· Tyra went to Disneyland to help Minnie and Mickey work on their runway walks and general fiercitude. That's right, terrorists: Feast your eyes. Ain't never gonna take this away from us. Ain't never! · Oprah will bring her long-running syndicated show to an end in 2011 to focus on OWN. But will she bring her ass-kissy expert panel of Ali Wentworth, Mark Consuelos and Gayle King along with her? · On her marriage to Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman said, "I thought, I don't deserve to be here. We would go to the Oscars and I would think, I'm here to support him. I felt it was my job to put on a beautiful dress and to be seen and not heard." She then grew profoundly melancholy for a moment, but you'd never know it from her forehead. · Nice try, CNN. Those were tomograms, not holograms. · Here's a peek at Hollywood's newest 24-hour post-partying eatery, called Our Color Scheme Will Coax The Puke Right Out Of You Sweet Love Hangover. · Uh—pardon us if we're the last person on the planet to realize this, but Barack Obama has a Flickr photo stream. With, like, tons of backroom pictures of election night. Riveting. We wish we could just leap in there and restyle Michelle!

These are the men and women Barack Obama assembled today to advise him on how best to fix the cratering economy. They are a largely respected group, and though they ain't perfect—so many CEOs and so much Larry "Women Be Unable to Learn Math" Summers!—they are certainly more reassuring than the ideologues and incompetents our last guy surrounded himself with. We've identified them for your benefit and their brief bios are below.

Sam Perry, the Reuters correspondent turned startup investor, has always been moderately famous in Silicon Valley circles. But he got a taste of real fame when TV host Oprah Winfrey cried on his shoulder, on camera, while watching Barack Obama's victory speech.Oprah invited Perry on her show, as this clip shows, and thanked him. But Perry should be thanking Oprah. This is why every geek switches from blogging about APIs to blathering about politics. None of Perry's venture-capital investments would ever have gotten him on Oprah — but his volunteer work for Obama's campaign did.

Facebook's COO is mounting yet another PR offensive. But not on behalf of her current employer, though it could use some good press. No, Sheryl Sandberg is defending former boss Larry Summers against charges of sexism. Summers, who was Treasury Secretary under Clinton, is being talked up for the same role in Barack Obama's Cabinet. A controversial speech Summers gave as president of Harvard University — speculating that innate differences might have to do with women's lack of progress in math and science — could ruin his chances. Hence Sandberg's timely defense.But the defense is timely for Sandberg as well. Sandberg served as Summers's chief of staff before she moved to Silicon Valley and joined Google, setting her up for her current job at Facebook. Summers and Sandberg had a close professional relationship; he even escorted her as his guest to a White House dinner in 2000. At Google and Facebook both, colleagues roll their eyes as they recount how often she brings up her Washington experience and brags about how working in tech is a cakewalk compared to D.C. But Sandberg's tenure at Facebook has been controversial. She's been acting as if she's the company's No. 2 executive, despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg's reassurances that her role is limited and she's not a CEO-in-waiting. Several key tech and product executives have left since she's arrived — and, crucially, she has not made visible progress in improving the company's ad-sales operations. At least one prominent investor has been talking about "reining her in." So why not head back to D.C.? If Summers gets the Treasury job, he'll surely call on Sandberg for advice, and perhaps more. Will she be able to resist the call to public service? Her husband, Dave Goldberg, is an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital — a placeholder job he could easily leave. Her children are young enough that she could move back east without disrupting their schooling. It might be a now-or-never opportunity. It must be on her mind — and on the agenda at Facebook's next board meeting. Sandberg leaving Facebook for the government gives everyone a graceful out from a bad situation. Zuckerberg could help give her a nudge; his cofounder, Chris Hughes, was the director of Obama's Web campaign. Perhaps he could put in a good word for Sandberg? If Summers gets the Treasury job, the only question is whether, having made millions at Google, she really wants to work as hard as she tells everyone she used to.

