Page Six got a pat on the head from no less than America's-Greatest-Living-Writer-cum-blogger Norman Mailer for its hypothesis that Mailer dissed on New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani in Rolling Stone so that Kakutani would be conflicted out of reviewing his next book. But no, Mailer's racially-tinged criticisms towards Kakutani (wherein he calls her a "token" at the Times and says that she "disdains white male authors") were not so basely motivated; he just doesn't like it when Asian chicks give white male authors bad reviews.

Meanwhile, we think it's safe to say that Mailer would rather watch "Dancing With The Stars" than George Bush.

UPDATE: Ears and tails to Norman Mailer from PressThink's Jay Rosen, who thinks the intrepid blogger should sally forth into the White House and tell the story from inside the Press Corps. Rosen thinks Mailer is first and foremost a journalist, and perhaps the journalist to decode Scott McClellan's doublespeak and unearth the unanswered - or unasked - questions, in his own inimitable way: "Do something you do well, journalism with an interior life, and do differently than other correspondents: describe, describe, describe on the big canvas you got from wanting to be a big novelist." It would be cool if Mailer could forgive the whole "wanting to be a novelist" thing and actually did that. Probably easier than forgiving Kakutani...

(links courtesy of original White House Blogger FishbowlDC!)