Cranky Madonna-hating gossip Roger Friedman has two things he loves bitching about (beside Madonna): Michael Jackson, and Scientology. He's ran plenty of copy about the latter, from Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' relationship to their friendship with fellow movie star couple Will and Jada Pinkett Smith. And on Monday night, he accosted the Hancock star with questions about L. Ron Hubbard!

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'Let’s put aside the Scientology and the Nazis for a minute. Forget that he disallowed wife, Katie Holmes, from playing her role in "The Dark Knight," now one of the biggest hits of all time. Just, let’s put that all aside for a sec.' And congratulate Tom Cruise for his Tropic Thunder performance? Roger Friedman goes off the deep end.

If TMZ's shtick is breaking courthouse news, then FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman's beat is charity scandal. More than happy to dig through the non-profit records of Scientology and Kabbalah, Friedman turns his attention to the Britney Spears Foundation, the pop star's erstwhile attempt at doing good for humanity. But like Ms. Spears' personal life in recent years, the foundation is suffering its own troubles. Tax filings from 2006 show the charity was nearly $200,000 in the red; some $150,000 came in as revenue, but $345,000 went out as expenses. Some red flags, in case you were looking for them: $50k was earmarked for Britney's summer camp for kids, but that's all but closed down; some $214,000 for grants are listed, but without any specifics for what those grants are for; and one of two people listed on the foundation's payroll is a former cop previously embroiled in a charity scandal.

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Madonna/A-Rod relationship denier Roger Friedman helpfully pinpoints all the dates relevant to their relationship that does not exist. As if this entire story could not get more sensational, there's this bit about a, ahem, "groin pull": "What was A-Rod’s injury? A grade 2 groin pull that occurred during a game against Baltimore on the 20th. He went back to work, but exacerbated the injury to the point where he couldn’t play. It was so bad that Rodriguez actually didn’t rejoin the team until May 20, when the Yanks lost to Baltimore 12-1. That’s a long time for a superstar of Rodriguez’s caliber to be out of commission. Indeed, when A-Rod was injured, manager Joe Girardi was quoted in several interviews saying that he was 'surprised to learn the strain was so severe.'" [Fox 411]

Backtracking is often the unfortunate side effect of being a professional gossip. Sometimes you get things wrong. Sometimes your sources lead you askew. Sometimes you're so self-sure of your own version of events that you put blinders up against the common thinking that everybody else subscribes to, ignoring tell-tale signs and well-sourced reports so you can do the Slate-y thing and zag where others zig.

It explains how Fox News gossip Roger Friedman went from denying any possibility of Madonna romancing with Alex Rodriguez to plotting out how the duo might've maintained their secret affair. Get on the bus!

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Nickelback, the maybe-Christian rock band that makes us want to take a hammer to our radios, is thisclose to signing one of those 360 deals with Live Nation, the troubled concert tour and music marketing company that's firing everybody, including its chairman.

This, from FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman, which makes the report questionable — since Friedman also reported it was Nickelback who had the hit "The Reason." Except they didn't; Hoobastank did.

Like fellow Live Nation transplant Madonna, Nickelback is currently on Warner Music, which means if Friedman's other reports about Warner planting negative items about Madonna and her supposedly struggling tour are true, then the Canadian rockers should expect the same when their next tour dates are announced. Something tells us tens of millions of dollars from Live Nation will soften the blow.

FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman, most recently seen finger-pointing Warner Music's way for leaking negative items about exiting client Madonna, is back on his usual Madge-hating rampage. Never one for cult religions like Scientology, Friedman has a special part of his tongue-lashings that he saves for Kabbalah and its red-string wearing celebrity leader. For one: She wore a baseball cap to a bar mitzvah.

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While we sort of expected to see another rant from Roger Friedman about the newest cover of TV Guide — still no Tim Russert, but plenty of reality TV stars — we were turned on by his rumormongering about who might be behind the anti-Madonna reports that have been popping up lately.

Friedman, as he so often does with the New York Post, is battling back against the paper's report yesterday that concert ticket sales have been sluggish for her upcoming Sticky & Sweet tour. Though Madonna has racked up $74 million in sales for 13 European dates, the Post says "just over half of the 43,000 seats available for a Nov. 6 date at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium - 27,000 tickets in all - have been sold in their first three weeks of availability, raising red flags about the limits of US demand for the 49-year-old Madonna at this stage of her career."

Worth mentioning: This is her first fourth tour with Live Nation but her first since signing a $120 million "360" deal that covers all of Madonna's recording, touring, and merchandising, though these mega-deals have also led to reports (also from the Post) of massive layoffs at the company to follow chairman Michael Cohl's ouster.

But Friedman, a regular Madonna foe (don't get him started on her Kabbalah), notes, "Dodger Stadium is the only venue Madonna hasn’t sold out. Of course, the show isn’t for five months. The fact that she’s sold half the stadium now for November is pretty darn impressive."