Lynn Sweet is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times who led the outraged howling over the Obama campaign charging the press extortionate prices to cover his election-night rally in Chicago. Yet even she has been brought in line by the Obama charm! During the just-completed press conference Sweet stood up with a broken arm and allowed that she had broken it covering his rally, and Obama gave a sweet answer and flashed the biggest smile ever and in one fell swoop made Lynn Sweet America's most famous reporter for a day and also a lady who probably would like to smooch Barack Obama right on the mouth. Click to watch the exchange. [UPDATE: Bonus Observer story on Sweet too!]

President-elect Barack Obama's first press conference happened the day the nation shed yet more jobs, it began a half-hour late, and the subject was mostly the miserable economy. Obama looked tired, and lapsed occasionally back into campaign boilerplate when discussing the pressing issues he'll have to address the second he's sworn in. As he reminded us, again and again, "there's only one President at a time." But with one question from Chicago reporter Lynn Sweet, Obama immediately won over the audience, and America. He's getting his little girls a puppy! "With respect to the dog," President-elect Obama said, "this is a major issue." Slipping into deadpan mock seriousness, Obama discussed the crux of the problem—the dog should be a hypoallergenic breed, but they wanted to rescue a shelter dog. "Obviously," Obama said, "a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me." Even Fox is being nice to our new President now.

OBAMA FIRST PRESS CONFERENCE RUNNING TEN TO FIFTEEN MINUTES LATE! That's not change we can believe in! "Before the election, he was always on time," CNN reports. Now they're playing Rush Limbaugh complaining about Rahm Emanuel on one side of the screen and an empty podium on the other. We'll update with details and eventually video! 2:41 Oh, Robert Byrd is stepping down as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Byrd, the former KKK member, is delighted with new President Obama! What a country! Still an empty podium. 2:43 Oh, god, FIVE MORE MINUTES. Obama is breaking promises all over the place, today. We are ashamed. HILLARY IN 2012! 2:48 Another five minutes! Jesus, what is going on in this economic meeting?? Is he just shouting obscenities about the hideous mess he's just inherited? Are they getting high? Is Larry Summers complaining about uppity womens again? 2:50 Here come the economic superfriends. Robert Reich is hilarious, is it mean to laugh at how funny he looks? Yes, it probably is. But he's not technically a little person, just a regular short person, so it's ok. Now Obama is backstage putting out his cigarette, maybe? 2:53 Rahm Emanuel is another tiny person, isn't he? What's up with that? The tiny cabinet! Trend piece! OH WAIT HERE'S OBAMA. 2:54 God, President Obama, we know things suck, everywhere. "The United States has only one government and one president, at a time" — GOD DAMMIT, NOW HE TELLS US. Right now, President-elect, we don't have any presidents. Bush checked out a year ago! But once Barry is sworn in, he'll help all the hardworking families. Middle class rescue plan! Extend unemployment and a new stimulus plan. Small businesses, blah. Economic policy is boooring. Announce a WPA Federal Bloggers Project, Obama. Do it. Come on. 2:55 Oh, the Auto Industry, they can go to hell. Obama should announce we need a new generation of fuel-efficient FLYING CARS. Then we'd bail them out. We're avoiding the foreclosures. Monitoring challenges. Strengthening the middle class. 2:58 Barack Obama looks exhausted. He does not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead. 2:59 Question time! Does he have a coherent stimulus/rescue plan? Surely he does! Why must it be explained in such vague terms, President Hopey? 3:00 Can we get things done in a lame duck session? No, we can't. So we wait for his new session. 3:01 President Achmadinejad sent a note of congratulations! When do we send all the envoys to the evil countries? Campaign boilerplate about Iran. "It's only been three days since the election," says the President of Disappointing us. Why isn't everything different? 3:02 Only one president at a time! "I am not the president." 3:03 Will it rattle the markets when President Bush does some of his famous DECIDING? Guys, President Bush has done no deciding since 2006. Obama will have dinner with him, later, and they'll get along fine, and everyone will recognize the severity of every situation. Man we all know they're just going to talk about football, the whole time. 3:05 In terms of picking his cabinet, Barack Obama has a weird, foreign, elitist idea about "thinking things through" and deliberating before making decisions? 3:06 Who will Obama select for his Senate seat? He defers to the Governor, though of course it will be Jesse Jackson Jr (shhhh!). 3:07 Lynn Sweet! We love her! She has an arm in a sling! She hurt her shoulder running to his speech on election night! Obama says that was the only major incident! She asks about talking to former presidents. Obama has spoken to ALL OF THEM. Hah, he made a Nancy Reagan seance joke. Obama is rereading Lincoln, so basically it's New Civil War Time, guys. "With respect to the dog: This is a major issue." This is hilarious. Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypoallergenic. But they want a shelter dog! "Obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me." This is a pressing issue in the Obama household. Awesome. 3:09 Are the president's intelligence briefings scaring the shit out of Barry? They don't seem to be! 3:11 We're gonna soak the rich. Good night everybody!

