Was Harvey Weinstein so furious with Page Six's report about Sharon Stone's amfAR antics that he bum rushed every other gossip in the industry asking for a counter attack?

That's what we've been hearing since the Post's item ran on Saturday, which chronicled Stone, who hosted the event, which raised $10 million, crawling into Diddy's lap to discuss his crack budget and spending hours on "self-indulgent commentary."

Weinstein, whose Weinstein Company helped underwrite the event, scored at least one coup: Fox 411's Roger Friedman battled back against Page Six, as we discussed earlier today, defending Stone's hosting abilities. Nevermind that Friedman and Weinstein are friends, and part of the gossip's Cannes column was spent talking about the film Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which Weinstein's company will be distributing abroad.

Bless any celebrity that takes on the unenviable task of entertaining the wealthy and powerful at a charity event in an effort to raise money for a good cause. That's what Sharon Stone did at the annual Cannes event for amfAR, the AIDS research organization whose capitalization nobody can quite get right, hosting the four-event auction that nabbed a cool $10 million, with an assist from Madonna.

But Stone's method of scrounging up cash didn't win everyone over.

A scathing Page Six report last week had a spy recounting her jokes about Diddy's budget for crack and all the sob stories she told about herself. "Her whole speech was about her," said P6's source. "What she has done, how her crusade had affected her . . . all with the backdrop of dying kids on the screen behind her. Then, it was [bleep] this, [bleep] that throughout the whole auction. It was vulgar beyond belief … At one point she actually said one of the items from the auction could be hung from 'your [beep] ring.'"

That didn't sit well with Fox 411 gossip Roger Friedman. Which is why he's on the attack today against Page Six's report.

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ETHICS Page Six's Paula Froelich could not attend the party where a drink named after her would be poured because the event was an open bar, not cash. [Gawker]

Page Six editor Richard Johnson vs. Steppin' Out editor Chaunce Hayden in the Bam Margera Sex Tape Retraction. [Gawker]

While this morning's Page Six item about Keith Olbermann recyles previous Jossip reports, it also makes one thing more clear: News Corp. has many vehicles to push its anti-MSNBC/GE crusade, and Bill O'Reilly's diatribes are just one of them.

Repeating our previous reports about Keith Olbermann's behavior and conflicts with other talent like David Gregory and Dan Abrams, P6 also finds itself on the front lines of O'Reilly's battle against the network — which, it turns out, News Corp. tried to quell at the highest levels, and is now more than content to keep supporting. Just like the real war!

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Somehow the travails of Buzz Bissinger v. Will Leitch, Jared Paul Stern v. Ron Burkle, Page Six v. Vanessa Grigoriadis, Cathy Horyn v. Giorgio Armani, Dale Peck v. Rick Moody, and Leonard Wieseltier v. Andrew Sullivan get boiled down to what's going on between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag:

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Page Six continues to be the only gossip sheet buying, or propping up, Chace Crawford's sexuality ploy: "NEWLY single Chace Crawford isn't mourning the loss of his ex-girlfriend, Carrie Underwood. The "Gossip Girl" heartthrob was all over town last weekend, drinking and flirting with gaggles of gals. On Saturday night, Crawford sat "between two beautiful brunettes" at La Zarza in the East Village until 1 a.m. "flirting and taking shots of Patron." Then on Sunday, Crawford and his co-stars Penn Badgley and Ed Westwick had a boys' night at Stanton Social on the Lower East Side. Our spies there saw Crawford sipping blood orange margaritas and befriending his waitress."

Of course, this could easily be interrupted as Chace going out with his gaggle of fag hags and drinking girly drinks.

Nice to see Rupert Murdoch's New York Post doing the bidding of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News this morning:

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For someone who should be scraping the bottom of the publishing barrel, author and news-article-re-poster James Frey certainly seems to have crawled his way to the top. Over Nan Talese's body.

Not only has his "switch" to fiction – one rumor we continue to hear from publishing insiders is James always imagined himself a novelist, but publishers knew they could better market a memoir, so he, stupidly, made the jump – been nicely swept under the rug (with A Million Little Pieces continuing to move copies), but his new effort, Bright Shiny Morning, on bookshelves May 13, is being feted with a May 8 Sotheby's party with a limited edition of the novel, in collaboration with photogs Terry Richardson and Richard Prince, to be released. He'll then head off to Anaheim to speak at the American Library Association convention.

Having ditched Random House imprint Double Day, Frey is now at HarperColilns. Which might explain why today's Page Six carries the flattering news; HarperCollins, like the Post, is owned by News Corp. That, and former MSNBC programming whiz Davidson Goldin, who is counseling Frey on all things media relations, appears to be damn good at his job.

Nylon is FIGHTING BACK against Page Six's claim that "crazy barking dogs" at the mag's offices have delivery workers scared for their safety. But who could be afraid of their adorable Greene Street pooch?

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It's a rare event when Page Six issues a correction — which means when they do, it's handed down from the top. Or Steve Rubenstein.

So today's item, which backtracks on a report that Darren Star stole the idea for his Cashmere Mafia from ex-friend Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle, should be cause for suspicion.

P6 says their March 25, 2008, item is the one they're retracting, but in fact it was their original item, on April 30, 2007, that claimed Star stole the concept and pitched it to ABC while Candace was bunking at his house; now the Post says ABC approached Star directly. "The two shows were conceived independently," they insist. (It was that first item, last year, that also claimed the 13-year friendship between the two had gone sour after the backhanded dealings.)

Which begs the question: Just who threatened what against the Post to score this event?

Read P6's original item in full below.

