Karma's A Nice Person Sometimes: Recently let-go, widely-read, and widely-liked Village Voice staff writer (and, full disclosure, a former co-worker of this writer's) Camille Dodero was snapped up by Gawker as a writer there. The site's editor A.J. Daulerio on his estimable new hire, who starts September 24th:

"She's the tits."

Direct quote. [@AJDaulerio]

Drew-Hoo: New York Times multimedia editor Andrew DeVigal is leaving the paper for an "interactive studio" in Portland. Fence-jumper. [Tumblr]

From Reuters to Rock: Reuters senior media correspondent Yinka Adegoke is going to Billboard as Deputy Editor. [Billboard]

She Don't Want Your Life: Daily Beast columnist Michelle Goldberg apparently got into a pretty heated exchange with Varsity Blues actor Jon Voight.

Voight simmered for a moment and then said, “Take it easy there, shorty.” As Goldberg looked on in amazement, Voight sprang out of his low-slung chair. “Let’s just stand up, how tall are you?” he demanded, hovering over her a tad menacingly. 

She's basically Jonathan Moxon. As opposed to spending absurd amounts of money, starting fights at the RNC is not, in fact, the worst editorial strategy. [The Daily Beast]

Teach Me How To Shupak: NY1 "Rail and Road Report" morning celebrity and erstwhile Observer Media Power Bachelorette (Class of 2011) Jamie Shupak made a video with someone from the NY Daily News about How To Ride The Subway. Not sure she's actually an expert on this, per se, but if there's going to be one, it should be her. [YouTube]

Huffington Post Labs Exactly as Scary As It Sounds: While she might not be attaching giraffe parts to reporters for new blogging limbs, Arianna Huffington does have something called "Huffington Post Labs" where they're conducting crazy news experiments. The first one involves the most popular sentences on the Huffington Post, which is basically what news on the internet will be one day: A series of popular sentences. [TechCrunch]

A Rich Legacy: Is it a coincidence that Frank Rich got on Reddit not a day after Barack Obama did? Better yet, is there a better moment in that entire thread than when answered a question from a young woman in love with his son, Simon Rich, who wanted a "good word" put in for her? Rich's answer:

"Get in line."

My answer: Nope. [Romenesko]

Not Afraid To Be Servicey: One of the few genuinely nice organizations we'd love to see survive for future generations of Internet, or media, or multimedia, or whatever it is: StoryCorps now has a KickStarter page everyone should give money to. Alternately, everyone should go do a StoryCorps. [KickStarter]

- - -

That's the end of the day, here. Tips, story ideas, Varsity Blues DVD easter eggs? We want to hear all of them. Tell us everything you know. | @weareyourfek

Adam Moss just wants to tell you about his new hire! (Patrick McMullan)

In today's Socratic dialogue between Adam Moss and Frank Rich on New York's Daily Intel, the esteemed editor teases his new star writer's forthcoming contributions to the magazine.

"When you came over to New York, we said we’d try a weekly dialogue of some sort. Right now you’re closing next week’s cover story and we haven’t figured out how these dialogues are going to work, but I thought maybe we’d sneak a kind of trial one in, given the passage into law in New York of gay marriage."

Right, this is just a normal way an editor talks to his writer. Just reminding him that he's closing a cover story, in case he forgot! No one here but us two professional media types, chewin' the fat.

The substance of the conversation--regarding gay marriage in New York as well as national politics and literature--is interesting (the text is unInternetishly dense!), but is inflected with an inside-baseball-ism that has seemed the tenor for our daily reading since the New York Times Magazine's relaunch under former New York staffer Hugo Lindgren, with its crediting editors and its blogged updates on (purported) inner workings. A magazine hired a writer! His writing will be good or it will not! The sneak-peek at the fact that he is writing for them reveals nothing other than the fact that the inner workings of New York are so uniquely interesting to Adam Moss that he cannot contain himself. Readers, waiting for the cover story they knew was coming from the full-page ads, might be forgiven for remembering a time when the weekly Frank Rich column was an expectation, not cause for exultation.

Journalists from newsrooms, magazine offices and studios across the country digested the information, repackaged it appropriately for their readers and viewers and moved on to the next order of business. For a select few, that meant planning for the weekend's events, the most high profile of which was the annual White House Correspondents Dinner--a tradition begun in 1920 that brings together the press and the people they purportedly cover for an evening of entertainment, shmoozing and, as the name implies, dinner. It is the nexus of a series of events, mostly cocktail parties and a few selective brunches, that extend throughout the weekend and are hosted by various media organizations and attended by Washington insiders, journalists--and increasingly, California-based attendees with a presumed interest in public policy, like Kim Kardashian and the Jonas Brothers--some of whom are invited as guests to the dinner by media organizations represented there.

