Suffolk County district attorney Daniel] Conley goes further: "People feel online communication is pretty discreet. That's entirely false." (Hotel security services routinely monitor Craigslist to see how much of the erotic trade they are attracting.)

Though the I.P. address gave police Markoff's name, it led to a wireless router in his apartment building, meaning anyone there could have been using the address. Police matched records of Simons' and Markoff's phone calls and texts to hotel surveillance footage, but also turned to more common methods to get an idea of who Markoff was.

Rasch says, the first thing police did, once they had a name, was exactly what many of us would do-they went to Facebook and Google to find out who their suspect was and what he looked like. Then they fell back on tried-and-true detective work and began an old-fashioned stakeout.

Police arrested Markoff on April 20 as he was driving with his fiancée, Megan McAllister to Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, which was about a half an hour from the Rhode Island hotel where Cynthia Melton was robbed and assaulted.

...this would have been his 19th visit to Foxwoods in four and a half months. His first visit had been noted on December 8, 2008, when he signed up for the "Wampum" points awarded as perks for frequent gamblers. His presence had also been documented in the early evening of April 16, the night Melton was attacked. (Police were able to trace his Foxwoods visits by the computer records kept of his "burning Wampum.")

Though McAllister revealed to Orth in a phone call that Markoff was her first love, and she believes she was his too, internet evidence suggests he had a darker sexual life online she was not aware of. Orth writes:

A police source told me that Markoff's tastes were "wide and varied." That may be an understatement. A crime blogger recently uncovered evidence suggesting that Markoff once applied as a newcomer for sadomasochistic experiences.

Orth interviewed a transvestite who had communicated with Markoff on two separate occasions and exchanged explicit pictures with him. The transvestite showed her about 1,500 responses he'd received to ads on Craigslist.

"It's not blackmail per se," he explained, patting the laptop, "but in case I get murdered I have the information to share." One of the icons on the screen was for his complete Markoff file. "Hey sexy" was the first subject line. On May 2, 2008, at 12:29 a.m., the name "Phil Markoff" came up with the e-mail address Sexaddict5385@yahoo.com. He was replying to Craigslist personal No. 664395223... "I am 6'3" a 22y/o grad student." Along with the message, he sent his picture, which the tranny verified by going to Markoff's Facebook page and seeing the identical photo of him there, smiling, in a blue-and-white striped shirt, with a small drapery swag in the background.

In May, after pressure from the attorneys general of 43 states, Craigslist eliminated its Erotic Services category in the United States and changed it to Adult Services, which Craigslist C.E.O. Jim Buckmaster says is "manually reviewed to make sure a human reviewer looks at each ad and picture, reads each word, and compares the ad with our posting guidelines." Some still criticize Craigslist for only providing the police with information after a crime is committed rather than doing more to prevent crimes; however, Buckmaster says the site has many filters in place and it's not smart for people to arrange illegal activities via the site because, "It virtually guarantees they'll be caught."

Killer@Craigslist [Vanity Fair]

Vanity Fair bills the article "Beautiful People, Ugly Choices," as "a definitive portrait of Fawcett's meteoric rise, turbulent second act, and tragic final chapter." Unfortunately, the story mainly offers the definitive portrait of what a horrible partner and father Ryan O'Neal is, without getting at who Farrah really was, or why she chose to stay with O'Neal on and off for 30 years. The profile will be published as the cover story of one of Vanity Fair's two September covers (the other features Michael Jackson), which will be available on August 5 in New York and Los Angeles and on August 11 nationally. Below are excerpts from an advance copy of the article.

Author Leslie Bennetts first interviewed Ryan in June, after Farrah had been hospitalized with an infection in the port in her chest, which was installed because the veins in her arm collapsed from the many injections she received during her three year battle with anal cancer. Bennetts writes that Farrah's condition was so bad Ryan was "desperately trying to sustain himself with gallows humor," such as joking that he and her loved ones were just trying to get their hands on her money.

He made another crack about the 2007 incident which led to his arrest on assault and weapons charges. Ryan claims he fired a shot at his son Griffin O'Neal because he swung a fireplace poker at him. (Griffin accidentally hit his pregnant 22-year-old girlfriend in the head instead of his father.)

