While the existing staff of The Early Show deals with its own dilemma, the saga of executive producer hopeful Ben Sherwood continues. Or maybe it doesn't.

Despite a push from his CAA team on both coasts, we're hearing his chances may be slipping, or have all but disappeared already.

But that won't keep us from bringing you this twenty-year old Spy magazine article! After all, we've already gone through his old emails.

The October 1998 article, posted in full after the jump, profiles Ben when he's a 24-year-old Rhodes scholar at Oxford. What do we learn?

• He went to prep school
• He's the son of a "well-connected Beverly Hills lawyer"
• His parents paid kids to play with him and his siblings
• His Harvard peers bonded over hating Sherwood and his enthusiasm, with one classmate saying people made it their business to dislike him, and with one going so far as to say, "When you think Ben Sherwood, you think funny stories, you think asshole, you think 'Thank God I'm not him.'"
• He thinks Machiavelli is misunderstood
• He likes magic tricks. And mime
• He wanted to lead the Harvard Crimson, and ended up with internships at the Los Angeles Times (no thanks to family friend, publisher Tom Johnson) and CBS before spending three months with the United Nations on the Thailand-Cambodia border (where he discussed fellowships with others) and a stint at the World Bank
• He took an interest in rugby to "lock up my Rhodes," but it's arguable whether he ever played a single game at Harvard. His teammates did like to strip him naked and force beer down his throat, though

CONTINUED »

Graydon Carter can really hook it up.

The Vanity Fair editor has set up his old Spy magazine friend, Kurt Anderson, with a one-year, two article contract. And for 10,000 words surrounded by Louis Vuitton and Burberry ads, Anderson will get a payday in the mid-five figures.

And suddenly, all of our friends in journalism seem useless.

Rather than lug a photog around last night's Spy: The Funny Years book party – it seems everyone (#) is (#) doing (#) that these days – we instead hit Grayon and Kurt's event the way we would a friend's small get together: casual dress code, drink in hand, and taking notes on our BlackBerry.

• We scored exactly 8.66 seconds of face time with Vogue's Anna Wintour. She had to make a phone call .. and a quick exit.

• There was one Donald Trump look-a-like, one real Graydon Carter, and one Graydon Carter look-a-like.

• It was difficult to tell who most deserved the superlative "effervescent": Women's Wear media scribe Stephanie Smith or Metro dating columnist and Candace Bushnell wannabe Julia Allison.

• Ex-Daily News gossip Lloyd Grove appears to enjoy these parties so much more now that he's not reporting on them. Guess that goes hand in hand with unemployment.

• Meanwhile, current Daily News gossip George Rush impressed us by going the entire night without mentioning Britney Spears' divorce. Kudos.

• Radar's photographer reminded us of our high school yearbook lensman who roamed the hallways trying to get you to pose. A snappily dressed Jeff Bercovici was not in the mood to wrangle photo subjects.

• Ex-Jossip editor Corynne Steindler arrived with new boss Richard Johnson. Guess who was more excited to see us.

• Dealbreaker Liz Spiers got off at the wrong stop: The 6 train gets closer to Wall Street than this.

• Time Inc.'s Jim Kelly was overheard vowing not to throw another beer bash at his house.

• Harvey Weinstein came in from the rain with his own umbrella carrier. That was the highlight of our fat rich Jew observations.

• Mediabistro's Dylan Stableford may have had one too many. Or we had one too many. One of us was slurring.

• AdAge's Nat Ives revealed his new game plan: Quantity, not quality.

Pause with us, for a moment, as we enjoy the pleasure of a post-coital cigarette in the form of a Spy retrospective piece that makes no mention of its obvious cultural influence. Oh, sure, the Observer's Alexandra Jacobs credits Kurt Andersen and Gradyon Carter's widely unread rag with such new age developments as Gawker Stalker (obvy) and Punk'd (no doy). But absent from the copy is any mention of Radar. As in that magazine burning its midnight oil to assemble scroll-intensive faux letter features commemorating Andersen and Carter's sycophant relationship. As in that magazine owing its very existence to Spy. Well, except for duplicating the scoops of others. That's entirely Radar's own table offering.

Hey! Remember Us? [Alexandra Jacobs, NYO]

• The hype over Vogue Living? Totally uncalled for, reports the hype machine. [Gawker]

• Kazakhstan finds a way to get in the headlines without the help of Borat. [Reuters]

• Record labels more douchey than previously assumed. [WSJ]

• Calvin Klein leaks all over Jean-Georges Vongerichten, loses choice tables throughout city. [NYDN]

• Surprise! Boston Globe staffers don't want their salaries tied to the sinking ship of newspaper revenue. [E&P]

• It's about time Kurt Andersen understands he's now part of the very bastion of media elite that Spy would've harped on. [Ocean Drive]

• Leonardo DiCaprio tries the same "green TV" stunt Cameron Diaz already attempted to force us to watch. [THR]

• A sneak peak at the upcoming Spy book reminds us that all the clever FOB pieces of Radar and New York have been done before. [Very Short List]

• Rubenstein PR resorts to the dirty tricks of newspaper journos. [Daily Intelligence]

• DeBeers and the diamond industry are doing all the promotion for Leo DiCaprio's upcoming flick Blood Diamond. A scandal is forever. [The Envelope]

• Esquire doubles its fiction offerings. Though that's literary fiction, not "The best sex comes after 50!" fiction. [NYP]

• Jon Friedman almost feels guilty for loving New Yorker editor David Remnick so much — interesting because of all the people Friedman fawns over, Remnick is perhaps the only one we're willing to give him a pass on. [Marketwatch]

• Leave it to Time Warner to take the "Court" out of CourtTV. Whatever it takes to attract those young viewers defecting to MySpace. And XTube. [WSJ]

• CBS shall not utter Devil speak. And by Devil speak we mean the word "gay." [Good As You]

We heard whispers of a book that was all about "going inside Spy magazine" a while back. And basically, because we are so tired of the entire media world licking Kurt Andersen's ass, we didn't pay much attention. Seriously, Spy is so dunzo.

However, now that The Transom has managed to snap some photos of the $40 book, which pays homage to all founders of cheek, we are re-intrigued.

So, what's in the spectacular, glorious, elusive Spy book?

It's big. It has lots of pictures. It's gorgeous. Great reprints, great photos. Can't wait. It's also got lots of opportunities for editors Graydon Carter, Kurt Andersen and George Kalogerakis to autohagiographize.

Never put it past the media elite had to come up with something to remind everyone how great they were even before they were rich and powerful. (We promise never to rub it in your face how cool we once were, even if we are forced to wear pants to work someday.)

The only thing we care about: when's the book party? We missed Toby Young and we really want to see a few more middle-aged white guys brawl.

Spy: The Book of the Magazine [The Transom, New York Observer]