Jay McInerney, he of Bright Lights, Big City, Rielle Hunter, and Gossip Girl cameos, has found a new reason to melt his cynics heart. Barack Obama represents a new era of tolerance and inclusion, says McInerney, and he's just so happy Middle America has gotten on-board with the coastal states on this one:

While we were celebrating here in New York, we should have raised our glasses to the voters in Virginia and Florida and Ohio because they were the ones who decided to change course, and who decided the election. We should feel very glad to have them back. After all, a liberal elite can't run a democracy by itself. Perhaps they were responding as much to the frightening meltdown of the economy as they were to anything else; at any rate the Democrats in Washington would do well to treat them better than the Republicans did during their ascendancy.

Yeah Jay. You and your BFF Brett Easton Ellis did a really great job depicting how all-inclusive and magical LA and New York was in the 80s. Too bad the American Psycho era ended when all the Patrick Batemans of the world lost their jobs on Wall Street.

Just sayin': Jay McInerney made a career out of books depicting the hedonism and excess of the East Coast wealthy. Let's not pretend that those aren't the same people who voted for Reagan.

Sometimes we connect dots just for the sake of seeing how many lines we'll need. It's like Soduku, for the weary. So we took two of the biggest items from the news cycle right now — Rielle Hunter and her maybe-love-child with John Edwards, and Ben Stiller's sort-of-offensive-but-really-just-whatever film coming out this weekend, Tropic Thunder — and rigamarolled a game of Six Four Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Without Mr. Bacon. It involves two of the 80s biggest coked-out yuppie nihilist writers (pictured left), and it's fun for the whole family once the kids are put to bed!

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• Pete Wentz celebrated his 28th birthday by having gross bar bathroom sex with Ashlee Simpson. Cheers!

• After Paris Hilton's grueling 5-minute incarceration, Nicole Richie starts preparing for her mugshot.

• Which daytime goddess is a fatty in denial?

• Jay McInerney broke his foot running to hail a cab outside the Waverly Inn. Which is so much cooler than having your foot run over by a produce truck…Jill Abramson!

• Ever wanted to see shitty video footage of Justin Timberlake dissing Britney Spears live in concert? Now's your chance!

• Teen hip-hop artist Chris Brown has expressed his desire to collaborate with Michael Jackson. For his part, Jackson says he has never had any objection to working long hours in tight quarters with pubescent boys.

• Annie Leibovitz shows us a side of her we never actually wanted to see.

• Yes, Bill O'Reilly gets invited to parties. If not many, at least the Fox parties.

• We find out just how sneaky Diane Sawyer can really be.

• Glamour makes it really, really hard to leave the house.

• Despite her visit to Africa, Madonna did not actually go there to adopt a baby. You'd think she would ever follow a trend she didn't actually start?

• We've had many heroes in our lifetime: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Strawberry Shortcake, Matt Drudge … yet, none of them quite compare to Shanna Moakler. She is definitely our number one right now.

• Us Weekly breaks up Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. Since nobody was really buying the whole engagement thing. Except Ken Baker of course. Yeah, literally.

• Who is this Little Miss Seventeen who thinks she has a chance in hell of both trying to sue Atoosa Rubenstein and getting a job in the media industry ever again.

• Jay McInerney officially retires Elaine's and Michael's.

• Betsy Burton jumps New York's ship for the new stellar start-up team of Time.

• The New York Times' Joe Sharkey goes through the hellish experience of being in a plane crash he may or may not have caused. And lives to tell us about it.

There is not much left to be said about Jay McInerney. After spending his life being compared to Brett Easton Ellis and being held up as an idol to every New York and Vanity Fair writer, McInerney has made a final step into the dark corners of fallen, over-hyped writers: freelancing for House & Garden.