"When [Farrah] turned 60, we had this celebratory birthday where I shot my son," O'Neal said, his tone as casual as if there had been nothing conversation-stopping about such a remark. "I could have hit him, but I missed. Farrah was lying in bed, and she could hear it all—fights, swinging, gunshots. Welcome to the O'Neals'!"

In her final days, much of the public's perception of Farrah's condition was shaped by anecdotes Ryan fed to the press, which were apparently more rehearsed than they appeared. Ryan's revelation during an interview with Barbara Walters in June that he had "asked her to marry me, again, and she's agreed" was widely reported, along with his joke that he'd dress for the ceremony, "like a gigolo, you know? With a little thin mustache and slicked-back hair." Bennetts says that Ryan had already tried out the exact same lines on her, but in his first draft of the story he sounded far less sincere. Originally, he described his outfit as "a boulevardier in a silk suit, taking her for her money." Griffin claims Farrah never intended to marry his father, and that he only cared for her while she was ill because he wanted to be written into her will. No one has disputed that Ryan stayed by Farrah's side throughout her illness and to be fair, Griffin is obviously not an impartial source on the matter.

The article discusses Farrah's difficulty with her sex symbol status, suggesting that may be what inspired her "to sculpt female nudes with an obsessiveness that seemed like an attempt to understand the world's fascination with her own body." Ryan even says Farrah told him she liked her iconic hair style because "I can't see to the right or left, and that way I don't have to see people looking at me." Bennetts writes:

Aging only exacerbated her ambivlanece about her acting career. "As you get older, the young studs take over, the agents change, and you get shuffled off to Buffalo," O'Neal observes. "She didn't like that feeling."

And the process is always harder for women who have traded on their looks. "I think they lose confidence," O'Neal says. "I my mind, if I say, 'Your're beautiful,' that should be enough. But she was very high-maintenance. She took a long time getting ready to go anywhere, and that started to drive me nuts."

While most say Farrah first left Ryan in 1997 after she found him in bed with a 25-year-old actress on Valentine's Day, Ryan says menopause was another factor in their split.

"I believe Farrah was going through some kind of change," he says. "I didn't have a change of life; I was always a jerk. But they're hard work, these divas; I was sick of it,a nd I was unappreciated. I just don't think she liked me very much. So I excused myself and I was lucky enough to meet this young girl. She was more a duaghter to me than a lover, and my own daughter had flown the coop, so here was this replacement."

Many of Ryan's most disturbing statements are about what an admittedly terrible father he was to his four children (by three different women). He said he only talks to Redmond, his son with Farrah, who is in jail. As for the others,

"I was in touch with them for years, and I was a mess. I'm not in touch with them now, and I've never been happier," he says, giving me a belligerent glare. When I ask if he's sorry he had children he nods. "A couple of them I would take back."

Though Ryan insisted in an interview following Farrah's death on June 25 that since he reunited with her about two and a half years ago he hasn't been with another woman, he also says that during her funeral:

"I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me," Ryan told me. "I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car' She said, 'Daddy, it's me — Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick."

The incident encapsulates what tarnished the image of one of the most glamourous stars of his generation: his womanizing, substance abuse, and horrifying relationship with his children. In the article Ryan pretty much undoes with his own words any public rehabilitation he may have accomplished by casting himself as the hero in the drama of Farrah's final days, but sadly we never hear Farrah speak for herself. In what will probably be one of the last in-depth articles written on her life, we're left with a better understanding of the "ugly choices" that she made, but no insight into why she made them.

