Personalities

Turns out Levi Johnston doesn't have a Twitter account, much to Conan O'Brien's consternation.

The Tonight Show host offered an apology to Sarah Palin's Wasilla nemesis after learning that the Twitter account from which William Shatner recited tweets on Wednesday night's show was created by an imposter. Made out of loin whole cloth, as it were.

WebNewser earlier today featured the Shatner segment in a video. Sadly, the clip, like many things in the media today, was entertaining but not based on fact. Here's O'Brien from last night's show:

"We'd been following Levi on Twitter and felt his gift for the written word needed to be shared with the world," he explained. "Today...I got some shocking news: Apparently the tweets that we read are counterfeit. They were written by a clever imposter posing as the witty Levi Johnston. And the real Levi is very angry with us."

"I would like to personally apologize to Levi Johnston and his lawyer and publicist for misrepresenting him in any way," he continued.

No doubt this pains the former Alaska governor even more than it does O'Brien, who, in retrospect, shouldn't have crossed swords with the pending Playgirl pin-up. WebNewser is trying to confirm rumors that, as part of an out-of-court settlement, O'Brien will have to "whip it out" on tonight's show.

The Business Insider CEO and Editor-in-Chief Henry Blodget sits down with WebMediaBrands CEO Alan Meckler for this video interview in which Meckler traces the evolution of his entrepreneurial career and some lessons he learned along the way. (Note: Mediabistro is a division of WebMediaBrands.)

Meckler went from pursuing a Ph.D. in American history in the '70s to starting a microfiche media company targeting university libraries. He discovered the Internet in 1990 (when it still was text-based) and eventually founded Mecklermedia Corp., which he sold to Penton Media in 1998.

Two key observations from Meckler in the interview: 1) Entrepreneurs must be "willing to fail" and 2) "Focus" is critical to business success.

Coming segments (according to Blodget) will cover Meckler's thoughts on the media industry and where it's headed.

British author, actor, comedian, television presenter and film director Stephen Fry isn't nearly as worried as Miley Cyrus is that social media and the Internet are turning us into passive idiots.

Far from it, Fry says in this fascinating video interview (below) in which he puts such concerns in historical perspective and points out the tremendous advantages of modern communications technology. Fry, by the way, has more than 920,000 followers of his Twitter account and already has been "listed" nearly 5,000 times.

Some excerpts:

"I'm not particularly negative or pessimistic about the social qualities, the linguistic qualities, the concentration qualities of 'Generation Web', as they're called."

"We are constantly in need of connecting with people for friendship, love, sex, knowledge, growth, enmity, territoriality...all the imperatives that drive us as human beings. And we've created villages and towns to help us do that, and roads. And now we've created something that allows us to do it even more."

"Where people make their critical error and criticize all this and think it's a danger and is reducing our capacity to act as proper human beings is they think it's all this: You either sit in front of a screen of some kind, tapping away all your life, going 'LOL' and being childish, and not writing in proper English sentences, or you sit in an old-fashioned study with books, and you read properly and you engage properly and you go for walks. Well, I do both. And most people do both. It is not one or the other."

The clip below is billed as Part 1. Looking forward to more.

It's one thing to make a personal decision to delete your own Twitter account. It's another thing altogether to declare that "everyone should leave Twitter."

But that's what tween singing sensation Miley Cyrus said in an interview this week with a Chicago radio station (video below), as reported by MTV.com.

Cyrus even goes a step further than the California watchdog agency that is considering proposing regulations for the privately owned microblogging service:

"I think Twitter should just be banned from this universe."

No doubt we soon can look forward to Miley suggesting that insipid television shows marketed toward kids also be banned from this universe. Like, you know, Disney's Hannah Montana. Because it undoubtedly pains her to see young people wasting their time on mindless, passive entertainment when they could, you know, "get out and do stuff and be in the world" -- buying Miley merch!

You may remember Chris Ariens' post from Wednesday (Oliver Stone Doesn't Much Care for the Internet) in which he describes the Hollywood director's verbal trashing of the web, television and traditional media while speaking at an event in New York sponsored by Hispanic web portal Terra.com.

A tipster pointed WebNewser to a video of Stone's comments, which come in a conversation with Terra CEO and founder Fernando Madeira at the New Museum of Contemporary art in Manhattan, in front of an audience of Internet professsionals. The exclusive video is on Guanabee, a web site devoted to Latino commentary on media, pop culture and entertainment.

I watched the video and read the quotes excerpted in the article by Cindy Casares. Judge for yourself if he's making valid points, is just being a "grumpy old man" or some combination of both. He certainly wasn't ranting -- this was no "get off my lawn" meltdown -- but I'm sure at some point Madeira must have been thinking, "I'm paying $75,000 for this?" (That was the amount of Stone's speaker fee, a Terra employee told Guanabee.)