At 4:52 p.m. on Thursday afternoon,  The Observer emailed The New York Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, to ask whether the dinner--an affair wherein journalists who are tasked with covering beltway power spend an evening socializing with it--is at worst, an outright conflict of interest, and at best, well ... a bit unseemly. Former New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who recently left the paper to become a columnist for New York magazine, had criticized the paper's attendance at the event and was said to be influential in curtailing its official appearances a few years prior. (Mr. Rich, who was out of the country, did not respond to The Observer's requests for comment.) The Observer wondered whether Mr. Rich's departure changed the paper's thinking on the issue. "GROAN," Mr. Keller responded via e-mail. "SUCH a done subject. Why don't you try Dean Baquet in the Washington Bureau? I'm sure he'd LOVE to answer your questions."

Seven minutes later,  The Observer received an e-mail from Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet. "Here is the deal," Mr. Banquet wrote. "We are not being holier than thou, or criticizing anyone who chooses to go. But we came to the conclusion that it had evolved into a very odd, celebrity-driven event that made it look like the press and government all shuck their adversarial roles for one night of the year, sing together (literally, by the way) and have a grand old time cracking jokes. It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game. It feels uncomfortable."

An hour earlier, in the Situation Room of the White House, senior intelligence advisers explained to the president that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance Osama bin Laden had been located in a compound in Pakistan that the C.I.A. had been scouting for months, and the president needed to decide whether he would move ahead with an air strike or a ground strike, or if he would wait to gather further intelligence.

Around 7 p.m. that evening, Mr. Baquet followed up: "I don't want to trash the small and medium size papers that really care about this. It's just the way we feel." (For the record,  The Observer is a small-size paper, and does not officially attend the dinner.) 

It was Friday morning at 8:28 a.m. in New York and  The Observer scanned news of the Royal Wedding in London, which attracted approximately 22 million viewers in the U.S. As we prepared to head to D.C. to further inspect the Correspondents Dinner attendees up close, a meeting was taking place in the White House Diplomatic Room. Before boarding a helicopter to Alabama to survey flood damage, the president called his senior aides in and told them: it would be a helicopter strike. Security Adviser Tom Donilon; his deputy, Denis McDonough; and counterterrorism advisor John Brennan decided to move forward with Operation Geronimo, scheduled to take place on Saturday.

That evening in the W Hotel lobby, one of the first of the weekend's various parties had begun. Around 8:30 p.m. Hilda Solis, dressed in fuchsia, was ushered past New Yorker party security. "Secretary of Labor," her handler said to a young man with earpiece and iPad. Secretary Solis bounced in place to the elevator music. Forty-five minutes later editor David Remnick rested a plate of sushi on a table and debriefed The Observer. "Do you know about Mike Kelly?" In 1987, Kelly, then a  reporter, set the precedent for outrageous escorts by bringing Fawn Hall, Iran-Contra femme fatale. Kelly was killed reporting in Iraq in 2003. Asked about the decision by his former employer, The Washington Post, to bring Donald Trump as its guest of honor, Mr. Remnick replied, "Well, that should be interesting because I just ripped his ass. I'll have to stop by and say, 'Hi'."

About an hour later, The Observer intercepted the dinner's emcee, Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers, who provided intelligence on the impending roast of the president, a tradition of the annual dinner. Mr. Meyers was not nervous, "healthy butterflies," he said. "It's easier to make fun of a politician you do like," he said. "It comes off as less angry."

Saturday morning. Operation Geronimo had been rescheduled due to weather.

The weather was just fine at Tammy Haddad's annual Garden Brunch--held at the former home of the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, which is now owned by venture capitalist Mark Ein--the weekend's festivities now in full swing. The Observer spotted New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich, who is reportedly working on a book about the incestuousness of beltway culture. Also in attendance were Olympic snowboarder Shaun "The Flying Tomato" White, Morgan Fairchild and Chace Crawford. Rupert Murdoch was ushered from the living room to the patio after being approached by reporter Gabriel Sherman, known to be working on a book about Fox News. Actor Tim Daly, in beard, shades and a threadbare velvet blazer, went largely unrecognized and explained to another guest that he wanted to meet Buzz Aldrin, who was being wheeled around the patio. He played [astronaut] Jim Lovell in the HBO series, he explained. Rosario Dawson, a guest of CNN, made sure to note that she was invited because of her advocacy work and not her celebrity status.

Mid-afternoon, REM bassist Mike Mills convinced an unidentified suit to submit to the powers of magician Gerard Senehi. "Mentalist," Mr. Senehi corrected. "If you call me a magician again, I'll kill you." Mr. Senehi correctly guessed the foreign word the suit has written on the back of his MSNBC business card. It was already written on Mr. Senehi's own business card, which he extracted from his wallet, to Mr. Mills' delight.

The Palin family arrived surrounded by photographers and clamoring fans and a TV producer was seen bragging about having given Sarah Palin his card.