Leslie Bennetts On Farrah Fawcett And Ryan O'Neal: "Beautiful People, Ugly Choices" [Vanity Fair]

• Lindsay Lohan is on the cover of Elle UK — the shoot where jewelry went missing! — and here's what Editor-in-Chief Lorraine Candy writes in her Editor's letter:

"Lindsay Lohan wrote me a note during this month's cover shoot. It read, 'Let's do it again some time.' I've put it on my office wall because, in all honesty, I don't know if I could. This was the most unpredictable, and confusing cover shoot in my magazine career. First, Lindsay was about to arrive. Then she was in Paris. She was almost on set, then she disappeared into her hotel room. She was ready for her interview, then she had to have a fake tan! But we got there. And what we got was amazing. This shoot is truly original, just like Ms Lohan herself. In the end, she did her job brilliantly and, I hope you'll agree, so did we." Here's video from behind-the-scenes at the shoot [Elle TV]

• Chris Brown will be sentenced on Wednesday and appear on Larry King Live afterward: He'll apologize for assaulting Rihanna on TV. [Radar Online]
• Was Chris Brown forcibly removed from an upscale bowling alley in NYC last week for "partying too much"? [Fox 411]
• Take note: Tom Cruise is David and Victoria Beckham's "relationship guru." [Daily Express]
• "David Beckham is to star alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in TV ads promoting California to tourists." [The Sun]
• Ryan O'Neal says of Farrah Fawcett's funeral: "I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me. I said to her, 'You have a drink on you? You have a car?' She replied, 'Daddy, it's me - Tatum!' I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it's my daughter. It's so sick." Tatum O'Neal says: "That's our relationship in a nutshell. You make of it what you will." [The Sun]
• Vanity Fair produced two different covers for its September issue: Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. These deaths bumped a scheduled Mad Men cover, so now the actors from the show will be inside. Boo. [WWD]
• This paper spoke with the grandmother of the Samantha Burke, woman that Jude Law got pregnant. Delores Burke, 80, says: "What I want to know is how a girl gets pregnant in this day and age? Yes, it takes two people but he is the older and wiser man and he should have made sure nothing like this happened. I'm mad at him, we all are. He has other children. Didn't he think about how his actions would affect them?" [Daily Mail]
• "Samantha, her mom, and her family can affirm that Jude has been responsive and supportive throughout the relationship and pregnancy, and know that he will remain so as a father once Baby Sophia is born." [People]
• Video of Samantha Burke talking to the media at the link. TMZ]
• Apparently Samantha barely had any boyfriends, hence the headline: Prude Until Jude. [The Sun]
• A source says: "Jude sleeps with so many different women. A lot of names were going around as to who the mother of his baby could be." [Page Six]
• Jude's ex, Sadie Frost, is the oldest of 10 half brothers and sisters and mother of four kids from two marriages, so she's "understanding" and wants her kids with Jude to meet the new child. [Mirror]
• Jude Law allegedly told Sadie Frost that he only slept with Samantha Burke once, after a drunken party. [Daily Mail]
• Jessica Biel sings! She's playing Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls at the Hollywood Bowl, and says she would love to to go Broadway: "That is one of my eight-year-old dreams. That's like my little eight-year-old inside me is cartwheeling around, thinking about that idea." [AP]
• Mariah Carey's new CD will have ads. Actually, the CD booklet will be a 34-page mini magazine in co-production with Elle… with ads from Elizabeth Arden, Angel Champagne, Carmen Steffens, Le Métier de Beauté and the Bahamas Board of Tourism. [BrandWeek]
• Paris Hilton's estranged manager Jason Moore is hopping a book about how he molded this blond piece of clay into a global icon." [Rush & Molloy]
• Dr. Conrad Murray was getting $150,000 a month to be Michael Jackson's personal physician. But many of his previous patients were low-income. "There are many, many patients that thank God this man was here for them," says one. One patient said Murray performed angioplasty on him three years ago without ever being guaranteed he would be paid. [CNN]