Singer John Mayer thinks tween throb Miley Cyrus made a good decision by deleting her Twitter account last week. He tells MTV News host Tim Kash:

"Artists have enough to deal with. ...There's enough mental real estate being taken up by dealing with all of that stuff. ...I am old enough and smart enough to tell someone to go f--- themselves if they tell me to go f--- myself. I think if you're in Miley's situation, it might take a little too much time to play goalie for your own heart and mind. So I totally get it."

If you wonder whether that means Mayer ever would bail on the Twitterverse and his 2.5 million followers, fear not:

"I would rather tell the world to eat my a--hole before I would delete my Twitter account."

Let's all hope it doesn't come to that.

You can watch a video of the interview and read Jocelyn Vena's write-up of it here.

CBS has been quietly trying to un-ring (or at least dampen) the bell in the David Letterman affair/extortion case. Brian Stelter of The New York Times reports that the network over the weekend was busy removing unauthorized videos of the talk-show host revealing after last Thursday's monologue the alleged plot and events leading up to it.

In a remarkable 10-minute segment Thursday night, Mr. Letterman told viewers of a Connecticut man's suspected $2 million extortion attempt, predicated on evidence of Mr. Letterman's sexual relationships with female employees. The suspect, Robert Joel Halderman of CBS News, was arrested Thursday and released on bail Friday.

Copies of the segment were uploaded almost immediately to YouTube by users, but many of them were flagged by CBS for removal, citing copyright claims. The network did not provide an official copy.

Indeed, a copy that WebNewser had embedded was removed, but another copy embedded by TVNewser remains available for viewing.

Meanwhile, Halderman's lawyer, Gerald Shargel, hit the morning talk shows to reframe the case. There's a video below from his Today Show appearance, in which he hints that his client's trial also will be about the "motive, intent and conduct of David Letterman."

On CBS' Early Show, the New York Daily News reports, Shargel said:

"Here's a guy who is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, who has dealt with cops and wiretaps and undercover investigations virtually his entire life.

"Look at the fact that there was a $2 million check. In the history of extortion, I don't think there's been a single case where the alleged extortionist took a check in payment. It just doesn't make any sense."

David Letterman dropped a bomb on "The Late Show" audience Thursday, revealing that 1) he has had sex with employees of the CBS program and 2) someone tried to extort $2 million from him over these affairs. (See video below.)

From the Los Angeles Times:

During a taping for tonight's broadcast, Letterman told viewers that three weeks ago he was approached by a person who claimed to have information about the host's affairs with female staff members. This person, Letterman said, threatened to expose the relationships unless payment of $2 million was received. The CBS star approached the Manhattan district attorney's office, which began an investigation that culminated in today's arrest of the person, whom Letterman did not identify.

"This morning, I did something I've never done in my life," Letterman said after the opening monologue. "I had to go downtown and testify before a grand jury."

Letterman told the audience that, in his testimony, he admitted to having had sex with female show employees.

"My response to that is, yes I have," he said. (By the way, he got big laughs and applause after saying that.) "Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would. (More laughs.) I feel like I need to protect these people. I need to certainly protect my family."

The laughter probably isn't coming as readily at home, where Letterman has a wife and child. The talk show host married Regina Lasko, his companion since 1986, on March 19. Their son, Harry, was born in 2003.

I can't help but think a certain former governor of Alaska is enjoying Letterman's public discomfort and private pain.

Update: TMZ.com reports that the arrested suspect is Robert Halderman, 51, an employee of "48 Hours" who lives in Norwalk, Conn.

Remember the dude whose web site was the take-down target of Glenn Beck's attorneys?

Beck's legal attack dogs filed a case with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Switzerland in a bid to have the domain revoked because, they barked, the web site -- DidGlennBeckRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com -- was improperly using Beck's trademarked name and defaming the infamous right-wing talk show host.

On Monday the lawyer for the site's owner, Isaac Eiland-Hall, filed a response with WIPO's Arbitration and Mediation Center. Here's a link to the PDF document, which urges WIPO to dismiss the complaint because the site is a "legitimate criticism site" consisting of "political satire."

The attorney, Marc Randazza, relies as much on comedy theory as legal precedent to defend his client. After establishing the obvious...

We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent's website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent's website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck's very rhetorical style. Beck's skin is too thin to take the criticism.

...Randazza launches into an entertaining discourse on Internet memes:

continued...

Here's what happens when one of those pesky blog commenters misinterprets a Tweet.

Tuesday night, Fox Business anchor Liz Claman tweeted:

Need some online shopping therapy but every SINGLE thing I wanted on JCrew.com was sold out. Thanks, Michelle!

A commenter on Business Insider posted that Claman was tweeting about her former CNBC colleague Michelle Caruso Cabrera.

Well we went straight to the source, and no, Claman was not talking about Caruso Cabrera but in fact she was talking about the only Michelle synonymous with J. Crew fashion, first lady Michelle Obama.