Bonfire of the Vanity, Mostly

AMONG GIANTS Grove, Bob Colacello, and Graydon Carter • Greener Grove: A newspaper's Liz Smith reports that erstwhile New York Daily News gossip Lloyd Grove is joining Graydon Carter's "murderers row" at Vanity Fair. It remains to be seen what part of this gig falls under the description "something that is multimedia, with components of Internet and television and print media."

• Speaking of Vanity Fair ... : New York speculates on the real winner of the Brad Pitt vs. VF contretemps: Katharina Otto-Bernstein, director of Absolute Wilson, a film about the suddenly controversial Brad Pitt cover creator and avant garde artist Robert Wilson.

• Fairly dominating the news: What? More Vanity Fair news? Neocons are incensed over the magazine's decision to take the valuable real estate its website usually devotes to nude socialites to post an article from its January issue in which several former administration officials and friends condemn the war. Bonus: David Frum takes to the Huffington Post to complain that VF's press release about the article is "the most dishonest document I have seen." We can't wait for his wife, Danielle Crittenden, to do one of her hilarious fake IM posts about this.

• Bird flu: Is the new all-singing, all-dancing penguin epic Happy Feet a long infomercial for flu medication? The New York Times reports that "characters from 'Happy Feet' appear in an extensive advertising campaign, including network and cable commercials, full-page magazine ads and online banner ads, for Roche, promoting its Web site..."

Photo: Patrick McMullan