• Everything at the Times is great, says Sulzberger! He loves Bill Keller! His job is totally secure! The staff is all happy! And he still believes, in spite of everything, that people are still truly good at heart! [MW]
• Stephen Colbert, fake blowhard political pundit, to emcee annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, filled with real blowhard political pundits. Also, universe to collapse just a little bit further. [FishbowlDC]
• Finally, some good news: Magazines aren't necessarily going away. [National Journal]
• Hed: "'First-Ever' Urban Gay Men's Lifestyle Magazine to Get U.S. Debut." You know, except for Details. (And we won't even get started on its name.) [Folio:]

The poll also shows, apparently, that Americans are self-contradictory morons. Or at least that they have no idea what the hell "civil liberties" means.

• It's amazing that Boston still has a New York City complex, especially when they can showcase fashionable trendsetters like this. It's as if the Sears catalog had its own version of the Look Book. [Boston.com]
• Joe Sexton ascends to Metro editor at the Gray Lady, presumably because he knows "every surviving beer joint within ten blocks of Times Square." [Romenesko]
• While the Mirror caught Madonna appearing "ropey," Hello! catches her looking rather nice at the exact same event. We don't know which glossy hackhouse to believe. [Hello!]
• You stay classy, Williamsburg. [Williamsboard]
• So does this mean Trent Reznor no longer wants to fuck anybody like an animal? [TMZ]
• Country singer Kenny Chesney might not be a gay cowboy after all. He's just be into haggard, old flight attendants with a slight case of the nutsies. [Good As You]
• Just before they turn the lights out, The Black Table eeks out one last list of maniacal beer reviews. It's easier to say goodbye if you're blackout drunk. [BlackTable]

We happen to be mildly terrified of people in German-inspired costumes. (We imagine our tolerance for such things was snipped off, along with some other bits, eight days after we were born.) At the Times business section, however, one hopes this particularly neurosis is in short supply. The Bizday administrator sent this reminder (or, warning) this afternoon:

With room for nothing else? But then where will you put your lipstick?

Times shopping columnist Alex Kuczynski walks into a bra shop (the Town Shop, to be exact, which is famous for refitting women into properly-sized torture devices) a lifelong 36B.

Two days after a trio of big promotions in the Times's Washburo, Romenesko this afternoon catches a memo announcing a trio of big promotions up at NYT HQ.

• Because there just aren't enough glossy mags about celebrity gossip: Page Six magazine, coming in February to a newsstand near you. [WWD]
• For the first time, Mr. Sulzberger goes to Switzerland. And various other Timesiana. [NYO]
• Also, Mr. Sulzberger has taken valuable lessons from all his fuckups. Really. [MW]
• Hell with Couric. CBS News should give Diane Sawyer the Evening News chair. [NYO]
• Steve Brill gives money to Yale to make more journalists. Because what the media business needs in more Ivy kids. [NYT]
• How a rant becomes a letter to the editor. [CJR]

We reported Monday on the Great Cafeteria Switchover of 2006 underway at The New York Times — it seems the Times Co., in its infinite nickel-pinching wisdom, outsourced food-service duties to Restaurant Associates, which promptly canned many longtime employees. The Upper West Siders who staff the paper know they should detest this, and yet they're conflicted. A Timesperson submits this early report:

Having ourselves spent a summer waiting tables, we absofuckinglutely love Frank Bruni's article in today's Times, in which the restaurant critic spends a week waiting tables in a busy Boston establishment. It's the sort of class reversal that makes the world a better place, really. And the idea of a beefy Bruni zipping between tables, demanding cooks prepare monkfish on the fly, is potentially hilarious (and optionable, ahem). The article also gives some insight into the sad reality of evil customers; on his first night following various servers, Bruni witnesses the following:

Eureka!

• Did Oprah know Frey was full of shit, and when did she know it? Likely before he was on her show, it now seems. [NYT]
• Channel Thirteen honcho to be new PBS chief. Tote bags for everyone! [NYT]
• 156K become paying members of TimesSelect in its first four months; Dowd starts mining list for potential dates. [E&P]
• Tired of tracking just Newhouses and Wassersteins and assorted Sulzbergers? It seems Florios are now invading 4 Times Square, too. [WWD]

• Simon Dumenco has a new media quiz for you. Yee-haw. [Ad Age]
• Breaking: In unmediated blog comments threads, people sometimes say bad things. [NYT]
• NYT reorgs Washburo, aiming for more investigative pieces, more and better explanatory journalism, and more D.C.-culture coverage. [Media Mob/NYO]
• What do you Radarites do while Maer goes a-hunting again? Take new gigs! For starters, Christ Tennant's at Page Six, Chris Knutsen's at Best Life, and Remy Stern's trying to be an entrepreneur. [WWD (second item)]
• Even on satellite radio, Stern now runs up against standards and practices. Which seems to defeat the purpose, no? [NYP]

From the front page of yesterday's Arts & Leisure:

Hey, so long as Oprah is buying that "essential truth" crap, ain't no way Tanenhaus is disagreeing.

Big changes afoot — big, outsourcing, job-costing changes afoot — at the New York Times cafeteria. Word came Friday:

Media & Advertising [NYT]

We saw The Little Dog Laughed, Douglas Carter Beane's hilarious new play about a high-powered Hollywood agent determined not to let her closeted client's coming-out process destroy his career, a few weeks ago at the Second Stage Theater, and we can assure you that Julie White, who plays the agent, gives a performance every bit as commanding and delightful as the Times says she does in its profile of her today.

We love the Thursday Times for many reasons: Thursgay Styles, Home & Garden for the insanely rich, and cute David Pogue. None of these, however, compare to Alex Kuczynski's Critical Shopper column, in which she throws her considerable wealth around New York and tells us all about her expensive experiences. This week, she heads west (en route to Sundance, we're sure):

• James Risen wouldn't show Times editors his spying book until a week before it came out — and even then only after they signed an NDA. We can't imagine Denton even stifling a laugh if we tried the same thing. [NYO]
• MPA chief "regrets" making donation to conservative group Abramoff suggested. Just as we're sure Bob Ney regrets taking all those perks Abramoff offered. And Abramoff, we're equally sure, regrets offering them. [Ad Age]
• It's a dorky thing to be excited about, but, still, we're dorks: The Observer website finally gives each article its own URL, and our long national nightmare is over. [Jossip]
• Now only TimesSelect subscribers can email the paper's op-ed columnists. We hope, for Maureen's sake, that Aaron Sorkin's a TimesSelecter. [E&P]
• Jon Friedman misses Walter Cronkite. [MW]