After the supposedly serious-minded Washington Post-owned Slate.com sent out the following e-mail PR blast on Thursday night pointing to a new feature called “Hillary Deathwatch,” several Hillary Clinton supporters are decrying rampant misogyny and bias at the online magazine (the male authors of the piece, Christopher Beam and Chadwick Martin, are believed to be in their early- to mid- twenties). If not bias, just plain crassness:

The Slate.com article also depicts a cartoon Clinton caricature on a sinking ship.

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From Jossip:

Chris Beam, part of the duo that put out IvyGate, is now running Slate’s new campaign blog, Trailhead.

The Columbia ’06 wunderkind co-wrote an infograph for the New York Times Book Review (PDF) last week with his dad, a columnist at the Boston Globe.

Who would have guessed that an Ivy League education and family connections would pay off?

Recall that Big Head DC covered Beam’s burgeoning success last year (before we even knew just how well-connected he is). We always pick winners!

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When Slate ran with Lucy Caldwell’s story yesterday, revealing Caroline Giuliani’s Facebook profile to the world, the publication violated one of Facebook’s main rules. Under the “User Content Posted on Site” section of the network’s terms of use, it reads:

You may not post, transmit, or share User Content on the Site or Service that you did not create or that you do not have permission to post.

Legal experts told Big Head DC today that Facebook could definitely take legal action against Slate regarding this matter.

Earlier: Radar Claims Caroline Giuliani Facebook “Exclusive,” But Slate Had the Story First

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At 3:05 p.m. yesterday, Radar’s Jeff Bercovici posted an item about Caroline Giuliani’s embarrassingly supportive Barack Obama posting on her Facebook page. Today, the graphics department at the mag went to town, creating this gossip-worthy billboard for the site’s front page features section:

The graphic links to the Radar story from yesterday. But how the heck was that story a Radar “exclusive” when Slate posted the same story earlier yesterday at 11:49 a.m.? The Radar piece, as far as we can tell, added nothing new and was based on the original Slate Facebook revelation.

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The Slate political writer makes a much more convincing (and concise) argument for why he loved his mom, Nancy Dickerson, in the shit-fit he penned in response to the NY Times’ negative review of his book than he did in the lengthy tome itself.

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Slate’s Jack Shafer is trying to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes.

In yesterday’s column about vain journalists (say what?!), he discloses, “[Mark] Feldstein is a friend—not as good a friend as David Corn, but a lot better than Michael Isikoff,” which some people are interpreting as a fast-on-the-heels new diss of the freshly engaged Newsweek journalist. (Earlier this month, in a review of the new book, “Hubris,” penned by Corn and Isikoff, Shafer also wrote, “Michael Isikoff is a friend, but not so good.”

But does Shafer really hold that much hate in his heart for Isikoff? Not from what he tells Big Head Rob (By the way, does anyone else believe in just flat out asking people about who they hate anymore?).

“On and off, I’ve been dissing Isikoff in print for the last fifteen years in hopes of destabilizing him just enough to prevent him from becoming the best reporter in the universe,” he told us recently. ”Such a development would hurt the feelings of Bob Woodward and Seymour Hersh, and we can’t have that.

“I conduct most of my anti-Isikoff psy-ops in public, towel-snapping him at parties and on the streets of Washington. But once in my Washington City Paper press column I described him as such a good friend that his daughter called me daddy. People still ask him what I meant by that.

“Isikoff’s career didn’t really take off until I left town in 1995 and I could no longer undermine him as part of my daily routine. Since I returned to Washington in 2000, I’ve done my best to cripple his ego, but to little avail. I think my recent diss rolled right off his back.”

Isikoff, indeed, confirmed that there’s no hard feelings between the two during his recent BHR interview, so it seems high time for people to stop speculating about these secret bosom buddies — no matter how well Shafer appears to keep pulling off his schtick.

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Disclosure: We consider Shafer to be a friend, but not as good a friend as Corn, and not as good as Isikoff – and definitely not as good as Hersh and/or Woodward.

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Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick covers Robert Steinbuch’s lawsuit against the former Washingtonienne in full, tiresome detail, explaining that Jessica Cutler’s blog exposed “Capitol Hill as a sad cross between seventh grade and Melrose Place.” That’s us, right?

Choice section:

In the short term, Steinbuch’s suit has only added buttercream frosting to the cake of humiliation Cutler baked him. It’s hard to fathom how his privacy interests are being protected by a pleading that recycles every salacious detail from her blog. But he is clearly angry and embarrassed and in search of some justice, and he has thus sued her for the tort of “public disclosure of private facts.” 

Even though his case seems rather weak to Lithwick, she says that a vital question still remains: “Is this lurid Internet dishing important free speech, or a cruel invasion of privacy?” We just hope this case doesn’t end up going to the Supreme Court to decide that issue. But stranger things have happened. Right, Anna Nicole?

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To quote Oprah, “We loooove this”:

To understand why hands-free toilet technology stinks, you must first understand three things that any well-designed loo should permit you to do.

1) Clean the pool. You must be able to flush the toilet easily before sitting down, in case any detritus remains from a previous, inconsiderate visitor.

2) Clean the pool, again. You must be able to flush more than once after you are done. Some of us are more prolific than others, and courteous patrons will want to ensure that Point 1 is unnecessary for whomever follows.

3) Issue a courtesy flush. If you plan to settle down with the sports page, you should flush immediately after dropping the kids at the pool. There’s no need to let the kids linger any longer than absolutely necessary. This is for the benefit of other visitors.

Read Slate.

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“I figured out later why he sat there. It wasn’t to give us his wisdom close up; it was to show us his balls. Every time I looked down at my feet, there was one of them staring back at me through a gap in his shorts, legs spread wide. They were shiny and sick-looking. Even when I tried not to look, there one was, lurking out, weird as Sputnik. I lost my timing, I was relegated to the back of the boat and thankfully I never saw them again.”

Read Slate.

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