Vanity Fair

Among the weekend's diverse specials are a lavish new adaptation of William Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," a "Scooby-Doo" marathon and a star-studded new VH1 concert. Women talk about their experiences with breast cancer on "Breast Cancer Journey" tonight at 7:30 on KOCE. Related programming follows until 10. On "Rumi: Poet of the Heart," Debra Winger narrates a profile of the 13th century scholar, tonight at 10 on KCET. Fox Family Channel presents "The World Magic Awards" on Friday at 8 p.m.

A future president sits shirtless in his rent-controlled Manhattan apartment working the New York Times crossword while his girlfriend looks on, an emotional barrier separating him from those close to him. He is unsure of his future path in life but certain that it will be one he builds himself. That's the portrait David Maraniss paints of a young Barack Obama in an upcoming biography, "Barack Obama: The Story," which is excerpted in Vanity Fair. The biography ends as Obama heads to Harvard Law School, but the excerpt is mostly about Obama's early love life.

For months, people close to the David Puttnam and Ray Stark camps have been looking ahead to the April, 1988, issue of Vanity Fair as if it were a crucial opinion being written by the Supreme Court. Would the scheduled article by writer-editor Tina Brown rule in favor of Puttnam, as most others in the media have already done?

As fans of the late Christopher Hitchens cycle through the five stages of grief, it's interesting to see which of his opinions can still inspire the kind of anger that is unlikely to ever fade into acceptance. There are, of course, the obvious candidates: his characterization of Bill Clinton as "a rapist" or his vilification of Mother Teresa as "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud. " There is also his oh so chivalrous shout-out to the Dixie Chicks, whom he called "fat slugs" (or "slags" or "sluts" depending on your source)

Former Rep. Gary Condit (D-Ceres) has settled his $11-million defamation suit with Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne over claims the journalist made about Condit's role in the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy, his lawyer said Tuesday. Condit received an undisclosed sum and an apology, according to a statement released to the Associated Press from Condit's lawyer.

Hilary Swank, who is divorcing actor-husband Chad Lowe, says Lowe's "substance-abuse problem" was partly responsible for the breakup of their marriage, in an interview in the August issue of Vanity Fair. "I knew something was happening, but I didn't know what," the Oscar-winning actress tells the magazine. "When I found out, it was such a shock because I never thought he'd keep something from me.

Filmmaker Roman Polanski on Friday won his libel suit against Vanity Fair magazine over an article that accused him of propositioning a woman while on the way to the 1969 funeral of his murdered wife, Sharon Tate. The Academy Award-winning director was awarded the British equivalent of about $87,000 in damages plus court costs. The jury of nine men and three women took 4 1/2 hours to reach a unanimous verdict at London's High Court.

As this year's Oscar race heats up, there's one guy to beat--Graydon Carter. No, not that race. We're talking about the race to the Swifty Lazar-like peak of party-giving--hosting the glammest Oscar bash. This year, the competition is particularly brutal. Townies will rock at studio bashes like DreamWorks' and Paramount's joint party at Barnaby's on Fairfax, as well as at the House of Blues, where the Hollywood Stock Exchange and Excite's will leap from the Web for a post-awards celebration.

Whether it's for an Oscar bash or just a cocktail party, Vanity Fair always manages to bring out the stars. Artie Shaw, Dominick Dunne, Lisa Kudrow, Sheryl Crow and George Hamilton were just a few of those who gathered at the hilltop home of screenwriter Mitch Glazer and wife, actress Kelly Lynch ("Charlie's Angels") Monday to celebrate "Vanity Fair's Hollywood" (Viking Studio, $60).

The actress Uma Thurman, a picture of bejeweled glamour on the January cover of Vanity Fair, gives a cool gaze that reflects the confidence of the magazine itself. The number of ad pages, which had declined after the departure of Editor in Chief Tina Brown by 18.6% in 1993 and 12.8% in 1994, rebounded dramatically this year. The pages for 1995 increased nearly 31%, to a total of 1,415, according to Media Industry Newsletter. In addition, readers have signaled their approval.

Christopher Hitchens, the engaging and enraging British-American author and essayist whose polemical writings on religion, politics, war and other provocations established him as one of his generation's most robust public intellectuals, has died. He was 62. Hitchens died Thursday night at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said his literary agent, Steve Wasserman. Hitchens was diagnosed with advanced esophageal cancer in June 2010, when his memoir, "Hitch-22," hit the bestseller lists.