Later that evening in the reception room of the Washington Hilton, a throng of people, including Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Piven, began moving toward the main hall of the hotel for the White House Correspondents Dinner. Greta Van Susteren engaged Donald Trump as a crowd looked on.  The Observer asked Mr. Trump who he was excited to meet at the dinner. "Everyone. Everyone," he said.  A Washington Times reporter thrust her comically oversize microphone at him: "Mr. Trump, what do you have to say about the rumor that Kim Kardashian will be your running mate?" He answered without looking at her: "That's, uh, I can't, that's not true." She persisted: "What about Khloe?" Trump and the throng trudged forward: "No, no." The reporter grinned as she turned away, pleased with her line of questioning.

At approximately 8:30 p.m., the president arrived at the dinner. Shortly thereafter, he left the dais, following Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' lead. As revelers continued to sip their Champagne, the president was informed the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi's son had been killed by a NATO airstrike.

An hour later, the New York Times reporter Peter Baker won the Aldo Beckman Award for his "deep insight about how Obama operates, from his response to the terrorist threat to his struggles to contend with what the president himself called our 'big, messy democracy.'"

At 10:22 p.m. Seth Myers was well into his routine for the evening. "People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush," said Myers, "but did you know that every day from 4 to 5 he hosts a show on C-SPAN?" The president laughed heartily. Myers later noted: "I am, of course, contractually obligated to attend the MSNBC party. Everyone knows how the MSNBC party works: President Obama mixes the Kool-Aid, and everyone drinks it."

An hour later, The Observer was at the Italian embassy for the MSNBC party, where Rachel Maddow mixed drinks and tended bar below a sign that glows in cursive, pink-neon lettering: RACHEL'S BAR." The Observer asked her if she thought the dinner was a little too cozy. "I don't go to the dinner, I just go to this," she said. "What are you asking me is too cozy? That thing that I didn't go to that I don't know anything about? You should ask me about something else. I didn't go!"

The Observer asked MSNBC president Phil Griffin how the evening was going for him: "It gets better because, you know, we're making a statement," he said. "An event like this, we're letting everybody know, we're here. We're in Washington, a place for politics, we should be celebrated on a night like tonight. It's a night to let all the issues be put aside for one moment to step aside and enjoy yourself. O.K.?"

Eliot Spitzer entered the party. "I thought journalists weren't working tonight," he told The Observer.

At 1 a.m., Cee-Lo took the stage. The Observer squeezed its way over to Sarah Palin, holding court with the largest crowd at the party. Sean Penn was sitting across the room at a table with four other people, including REM's Michael Stipe. Ms. Palin, for her part, was vocal about the role of the press in such proximity to the president. "Well, I still would like the White House Press Corps to ask our president a bit tougher questions about where he really wants to go with this economy and does he understand and believe in free markets or does he really believe in government's ability to plan our economy for us? So I want the press corps to ask those questions!"

The next morning, the weather was nice in Pakistan--nice enough that Operation Geronimo received another green light. In Washington, it rained, but President Obama was reported to have played nine holes of golf.

Just after mid-day in the Hay-Adams Hotel Penthouse , the Reuters-McLaughlin Group Brunch was filling up; on the terrace, attendees noted a spectacular view of the White House. Inside, a caterer spilled an entire dish of butter onto The McLaughlin Group's Eleanor Clift.

Around 2 p.m., the president met with the core Operation Geronimo team before the final "go" order was given.

A few minutes before at the brunch, the Financial Times New York editor Gillian Tett was cornered by anti-tax lobbyist Mark A. Bloomfield, the president and CEO of the American Council for Capital Formation. Post-business-card exchange with Mr. Bloomfield, she talked to The Observer about her table's guests: "We had both the chairman of the S.E.C. and the chairman of the F.D.I.C. We weren't expecting to get both and they both said yes immediately. You know what's brilliant about the whole evening? Most of the time all these people would be at loggerheads, and at this, they're all relaxed."

"When you put them all in a room together and it's 3,000 people and it's all the show-business stuff, it looks kind of icky," said FT columnist John Gapper. "But actually, the reality is: How am I not supposed to not ever have lunch or talk with these people? You get a story out of it."

But the story was happening elsewhere. At 3:45 p.m. EST/12:45 a.m. PKT, explosions were heard by locals in Bilal Town, a suburb of Abbotabad.

An IT guy Abbotabad noted over Twitter: "A huge window shaking band here in Abbotabad Cantt. I hope it's not the start of something nasty :-S"

At 3:50 p.m.: Osama Bin Laden was "tentatively identified as dead."

At 7:01 p.m.: Osama Bin Laden was positively identified.

At 8:30 p.m.: President Barack Obama was given a final briefing on the operation.

And at 9:45 p.m., every major television network interrupted its broadcast with an update that the president would be briefing the nation. The Apprentice was cut short before America could find out who had been fired.

