More on the Time 100 shortly, meanwhile it seems that while we were snapping surreptitious photos of Rupert Murdoch, John Koblin over at the Observer was asking him actual questions.

When asked about his assertion that a Newsday deal was imminent, Rupe admitted that "yeah, I might have gone a little too far saying it was a certainty...I was telling the truth, but you don't know until ..."

Hmm, we think we see the future of New York media in that "..."

As to whether the Wall Street Journal has improved since Rupe took it over a year ago, he said ""Yes...But it's got a long way to go." Starting we imagine with a managing editor, who Rupe says will be hired in a number of weeks.

*Caught in the act: That's Koblin on the far left chatting it up with Rupe, Martha Stewart and Charlie Rose.

There's at least one person in America who's undeterred by Miley Cyrus's controversial Vanity Fair spread: Hugh Hefner. The longtime playboy of Playboy said that he'd be happy to welcome the fifteen year old Disney star to his pages...once she's of legal age, that is.

According to Hef the whole thing was a big to-do over nothing: "[it] is a reflection on how schizophrenic America is about sexuality."

Remember that Danish newspaper editor who received death threats after publishing those cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, and is now facing criminal charges for commissioning them? Turns out he's not so impressed with the American Press for refusing to run the cartoons in their pages.

It reads on the top of the New York Times, 'All the News That's Fit to Print,' but it's very hard to argue that this was not news on February 1, 2006.

He also suggests that had the US papers got on board with the story there would have been less of a fuss "because by doing so you would have drawn a clear line." And that he was disappointed at the lack of coverage since the Washington Post, New York Times and the New Yorker publish "offensive" cartoons all the time. This also happens to be the closest he got to calling anyone chicken.

Over at wowOwow Vanity Fair writer Judy Bachrach has discovered why the media hates Hillary Clinton so much: it's because she reminds them too much of themselves!

It seems that once upon a time Bacharch was dumped by her boyfriend and in the aftermath made a complete fool of herself discovered that she was a human being.

I couldn't...let go of a guy who exchanged me for a moron...the memory of my mortifying, excruciating almost erotic attachment to stone-cold failure haunts me to this day.

And now, just when she thought she'd pushed these "mortifying" memories to the back of her mind, never to be suffered again, Hillary Clinton's candidacy is bringing the whole distressing experience back to life.

I was, in other words, simply a younger version of Hillary Rodham Clinton. I simply could not get out of the race, even though, let's face it, the race was over...Everything I hate about myself I see in Hillary

Later we discover that what really bugs Bacharach is how Hillary deals with "powerful men" (somehow how powerful men deal with Hillary is not a problem).

continued...

Rupert Murdoch announced yesterday that he intends to double the price of the NYPost beginning May 19, perhaps concluding that with the reportedly imminent purchase of Newsday the money is bound to find a way to his pockets one way or another.

The Post experienced a similar price hike last year, one which was quickly reversed in the face of rapidly dropping sales. This time it looks like the hike may stick. While Rupe says the extra quarter is all about stemming the Post's estimated annual loss of $50 million, Jeff Bercovici over at Portfolio suspects Murdoch has "his sights set on a higher target...a Post-Newsday tag team might eliminate the News from the picture altogether."

According to Rupe, we might not have to wait that long to find out; E&P is reporting that Murdoch has "signaled that he will be the owner of Newsday as early as next week," and that we should all "just be patient a couple of days."

After years of launching formidable Oscar campaigns it seems that Harvey Weinstein decided to try his hand at running the current presidential one. CNN is reporting that the long-time Hillary Clinton supporter put a "heated" phone call in to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month during which he threatened to cut off campaign money to Congressional Democrats "unless Pelosi embraced a new plan by the movie mogul to finance a revote of the Democratic presidential primaries in Florida and Michigan." (Wow, who knew Harvey Weinstein was bankrolling Congress.)

No word on what this dastardly plan entailed exactly, only that the mogul seemed determined to "buy Clinton more time." For his part, Weinstein denies all charges saying that the phone call merely "focused on his offer to put together a team of people to help finance a revote in Florida and Michigan." Hmm, something about this makes us wonder: if Harvey Weinstein took Karl Rove into a room, who would come out?

Another gem from our ever imaginative friends over at Slate: political ringtones.

In case the robo-calls from the campaigns aren't enough, now you can hear from the candidate every time your phone rings. Choices include: (not surprisingly) Hillary's laugh, Obama saying, "Yes, We Can," or John McCain saying "My Friends."

Just yesterday Bill Gates was telling people that after being spurned by Yahoo , Microsoft would not be "pursuing" any new deals; for the time being the company would be focused on its "independent strategy." Read: alone time.

We had our doubts, and apparently they were well-founded as just today reports have surfaced that, when it started to look like the Yahoo deal wasn't going to go through, Microsoft "informally" approached the social networking site Facebook to "gauge its interest in selling itself."

No word on whether Microsoft's wandering eye will inspire Yahoo to take a second look. At the moment Yahoo is reportedly still trying to charm a skeptical Google while also continuing separate discussions with Time Warner. These internet folk get around.

According to today's NYT's this year long civics course also known as our presidential election, has now reached the pinnacle of press coverage: the celebrity tabloids.

This election is so hot that Brangelina and Britney are losing coverage to it as an "unprecedented number of pages in People and other celebrity magazines" devote themselves to the candidates.

Says US Weekly editor Janice Min:

“When you look at the great celebrity dramas of the last few years, you have Team Aniston, Team Jolie, Team Heidi and Team Lauren...and now we have Team Hillary and Team Barack.

Truth be told, we actually find this somewhat hopeful, and far more appealing than reading a cover story about Britney Spears, in say, the Atlantic.

The folks over at Slate are just a continual ray of sunshine as far as this election is concerned. First they brought us the oh-so-charming "Hillary Deathwatch" (now in widget form! — one can only imagine the uproar over a similarly named Obama clock). And now? An Obama Doomsday Scenario.

The Trailhead Blog is hosting a contest which asks readers to submit their best guess at what kind of "out-there, long-shot, one-in-a-kajillion occurrences must happen to Clinton or Obama to bring about the Obamapocalypse and hand Clinton the nomination."

Suggestions thus far include one from On the Media's Bob Garfield who says that "a video of Barack Obama in a motel room with a den of Cub Scouts setting fire to the American flag," might just do the trick. Ideas can be submitted here. As for us, well, we just read Maureen Dowd's columns when we want to feel like the world is ending.