We could barely keep up with the steady stream of A-listers who poured into Michael’s today. When we arrived a little before noon, there was a handful of power brokers quietly hunkering down to business over their Cobb salads in the back of the room. By the time Bravo’s latest star, designer Chris March arrived with Jennifer Geisser, the network’s senior vice president of communications, and publicist Alana McElroy, there was a palpable party vibe in the dining room.  Late arrival Harold Ford, Jr. worked the room like nobody’s business while social swans Muffie Potter Aston and Suzanne Johnson doled out air kisses like they were candy.

While it was a little hard to hear over the chattering crowd, I thoroughly enjoyed dishing with Chris, whose new show, Mad Fashion, premiered Tuesday night on Bravo. Chris, you might recall was a finalist on Project Runway. (Christian Siriano was the winner that season). His quirky couture and good natured personality ( gotta love that laugh!) made him a fan favorite. Chris tells me when Bravo’s resident boy wonder, Andy Cohen, got wind he was shopping a show around, he got in touch with Chris and insisted Bravo see it first. The deal was done in a matter of days.

Unlike most of those ubiquitous Bravolebrities, Chris isn’t into the fame game. “I didn’t do either show to get famous,” he tells me. “I did it to get to do the type of work I wanted to do.” Things have worked out pretty well on that score. On the Wednesday before the I Heart Radio concert in Las Vegas, Chris got a call from Lady Gaga’s office requesting he make something fabulous for her appearance at the show. In less than a week, he delivered the studded motorcycle cape she wore on stage. “That wouldn’t have happened without being on television.” Maybe, but the guy has definitely got it.  This is the same man who made Meryl Streep‘s last Oscar dress at his kitchen table. His secret weapon: a drama-free attitude when dealing with people who live and die for style.

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Judith Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter with The New York Times, is now a contributing writer for Newsmax magazine. Miller, who turns 63 on Sunday, will focus on national security and foreign relations issues.  

Her first article for Newsmax has been published in the January 2011 issue, an exclusive story about the Middle Eastern drug trade. 

She spent 28 years at the Times, writing many articles about the War in Iraq. Her stories about Weapons of Mass Destruction came under fire. It was learned later that many of those pieces were either inaccurate or completely false.

Miller was also one of the reporters that famously tipped off a White House official that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent.

Miller has authored a handful of books.

This is a clip from the Rod Lurie movie Nothing But the Truth, which is about a female reporter faces a possible jail sentence for outing a CIA agent and refusing to reveal her source. Sound familiar? The film is said to be loosely based on the Valerie Plame case with Kate Beckinsale playing Judith Miller and Matt Dillon presumably playing Patrick Fitzgerald. In the clip below they discuss ‘off the record.’

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So what do you do if you’re a disgraced former investigative reporter for the national paper of record, who, in your own words, became a “lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war?” You go work for Fox News of course!

Over at WaPo Howie Kurtz is reporting that Fox News has signed Judith Miller to be an on-air analyst as well as contribute to Fox’s website. Says says Fox senior vice president John Moody: “We’ve all had stories that didn’t come out exactly as we had hoped. [Ha!] It’s certainly something she’s going to be associated with for all time, and there’s not much anyone can do about that, but we want to make use of the tremendous expertise she brings on a lot of other issues.” The “for all time” bit does seem a bit overdone, but still that was a pretty fundamental screw-up. Television is the great absolver, however! Miller isn’t the only questionable hire Fox has made of late.

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Last month, Ken Friedman and Andy Breckman, a pair of WFMU hosts, speculated about what components were necessary to get a piece into the the “unfunniest humor column on earth” — the Times‘ “Metropolitan Diary.” They determined “pithy tales of the filthy rich which were A) overheard, B) overwritten and C) dealing with the stock market” were sure winners.

Listener Amy called in to say that little kids with stock portfolios would be a sure winner, then Andy concocted the perfect overheard comment by an adorable five year old who was concerned that his stock broker daddy wanted to “sell his shorts,” (streaming realaudio) and then Irwin put the icing on the cake by suggesting that the entry be overwritten by using the word “consternation” to describe the tyke’s concerns.

A listener posted the story to the comments section of the show’s blog, and its Webmaster, Andrea Silenzi, submitted it to the Times and, as the hosts surmised, published it yesterday.

The result? “It took about six hours for The Times to remove the entry from the online edition of February 12th’s Metropolitan Diary. If only they had corrected Judith Miller‘s errors as quickly.”

• Air America Sold: And Al Franken‘s leaving. [AP | ETP]
• Judith Miller: First up to testify at Scooter Libby CIA leak trial. [E&P]
• Top Chef Winner: Spoiled again before show airs. [Eater]
• Martha: Lures Culture & Travel editor Michael Boodro away from Louise T. MacBain. [NYP]
• Nickelodeon: Launches “Second Life for ‘tweens.’” [Mediaweek]
• Times Soccer Story: Leads to Hollywood fight over movie rights. [WSJ]
• VH1: Developing show about bloggers. [Jossip]
• Time Inc.: Mulling health portal. [BusinessWeek]
• NYTimes.com, NYPost.com: Web traffic climbing fast. [HuffPo]
• Demetri Martin: Popular on the Internet, shills without shilling. [NYT]