Sure they probably pay like two bucks a word over at H&G and are likely just as thrilled to have such a sexy middle-aged guy like McInerney filling the women of surburban Indiana with fantasies of life in New York. Which is fab. Except that McInerney's subjects — Elaine's and Michael's — have just been officially locked in the "only old people care about this crap" vault.

On the very same day I hit two—count em, two—of the canteens of the chattering classes, Michael's and Elaine's. Which couldn't be more different, though the clientele overlaps significantly. Michael's being more of a lunch spot, as far as the tribe is concerned, a serious midday power center for the worlds of publishing, journalism and entertainment. Elaine's is strictly an after-business-hours hang, more boozy and raffish. More writers, fewer editors and agents. Some of the writers no longer among us hover around the place or haunt it with their photographs.

Canteens of the chattering classes? More like "retirement home for editors who worked at, wanted to work at, or wish they were out of diapers so they could've worked at Spy." Don't get us wrong — we occasionally get an invite to a party Elaine's or film a lunch at Michael's with the likes of Atoosa Rubenstein and such other young hip media folks.

But now that Jay McInerney is writing about these canteens we may consider a little longer before fleeing to the UES or Midtown for a soiree. Also, we hope this gives Dylan Stableford all the more motivation to get his "Drinks at Von" segment on a role.

Michael's and Elaine's [House & Garden]

Because product placement isn't prevalent enough in movies and novels, Svedka vodka is buying off some talent to help further blur the lines between literature and advertising. Nerve.com is sponsoring "a series of articles" that will pop up both online and in a book. Which book? We have no fucking clue.

The project is indicative of how the road between advertising and entertainment is increasingly becoming more of a two-way street. The campaign, from a New York agency named Amalgamated, carries the theme "the future of adult entertainment" and features a character known as the "Svedka_Grl," a female robot by the Stan Winston special-effects studio. The ads presents the fembot puckishly commenting on contemporary mores by positing outlandish outcomes for life in 2033, when cigarettes will cost $450 a pack, couples are parents to "stem cell baby boomers" and celebrity worship is "the fastest-growing religion."

The story of Svedka_Grl will be written by 16 writers, including Joel Stein, Jay McInerney, Will Self, and Ana Marie Cox. But, these folks feel totally justified taking part in this project. For one, it's not journalism, it's just fiction. And also, there is absolutely no mention of the product or the company. (Except, you know, when they mention Svedka_Grl.)

The photos on the site are all futuristic fembots with teeny waists and huge boobs covered with pasties … which is indicative of how there will still be sexism in advertising in 2033.

A little sneak peak at a portion of Joel Stein's story, after the jump.

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No matter what this guy does, it ends up in the gossips. Granted, we would much rather hear stories of Jay McInerney screaming at reporters and threatening to not invite certain online magazine to his parties … but this random, not to mention extremely wholesome, bit from Page Six will have to suffice for today.

PATRONS at the Dockside restaurant in Sag Harbor were mystified by the behavior of Jay McInerney, who got up from his table and carefully carried two cups of ice out to his Audi. The author of "The Good Life" then opened the trunk and poured in the ice. He later repeated the process. Turns out McInerney had just been fishing with his son, Barrett, 11, and had a 15-pound striped bass that he was trying to keep cold in the trunk.

So, this is the good life? Dumping piles of ice into your trunk for the fish you caught with your son? Sounds actually pretty crappy to us.

But maybe if we send Jay a cooler and offer to baby-sit his kid if he'll start inviting us to his book parties and avoid yelling at us when we approach with a tape recorder … and then at least our lives could be a smidge better.

SOMETHING FISHY [Page Six]

We weren't kidding when we said we were obsessively searching for Hamptons gossip. Hell, we decided we would even settle for gossip on socialites. So we hit New York Social Diary. And though we found nothing from the weekend's happenings (what is this place, Vegas?) we did find some somewhat older yet not yet widely circulated as far as we know Jay McInerney gossip.

Apparently the author has some beef with NYSD, and wasn't afraid to show off his temper tantrum skills with the party reporters.