• If you have $30 million or so, you can big on the Andy Warhol portrait of Michael Jackson, going up for auction soon. [BBC News]
• Jon & Kate Plus 8 will not become Jon & Kate Plus Dates. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Leslie Mann says her husband Judd Apatow gives her anecdotes to tell while she's promoting new film Funny People: "He has trained me to be ultra-prepared, to have five stories ready to go. He gives what I say a beginning, a middle, and an end. Whereas I'd just barf it out," she says. "It's really lazy of me to depend on him to make me sound sensible, but so what? I'm lazy." [The New Yorker]
• Milla Jovovich: Getting hitched for the third time; filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson is her fiancé. [Daily Mail]
• Tilda Swinton and 40 other people are pulling a film screen through the Scottish Highlands "on an eight and a half day odyssey through the mountains, camping each night in a different village." [Guardian]
• In this interview, Diane Kruger says she is a "country girl" and "definitely not sophisticated." The reporter writes: "What utter hogwash! Kruger spent most of her childhood summers on a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School in London, then five years as a top-drawer international model, based in Paris, before becoming a film actress." [Times of London]
• Liev Schreiber says kids make you youthful: "I'm older physically, but spiritually much younger." [People]
• Kate Middleton, aka Prince William's girlfriend, has had a series of meetings with Sir Richard Branson, in an effort to "sharpen her business acumen." [Daily Mail]
• Editors at British magazine Pride are apologizing for manipulating comments made by Nia Long, which made it seem like she was ranting about Beyoncé's acting skills. [Daily Express]
• Liza Minnelli will not be on Ugly Betty, but she will be on Drop Dead Diva. [AP]
• Whoops! Emile Hirsch and an Emile Hirsch impostor both attended the same party. [Page Six]
• Eric Bana is hot and talking about his attraction to cars. [Daily Mail]
• Sienna Miller on GI Joe: "If these films are well done I can find them quite entertaining. But…I prefer indie, arty films really. It's not the kind of film I'd normally go and see." [Guardian]
• In addition, Sienna's GI Joe wig cost cost £4,800. [Telegraph]
• Carey Hart says he and Pink are going to have a baby… Eventually. "She still has another 18 months of touring, and I'm pretty heavy in competing again in all my businesses, so it's definitely going to happen, but just not anytime soon." [E!]
• Q: A character with special needs or a prostitute-those are usually the two paths to Oscar. Had you considered that? Hugh Dancy: "I genuinely didn't. But now that you've said that, if it doesn't work out for me with Adam, I'll play a hooker next. There was the worry that if we didn't pull this off, I would look doubly exposed. Like, 'Really? You thought that was going to work? Better luck next time! There's this great prostitute movie coming out-maybe you should give that a shot.'" [BlackBook]
• Kevin Costner and his band were set to perform in Canada when suddenly the stage collapsed. One person died and at least 60 people were injured, including 2 members of Costner's band. [TMZ]
• Funny interview with Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, at the link. [BlackBook]
• Sheree from The Real Housewives Of Atlanta seems psyched that she was the number one trending topic on Twitter last week after her "Who's gonna check me, boo?" argument. She says: "You don't want to be on the wrong side of Sheree. You really don't. I tell them all the time, 'Don't let the cute face fool you!'" [E!]
• He's done Ali G, Borat and Brüno.What will Sacha Baron Cohen do next? How about a Eurovision music mockumentary? [The Sun]
• Kathleen Turner spills about living the last 17 years with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis, taking steroids which made her puffy and bloated and then turning to vodka to kill the pain — and becoming a drunk. [Daily Mail]
• Omarosa will be on TV One in a new series called Life After. [WaPo]
• "In Cold Souls, opening Friday in limited release, the actor Paul Giamatti plays an actor named…Paul Giamatti." [LA Times]
  