11:35 p.m.: News of the operation had already leaked out through unofficial outlets on Twitter feeds, some of which had been formerly sprinkled with the Correspondents Dinner's preferred cutesy moniker for itself: "#nerdprom." At 10:24 p.m., Donald Rumsfeld's Chief of Staff and Navy Reserve intel officer Keith Urbahn tweeted, "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot damn."

Then the president addressed the nation. Nearly ten years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden was dead.

The biggest story of 2011--the behind-the-scenes workings of which had happened within single-digit miles of the elite of the nation's press corps, in closer mass proximity to the president than they are at nearly any other time of the year--had broken.

And it had not leaked. Except perhaps at 10:24 to Urbahn, and via Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock. "Just got word that will shock the world - Land of the free... home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!"

Mr. Johnson did not attend the dinner. 

kstoffel@observer.com, fkamer@observer.com

Intellectuals, unite. This fall, the ideas and ideologies will be flying at New York museums. Here's a look at some of the more important, or interesting, lectures and readings coming up.

The Morgan Library & Museum

Reading Mark Twain

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2010, 6:30 p.m.

$30 for non-members

As part of its commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death, the Morgan Library presents three writers who have, in their own way, aspired to Twainness. Toni Morrison represents the serious novelist, Frank Rich the social critic and Fran Lebowitz the literary gadfly. Put them all together, and you'll have a nice facsimile of the great man himself--excepting the mustache, of course. Ten points to any wag who can make them discuss Twain's celebrated speech, "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism," a favorite of 14-year-old boys.

www.themorgan.org

New Museum

Gysin's Ghost: Poetry Marathon

Saturday, Sept. 25, 1 p.m.

Free with museum admission

In September, the New Museum hosts a day long poetry reading--an event whose oh-so-downtownness is meant to be in keeping with the current exhibition: a retrospective of the works of Brion Gysin, heppest of the hep beats. His most striking piece on display is the Dream Machine, whose flickering lights are meant to be viewed with one's eyes shut. As poets Kenneth Goldsmith, Bernadette Mayer and Anne Waldman read, feel free to leave your eyes closed and imagine.

www.newmuseum.org

The Museum of
the City of New York

Who Broke
New York?

Wednesday, Sept. 15, 6:30 p.m.

$12 for non-members,
reservations required

There was a moment when everyone liked John Lindsay. Lanky, handsome, with the amiable patrician cluelessness of a Gary Cooper character, his mayoralty was undone by a snowstorm and looked even sillier in retrospect, as his policies ushered the city into fiscal quicksand. But though it's tempting to blame the WASP, 1975 was not wholly Lindsay's fault. The Museum of the City of New York, as part of an ongoing attempt to rehabilitate the tall man's legacy, discusses.
www.mcny.org

The Frick Collection

Drawings by Ribera, Murillo, Goya, and Their Contemporaries in North
American Collections

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 6 p.m.

Free

In October, the Frick shows off a bevy of drawings by the Spanish Old Masters, many of them now in U.S. collections. Iberian art was first imported en masse by the nation's kindliest plutocrats-J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt, particularly-but after the pesky Spanish Civil War, it became much trickier to export. This lecture tells how museums and collectors managed to get Franco to let go of his Goya.

www.frick.org

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Celebrating the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

Friday, Oct. 1 and 29, 6 p.m.

Free with museum admission

The spectacular Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela has been attracting long lines since the ninth century. Traveling mostly by foot, pilgrims came from as far as Eastern Europe to pay penance in front of the remains of St. James, one of the 12 apostles. To mimic the experience in microcosm, try walking to the Metropolitan Museum on a Friday night to learn about the industries--artistic and commercial--that sprang up on the road to the shrine. Dubbed "The Way of St. James," it has drawn believers to the Holy City of Galicia, Spain, for a thousand years.

www.metmuseum.org

Japan Society

Mark Epstein & Lewis Hyde: Mindful Living

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 6:30 p.m.

$20

No matter what he claimed, that way enlightened dude who lived in the dorm room next to yours was not the first to ask, "What's the sound of one hand clapping?" He should have credited Hakuin Ekaku, an 18th-century Zen master who posed the question in painting, as the slightly more tidy query, "What is the sound of one hand?" That painting and dozens more go on display at the Japan Society in October, along with a lecture presented by the adorably named "Tricycle: The Buddhist Review." www.japansociety.org

The Museum of Modern Art

Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement

Monday, Oct. 18, 12:30 p.m.

$5

A highlight this fall of MoMA's smart Brown Bag lunch program is this talk celebrating public architecture projects that seek, in ways big and small, to change the world. Amid fruit cups and paninis. lecturer Margot Weller will talk about how the architects featured in the exhibition became agents for social change simply by designing particularly vibrant houses, schools or community centers. Visitors are permitted to trade snacks, but anyone whose mother packed their lunch will be roundly snickered at.

www.moma.org

I have two reactions to the latest Mel-gate. The first is that I couldn't give a hoot about Mr. Gibson, a mega-celebrity who has clearly lost control of his life. The second is: There but for the grace of God go we.

