Scholar and walking punch line Donald Trump is really getting serious about this whole 2012 presidential run bullshit. And why shouldn't he, when he's already got Lewis Black and Rush Limbaugh on his side, and he's only the third least popular figure in NYC. But Trump made a dangerous move yesterday during a visit with the ladies of The View: he came out of the closet as a birther. more ›

In the past 24 hours, two Fox News hosts revealed what they really think about Muslims, shocking no one. Appearing on The View yesterday, Bill O'Reilly prompted Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the show in disgust after he declared, "Muslims killed us on 9/11." Then on Fox & Friends this morning, co-host Brian Kilmeade said, "Not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim." Here's video of the O'Reilly appearance, via MediaMatters: more ›

President Obama is currently taping a segment at the studios of The View on the Upper West Side. Onlookers were greatly outnumbered by police, but that could have something to do with the various sanitation trucks and barricades set up on the quiet Upper West Side street (yup, if you saw the pictures of the set up outside Vogue editor Anna Wintour's Greenwich Village house, the scene of one of two Manhattan fundraisers Obama will be attending, it's that...uneventful). more ›

President Obama is visiting the Garden State and Big Apple today, so everyone should just get ready for the inevitable gridlock headaches. According to the AP/1010 WINS, "Obama was to speak Wednesday at a sandwich shop in Edison, N.J., to tout a lending initiative aimed at small businesses. From there he was to travel to New York to tape an interview with the daytime talk show 'The View' and attend two high-dollar fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee." more ›

President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit a daytime TV talk show when he visits with the ladies of The View this week. It's part of the show's "Red, White & View" series (VP Biden was on in April) and ABC News reports, "The president will take the hot seat among the show's five female hosts, who represent a range of backgrounds and political views, at a time when his administration grapples with challenges from the economy to the BP oil spill." We also expect Shirley Sherrod to come up! Obama will tape the segment on Wednesday (expect motorcade action near Lincoln Center) and it'll air on Thursday. His last View appearance (video) was during the 2008 campaign. more ›

GLAAD, the Black AIDS Institute and the National Black Justice Coalition are really not happy with the ladies of "The View," taking out a full page ad in Variety blasting them for their ignorance. On the June 22 episode, Sherri Sheperd and co-host D.L. Hughley said that closeted black men are to blame for increased HIV rates among straight black women. Hughley said, "When you look at the prevalence of HIV in the African American community, it's primarily young women who are getting it from men who are on the down low." But GLAAD and, you know, science disagree. more ›

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will be in NYC today. Obama will be making his financial reform speech at Cooper Union around noon today; according to WPIX, "The President will arrive in New York around 11am. He will take a helicopter to Lower Manhattan, then motorcade up the FDR Drive to the Houston Street exit then make his way to Cooper Union," which is on 7th between 3rd and 4th Avenues. Plus, the FDR will be frozen between 23rd Street and South Ferry, and expect delays on buses that go through the area between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Oh, and some subway entrances might be closed too! more ›

We tried our best to bury our heads in the sand on this Justin Bieber... thing, but this is just something we're going to have to come to terms with, like shingles and Uggs. The young recording artist, who has previously caused mass hysteria in shopping malls, is all over Manhattan this week; according to his Twitter (which we don't follow obsessively or anything) he's appearing on BET's show 106 and Park today and Letterman's show tonight. Yesterday Bieber was charming Barbara Walters on The View, but outside the studio one teen's whole entire life was RUINED when she couldn't get in to watch the taping. We know this because the girl's mother sent us an outraged e-mail, with the subject title, "ABC's the View leaves Justin Bieber's teenaged fans out in the cold!!!!" Hope you've got a box of tissues ready, because this one's a tearjerker: more ›

Some two years after the fact, folks are still asking Alec Baldwin about The Voicemail. This time around it's not quite the sprawling New Yorker piece, but a short Playboy interview. The actor told the magazine that following the incident, he trusted The View as a safe forum where he could "get a fair shake." However, he quickly turned his back to another NYC morning show, declaring, "I'm on an NBC show, and Today was considered vital. But when that voice-mail tape thing happened, Matt Lauer interviewed [TMZ's Harvey] Levin before he even called me. Lauer put Levin on Today, and they never phoned me. When it’s in their interest to reach me, they know how. I saw that and said, ‘My relationship with the Today show is over.’ I’ll never do Today again, ever. Life’s too short." And as for 30 Rock, he plans to retire in 2012 when, presumably, he'll begin living a fantasy life with a new family that is unaware of his past life as a celebrity. more ›