• Billy Joel is "distraught" over his breakup with Katie Lee Joel and "obsessed" with getting her back. [Page Six]
• People you may or may not have hear of had a kid: "Survivor & Amazing Race's Rob and Amber Become Parents." [People]
• Hollywood is out of ideas, part MCDXLIV: Steven Spielberg will direct a remake of Harvey, about a man and his friendship with an invisible six-foot tall rabbit. The original flick was released in 1950 and starred James Stewart. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Will Ferrell has left the film project Neighborhood Watch. [Variety]
• Dustin "Screech"Diamond: purposely excluded from the Saved By The Bell reunion by his castmates. [NY Daily News]
• Whatshername will celebrate her divorce with a televised "party extravaganza." [The Sun]
• Whatshername is on "yet another" holiday, and her cagefighter boyfriend is with her. [Daily Mail]
• Whatshisname has been crying himself to sleep and wishes he were stronger. [Mirror]
• "They did try to submit in the comedy category in the '90s and suffered from doing it in an era of juggernaut comedies like Friends and Seinfeld and Cheers and whatnot. And The Simpsons was as well written, if not more so, as any of those — but suffered from the prejudice against the medium. So I think perhaps in reparation for that, they should give them an honorary achievement Emmy." — Seth MacFarlane. [LA Times]
• "At 21 I married Luc Besson and we bought a beautiful 13-room chateau in Normandy. I was totally happy, drinking wine, walking in the forests and riding horses in the beautiful farmland. It didn't work because he was so much older. I was young and staying up late, playing the guitar and hanging out with my friends. He was the early riser who went to sleep early. He expected me to be the perfect wife, which was natural - the hostess entertaining his friends. But I was like, 'Aaaargh! I don't even like those people.' It's too bad it didn't work because he was an incredible person and I was an incredible girl, but the timing wasn't right." — Milla Jovovich. [Daily Mail]
• "I think Hillary Clinton is one of the most amazing women of this time. I don't know her and I don't know — should I call her? I'm sure she's busy. But I know they know this movie's being made. And I just want to call and say: Do you have any thoughts or feelings I should be aware of? Of course I can't make that call. I feel like saying, 'I'm going to play you in this movie and I have a lot of respect for you and is there anything you want me to say?'" — Hope Davis. [LA Times]
• "Whatever I say, I get myself into trouble." — Sienna Miller. [Guardian]
• "When I'm not working, I feel like a Ferrari in the garage. You have all this potential and you just want to break out." — Glenn Close. [LA Times]
• "I would talk my wacky language to him and he'd interpret it to the drummer. I'd say, 'I want it to sound like Zeus woke up from a nap and he's pissed and there's an opening in the clouds and he starts handing out lightning bolts,' which is crazy, but that's how I hear the rhythm. And Omar, he whispers some things to the drummer, and that's exactly what it sounds like. It really encouraged the songwriter within me." — Juliette Lewis, on recording her band's new album, produced by The Mars Volta's Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. [Reuters]
• "I have a theory that people feel as attractive as they did as a child. I was a really hideous child. People who were attractive as children have a sense of entitlement. I have a sense of awkwardness." — Kate Beckinsale. [Times of London]
• "Troy launched me but it launched me as the face that launched a thousand ships and not as an actress. I want roles where I have to expose my soul." — Diane Kruger. [Sydney Morning Herald]
• "I have never come across a female character that is written with Blanche's level of complexity, in that she's vulnerable, she's pathetic, she's a monster, she's nasty, she's tender, she's kind – she's so many things that you never know quite what she's going to do next. I've never come across so rich a character before." — Rachel Weisz on being in A Streetcar Named Desire in London. [Telegraph]
• "My life has gotten more surreal in stair steps. from the blog to the book to the movie to 'Oh my God, Nora Ephron's directing it! Oh my God, Meryl Streep's in it!' So right now I'm at this sort of surreal-is-the-new-normal phase. I'm cool with it." — Julie Powell, whose blog became the movie Julie & Julia. [NY Daily News]
• "I'm so not the relationship go-to girl. But I'm much clearer about what a relationship is, which is why I will never marry again. Gabriel and I have a great partnership and a lovely daughter. But I once was stupid enough to say, in a previous relationship, 'I'm going to be with this person for ever,' and realized, as I grew, that I don't know if for ever is possible. Gabriel and I don't look at our relationship in terms of for ever, we look at it as right here today. And today means being the best people we can be, the best parents we can be. It's wonderful, but neither one of us feels the need to attach ourselves to each other for life – because it may not be that." — Halle Berry. [Daily Mail]
• "I hate alcoholics and AA. If you can't drink responsibly, don't drink at all. Don't go to meetings, whine about your character flaws and blame the fact that you are a sociopath on booze" — Roseanne Barr to Heeb. [Page Six]