I don't mean that we all harbor barely suppressed racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny. I'm not saying that we are all one step away from exploding into an obscene, drunken tantrum. I mean that we are all-those of us who are not saints, anyway-fallible beings capable of irrational behavior, ugly sentiments and rhetorical rage.

I agree with the notion that the ugly private acts of public figures like Mr. Gibson are fair game. If the public giveth fame and unimaginable wealth, and it is accepted, then the public should have the right to take it away in the light of an extraordinary meltdown of character. Call it the force majeure clause in popular culture. But like our legal system, our structure of customs and conventions also proceeds by precedent. There is general exultation that Mr. Gibson's former lover, Oksana Grigorieva, taped her telephone conversation with him, thus catching him in the act of viciously attacking her and hurling racial and ethnic slurs. (How old-fashioned to use the telephone to expose someone, rather than some digital technology.) But there is no awareness that the same tactics could one day soon be used against all sorts of public figures, virtuous or not, and even against people who have no public presence whatsoever. Aren't Facebook pages being scoured for private indiscretions, even as I write this, by prospective employers, embittered ex-spouses and just plain malevolent individuals?

And when you or I are caught with our pants down or our tongues embarrassingly flapping, our expectation that people will see the complicated shadings of our misconduct might be disappointed. The most sophisticated people have turned a blind eye to the possibility that Ms. Grigorieva might well be the ruthless gold digger Mr. Gibson has accused her of being. Can't he be the indecent man he has proven himself to be, and also be right about his perception of his former paramour? Just as you can applaud the downfall of the equally tongue-tripping Stanley McChrystal, despise him as a homicidal frat boy, yet believe him when he says that he found Barack Obama "unprepared" and understand, if not pardon, the source of his disdain for a president so easily intimidated by a general?

As for Mr. Gibson, that gnarled, dark, snarling voice on the tapes is the voice of a man who has been delivered a blow to, as D.H. Lawrence once put it, his "sexual root." After all, Mr. Gibson doesn't have the typical profile of a Hollywood celeb. He was married for 30 years to the same woman-a former dental assistant-with whom he had seven children. Apparently, he likes children so much that he and his now ex-wife have donated millions of dollars to organizations devoted to helping sick ones. After 30 years, something in him snaps and he runs off with a woman who allows him to donate millions of dollars to her mediocre career as a performer. Filled with self-loathing at being made a fool, he turns his self-hatred against her. His childish, inadequate view of the world-his religious inflexibility, fueled by alcohol and a self-aggrandizing "romanticism"-breaks under the strain of his contradictions and he erupts. The kikes and the niggers and the fags and the wetbacks are the patchwork monster of his very own self, formerly hidden by a puerile Catholicism, and by an adolescent notion of himself as a hero-Braveheart-and by his own occasional charitableness. Maybe he is so fond of children because, like so many Hollywood actors who grew rich and famous before they could grow a character, he never had a reckoning with his responsibilities to people outside his familiar world.

You can buy my psychologizing or not, but I think that if we don't practice understanding in the public realm, we will start to lose it in the private realm. Alas, there are plenty of people willing to hasten the prosecutorial atmosphere to advance their own interests. Consider The Times' David Brooks and Frank Rich. Like some old vaudeville duo, both of them instantly seized on Mr. Gibson's latest meltdown to preen themselves on their own moral virtue, and to draw the most foolish conclusions from it about American life.

According to Mr. Brooks, Mr. Gibson's private rant means that "we've entered an era where self-branding is on the ascent and the culture of self-effacement is on the decline." Never mind that with his global celebrity and his hundreds of millions of dollars, Mr. Gibson is as much unlike "us" as Mr. Brooks is unlike Homer, to whom he repeatedly and inaccurately refers in his columns. (Anger in The Iliad is not perceived as "a source of pleasure," as he wrote in his Gibson column. Rather, it destroys families and societies.) And never mind that barely three weeks ago, Mr. Brooks himself deplored the culture of exposure, using the McChrystal meltdown to mount his social-science pulpit and loudly lament "the exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities."

And here is the ever-sanctimonious Frank Rich reaching his big-picture conclusion: "The death throes of Mel Gibson's career feel less like another Hollywood scandal than the last gasps of an American era." Never mind that Mr. Gibson, who abruptly shifted from action hero to playing the infinitely complex Hamlet, does not stand for an era. And never mind that the era Mr. Rich is referring to-the era of the culture wars-is one that he keeps pronouncing dead in column after column, for the simple reason that all he knows how to write about is the culture wars. Mr. Rich goes on to call Mr. Gibson a "bigoted blowhard." Well, that's obvious. Mr. Gibson also opposed the Iraq war and spoke of President Bush's "fearmongering." I still think he's a creep. I can't forgive him for using the N-word, even though the Lethal Weapon movies that he made with Danny Glover probably did as much as Oprah to break down taboos between whites and blacks. Yet in their affectation of starry-eyed naïveté about human nature, Messrs. Brooks and Rich seem to be enacting their own Braveheart fantasy. Mr. Rich even boasts that Mr. Gibson once threatened to kill him. Ecce homo!

