Crouch Swings, Pauley Sues, Diller Cleans Up, Bushnell Boozes

FIGHTING WORDS Crouch • Block that metaphor, etc.: Confidential to Stanley Crouch: If you're famous mostly for assaulting a colleague and "bitch-slapping" a critic, you might want to avoid phrases like "Now a federal jury has slapped a judgment against the journalistic toilet paper of the hip-hop magazine" while writing about Kimberly Osorio's lawsuit against the Source. Furthermore, you might also avoid decrying the fact that "She was fired last year from her position as an editor for vocally disapproving of the ham-fisted sexual jive in an office where women were called 'bitches' and the environment was like a Nelly video come to life." Just sayin'.

• "Dupe" process: Newscaster Jane Pauley is suing the New York Times for allegedly tricking her into giving an interview in an Eli Lilly advertorial about mental illness in 2005. She is seeking unspecified damages. Meanwhile, Pauley's husband, Doonsebury creator Garry Trudeau probably wouldn't proceed with such a public fuss. As Pauley told the Washington Post in a recent profile of her husband, "he's afraid to return a shirt that's the wrong size." In that same profile, writer Gene Weingarten described Pauley's struggle with mental illness: "In 2001, Pauley nearly lost her mind. After receiving steroids to control a case of the hives, she began doing oddly intense things. How intense? She bought a house one day, for no good reason, on impulse, from an ad on the Web. Misdiagnosed with depression, she was hospitalized under an assumed name, to protect her privacy. Eventually, she was found to have a bipolar disorder—triggered but not caused by the steroids—for which she is still undergoing treatment."