Having read both profiles, I think it's possible that Todd Purdum is just a jerk obsessed with politicians' reproductive organs, an itchy finger on the "narcissist" trigger (project much?), and a love of wallowing in anonymous sources. Not convinced? Let's look at the evidence.

Their sex lives

One would think, based on reputation alone, that there wouldn't be much to dissect about Sarah Palin's sex life... and, yet, Purdum's fascination with Bill Clinton's cock carries over to the Alaska Governor's reproductive tract.

Even though Purdum conceded that there is no evidence that Clinton has been anything less than faithful to his wife lately, he couldn't resist speculating about it with absolutely no evidence.

But among the not-so-small cadre of Clinton friends and former aides, concern about the company the boss keeps is persistent, palpable, and pained. No former president of the United States has ever traveled with such a fast crowd, and most 61-year-old American men of Clinton's generation don't, either. "I just think those guys are radioactive," one former aide to Clinton who is still in occasional affectionate touch with him told me recently, referring to Burkle and (to a lesser extent) Bing. "I stay far away from them."

Another former aide, trusted by Clinton for his good judgment, said, "On the sort of money, women, all that stuff … I'm the bad guy. All this stuff is kept away from me. Whatever they're doing, they definitely view me as somebody you cannot confide in."

A longtime Clinton-watcher, who has had ties to the former president since his first campaign for governor of Arkansas, said of Clinton's sometimes questionable associations, "I don't know what to make of any of that, if it's a voyeuristic experience, or if he's participating in it."

See? Aides who are so close to Clinton they know (or think they know) what he does with his dick are concerned that he might be doing something with his dick, so he must be doing something with his dick!

On Palin, Purdum professes himself amazed that a pre-menopausal — and attractive — woman could ascend to political heights.

The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan-the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game-give her family a singular status in the rogues' gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin's life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.

Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs.

Hmm, well, off the top of my head, I would guess that former beauty queen and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand might object to Palin being called the best looking (or only fecund) women elected to high political office, if Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin didn't qualify as only one of 435.

But Purdum likes to dispense with sexytime early in his pieces, so he can get straight to the projection psychoanalysis.

Narcissism

One might think that a reporter who has spent much of his or her career covering politics and political figures would be less quick to diagnose abnormal narcissism in politicians, but Pardum is practically making a career of it. Surprise! People that seek elected office and/or believe they can make a difference in the world hold themselves in high regard!

First up, Bill Clinton, who's a narcissist for thinking (like nearly everyone who's ever cheated or committed a crime) that he could cheat and not get caught — or, like every President before him, not get outed to the American people. Purdum says:

It is also possible that all these influences have combined to make the cavernous narcissism that has always driven Clinton, for better and worse, at last consume the man almost completely. It was Clinton's political genius to position the Democratic Party, for the first time in a generation, as the champion of those who "work hard and play by the rules." In his own life, he has always followed only the first half of that dictum, and has never been fastidious about appearances, in ways charming and not.

So, Clinton's a "genius" (in Purdum's judgment) with too high regard for himself? Maybe because everyone keeps calling him a genius?

Sarah Palin, too, is an apparent narcissist for seeking to obtain higher public office and screwing people over to get there, just like almost every politician has done since time immemorial.

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of "narcissistic personality disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-"a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy"-and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig's condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God's, and signed it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

Right, I'm sure a bunch of politicians in Alaska keep psych texts in their offices. And goodness knows no mother or father has ever written an overly cutesy email about their child to friends and family — she obviously thinks she's God Herself.

Anonymous Sources

If I cited every anonymous source used by Purdum to allow him to publish rumors and gossip about Clinton and Palin, I'd have to go on for days. Suffice it to say, Purdum is a lot less interested in what people will say off the record when they've no fear of reprisal — like the postpardum depression comment about Palin that Kristol links to senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt or the many "close" Clinton associates who suspect him of still fucking around — than finding people to say too many interesting or enlightening things on the record. When the only "news" a long profile like this makes is that McCain adviser Mark McKinnon — who famously dropped out of the McCain campaign because he said he wouldn't work against Obama — helped with debate prep, either one is rehashing really old stories (which Purdum does in both pieces — does anyone care that Clinton went jogging with Mondale's hot daughter once in the nineties?) or indulging in sensationalistic rumor-mongering.