With his racial, religious and sexual slurs, Mr. Gibson has disgraced himself with an un-American outburst. Our fair land of teeming differences is too much for him. He has forfeited his right to loom on our mythical and mythologizing silver screen: He will disappear into ignominious oblivion, and he should.

Still, I wonder if in this little story we are now telling ourselves about the absolute badness of Mr. Gibson and the absolute goodness of those who condemn him, we are not acting a lot like the puerile Patriot himself.

editorial@observer.com

"I still walk closer to the curb because I'm sure that's going to happen," the 26-year-old novelist SNL writer said over iced coffee last week.

For Mr. Rich, whose writing is often inflected with an impending sense of doom — God makes completely irrational decisions, Dracula poses as the Red Cross — New York has always been a scary place. In his own assessment, living here has instilled an intensely neurotic style in all his writing.

"Just the sheer population makes it a scary place and with a city this packed with people there are sure to be a few murderers on your block," Mr. Rich deadpanned.

John Mulaney, an SNL writer with whom Mr. Rich writes frequently, said that these jokes are typical of Mr. Rich.

"I think nothing makes him laugh more than freaking out and panicking," Mr. Mulaney said.

Mr. Rich's illustrious origins are well documented. His father is Frank Rich, the Times columnist, and his brother Nathaniel is an editor at The Paris Review. His first book of jokes came out mere months after graduating Harvard — he has since published a second humor book — and he's working on the screenplay for his recently optioned novel Elliot Allagash, which was published in May. News of the film deal provoked an angry rant on Gawker, but Mr. Rich said he has "sympathy and respect" for his haters.

"I think that's not even the biggest travesty," he said of his perceived nepotism. "The biggest travesty is that anybody gets to write jokes for a living. It's a ridiculous profession and I feel like it should probably be against the law for everyone not just the children of successful journalists."

When Mr. Rich walked into the Brooklyn Heights restaurant where we met him, he could have been mistaken for a student on the way home from school, wearing a loose red polo shirt and carrying a backpack. Later on, three children began to make faces at him through the restaurant's window. 

"Hey kids!" he said smiling at them, admiring a small black toy carried by one of them. "I feel like toys are cooler now."

Youth has been a fertile source of material for Mr. Rich. Elliot Allagash is set at a fictional New York private school not unlike Mr. Rich's alma mater Dalton, and SNL cast member Bill Hader, 32, pointed out that if an SNL sketch ever involves a fairytale, Mr. Rich had a hand in it.

For the record, the school in the book is not Dalton. "I thought it would be more Dalton-y but it's not," said one of Mr. Rich's former teachers.

“I always write out of a sense of fear and doom,” Mr. Rich said. Obviously New York provides him with ample material there, as does being Jewish and reading about God's smiting in the Torah when he was younger. "The Old Testament God is just a hilarious comedy character," he said. 

WHENEVER MR. HADER visits Brooklyn Heights Mr. Rich gives him and his wife the "hard pitch" on the neighborhood.

"[He] takes us on a long walk and... knows the all the little interesting anecdotes about each building like, 'that's where Norman Mailer wrote whatever book,' 'that's where Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's. He lived on the garden level,'" Mr. Hader said.

Mr. Rich does most of his writing in his own Brooklyn Heights apartment, by the window. He and Mr. Hader worked on their horror comedy screenplay for Judd Apatow in that apartment. When Mr. Rich and Mr. Hader write they take breaks at the local deli Lassen & Hennigs where Mr. Rich orders a Knickerbocker — a sandwich with fried chicken, bacon, cheddar and mayo on a buttered roll — which he said he eats about three times a week. SNL head writer Seth Meyers said via email that watching Mr. Rich wait for his sandwich at the Second Avenue Deli on rewrite day is a "true joy."

Mr. Rich is aware that he draws on his unique angle on New York in his novel.

"It's certainly not McInerney's or Bret Easton Ellis' New York," he said. "It's more about the idea of New York." In this way, he thinks Elliot Allagash's New York is like the London of P.G. Wodehouse, or Arthur Conan Doyle.

Simon is "fairly fanatical about the city, its history, its lore," according to his father, who told us that his sons' recommendations for New York reading have led him to books he may not have otherwise discovered.

Simon's brother Nathaniel wrote: "All three of us are obsessed with New York lore, with the city in previous eras, its forgotten and hidden aspects, its purest expressions of urban insanity. But we share other obsessions too: hot sauces, the Mets, Sichuan food."