So if that's the case, and many of her shows are selling out in minutes (like her three dates at Madison Square Garden), how does the Post manage to print the headline "Madonna Sale$ Sag: Live Nation Defends Limp Response to Her U.S. Tour"?

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FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman launched a seemingly personal battle against TV Guide today when he didn't see Tim Russert's face peering at him from its cover this week. While some folks think the media have gone overboard with Russert tributes, Friedman expected the magazine covering Russert's industry would put him on the cover. And when he didn't spot the mug of the deceased? He blamed new owner Macrovision, which is trying to sell off the print title while hanging on to its dot-com.

Except as so often happens with Friedman, his argument holds little water.

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In between plugging Cyndi Lauper’s "True Colors" tour, which hits Radio City on Tuesday night, with special opener Rosie O’Donnell, Roger Friedman sneaks in this bash of the New York Post, continuing an on-going feud: "Somehow, though, both Rosie and Cyndi were left off of the New York Post’s extremely odd '50 Most Powerful Women in NYC' List on Sunday. The list is so wacky — who is Tinsley Mortimer? Powerful? I doubt it." [Fox 411]

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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Fox News gossip Roger Friedman, who's spent the last few weeks chronicling the build up to the Sex and the City movie in between Michael Jackson updates, on the film's "one odd thing … which still doesn't make sense": "We never see of the girls’ families. Carrie’s elaborate wedding doesn’t include even a mention of parents or siblings. Charlotte’s pregnancy, ditto, includes no doting grandmother. I dimly recall some mention of Miranda’s family in the TV series. Here they are non-existent." [Fox411]

FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman, in dissing Oprah, conspicuously continues his tirade against black people. Or maybe just Barack Obama supporters? [Fox 411]

Whew. FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman returns from Mariah Carey album reviews to his area of expertise: Michael Jackson. The pop star, now wallowing in expired fame as Janet Jackson's older brother, paid $3 million to his Neverland Ranch creditors as a way of buying himself another 60 days from their auctioning off his old circus pad. He's already eaten halfway into his extension and a white knight, much like his children's faces, doesn't appear to be showing himself anytime soon. [Fox 411]

Above: Fox 411 gossip Roger Friedman's item that ran this morning about Stop Loss actor Ryan Phillippe and homewrecker Abbie Cornish.

Below: A sneaky edit made to the item after it was published. [HP]

BACK TO BLACK On Sunday, FoxNews.com gossip Roger Friedman published what could have easily been a Clinton camp-fed item about how black celebs aren't supporting Barack Obama's campaign with donations. He listed Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Denzel Washington among those who haven't followed Oprah's lead. But what about … Eddie Murphy, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Rock, Will Smith, Forest Whitaker, Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, Camille Cosby, Tyler Perry, Tyra Banks, Phylicia Rashad, Dennis Haysbert, Tracey Edmonds, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Gabrielle Union, Hill Harper, Holly Robinson Peete, Jamie Foxx, Nia Long, Morgan Freeman, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Regina King, Jasmine Guy, Debra Lee, and Michael Jordan? [Stereohyped]

Newly installed NBC programming wunderkind Ben Silverman is losing his shit over Rosie O'Donnell. In a word, it's love … at first Nielsen. So says Roger Friedman, who reports Silverman is "telling friends" that he'll do anything to get Rosie on the Peacock's roster. Silverman is said to want Rosie for a primetime game show as well a daytime competitor to The View.

But that's not the real news from Friedman. We hear the Fox gossip is celebrating his birthday this weekend. We're sending over a Pop Burger gift certificate.

Roger Friedman's outting of Bob Scheiffer as a Katie Couric bad PR plant continues to reverberate. In his FoxNews.com column yesterday, Friedman fingered Schieffer as the CBS insider behind Katie Couric's publicity troubles — ratings, on-set tension, feuding with CBS' in-house PR diva Gil Schwartz, producer hopping rationales. The evidence of Schieffer's doings: His airtime on the CBS Evening News has been decreasing. Or something.

Schieffer is cited as the source behind Gail Shister's Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday column – the front page, very-insider article from the woman who just had her TV industry column canned – where she laid out claims that CBS execs feel Katie's hiring was an "an expensive, unfixable mistake" and that she could be gone after the 2008 presidential election.

Not that those sentiments aren't common knowledge at this point.

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Like many of you, we love nothing more than good ol' media catfight (like that girl-on-girl kerfuffle at the Times!) Which is why we're enjoying this little gem Intern Wendy dug up, in which Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman takes a potshot at resident nutjob, Nancy Grace. As Friedman writes:

And then crazy ol' Nancy Grace borrowed our story last night on CNN Headline News. She managed to take everything we'd reported and mix it up in a Cuisinart until several people were all talking at once and making no sense.

And while we empathize with Friedman, we're forced to wonder: how was last night different from every other night?