Could the LAT be extending out a friendly hand to potential buyer David Geffen? That's what moonlighting NYT blogger David Carr suspects. There are just too many flattering articles about Dreamgirls – Geffen's "pet project" – for the LAT to merely be towing the line of every other media outlet in fawning over the blockbuster project.

Still, the LAT and its Oscar website, The Envelope, has dived deeper into the tank and more often than almost any media outlet. The Bagger is no cynic — he actually enjoyed “We are Marshall” — but he has watched story after story emerge from his esteemed West Coast competitor and wondered if someone, certainly not him, would begin to think thusly:

“Dreamgirls,” is the long-beloved project of David Geffen, the Los Angeles macher who owned the film rights to the story and who has been rumored to be in talks with the Chandler family about teaming up on a bid for the LAT.

No one knows what, if anything, Mr. Geffen is going to do, but if you worked at the paper, might not the possibility that you would soon be calling him boss or He Who Must Be Obeyed have an impact on the amount of attention “Dreamgirls” gets?

While we were quick to notice former New York Post-cum-Fortune scribe Tim Arango's CNBC flattery when he thought he could land a gig on the biz channel, we're going out on a limb and remaining cautious about whether LAT writers even have the foresight or dot connecting ability to play into Geffen's back pocket. But when Lola Ogunnaike started feting ABC any chance she got as she auditioned for The View? Yeah, that was totally her M.O.