Comedy was one of Simon's personal obsessions. As a kid, he would around 30 Rockefeller Plaza, now his work place, to catch glimpses of the Late Night with Conan O'Brien writers and would pass by the Your Show of Shows writers' room near Carnegie Hall just to marvel at the "holy moly" — his words — quality of it.

Now, though, Mr. Rich seems content with the "holy moly" of Brooklyn Heights.

"There's a plaque on a brownstone near here that claims that the curveball was invented in Brooklyn Heights," Mr. Rich told us. "Like, the pitch. And that alone is reason enough to live in this neighborhood."

"He was probably burned for being a warlock," he added, referring to the inventor. "What a terrifying thing to make a ball curve."

And that, in miniature, is the story of Mr. Obama’s relationship with the press. Time and again, he has turned up in positions that, to observers in the media, looked all but hopeless. Each time, pundits have pleaded with him to abandon his measured, methodical approach in favor of more radical measures. And each time, he has ignored their advice—and cruised to victory, or at least some messy version of it.

This dynamic was most pronounced during his presidential campaign, when practically every week some op-ed mandarin was advising him—always in vain—to get vicious with Hillary Clinton/John McCain/Sarah Palin. It reached its apotheosis in the run-up to the March 21 passage of his health care bill, the Obama administration’s signal achievement so far. “When the history of President Barack Obama’s first year in office is written, scholars will try to answer this puzzling question: How did a gifted, charismatic young Democrat—who won the White House by a large margin and brought in huge Congressional majorities—manage NOT to enact fundamental health care reform, a goal his party has been seeking since Truman?” That was Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman, writing in August 2009. By the time of Mr. Obama’s January 27 State of the Union speech, the entire Beltway press corps was singing in harmony. Politico.com set the pitch, as it so often does. “As the Obama administration marks its first birthday, there is no reason to shop around for the perfect present,” wrote John F. Harris and Carol E. Lee. “What President Barack Obama needs most is obvious: a new political strategy.”

To paraphrase Howard Fineman: When the history of the coverage of Barack Obama is written, scholars will try to answer this puzzling question: How did the press keep blowing it? The answer has a lot to do with the unwillingness or inability of journalists to see things in terms other than their own. Mr. Obama has often spoken, never approvingly, about the modern media machine and its continuous, insatiable need for fresh grist. Last June, for instance, he grew testy when pressed for a response to the Iranian regime’s harsh put-down of democracy protests. “I know everybody here is on a 24-hour news cycle,” he told NBC’s Chuck Todd. “I’m not, O.K.?”

Those closest to the president see things in much the same way. “People in the news media are trying to make news every day, more so than they used to, and more so around politics in particular,” says Joel Benenson, lead pollster for President Obama. “You get these massive misinterpretations very quickly because everyone’s so anxious to declare a trend.”

Since actual news events like elections and floor votes are no more frequent than they were a decade or two ago, the tendency is to fill the gaps with horse-race journalism. “There’s a consistent rush to judgment and to declare winners and losers before anything has happened, on a timetable that has nothing to do with reality,” says Frank Rich, the New York Times columnist. Mr. Rich is not wholly innocent. Last summer, not long after Mr. Fineman wrote his bit of future history, Mr. Rich used his column to lament “Obama’s Squandered Summer.” He chided the president for insisting that managing the news cycle was not part of his job: “His White House has a duty to push back against the 24-hour news cycle, every 24 hours if necessary, when it threatens to derail his agenda, the nation’s business, or both.” He now acknowledges that he underestimated the wisdom in Mr. Obama’s stubbornness. “His defiance of the 24/7 news cycle, certainly in the case of health care, has paid off,” he says. “He’s obviously taking a certain joy in defying it.”

In keeping with Mr. Obama’s rhetoric, the view from inside the administration is that the media meta-narrative is something to be regarded, if at all, with ironic detachment. “It’s more a game members of the media play against each other than a game they’re playing against him,” says one administration official. “It’s not how he defines victory by any stretch.”

This amused condescension is, to some degree, a posture, says Tracy Sefl, a Democratic media strategist and senior vice president of Navigators Global, a Washington communications consultancy. “If Obama didn’t believe the news cycle was important, he wouldn’t have such a robust communications apparatus,” says Ms. Sefl. But no president, no matter how obsessed with managing the media, could possibly afford to engage with it on the hyper-granular level it now operates on. “If the White House did the same dance that the press does on the minute-by-minute news cycle basis, I can’t imagine anyone there would have the stamina to get up every day to do their jobs,” she says.

Whether the Beltway press is confused by Mr. Obama’s mixed signals, or whether it has rendered itself institutionally incapable of thinking in terms other than the short and the shallow, it’s a fair bet that the best, most accurate prediction about the political fortunes of this president is the one you’re reading here: The media will continue to attach significance to things that he doesn’t care about, and it will continue to rush to judgment before the evidence is in. And if you don’t believe that, says the administration official, just wait until the midterms. “That’ll be the next time he’s underestimated and beaten up in the news cycle and then comes out smelling a hell of a lot better than they think.”