Today, Newsweek posted the final chapter of their Special Election Project, the annual How He Did It book they've published for each presidential campaign since 1984 (when the answer was much easier: he just ran against Walter Mondale). The reporters assigned to the special project are embargoed from those publishing in the regular magazine, so they get jucier anecdotes, more hilarious quotes, and revealing stories, all of which are then packaged and in such a way as to make the winning campaign look like a well-oiled machine and the losing campaign look like a parade of idiots. Did you read the whole thing? We did! We'll share with you the funniest bits, the important takeaway, and the already solidifying conventional wisdom. In short, this is the story of the 2008 campaign: the Hillary Clinton campaign was a stressful psychodrama, the Obama campaign was an intellectual exercise, and the McCain campaign was a ragtag bunch of misfits who stumbled into an insane family nightmare from Twin Peaks, Alaska. Let's begin with Hillary and co. Hillary The Clinton campaign was beset by the vicious infighting among assholes, basically. The biggest and dumbest asshole was chief pollster/strategist Mark Penn!

Remember that pretty, red dress that the adorable Malia Obama wore on Tuesday night when her dad took the podium in front of 125,000 adoring supporters in Chicago's Grant Park? It didn't take long for the Oakland-based company that manufactured the dress, Biscotti Inc., to be besieged with callers interested in purchasing the red silk, bubble-hemmed number that retails for $110. Unfortunately, the company didn't have any more in stock and said they didn't even have the fabric in stock to make more. They've since figured out a solution. They located just enough fabric to make 200 more of them, says Biscotti's co-owner Bernadette Reiss, and they company will have them completed in three weeks, just in time for the holidays. How can she guarantee such a quick turnaround? They'll be made in Vietnam, naturally. [WSJ]

Let the procession of post-election Obama books begin! Michael Calderone of Politico.com reports that Newsweek reporter (and frequent Keith Olbermann guest) Richard Wolffe just signed a deal with the Random House imprint Crown. The book, Renegade: The Education of Barack Obama, is scheduled to be published in June 2009. [Politico]

Though Hillary Clinton was once seen as the inevitable pick in this year's presidential election, the first stain on her pantsuit may have come as early as February 2007, when gay mafia don/beach hog David Geffen broke ranks with the Clintons to endorse Barack Obama. "I don't think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is — and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? — can bring the country together," Geffen told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd then, as his second assistant provided a helpful yes-man chorus of "Oh snap!" and "No she did not just say that!" Now, the LAT's Patrick Goldstein has caught up with Geffen to get his thoughts on Obama's once-unlikely victory, and Geffen dropped this tidbit about his own kingmaking ability:

