Axed ABC Newser Faked 'Bama Sitdown

STOP THE PRESSES Barack

• French Barack interview, c'est faux: Obama says he never gave an interview to a French magazine in which he supposedly calls the war in Iraq a "defeat." The reporter behind the fabrication, Alexis Debat, was asked to resign from ABC News in June after his alleged Ph.D. from the Sorbonne was also found to be false.

• Frey fiction: The disgraced, embellishing memoirist who was ripped into a million little pieces by Oprah and shunned by the literary world will release his debut novel, Bright Shiny Morning, through HarperCollins next summer.

• Goldman squeezes the Juice: Speaking of Oprah, Fred Goldman will appear on the show today to promote OJ's, If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer. Goldman has virtually cut Simpson's hypothetical "if" from the title by reducing the font size to microscopic levels.

• Democratic mashup: The eight Dem candidates field hardball questions from Charlie Rose and "wildcard" queries from Bill Maher in an online candidates' forum. Maher asks of Joe Biden: "A good reason why ... marijuana should be illegal."

• Eggers does good: The man behind McSweeney's became the youngest person ever to win one of the $250,000 Heinz awards, which he will donate to his nonprofit writing and tutoring centers.