One doctor in Texas and another in California are under federal investigation for prescribing the painkillers Oxycontin and Vicodin to Heath Ledger, who died from what's likely an accidental overdosing by mixing medications. Authorities want to know whether the drugs were indeed legally prescribed. And in this era of docs prescribing Ambien because a patient couldn't get to sleep last night after a 2-day coke binge, questioning the doctors' legality in prescribing the drugs is like asking, "Was Heath capable of feeling the pain of a pin prick?"

STILL :( Michelle Williams is still bummed about the death of her ex-lover/father of her child. Whatever, that was like two news cycles ago. We kid. The death of Heath Ledger continues to be very sad. [People]

• Madonna is still pretending to be British. How come when people fake an English accent, they become posh-English instead of cockney-English? Class discrimination knows no borders.

• Oh, by the by, Brad Renfro died of a heroin overdose. But did you hear that Heath Ledger died? A real tragedy, huh?

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With Manhattan's rental vacancy rate hovering around 1 percent, digs are in hot demand. Which is why Heath Ledger's abode of demise on Broome Street is already back on the market. "You don't wait around in a hot rental market like this," one disgusting broker had the balls to say. The 4,400 square feet, with 3 beds, 2.5 baths, balcony, wood-burning fireplace, and 15-foot ceilings, is also getting a rate hike: While Ledger's stay was billed at $22k/month, the new tenant will be shelling out three grand more. [NYP]

Officially, Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose of prescription pills. The toxicology report found acute intoxication from of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine.

The closest thing to a punch line we can imagine is that almost all of those substances come up as incorrectly spelled. Also, good timing on that anti-prescription drug commercial during the Super Bowl.

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Eric Starkman is president and founder of Starkman & Associates. Before becoming a PR guru, he was a reporter and editor, working for The Wall Street Journal, The Toronto Star and The Montreal Gazette. Before starting S&A, he oversaw the corporate communications practices for Morgen-Walke Associates. We talk about Olsen twins, boycotts and playing chicken with lawsuits.

When a headline-making personal or corporate crisis hits, there's a tendency with lawyers to circle the wagons and maintain radio silence. What does involving legal teams do?

Lawyers are responsible for ensuring their clients are legally protected and from a legal point of view, maintaining radio silence is often the easiest and safest route to go. However, attorneys experienced with high-profile crises know that a client's media coverage can have a material impact on their legal proceedings and work to develop a thoughtful strategy that protects their clients on both the legal and PR fronts.

Does silence ever work?

There are circumstances when maintaining silence is the best strategy, particularly in a highly controversial situation where someone has been accused of wrongdoing. Also, during times of tragedy and loss, speaking to reporters could be misconstrued by the public as undignified and opportunistic.

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We posted “Wicked Games” below because we wanted to remind that you before using her son as an excuse to avoid an awkward funeral, Helena Christensen was once a very sexy model.

Okay, now that you’re reminded, Helena Christensen is speaking on matters she shouldn’t …

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Although Heath Ledger is said to have finished shooting all his scenes for Batman: The Dark Knight, his death presents some marketing challenges for Warner Bros., who have to sell a blockbuster franchise film not only without one of its celebrity leads, but also in a way that doesn't gross out moviegoers, or smell of disrespect. Especially hard when Heath's character, The Joker, is a vile heavy.

The excellent Kim Masters expounds on how we might be listening to a voice artist for some of The Joker's dialogue, since the rough audio captured during filming might not be pristine enough.

But what about the T-shirts? Action figures?

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Heath Ledger's publicist Mara Buxbaum, along with Ina Treciokas, runs the New York office of public relations firm I/D PR. (On the West Coast, power publicist Kelly Bush leads the charges.) It's Buxbaum who sent out an email to other Hollywood rep firms, including PMK-HBH, 42 West, and BWR, calling on them to protest Entertainment Tonight and The Insider's decision to run video of Ledger at a 2006 SAG Awards party, which they paid $200k for, that showed another man snorting "something" off a table and Heath discussing his drug use.

To ET executive producer Linda Bell Blue and Paramount exec Brad Bessey, this email, which included both of their email addresses and a call to speak out, meant something else entirely: If they moved ahead with airing the video, they would effectively lose access to all of I/D PR's clients, as well as those of allied powerhouse agencies. Not that Buxbaum would go on record saying so.