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Jared Paul Stern's alleged shakedown of Ron Burkle is finally getting the Law & Order treatment, and Mo Rocca will guest as the former Page Sixer ripped from the headlines. But in this version of events, Stern's character suffers the fate of a car bomb. In real life, he simply did what any struggling writer might do: found a blogging gig.

Are we reading this correctly? The New York Post's Page Six is calling out CNBC's Erin Burnett for being a China-lover, when owner Rupert Murdoch couldn't be described any other way himself? [P6]

Yesterday's New York University panel about celebrity gossip and its players, sponsored by The Atlantic magazine and aptly titled "The Britney Show," brought together heavyweights like Page Six's Richard Johnson, Star's Bonnie Fuller, and X17's Brandy and François Navarre, who were kind enough to leave their six million dollar Pacific Palisades home to hang in the city.

Johnson shot himself in the foot when he called celebrity blogs "parasites," accusing them of not "generat[ing] their own news stories," which is amusing since Page Six wouldn't get through the day without lifting items from many of these bottom-feeding blogs, and the brand's own effort at competing with them failed after just three months.

And the always quotable Brandy Navarre, who is building a cache of Miley Cyrus photos in the hopes she becomes the next trainwreck poptart, admits her agency is "trying to get the shots before they go into rehab."

And that's when her God complex shines through: "Mr. Navarre suggested that a pack of paparazzi may have been able to prevent John Lennon's murder in 1980; Ms. Navarre said photos of partying starlets have sometimes spurred their families to get professional help," reports AdAge.

And the little matter of X17's own photogs allegedly brutally assaulting individuals to within an inch of their life? Well, so long as they're not celebrities, preventing their murders isn't really the Navarres' concern.

What's shocking in this Page Six item about hot tranny messes?

THE tourists in Times Square are in for a treat Saturday when 1,200 transvestites will gather at the Marriott Marquis for "Night of 1,000 Gowns." Michael Salem, who caters to the needs of drag queens, is planning to attend with Veronica Vera, who runs Mistress Vera's School for Boys Who Want To Be Girls. Salem - who does a brisk business in high heels up to size 17, triple-E width, and silicone breasts with nipples and without - is eager to mingle with his customers.

The regularly homophobic Post seems to have lost its inclination to bash the GLBT community!

After the jump, a classic example.

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How to score a plug in Page Six? Mention the column on your show. [P6]

What's this we're hearing about the New York Post not keeping ANYONE from PageSix.com after they decided to shutter the three-month old site?

First on Jossip: The New York Post's attempt to take on TMZ.com is officially offline. We hear from inside the PageSix.com hen house that they've abandoned their online effort, effective immediately. The announcement was just made internally. Visitors to PageSix.com are redirected to Page Six proper. So, what, no more infighting?

Update: The site was online this morning and was taken down sometime this afternoon, we're told … Phone calls to various extensions there all go directly to voicemail … Blame low traffic numbers … An announcement from Post publicist Steve Rubenstein is forthcoming … The staff of 18 will be let go, though some will be transferred internally within the Post …

Like every other gossip outlet, Page Six today leads with a double sex scandal whammy: Naked photos of both Kristin Davis and The Hills star Audrina Partridge should be a warning to "young women [...] about not letting nude photographs of themselves leave their hands. Notes P6 (emphasis ours): "There's absolutely no doubt that the photos of Partridge - the faithful perky sidekick of Lauren Conrad on "The Hills" - are 100 percent real. Partridge posed for the pin-ups in 1994, after graduating from high school in the hope she could score some space in Playboy."

Except, given Partridge was born in 1985, that would make those pin-up shots of her child porn. And even Joe Francis, who has no problem with Ashley Dupre being under 18, might have a problem with that. (In fact, the photos were taken around 2004, when she was 18, just out of high school, and hoping to land in Playboy.)

Though Oprah may have given Rachael Ray her shot at TV, the cook's reps have no problem trashing the daytime queen if it means saving face for the client. When Page Six reached out to Ray's camp about rumors from "an impeccable TV source" that Ray's show was being canceled by King World for dismal ratings (she earns a not terribly impressive 2.5 rating), her rep jumped to remind the column that even Oprah's ratings are down 15 percent from February 2007. As for Ray's older viewers, who have an average age of 55.1 (and 688,000 women in the target 18-49 category), again Ray's camp refutes it with data from Oprah's show, where the average age is 54.6.

So is Ray getting the ax? Her rep says the show is signed on through 2010, but the contract may have an out clause based on any number of factors.

More spin from Ray's camp was sent to Huffington Post: "And with regard to our median age rising, yes it has, but less than 3% and the explanation for that is we have a loyal viewership that has been with us since the show launched and they had a birthday since last year!" Or another way of looking at it: They aren't attracting any new viewers. Not that we're cynics!

Update: Ray's camp, obviously very upset with the coverage their show received today, gets in touch with Jossip to point out errors in the P6 item:

1. They call Rachael's Food Network show "30 Minutes a Day." Obviously this is incorrect it is "30 Minute Meals."

2. They claim that King World is producing a chat show for Marie Osmond. This one blows me away….King World has nothing to do with this proposed show. It is being pitched around town by another syndication company called "Program Partners." All anyone would had to of done was google "Marie Osmond" and talk show.

3. And finally, as I said King World doesn't even exist any more. It was purchased awhile ago and is now called CBS Television Distribution. [Ed: To be fair, the email did come from an @kingworld.com email account]

4. In terms of numbers the article reads that Oprah, Regis, Tyra and Martha were down 15% this February sweeps period. Untrue! Regis and Kelly were down 16%, Tyra Banks down 13% and Martha Stewart down 27%. These numbers are widely available from Nielsen and were published this week in several trade publications. Guess no one cared to fact check.