Although Palin-haters will no doubt cheer the piece and Palin-fans will decry it as a piece of left-wing journalism, I hope that no one ignores the fact that Purdum took the template he used for his Clinton hatchet-job, filled it in as though it was an Alaskan-themed Mad Libs, and published it. That might make him a hack, but it doesn't make him a partisan one.

It Came from Wasilla [Vanity Fair]
The Comeback Id [Vanity Fair]

Related: Kristol: Liberal Media and GOP Hacks vs. Palin [Weekly Standard]

Earlier: Sarah Palin: Just Call Her "Little Shop Of Horrors"

On Governor Palin's "slippery" sense of the truth:

At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn't really count and need not be revealed.

On the concession speech she tried to shoehorn in on election night, despite the fact that there was no precedent for a losing VP candidate delivering such a speech.

When aides went to load McCain's concession speech into the teleprompter, they found a concession speech for Palin-written by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, who had also been the principal drafter of her convention speech-already on the system. Schmidt and Salter told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she wouldn't be giving one. Palin was insistent. "Are those John's wishes?" she asked. They were, she was told. But Palin took the issue to McCain himself, raising it on the walk from his suite to the outdoor rally. Again the answer was no.

A snapshot of Palin's approach to preparing for debates, courtesy of her 2006 campaign for the governorship of Alaska:

But Palin's lack of knowledge turned out not to hurt her. Andrew Halcro later remembered that he and Palin once compared notes about their many encounters, and she said, "Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, Does any of this really matter?"

Her personality:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of "narcissistic personality disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-"a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy"-and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig's condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God's, and signed it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

A statement by an anonymous former McCain staffer:

Another key McCain aide summed up his attitude this way: "I guess it's sort of shifted," he said. "I always wanted to tell myself the best-case story about her." Even now, he said, "I don't want to get too negative." Then he added, "I think, as I've evaluated it, I think some of my worst fears … the after-election events have confirmed that her more negative aspects may have been there … " His voice trailed off. "I saw her as a raw talent. Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better."

Her childhood friend (and onetime consultant for governor), John Bitney, whom she later fired as a legislative liaison once she got into office:

When I ask Bitney what he makes of the whole Palin phenomenon, he sighs. "What do I take away from this?" he asks. "Oh, I don't know. I don't know. It's just a lot of emotions and stuff. I find it's frustrating dealing with Sarah, because it seems we're always dealing with emotional crap and we never seem to be able to focus on the business at hand that needs to be done. I don't know whether to blame her or pity her for all this emotional upheaval that we're always going through with her. Now we all get to listen to Levi and Bristol. Check my feet for horseshoes if I have to sit there and listen to another talk show. I got involved in helping her become governor because we needed to change some policy directions. Teen abstinence is not why I waved signs for her."

And my personal favorite:

Palin maintained only the barest level of civil discourse with Tucker Eskew, the veteran G.O.P. operative who had been made her chief minder. A third party had to shuttle between them to convey even the most rudimentary messages. "She started to hedge her bets," the same McCain friend says. "Frequently, she would be concerned about how something would play in Alaska. What? You're worried about your backside in Alaska when there are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent?" One longtime McCain friend and frequent companion on the trail was heard to refer to Palin as "Little Shop of Horrors."

It Came From Wasilla [Vanity Fair]

Contributing editor Peter Biskind travels to Pinewood Studios outside London to view Ledger's last movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which he calls a "piñata exploding with brightly colored gewgaws, as if Gilliam were afraid the movie police would lift his license, and this would be his last shoot." He deems the film "good enough to remind us that Ledger's death deprived the movies of one of their most accomplished talents." Biskind's interviews include director Terry Gilliam, a close friend of Ledger, Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, and Steven Alexander, Ledger's agent and friend, along with other "insiders." They discuss Ledger's rise to fame, personal life, drug abuse and death, and his final performance.

