Why was TMZ so late to the story about Sandra Bullock's cheating husband Jesse James? It takes a Rat to know.

We don't like that Sandra Bullock-blindsided-by-Jesse James-and-the-tattooed-stripper lady story much, because Sandy's such a likeable plain jane who spent all that time bearding for Matthew McConaughey and now it's looking like the plum dumb Jesse may have been bearding for Sandy.

And after watching him on Celebrity Apprentice, we really liked believing that Jesse was a sincere and stand-up simple guy. But it's definitely a Hollywood tabloid story! And you'd figure it would be something the nasty conscience-free slugs at the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com would be all over, sliding in the hot oiled jealousy and grappling in the celebrity embarrassment takedown behind their shaved bronzed midget frontman.

But they're not.

While even the LA Times splooged with stories about Oscar curses as it avoided the Tom Cruise elephant in the room, the gutter site has been tiptoeing around the story the same way they ignored Owen Wilson's troubles. Heck, the subliterate slugs even ran a pathetic diversionary story this morning about Jesse's missing dog.

Why such sympathy for the villain? Why the sidestepping cowardice?

Is it because the Bullock movie The Blind Side is distributed by Warner Bros., which owns TMZ?

Is it the McConaughey connection?

Or just the standard oh-bitch-pleez TMZ immorality and corruption?


Tabloid Baby pal The Big Cheese at the independent, entertaining, infiltrating news and gossip site Rumor Rat has the exclusive story.

Read it here.

And keep writing your own comments, Teemzers.

UPDATE: Just how pathetic and paltry is TMZ's coverage of this major scandal? Click here to read Rumor Rat's analysis and comparison with the work by the pros at RadarOnline.

Rumor Rat's sweat lodge death guru jailed

Oprah-endorsed New Age guru James A. Ray, who led a sweat lodge ceremony in Arizona last year in which three people died, is being held tonight on $5 million bond on three charges of manslaughter.

Kudos are in order for our pal The Big Cheese and the other busy newsvermin at Hollywood's Rumor Rat, who were on the story from the start and led the way in coverage of the scandal even before it was recognized as such and, while the morons at the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com chase around interchangeable basketball players nabbed on drunk driving or gun raps or keep posting bum information on Michael Jackson's doctor until they get it right, showed how an entertainment site can expand its scope and cover serious news to great effect.

How 20/20 landed La Toya without paying!

The network news organizations don't pay for interviews. When one of them lands a great "get"-- meaning an in-demand interview subject-- its because of their powers of persuasion and the confidence their integrity inspires. Yeah, right. If you believe that, we've got a great health care reform bill that will solve everything. Network news operations from the Today show to 60 Minutes pay for interviews-- although they use very creative methods to get around having to admit it. Our pal the Rumor Rat has the latest example as it looks at the "coincidence" of La Toya Jackson guest-hosting ABC's Barbara Walters show, The View, while agreeing to give "her first one-on-one" interview to Barbara Walters on ABC's 20/20-- and finds it's no coincidence at all.

In fact, it's what we've been telling you-- and what the networks have been denying-- for the past ten years.

They pay.

Writes The Rat:


"How's this for coincidence: LaToya Jackson is recruited to co-host ABC's The View for two days at almost exactly the same time she decides to give her first one-on-one U.S. television interview to "20/20" which airs on the same network.

"Not buying it? Neither are we...

"A source tells The Rat that ABC, which 'never pays for interviews,' has worked out a deal with Jackson whereby she's paid a much higher-than-normal fee for co-hosting The View.

"In exchange, she throws in a 'free' interview with 20/20..."

That's how they do things at the networks. And that's another reason Rumor Rat is becoming a go-to site for lots of influential people in the media. While Perez Hilton slips dangerously, posting a surprising number of day-old and older used stories and the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com becomes more irrelevant with its subliterate, crass childishness, Rumor Rat is having great fun taunting both of the mainstream-backed phonies while making great use of the sources it seems to have in every network newsroom and infotainment show studio office.

Read the rest of Rumor Rat's story here.

Rumor Rat charts the decline of TMZ.com

Gotta love that Rumor Rat and the way the pack is nibbling away at the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com and its cheesy shaved bronzed midget frontman by charting its daily decline on the Most Popular Websites chart. Not only does the daily tally provoke a smile that brings to mind the old Family Circus comics, but the newcomer with rats inside every TV infotainment show it gives the sewer site a lesson in witty, literate writing with lines like these:

"Rumor Rat hears that TMZ Honcho Harvey Levin's losing so much sleep over his site's falling numbers, that he's practically on the verge of making an appointment with Dr. Conrad Murray so he can get some shut-eye.

