Remember a few days ago when Whoopi Goldberg ranted about a New York Times article that she and the cast of The View obviously misread? Well today she apologized to the paper:

I said that I felt the reporting was shoddy and for that I’m going to apologize, OK? I personally found the article really confusing, and as I said, I was also quite hurt that Cuba Gooding Jr., Louis Gossett Jr., and myself were not included in this expose about black Hollywood. But for saying it was shoddy reporting, I apologize, New York Times.

Very nicely done by Goldberg.

Now that the mega feud (you heard us – MEGA FEUD) is over, we can get back to our lives. Or… We could talk about how Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian have ended their MEGA FEUD as well. OMG girlfriend!

— DIANE CLEHANE

There was definitely something in the air (besides all that pesky pollen) at Michael’s today. The dining room was so jam packed with every conceivable type of boldfaced name I could barely keep track of all the wheeling and dealing that was going on around me. While the fashionistas and socialites traded air kisses and picked at the salads, the media mavens were spinning like there was no tomorrow. The power lunch is back, folks, so break away from your desk and go make something happen.

Here’s the rundown on today’s crowd:

1. Jack Myers, presiding over a table of movers and shakers: Huffington Post’s Greg Coleman, Eric Hippeau and Phil Cara; Colgate’s Jack Haber, Pattie Glod of Limited Brands; and E*Trade’s Nick Utton.

2. Peter Brown and Dan Scheffey, who joins Fairchild Fashion Group on May 10 as the new director of communications for the trade and business sector of Conde Nast. Dan tells me he’ll be working on all the titles including WWD and WWD.com. He reports to president Gina Sanders. Congrats!

3. ‘Mayor’ Joe Armstrong with Vanity Fair’s Wayne Lawson and Punch Hutton and a chic blonde gal we didn’t get to me. Joe, fresh off another trip to his home state of Texas was all jazzed up to tell the group about the The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas. (He’s on the board.) Joe reports that the center has acquired an impressive array of archives of literary legends including Norman Mailer, Tennessee Williams, Evelyn Waugh, and even Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Joe also reports that none other than Robert De Niro has given the center his script archive and actually footed the bill for two 18-wheelers to deliver the costumes he’s worn in his films. So, the next time you’re in Austin, you might want to check it out.

4. Sean Cassidy — no, not the eighties pop icon — this fellow works for Dan Klores.

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What was the most iconic New York Post cover of the 00′s? Was it a photo of a smoking World Trade Tower, a practically naked Ashley Dupre or Martha Stewart in prison stripes?

And who can forget any of those punny headlines that the Post is so famous for, from “Stray-Rod” to Eliot Spitzer‘s “Ho No!” to the recent Tiger Woods scandal headline “I’m A Cheetah,” there are so many witty taglines to choose from.

And choose you can. The Post has launched a poll that let’s you vote for your favorite out of 50 chosen covers from the past 10 years. Will Bernie Madoff, Saddam Hussein, Paris Hilton or Michael Jackson rule supreme?

We like the simplest covers: a photo of New York City fireman erecting a flag at Ground Zero and former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey‘s cover that proclaims, with double entendre brilliance, “I’m Out,” are our favorites. What are yours?

Vote here: Vote For Your Favorite Front Page –New York Post

And here we are, talking about accountability again, which was not used with any thought to discretion today in New York Post‘s article about Spoofcard, a service that allows you to scramble your number for outgoing calls, making it easy to hack into people’s messaging services, get their voicemails, and even change their messages.

Why is this relevant news?

Well, because Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan have had their phones hacked using Spoofcards, and since The Post has given you step-by-step instructions on how to use one of those “theoretically legal” (what does that even mean? Lawfully legal? Juridically legal? But not morally legal?) cards, soon you too can be using them for “for pranks, calling boyfriends or mothers under another number to fool them.” Not The Post approves, in anyway, of course. They’re just letting you know.

In his column this week, New York Times media critic David Carr took on News Corp. head honcho Rupert Murdoch and his recent pronouncement that all of his newspaper and television news channels would soon charge for access to their online content.