In the Vanity Fair piece, Ledger is compared several times to Johnny Depp, first in the trajectory of his career, and later in his portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight. The analogy is an apt one, especially since Depp, along with Colin Farrell and Jude Law, replaced Ledger in Doctor Parnassus after Ledger's tragic death. Throughout the article, Ledger comes off as every bit the tortured artist; he is portrayed shying away from his growing fame, a reluctant celebrity, more artist than movie star. We present you with several highlights from the illuminating 11-page story, which reads as a sweet, if occasionally sensationalized, tribute to the actor.

Alexander on Ledger's reluctance to be a heartthrob or matinee idol:

He wasn't motivated by money or stardom, but by the respect of his peers, and for people to walk out of a movie theater after they'd seen something that he'd worked on and say, ‘Wow, he really disappeared into that character.' He was striving to become an ‘illusionist,' as he called it, able to create characters that weren't there.

On Ledger's unsteady, and sometimes unwanted, rise to fame:

After Brokeback Mountain and Casanova, released the same year, in which he had unhappily starred for director Lasse Hallstrom, Ledger was so distressed he wanted to stop working. (He did stop for a year and a half after his daughter, Matilda, was born on October 28, 2005.) He told his friends that one of the reasons he had taken The Dark Knight was that it would be such a long shoot it would give him an excuse to turn down other offers. In fact, a few years earlier he had met with director Christopher Nolan regarding the title role in the first of his Batman films, Batman Begins, but the actor was reluctant to become involved in a franchise.

Although the focus is primarily on Ledger's career, there are a few paragraphs detailing his relationship with Michelle Williams (who declined to be interviewed for the article):

According to Gilliam and Pecorini, the pair were too different for the romance to last. "My impression was that they had nothing in common," says Pecorini. "They didn't fit. They kept two separate lives. She never mingled with his friends-he never mingled with her friends." The two men say that the couple's relationship mimicked the marriage between the characters they played in Brokeback Mountain, with hers, lonely and resentful, watching his [sic] go off on his mysterious fishing trips… Gilliam and Pecorini agree that the romance began to unravel during the Oscar campaign for Brokeback Mountain, when Williams was nominated for best supporting actress alongside Ledger's nomination for best actor. For him, they say, the Oscars were a kind of game that he went along with grudgingly, whereas Williams took the hoopla more seriously.

On his drug use:

Pecorini says Ledger's drug use-"He used to smoke marijuana on a regular basis, like probably 50 percent of Americans"-became an issue. "From that moment, he went clean as a whistle. He was so bloody clean that he didn't drink a glass of wine anymore." Ads Gerry Grennell, who was Ledger's voice coach and shared houses, meals and down-time with the actor, "Heath loved good food and good wine. From the rehearsal period on Dark Knight, right up to the last days in London, when we worked and lived together and went out for dinner, Heath would happily go to the bar, buy a round of drinks for friends, and come back and have a soda or juice, never once drinking alcohol."

On his chronic insomnia and eventual death:

"Everyone has a different view of how he passed way," says Grennell. "From my perspective, and knowing him as well as I did, and being around him as much as I was, it was a combination of exhaustion, sleeping medication, which was doing less good than it was harm, and perhaps the aftereffects of the flu. I guess he just stopped breathing."

Says Gilliam, "He desperately wanted to sleep. And he finally got the big sleep. I don't know if it was the combination of his tiredness with his emotional state. I wish I had the answer. It really bothers me that I can't make sense out of it. There was nothing grand or dramatic about it. It just happened. It's still a big mystery."

On his final performance, as Tony in Doctor Parnassus:

In a complex and difficult part, he gives us everything we have learned to expect from him, and then some. A puzzle at the heart of a puzzle, his character gives him license to essay a blizzard of guises, calls upon him to be appealing, vulnerable, and frightening, all at the same time; he provides a whole new definition of identity theft. And in all these versions of Tony, the actor is wholly present, entirely in the moment, investing them with almost uncanny immediacy. As Audsley says, "with all due respect to the other actors in the piece, who are all terrific, the film really only leaps into life when Heath appears."

The Last Of Heath [Vanity Fair]