With less than 48 hours left before the election, John McCain stopping into Saturday Night Live to perform in a couple of sketches seems like it should be huge news. But with so much attention being showered on the show this year throughout the campaign season, somehow it just felt par for course at this point in a period that Tina Fey for one calls "the weirdest time in my life." more ›

Bill Clinton was on the talk show circuit yesterday, to promote his Clinton Global Initiative which meets this week. But naturally he discussed the current presidential campaign. The former president told the View ladies that Hillary Clinton wasn't dying to be VP, "She said, 'If [Obama] asks, I'll do it because it's my duty.' She loves being a senator for New York and has more freedom to develop her positions on the issues." he did add:

It's a very personal decision who should be vice president. I like Senator Biden a lot. I think he was a good choice. [Hillary Clinton] would have been the best politically at least in the short run because of her enormous support in the country. I think that [Obama] felt more comfortable with another choice and you have to respect that.

The ladies from The View may have found a way to relax after last week's testy run-in with John McCain. Today Page Six reports that when Eurythmics' Dave Stewart stopped by the show this week, he presented them with a gift from his new London boutique: a vibrator for each of them. But these weren't your father's old sex toys from the discount bin at Fantasy World. Stewart gave each co-host gold vibrators that are are "waterproof, silent and everlasting" and worth $325 a piece. The Post says that the ladies were "atwitter" over their gifts. more ›

While Sarah Palin made it through her big interview last night, John McCain had a harder time on The View. The Daily News reports Barbara Walters went after him, "noting that Palin had gobbled up earmarks for her state" and that the Alaska governor also sold the governor's plane on eBay at a loss. Joy Behar said the McCain-Palin camp's recent ads were "lies," "You've changed, you've become more in lockstep [with Bush]...because you want to get elected." And Gawker caught the moment where Whoopi Goldberg asked McCain if she should worry about slavery being reinstated. Anyway, you can keep all the mis-sayings straight by checking out FactCheck.org. more ›

Later today ABC will join together Barack Obama with the ladies of The View. While they tell us the main focus of their interview segment is on the "controversial remarks of Reverend Jeremiah Wright" (something that Elizabeth Hasselbeck has slammed him for in the past), one of the clips shows Barbara Walters telling Obama he is, "very sexy looking." At which point the presidential candidate needs to fan himself from the 78-year-old news legend's praise! more ›

In a matter of weeks, Kimya Dawson has gone from nice, unassuming local anti-folk artist to a bona fide national breakout star, thanks to the success of the movie Juno and her contributions to the soundtrack. This week the soundtrack hit #3 on the Billboard album chart, and Kimya's been busy basking in the much deserved success. Aside from speaking with us earlier this week, the former Moldy Peach played a handful of packed (overflowing, even) shows around Brooklyn, likely impressing her new fans at every stop. Those who couldn't make it, or couldn't get enough, be sure to catch her on The View with her idol, Whoopi, next Monday. (pic via thepiratehat's flickr) more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a pedestrian struck on East 112th St. and 3rd Ave. in Manhattan, shots fired at 132nd St. and Madison Ave. in Manhattan, and a commercial burglary on 4th Ave. and 90th St. in Brooklyn.
• Page Six lists its top ten scoops of the year. #1 is about Rosie O'Donnell's writer being escorted from The View offices for drawing magic marker mustaches on pictures of Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and rumors that O'Donnell might quit the show.
• James Colliton, the lawyer who pleaded guilty to having sex with two underage sisters and served 18 months in jail, is suing the 188-year-old law firm Cravath, Swaine, and Moore for $1.45 million he feels the firm owes him after he was fired. Colliton's lawsuit was handwritten on notebook paper.