All of it was fun with the exception of the moment with Jay McInerney passed by with his girlfriend Anne Hearst. As I raised my camera to take their pictures, he said in my face: “no photo ops for you after the mean, nasty, bitchy things you said about me and my book party.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, recalling that I’d covered his book party at “21” three and a half months ago, and although I couldn’t recall what I’d written, I knew it wasn’t mean, nasty or bitchy. Or at least, not intended to be.

“Oh, look at him, now he’s pretending he doesn’t know …” McInerney snarled.

I asked Anne Hearst what he was talking about. He jumped in: “it was so mean she didn’t even want me to see it.” Anne, who is not the snarling type, quietly concurred.

So, what exactly did NYSD say that pissed Jay off so much? Check out the book party review after the jump, and judge for yourself.

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• It ain't easy being green. Especially when every magazine wants to be green, too, just like you. [WWD]

• If you make fun of Jay McInerney he won't invite you to his parties or share his snack pack. [Slate]

• Why do college students pay tens of thousands a year to learn journalism in New York? So that Gawker bloggers can come tell them it's all pointless. [WWD, WSN]

• Will anybody buy Sporting News? Has anybody heard of Sporting News? [NYT]

• New York magazine and Time Warner may not be necessary for Michael Wolff, but Time Warner's screening room is necessary for his boss, Graydon Carter [Page Six]

• The Office Pirates are coming to steal your absurdities. [NYP]

Jay McInerney would love nothing more than for all of you to put Bright Lights, Big City behind you, and move on to a new chapter — his next book. Unfortunately, the New York Times will have none of that.

We can't help but revel in the PR spin given to authors like McInerney. It breaks our heart a little bit that the NYT feels that its readers need a socialite, drug induced, post-BLBC analysis of a great writer in order to engage them with his latest work.

Now 51 and fearful that his reputation as a partyer has overshadowed his accomplishments as a writer, Mr. McInerney has embarked on a mission to kill off the decadent persona he earned in the pages of "Bright Lights, Big City" and subsequently in more gossip column items than he cares to count.

"I became that figure that media wanted me to be."

Too old for coke-snorting and jumping from gal to gal, McInerney is now becoming the new thing the media wants him to be: a poster child for the success hang-over.

So, be careful young writers, don't get too famous or too good. Don't give out interviews, get your picture taken, or date suicidal models. Don't run around searching for inspiration in drugs, parties, and fellow generation forming artist. If you do, you might end up 51, successful, and able to stay thin on anxiety alone. Really, what could be worse?

His Morning After [Warren St. John, New York Times]

Who is Craig, and where did his beloved list come from? Will The Strokes ever be cool again? What the hell is Index magazine?

New York magazine answers all of our burning, passionate desires in this week's issue. Oh, also, they laugh at the New York Times really hard for being about four months late on that whole JT LeRoy thing.

The models are absolutely gone from the Look Book, and Jared Paul Stern can finally breathe a sigh of relief that his fedora is back in style. But the best part of this week's NYMag? It's more or less all about California.

• Fresh off the back page of Vanity Fair, Jay McInerney brings his hipster insight to New York's music scene. He also reveals the dangers of reporting, such as getting booze spilled all over you and creaming your pants. [Group Therapy]

• Is Craigslist's Craig Newmark the Exploder of Journalism, or The Exploder of Pee? Who cares, this man can get you laid, and take down the New York Times. Mwaahaahaaa. [A Guy Named Craig]

• Keeping the gay porn industry alive is so in fashion right now. Very Brokeback Mountain meets Andy Warhol. [New York Screen: Peter Berlin]

• Does New York talk more about Tina Brown or Hillary Clinton? [Can Anything Stop Tina Brown?]

All this, plus advice on how to get NYC ranked even higher on the list of fattest cities. Now all we need to figure out is how to get an invite to that premiere party at Duvet …

New York magazine