So exactly who would the CBS-Paramount tabloid shows wave goodbye to? Here's a short list: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ellen Page, Mira Sorvino, James Marsden, Kevin Kline, Ethan Hawke (who Buxbaum just confirmed is about to be a daddy), Sarah Jessica Parker, Winona Ryder, Sean Penn, Diane Lane, America Ferrera, and Elijah Wood. Dozens – and dozens – more follow.

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The AP didn’t leak an internal memo this time, but it seems like now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Heath Ledger is a big deal.

The Associated Press ran a lengthy piece explaining why Entertainment Tonight held the tape of Heath Ledger hanging out at a party where there were—get this—drugs. (At moments like this, we’re content with our complete lack of social importance.)

According to the AP, other famous people like Natalie Portman and Sarah Jessica Parker asked ET to have a little class. Apparently those two didn’t get the note about what celebrity reporting is all about: not offending the PR agencies they need to be on good terms with in order to snag access to celebs. Heath's publicist Mara Buxbaum, at I/D PR, emailed fellow PR outfits like PMK-HBH, 42 West, and BWR, a note that called the video "shameful exploitation of the lowest kind"; those firms banded together to effectively threaten a boycott against the CBS-produced tabloid shows unless they pulled the video.

Well, on the plus side, unlike the Britney Spears saga, this story has a foreseeable end. There’s only so much to say about Heath Ledger these days: The dead rarely make news, unless Page Six spots them at a dinner.

Thank god you can't, legally, libel the dead, or the Post might have had to run their items by counsel before running them.

The Post says it was cocaine and heroin that Heath was on, forcing Michelle Williams to kick him out after multi-day binges. But the real hook here, as the Daily News is on, is the video tape of Heath rambling on, after the 2006 SAG Awards, at the Chateau Marmont, about his drug use; in the background, someone is snorting "powder" off a table.

CBS's Entertainment Tonight paid $200,000 for the video, thinking they had an instant ratings-win on their hands. At 3:30am EST, the network's VP for business and legal affairs, Joseph Jerome, even sent out a notice to bloggers, always keen to beat the mainstream media with their own scoops, that they had "EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS REGARDING PROPRIETARY MATERIALS OF HEATH LEDGER AT THE CHATEAU MARMONT ON APPROXIMATELY JANUARY 29, 2006," and, "ANY BROADCAST OR USAGE OF THIS MATERIAL IN ANY MANNER NOT AUTHORIZED SHALL CONSTITUTE AN INFRINGEMENT AND VIOLATION OF ET AND THE INSIDER'S VALUABLE EXCLUSIVE AND PROPRIETARY RIGHTS AND WILL CONSTITUTE INFRINGEMENT AND TORTIOUS INTERFERENCE BY THE INFRINGER, EXPOSING THE INFRINGER TO SUBSTANTIAL MONETARY DAMAGES."

But then they backed down, bowing to … public pressure? Gross out factor? The understanding that they'd never get access to any other client that Ledger and Michelle Williams' I/D PR represents?

By 6:46pm EST, ET publicist Kristin Miller, also a fan of caps-lock, was issuing a release announcing the recanting of their decision to air the video: "Out of respect for Heath Ledger s family, Entertainment Tonight and "The Insider" have decided not to run the Heath Ledger video which has been circulating in the world media."

No worries, however: Australia's Channel 9 also has the video, and insists on airing it. See you on YouTube.

According to a friend of Jake Gyllenhaal, the actor is taking the death of Heath Ledger “harder than most people."

Yeah, Wes Bentley—you remember him, the guy from American Beauty—who released a rare public statement about Ledger, knows nothing of grief. He’s just taking it like most people would. Gyllenhaal is actually taking it harder than that.

FUN WITH DOMAIN NAMES Heathledgerisdead.com directs to a CNN website. The only question now is how are Mary-Kate Olsen and the masseuse are connected to this tragic turn of events.

• A secret from Jossip HQ: we're obsessed with doing calisthenics between posts. But with this chair, we could calisthenics while writing posts. We'd double our output. Please David!

• From Deadspin: "Being a Patriots fan this season has been like waking up and suddenly discovering your dick is six inches bigger." This is why girls don't follow sports. Also, a sentence like that implies that your dick is only two inches to begin with.

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Production of Blue Valentine, Michelle Williams's next movie, has been put on hold indefinitely.

Williams was rumored to be dating Ryan Gosling, her co-star on the film. Things must be crazy awkward there; People magazine should really assign a reporter to that set.

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