Say what you will about Thomas Friedman or Malcolm Gladwell – Is one too anti-Arab for you? Is one too obsessed with thin-slicing? – but unlike you, they're picking up high five-figure speaking fees, thanks to their being in this era's crop of "influential business thinkers." The Wall Street Journal picked the Top 5 (click graphic for larger version), and you should trust their decision because they used advanced ranking technologies called "Google" and "Nexis." [WSJ]

Can we not have our pie and eat it too?

The video of Times columnist Thomas Friedman getting pied at Brown University has been pulled from YouTube, leading conspiracy theorists (like the girl who threw the pie) to believe Friedman controls the media. Well he is Jewish.

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Inevitably, somebody had a cell phone camera running as Thomas Friedman took a pie to the face and body at Brown University on Tuesday. A group calling themselves the Greenwash Guerillas then promptly issued a press release to explain their actions. No, for realz. It's below.

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This is the female Brown student who ran up on stage last night to throw a pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who had just started a lecture on environmentalism. After she threw the pie, she ran for the exit and was eventually caught by police. After the pie landed on Friedman's face, a male accomplice ran through the aisles throwing pamphlets around, which included a bullet-pointed list of arguing why "Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face." The female student had concealed the pie in a Brown Bookstore plastic bag was tucked away in a red backpack. Friedman left the lecture hall for about five minutes to clean himself off, then returned to finish the lecture.

Page Six magazine will debut re-debut next week, in an purported effort to compete with low and highbrow culture.

Says optimistic Post editor Col Allan: "The New York Times is as much in our gun sights as the Daily News."

When reached for comment, Times' disheartened Sunday op-ed columnists Thomas L. Friedman and Frank Rich promptly conceded defeat by immediately bursting into tears, burying their heads in their hands and quietly sobbing, "We're finished."

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• Kit Seelye weighs in on the newspaper circulation reports, with little or nothing new to say. [NYT]

• Is Tribune faking a sale of the LAT to placate the Chandler family? How disappointed David Geffen will be. [NYP]

• Reese and Ryan split? Keith Urban heads to rehab? Closing dates laugh in their faces! [WWD]

• Dave Price will continue getting up at the ass crack of dawn for CBS. [TV Week]

• Times columnist Thomas Friedman is rich, which makes him the enemy. Or did we miss the point of Norman Solomon's critique? [HuffPo]

• Barry Diller makes it big by going small. [NYT]