The Times announced yesterday that gossip columnist Liz Smith was getting canned from the Post after 33 years of dedicated snarky service. A scant 24 hours later, and Liz is ready to dish about how much she and (Post editor) Col Allan didn't get along, and how current gossip sites like Gawker and Perez don't have shit on the bitchiness of L.A. Confidential in the 50s.

What has been the impact of Internet sites like Perez Hilton and Gawker, who are putting up items on an hourly basis?

I don’t think they mean anything either, except they mean instant success for these very, very energetic and ambitious young people. And it’s perfectly fine, but I wouldn’t give any credence to most of the stuff I read. I mean, there are no publishers, no editors, no lawyers vetting anything. This is the problem with the Internet where everybody has a voice and we’re stuck with it. We’re going to have the Internet even when we don’t have things to eat.

A real gossip story is Lana Turner’s daughter killing Johnny Stompanato. It had all kinds of tragic ramifications—celebrity, sex, a little girl involved and so forth. I mean, who cares if somebody you’ve never heard of is sniffing cocaine in a bathroom down in Soho?

This kind of philosophy would of course rub Col the wrong way, who loves to leave no stone unturned for even the smallest scandal…even when that means taking on the heat himself.