Times columnist Maureen Dowd spent a decent chunk of this campaign trying to paint Barack Obama as another effete faggy Democratic wuss, as she did to John Kerry and Al Gore, just because, hey, why not. OBambi was all her, remember? Also she called him a "butterfly." Now, today, she's thrilled Obama won, and certain he'll restore dignity and grandeur to Washington and the White House. Obama "has the chance to make the White House pristine again." Yes, because Washington DC and the White House were certainly pristine before all this, right? Dowd explains how rough the last 16 years have been:

♦ More pain at 4 Times Square: Condé Nast is shuttering Elegant Bride. [Jossip]
♦ Despite the fact Portfolio fired 32 staffers last week, a spokesperson confirms the mag is going ahead with a soirée at the 21 Club later this month. [Page Six]
♦ Not surprisingly, Fox News has landed the first post-election interview with Sarah Palin. Greta van Susteren will sit down with her in Alaska over the weekend; the interview will be broadcast on Monday. [THR]

At 2:30 today, President-elect Barack Obama will hold his first press conference since the election. Reporters will ask him for his magical plan to fix the miserable economy and Obama will announce that out-of-work Americans will be relocated to state-run Unicorn Ranches, or something, and the markets will rally, hooray. But he'll make no personnel announcements! Those wondering who might end up on his presidential money team could look at his current advisors, of course. Obama's assembled a 17-member all-star team of economic advisors, from Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, who helped create the current crisis under the Clinton administration (Republican talking points yay!!) to the chairman of Google and Warren Buffet, America's two last remaining rich people. Obama's been totally cold to the press for the entirety of the campaign, and reporters don't actually like him very much, so it might be interesting. Obama to meet economic advisors after grim jobs data [Reuters]

As Barack Obama delivered his presidential acceptance speech, Oprah Winfrey prominently led the nation in a good cry. But when the cameras caught her, she was leaning heavily up against some white guy. Who was that?? Oprah basically owns Chicago, so the Sun-Times promptly deployed an investigative team to find out. The man is Sam Perry of California's Silicon Valley, he is an Obama volunteer and contributor, a former wire-service reporter, and basically one of the nicest guys ever, according to his wife, who should know. Her quote and a clip of the Daily Show making fun of Perry, after the jump.

"By late yesterday, Time, which published more than 100,000 extra copies, had already gone back to press, while Newsweek, which also added 100,000 to its print run, was very close to doing the same." [Post]

The Daily Show weighed in on whether it will face a CRISIS OF COMEDY in a new, much more competent Obama Administration. As host Jon Stewart made clear Wednesday night, the show thinks it'll be fine, and as we predicted, the show will hedge its bets with other targets — namely, Fox News and Democrats not named Barack Obama. Here's what Daily Show writer J. R. Havlan said at the New York Comedy Festival, via the Times:

In some prior election year, the behind-the-scenes footage of a president-elect's first moments might have been captured by a photographer for, say, Life, or at least distributed through a glossy magazine like that. It must have been some small comfort to Barack Obama to be able to rely instead on a longtime photographer of his own, David Katz, at such an intimate moment, and at such a tender one, a day after the death of his grandmother. As for distribution? Photography's bridge to the 21st century, Flickr. The campaign's remarkable set of 82 behind-the-scenes pictures includes the one above, of Obama watching McCain concede, and our other favorites, after the jump.

The urge to draw, literally, a link between Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama would have been irresistible to editorial cartoonists even if both men were not Illinois legislators, outspoken against a foreign military adventure and exploitive of their hardscrabble upbringings in the national hinterlands. Who better to juxtapose with the country's first black president than the commander-in-chief who emancipated American slaves (even if Obama's ancestors were not among them)?

Amy Rice and Alicia Sams' documentary on Barack Obama has been filming since summer 2006, before the president-elect was even seeking the Democratic nomination. But the directors were inspired by the Illinois senator's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and thought he'd be worth following. Actor Ed Norton's Class 5 Films put up some money, the Obama camp provided inside access and now the bet is paying off, and not just because the candidate went all the way: HBO, it was just announced, is paying in the low seven-figures for the film, and theatrical rights are still available. Chalk it up as yet another Obama win against the Clintons!