The British phone hacking scandal continues to take its toll on News Corp. The media conglomerate on Wednesday reported a 5% drop in its fiscal first-quarter earnings. It incurred charges associated with shutting down its News of the World tabloid in London, which has been at the center of the scandal, and abandoning its bid to acquire 100% of satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting. News Corp.'s financial disclosures come as a Vanity Fair magazine article — on newsstands Friday but released to media Wednesday — reveals how the hacking crisis has intensified a rift among members of the Murdoch family, which owns 12% of the company's shares but controls nearly 40% of their voting power.

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen says Bill Gates, his onetime business partner, was a "mercenary" opportunist who schemed to lessen Allen's stake in the software company. Allen, now a venture capitalist in Seattle, says in his book "Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft" that he learned of the plot while listening in on a conversation between Gates and Steve Ballmer in 1982, after he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Gates is currently Microsoft chairman and Ballmer is chief executive.

At the tail end of an ever-expanding awards season that has already seen the Golden Globes, the Grammys and countless other awards functions, the main event is finally in sight. The Oscars are upon as, and as sure as James Franco and Anne Hathaway are prepping "Black Swan" gags, we're prepared to party all weekend. Here's a comprehensive guide to who, what and where for Academy Awards weekend soirees. Friday Women in Film: For their fourth annual pre-Oscar celebration, WIF taps Halle Berry and producer Cathy Schulman to toast female nominees and their admirers.

As provocative headlines go, the editors of Inspire magazine chose a doozy for their inaugural issue last summer. "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom," it promised. The author of the crude how-to guide was identified only as "The AQ Chef. " That's AQ as in Al Qaeda. The terrorist network long has exploited gory YouTube videos, fiery Facebook pages, hate-filled chat rooms, and other incendiary Internet websites to radicalize recruits and gloat over mass murder. Now the media wing of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot group based in Yemen, is producing an online propaganda periodical that gives pop culture a lethal twist.

One hundred-plus years after the newspaper comic strip was born in San Francisco, a reader might well ask: Who was the greatest comic artist of all time? Some scholars say the question was settled in 1924 by New York arts critic Gilbert Seldes, whose book on the American cultural scene, "The 7 Lively Arts," devoted an entire chapter to a reclusive cartoonist in the Hollywood Hills named George Herriman and his avant-garde comic strip, "Krazy Kat. " Although President Woodrow Wilson, a notorious egghead, and writers T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein were fans and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst was an ardent supporter, Herriman's dialect-heavy but poetic strip was a problem for many newspaper editors and most readers — where were the jokes?

The 20 words that shook the record business are found near the end of Vanity Fair magazine's eight-page profile this month on rock provocateur Courtney Love. Talking about a day last January when her husband Kurt Cobain's band, Nirvana, appeared on "Saturday Night Live," the 26-year-old singer is quoted as saying, "Then, we got high and went to 'S.N.L.' After that, I did heroin for a couple of months." The shocker is that Love, the lead singer of the group Hole, was pregnant at the time.

Flipping through a copy of GQ or Vanity Fair, you've more than likely noticed the guy in those Ralph Lauren fragrance ads — you know the one: the impossibly good-looking guy in the polo shirt, with the perfectly toned body, chiseled cheekbones and dark, luxurious mane tossed in perfect disarray. In a fit of schadenfreude you may have secretly hoped that behind that facade, the perfect picture of masculine pulchritude, lurked some dark, unspeakable flaw, some kryptonite that would bring him down into the realm of mere mortals — horrid table manners, chronic halitosis or the nub of a prehensile tail.

"Look at me, do I look like an alter kocker ?" Jerry Weintraub asks. Verily, he does not. At the moment, he looks like a guy ready to swing a golf club at a visitor for asking him if he feels like -- to offer a rough translation from the Yiddish -- an old fart. At 72, Jerry Weintraub is still swinging. He has just come out with his autobiography: "When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories From a Persuasive Man" (Twelve: 292 pp., $25.99). For a fat tract of the last half of the last century, Weintraub was the Man Behind the Man, whether the man was Sinatra, Elvis or George H.W. Bush.