"The latest daily website rankings are in, and TMZ continues its downward slide, checking in at #404.

"That's TMZ's first time below the "magic-400" mark since June 25th, when Levin made his luckiest managerial call ever by reporting Michael Jackson's passing several minutes before the doctors at UCLA medical center had even pronounced the singer dead."

Ha!

Rumor Rat has fun nibbling away at TMZ

Over the past few years, we've become known as the primary critic of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com and the immoral online exploits of its shaved bronzed midget frontman Harvey Levin, a tabloid pretender who combined the worst elements of local TV news coverage with a jealous confrontational hatred of a short person-- with a disdain for wit, literacy or context-- into a gossip site that makes the viewer feel dirty through the simple act of scrolling (and yes, we realize that "waxed" may be the proper description but we stuck Harvey with the monicker a while ago, so we're stuck with it as well).

Our problems with TMZ have to do with its poisoning of the celebrity culture and Hollywood coverage, its subliterate postings, bullying, lack of respect for great artists and talent, and dirty, slimy, megabucks-backed tactics. In other words, when we see happen to trawl by the TMZ trough and encounter a floating post that really disgusts us, we write about it. There's no real joy dealing with these criminals against journalism.

That's why we offer another tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to The Big Cheese and his (her?) minions over at Rumor Rat. On an almost daily basis, the Rumor Rat gang tweaks and pokes and ridicules TMZ for its everyday foolishness, embarrassments and offenses. And Rumor Rat does it with a witty, joyful hilarity that's helping turn Hollywood tabloid coverage into something smart and fun again.

This morning alone, we see Rumor reporting on how TMZ's website traffic has declined steadily as its oversaturation of the Michael Jackson story continues, and points the way to another report on the latest accusation that TMZ is using its corporate millions to pay for material that it legally should not be getting its hands on, let alone be publicizing for profit.

As Harvey, who know has been chasing his tail around the TMZ ofice in a search for the Big Cheese's identity night say: "Rats!"

TMZ's crappy clip show canceled

Beyond Twisted, the clip show brought to you by the subliterate scumbags at the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com, has gotten the axe only three mind-numbing weeks into its eight week "trial run" by Warner Bros. and Fox television stations.

The cancellation is of little surprise and surely pales beside the original decision by cash-tight syndication suits to allow TMZ's shaved bronzed midget frontman Harvey Levin to enter the genre of concise, well-written and often dramatic reality clips, based on his middling success with his sewer site's whitewashed inconsequential syndicated sister.

Giving Harvey Levin and his classless crew of corner boys a daily show that requires subtle writing skills and topnotch production values is akin to giving Chevy Chase (or Sharon Osbourne or Magic Johnson or Howie Mandel or...) a talk show.

Bad enough the show's title sounds like it was spit out by a 13-year-old. One would think hubristic hairless Harvey's corporate overlords would have gotten the picture when he originally pitched the putrid project under the title, "WTF?" (that's the type of wit and style that circulates in his circles). While the show's website has already been purged from the Internet, the official promotional material still refers to the program's content as "funny and gross"-- good examples of the crude, sleazy and childish worldview and methods of a Fagin and his team of street thugs who've soiled the celebrity scene with foul intrusive reports like the one yesterday in which directional microphones were used to record private conversations between sad Lindsay Lohan and her girlfriend, behind a closed gate, in a supposedly exclusive residential neighborhood, at five o' clock in the morning.


Does one's dedication to the arts and entertaining the masses negate all expectations of privacy even while inside one's wall- and hedge-protected home? Has Harvey Levin paid off everyone in the Sheriff's and police departments?

Yet, TMZ spreads like a virus and our criticism goes unnoticed--

NO, IT DOESN'T!


A tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to the scrappy, funny, mysterious and never cheesy newcomer to the celebrity news and gossip scene, Hollywood's Rumor Rat. The anonymous Big Cheese and his rat pack have come out of their hole, nibbling away at bigs like Perez Hilton and joining us in targeting offenders like the Levin gang. Rat has not only proven to have excellent sources inside every syndicated infotainment operation (including Harvey's pit) in town, but manages to come up with scoops that may be overlooked because they hit a week or two before anyone else catches up.

Case in point: the Beyond Twisted cancellation. Rumor Rat had the scoop last Wednesday.