Some of you looking outside this morning might have had a double take, as fog has rolled in some parts of the city. Janelle sent us this photograph of fog seen over the East River from Dumbo (the Brooklyn Bridge is hidden on the left), but we hear that the view is clear and beautiful looking from Midtown East. As for what kind of fog it is, we're not sure, but it sure is... more ›

Barry Manilow, who is out promoting his Greatest Songs of the Seventies, has refused to share a stage with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who was barely walking in the 70s. The crooner left a little message on his website yesterday for his fans letting them know he wouldn't be on The View today, saying "I had made a request that I be interviewed by Joy, Barbara or Whoopi, but not Elisabeth Hasselback. Unfortunately, the show was not willing to accommodate this simple request so I bowed out. It’s really too bad because I've always been a big supporter of the show, but I cannot compromise my beliefs." more ›

A report being released tomorrow by the Industrial Assistance Corporation (IAC) titled "Buried Treasure: New York's Hidden Tech Sector" asserts that New York City rivals cities like Seattle and areas like Silicon Valley as the largest technology center in the country. The study counted the number of tech workers in the city, at branches of corporations like IBM, Microsoft, Google, and the research and development departments of medical centers in the city. The IAC report actually considered all of the "New York Metropolitan Statistical Area," which includes southern New York State and northern New Jersey. The Associated Press story says that IAC found 620,000 tech workers in that area, more than twice the number found in Silicon Valley. more ›

After the outcry from families of September 11 victims as well as other members of the public, WABC 7 reversed its decision not to air the reading of 2,749 September 11 victims' names by yesterday afternoon and will now air the ceremony in its entirety. more ›

Has WABC Changed for the Worse? We are starting to think that Bill Beutel, Roger Grimsby, or Tom Snyder would not recognize their former station if they came back to life. Sure the station is dominant in the ratings but has the quality of the news product gone down? more ›

A look at some noteworthy television this week: more ›

In 2005 Barbara Walters mentioned her distaste for public breastfeeding on The View and was met at the show's studio with "lactivists" protesting her statement. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible abduction at 39th St. and 4th Ave. in Brooklyn, falling debris from 820 Columbus Ave. in Manhattan, and a stabbing on East 214th St. in the Bronx.
• Queens Councilman James Gennaro was fined $2,000 after admitting to the Conflict of Interest Board that he asked a staffer to volunteer on his campaign, although he says he has no recollection of the 2003 incident
• MTA CEO Elliot Sander has instructed his division heads to only cut costs by 1.5% next year, after concluding that there is no more fat to trim or inefficiencies to reduce at the agency.
• Madonna spent two hours at Bill Clinton's Harlem offices yesterday, possibly discussing an endorsement of his wife's run for President. She has yet to visit Hillary Clinton's offices.
• A GoogleMaps mashup illustrating the geography of Seinfeld.
• Free alt-weekly New York Press changes ownership hands again. It was sold by Avalon Equity Partners to Manhattan Media for an undisclosed sum.
• Whoopi Goldberg was chosen as Rosie O'Donnell's replacement on the female chat-show The View.
• The New York Times looks at bad behavior at four star restaurants, when well-heeled diners can't wait until they get home to vomit, get naked, or have sex.

A look at some noteworthy television this week: more ›

Designer Michael Bierut has details over at the Pentagram blog on how he and his team created the recently installed sign at The New York Times Building, the 52-story tower designed by Renzo Piano and FXFowle. more ›

Barbara Walters may not have the controversy-ratings dervish Rosie O'Donnell on the roster of The View anymore, but what she does have is her reputation as the go-to interview for many celebrities. Last week, it was announced that Paris Hilton would be giving her first post-jailhouse interviewed with Babs. One release and re-jailing later, Hilton called Walters collect. more ›

Rosie O'Donnell made an appearance at BEA this past weekend, though her involvement with the expo was toned down significantly after The View fued. Variety reports: more ›

Google Maps has upped its considerable offering to include "Street View," which offers views of the certain locations at the street-level imagery. The areas where you can see images are noted by blue lines on the map (click the "Street View" button). Manhattan is pretty covered and downtown Brooklyn is covered, but the Bronx, Queens and State Island views are pretty much limited by major roads. Below is 1 Centre Street; you can't get an image of City Hall, because the blue line doesn't go into City Hall Park. Here's what Eastern Parkway at the Brooklyn Library looks like and this is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. more ›