Jeff Bercovici writes for AOL’s Daily Finance blog.

At one point, we asked Ms. Naegle about Frank Rich and Tina Brown's role at the network.

Last time we checked in with HBO, in the first half of 2008, both Ms. Brown, the founder and editor of the Daily Beast, and Mr. Rich, the New York Times columnist, had signed on as creative consultants for the network. 

All these months later, were Ms. Brown and Mr. Rich, we wondered, still sifting through the tides of culture in search of potential development ideas?

As it turns out ... yes!

Ms. Naegle said that she still talks with Mr. Rich and Ms. Brown on a recurring basis.

"They're working with material just like producers work with material," said Ms. Naegle. "We talk with them fairly often."

So far, Ms. Brown has already teamed up with the producer Bill Haber on one project for HBO, optioning Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons for an hour-long series.

And last week, shortly after arriving in town from L.A., Ms. Naegle  headed off to the Union Square Cafe for a dinner with Mr. Rich.

"Frank has got such a ravenous interest in so many things," said Ms. Naegle.

The Observer has learned that Mr. Rich is currently working on a project for HBO with the actor James Gandolfini (of The Sopranos fame) and Roberto Benabib, the co-executive producer of Showtime's Weeds. The project is apparently still in its embryonic stages.

In the meantime, Ms. Naegle continues to discuss ideas with Ms. Brown and Mr. Rich on a semi-regular basis.

"They do have day jobs," said Ms. Naegle. "But when they have something they are passionate about and want to say creatively, we talk."

1. Times editors are proud of Aunt Mabel today. Investigative journalism takes the top spot in an exhaustive look into how a Philadelphia Veterans Hopsital botched treatments for prostate cancer—well, yes, of course she's worried about this, but still. Honestly, anything other than Frank Rich for a Monday morning is a welcome change.

2. We'll just give you the headline for this one: For Older Investors, Old Rules May Not Apply. 'Nuff said.

3. Kristof scores the upset and takes top spot for the columnists.

4. Oy, again with the abs.

5. We'll give you the headline for this one, too:  Typing In an E-Mail Address, and Giving Up Your Friends’ as Well.

6. From the magazine, a story about Jodi Picoult, kid-lit and how we raise our children. If the headline were better, we would have just given you that.

7. And there's Frank Rich.

8. And Maureen Dowd.

9. We actually like this story: Debating the ethics of when/how to use a BlackBerry during meetings. Cough: Don't do it during Auntie's dinners.

10. Friedman discusses ... Iran! It finally cracks the top 10!

Final Tally:
Columnists: 4
Health: 1
Investigative Journalism/Health: 1
Money: 1
Technology: 1
Magazine: 1
Ethics: 1

Six Day Total:
Columnists: 13
Health: 12
Travel: 5
Technology: 5
Money: 4
Op-Ed Contributors: 3
Dining: 2

An Observation: Aunt Mabel decided to shake things up on Wednesday! Only one story from the top 10 list yesterday remains on the list. But don't worry: She stays loyal to her favorite topics. And Iran still isn't one of them.

1. Unlike Frank Rich, who instantly catapulted to No. 1 on Sunday/Monday, this story has steadily creeped up the list to land on the top spot. Auntie loves herself a piece where creditors are settling delinquent accounts for much less than what was originally owed.

2. Don't use Zicam! This story, we humbly think, actually should be No. 1. In fact, I wish Mabel had sent me this this morning. Zicam is one of the reasons why we haven't been so sick in the last year. Feel a little tingle in your throat? Squirt this up your nose, repeat every four hours, and cold averted! But apparently the F.D.A. said this will destroy your sense of smell, and there are a whole bunch of lawsuits against it. We see a Mabel-ready Day 2 story tomorrow: Life After Zicam.

3. Borderline personality disorder, misconception, health, Aunt Mabel wheelhouse.

4. The popularity of growing a garden on a city rooftop.

5. David Brooks wins the Wednesday war among columnists.

6. Apparently when you dip into a swimming pool, you're also entering a cesspool of parasites!

7. Auntie loves to talk about wedding food, especially when the photo is of mini-burgers smothered in cheese.

8. Evolution science story!

9. Auntie's intellectual streak comes out when she reads Colum McCann on Ulysses.

10. A lot of people Aunt Mabel's age live in Arizona, we've heard. Or, they like the Southwest, anyway! Maybe that explains this piece in the top 10?

Final Tally:
Health: 4
Columnists: 1
Op-Ed Contributors: 1
(2 for Op-Ed Pages)
Money: 1
Dining: 1
Science: 1
Iran, foreign unrest: 0

Three Day Total:
Columnists: 8
Editorials: 1
Op-Ed Contributors: 3
(12 for Op-Ed Pages)
Health: 6
Travel: 4
Money: 2
Iran, foreign unrest: 0