Rumor Rat has the buzz and has generated speculation as to his identity. Once he upgrades his site to include individual story links and reader comments, the Rat is bound to nibble its way to the top.

Michael Jackson's missing nose makes news one month after we revealed that its tip was absent from Jacko death photo

Rolling Stone magazine is getting lots of play today for a story that was broken by Tabloid Baby within hours of Michael Jackson's death:

Michael Jackson died without his nose.

We alone among the world's journalist noticed and reported that the photo showing Jackson's lifeless corpse on the way into the UCLA Medical Center revealed that the tip of Jackson's cosmetic surgery-damaged schnozzola was missing:

"A study of the photo reveals one detail that's yet to be commented on: Michael Jackson is missing the tip of his nose.

"With his many plastic surgeries, Jacko did much damage to the cartilege in his nose and was rumoured to use putty or a prosthetic to replace the destroyed end...

"It appears that the tip was lost as paramedics worked valiantly to get his heart started, perhaps in a kiss of life."


In a detailed report of Jacko's final days and the hours after his demise, Rolling Stone reports that further attempts to pump some life back into the star had rubbed away the rest of the false appendage, revealing the horrific results of one nose job too many. The once-essential mag quotes a witness who claims to have seen Jacko's corpse on an autopsy table said there was simply a small hole where the singer's nose should have been:

"The prosthesis he normally attached to his damaged nose was missing, revealing bits of cartilage surrounding a small dark hole."

The Daily Mail reports the story today, adding confirmation from a former Jacko housekeeper who adds:

"In his closet he had a jar of fake noses and stage glue, which he told me he used for disguises. But some were similar to his real nose, just without the hole."

Most of the mainstream and tabloid Internet media have attributed the story to the Daily Mail. Only the most perceptive and cutting edge tabloid news sites, like Hollywood's Rumor Rat and the UK's Anorak, cited out story-- on Day One.

A good excuse to follow us on Twitter and receive Tabloid Baby updates. We notice things that others do not. That's what we do.

TMZ & Jacko: Who you gonna believe? The New York Times or Hollywood's Rumor Rat? Think twice before you answer.

In the world of journalism, reporters and columnists look to the rung above them-- or even beneath them-- for what's already been published or posted, and accept the word as fact. So it goes with the spreading story that the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com scooped the world on the death of Michael Jackson because of its superior sources and technology. Though we proved on Friday that TMZ's early word of Jackson's untimely yet not entirely unsurprising bucket kick was based on a gamble-- shaved bronzed midget frontman Harvey Levin and his boy squad took the information everyone else had and ran with it before it was confirmed (an old, dangerous tabloid trick-- see the Bible, Tabloid Baby), the awestruck praise of the despised Hollywood sewer site is comin from "the top"-- in the form of a New York Times article that's been copied and commented upon by print columnists around the nation and world.


We should mention that the Times story is written by Brian Stelter, a boy blogger turned news man who, coming from the Internet and helping his musty print bosses understand its importance, has made a cottage industry of elevating TMZ.com in the eyes of the mainstream media.

Back in March, Stelter pushed the story that during the brouhaha over givernment bailouts, TMZ "drove mainstream coverage and Congressional outrage."

Our own criticism of Stelter's fawning TMZ coverage under the authority of the New York Times goes back to 2007, when he wrote more than one fawning article about the successful debut of TMZ's whitewashed syndicated television sister, which had actually opened to middling ratings, especially in comparison to entrenched infotainment shows.

It's an interesting situation we have here: The established, "mainstream" media doesn't trust Harvey Levin and TMZ enough to use it as a source on a major story like the death of Michael Jackson, yet it sources TMZ on other gossip items on a daily basis, praising the gutter operation and laying out the foundation for using it as a valid source in the future. Of course, the fact that TMZ is a division of Time Warner has little to do with that.


Meanwhile, we find that the unfiltered truth is coming from the independent sites run by real journalists, not TV lawywers like Levin. For example, Rumor Rat, the mysterious celebrity news site whose Big Cheese is obviously a veteran with perscpective and experience and whose team has swarmed across Hollywood and nibbled away at TMZ and Perez Hilton, recognizes who the real rats are.

The winner in the Perez Hilton-will.i.am feud is... Rumor Rat

We have no problem with Perez Hilton. We like the kid. When he's linked to our posts once or twice, it's given us a boost in traffic. And we don't think anybody should respond to the written words of any blogger, Internet writer or critic or journo with violence, as apparently happened (with a little help from Perez' bitchy mouth) in the case and of him and that supposedly cultured and political Obama guy from the Black Eyed Peas.