“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting,” Murdoch said during News Corp.’s earnings call last week. “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news Web sites.”

Although Murdoch boasted that, if his model was successful, other media companies would follow his lead, Carr pointed out that many publications have already tried pay models, with varying levels of success. Instead, Carr questioned Murdoch’s level of commitment to his plan:

“Setting aside the execution risk of such a plan, it’s difficult to tell how serious Mr. Murdoch is, given his history of grand statements that were only that. Perhaps he was making an unsubtle effort to change the subject during a bleak earnings call for News Corporation…”

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Is there joy in being a stalker/hustler? Ask Julia Allison.

Internet personality Julia Allison earned her billing last night at mediabistro.com’s panel discussion “Personal Branding Redefined.” That’s not to say the other headliners — Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV and 1938 Media’s Loren Feldman — didn’t deliver, but they were no match for ubiquitous talking head Allison. Held at Manhattan’s new 92Y TriBeCa, the event drew more than 100 attendees: some wannabe brands, some suits seeking marketing pointers.

Festooned in a bright pink top and substantial black heels, Allison — when she wasn’t sitting with her white lapdog slung across her — embodied one of her main tips of the night during her presentation: “Walk with purpose,” she said. “You can get away with just about anything.” Such as?

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See Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad and more funny videos on FunnyOrDie.com

Between the start of the Olympics on Friday and the upcoming conventions, we should very shortly have lots of news to report. Until then we bring you Paris Hilton who has created her own spot in the aftermath of John McCain‘s Paris/Britney/Obama attack ad. Ha! In the video a bathing suit clad Hilton refers to McCain as “white hair dude” and offers up her own energy policy. To which the McCain camp, possibly not understanding it may be time to cut their losses on this one, responded: “Perhaps the reality is that Paris has a more substantive energy plan than Barack Obama.”

Maybe John McCain should have checked his donor list before deciding to cast Paris Hilton in his latest attack ad on Barack Obama. It seems that Paris’s mother Kathy Hilton has donated thousands to McCain and she was none to pleased to see her daughter used as McCain’s worst-case scenario for where this country might be headed under a Obama presidency. So displeased, in fact, that she took it straight to HuffPo (or maybe “The HuffPo” in McCain terminology).

I’ve been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States.

Apparently John McCain missed the Barack Obama teflon memo. The latest, and now controversial, ad out of the McCain camp includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, that maybe are supposed to suggest…we’re not sure, that Barack doesn’t wear underwear? That he’s a bad parent, who dates his bodyguards? Maybe if the whole thing wasn’t so laughable we’d be offended (we mean, seriously, Britney and Paris? they don’t exactly inspire adulation). Some people are suggesting that the ad is racist because, in the words of Josh Marshall, it is “pushing the caricature of Obama as a uppity young black man whose presumptuousness is displayed not only in taking on airs above his station but also in a taste for young white women.” Many people are noting it was just this sort of imaging that the GOP used against Harold Ford Jr. back in 2006.

McCain says the interpretation is ridiculous. Obama responded with his own video saying McCain is taking the low road. Truthfully, we think it’s just one more instance of McCain demonstrating he actually has no idea whatsoever about anything that could remotely be called current. Watch both videos for yourself after the jump.

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Probably before the Internet, and its pesky quota-filling bloggers, it was a lot easier to borrow magazine images without drawing a lot of attention. No longer! In the past few months it’s been similar images of Barack Obama that have garnered the most attention. However, today we bring you two new additions the “wait, where have I seen that before” category. First, via the folks over at UnBeige comes this month’s Vanity Fair cover of Carla Bruni, which looks a whole lot 2005′s Vanity Fair cover of Paris Hilton (talk about a one-trick pony).

Next, let us draw your attention to the (slightly less obvious) resemblance between a Harper’s 2006 “World Without Oil” cover and the images from this month’s “World Without Oil” feature from GQ (seriously, was it that hard to think up a new title?). What is also interesting to note in this case is that GQ editor Jim Nelson was Harper’s readings editor until 1997, furthermore the author of GQ‘s oil piece, Benjamin Kunkel, has written for Harper’s. Image after the jump.

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