But the incident in Toronto that threw a spanner into young Mario's plans to become a kinder, gentler and more mainstream media personality has also marked a changing of the guard in Internet entertainment journalism.

When word got out that Perez got poked, Harvey Levin, the shaved bronzed midget frontman of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com, ran himself silly trying to kiss every ass cheek thrust in his direction-- first siding with will.i.am after he sent a denial video to the sewer site, then jumping back under Perez's sheets when the blogging queen released an epic 11+ minute soliloquy-- only to hop back into the anti-Perez line after GLAAD tried to wash Perez's mouth with soap, then-- well, basically revealing TMZ as the amoral waterboy for whoever wants to splash it in watersports.

And as these instant dinosaurs stumble-- one literally punch drunk, the other high on hate-- comes the latest shift in Hollywood entertainment reporting as the Hollywood gossip site that's done the best play-by-play and kept up with every twist in the tiff is that upstart gossip site, Rumor Rat. The mysterious site that's broken onto the scene in recent weeks is just smart and clever and nasty enough to never fall into the jealous, antagonistic smut that circles the TMZ bowl.

While we at TabloidBaby.com are getting international attention and record traffic with our breaking coverage of the Danny Gans and Farrah Fawcett stories, upstart Rumor Rat, which first nibbled into the general awareness by skittering around Perez and leaving its droppings across the TMZ bow, is taking over the Hollywood rumor and celebrity news mantle.

We know Harvey storms around his office asking who this giant mouse and Big Cheese may be. We've gotten accusatory phone calls from his sister operations. We've also learned exclusively that Rumor Rat's experienced an 800% boost in "unique visitor" traffic over last week, and is growing by the day, in part thanks to its coverage of its rivals.

Just as TMZ's shameful launch capsized the bounding Defamer and sent its correspondents to the couch in their bunny slippers to transcribe episode of Oprah and The View, so is RumorRat.com turning into the Ratatouille chef of the stew of Hollywood gossip sites.

BTW, if you haven't noticed how our criticism of TMZ has led to its neutering, check out their announcement of the death of Ed McMahon. While in the past, Harvey and his boys would ridicule the passing of elderly celebs with tasteless puns, they now bow to the powers behind the ones they taunt:

Rumor Rat is latest influential media source to focus on Las Vegas news media's attempt to cover up Danny Gans overdose

They won't admit it in the newsrooms and corporate boardrooms of Las Vegas, but people are paying rapt attention to our coverage of the death and post mortem coverup of the life of Danny Gans, the evangelical Christian headliner who died from an overdose of the powerful opiate Dilaudid.

If it were up to Tom "McCloud" Mitchell, editor of the sinking Las Vegas Review-Journal, fellow journalists would follow the lead of Gans' tragic family and leave the details of his drug use and secret life a closed book.

Steve Friess (left), the local New York Times stringer and comp queen, would have us believe that an investigation into the details of a life that one prominent Las Vegas journalist now calls "a fabric of lies" is somehow not fit to be printed.

But people are paying attention: powerful people far beyond Clark County who are looking at the players in Las Vegas and shaking their heads. The Hollywood Reporter's Ray Richmond was the first to point it out on his essential Man Bites Tinseltown site.

The latest resource spreading the news about Danny Gans and what the Las Vegas news media is not reporting is Rumor Rat, the entertainment news and gossip site that caused immediate shockwaves when it suddenly appeared a few weeks ago with shots across the bows of Perez Hilton and the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com.

Writes the Rat:

"There's an interesting story that's, oddly, NOT surfacing in Las Vegas, but which seems to have a great deal of journalistic merit.

"Apparently entertainer Danny Gans, one of few Sin City entertainers with a squeaky-clean family image, had been hooked on pain killers for years prior to his death.

"Despite this, his overdose is being portrayed in the local Las Vegas media as a freak accident of sorts...

"But the website Tabloid Baby is reporting that Gans had recently been seeking medical treatment for hearing loss - the kind of hearing loss suffered by Rush Limbaugh and others as a result of chronic Vicodin and/or Oxycontin use.

"Tabloid Baby has been on top of this story since news of Danny's death first broke, and the webber's account of what's not being reported by the Las Vegas press is an eye-opening read."

There is one Las Vegas newssite that's been fearless in its reporting of the Danny Gans case. We'll have their story next.

Upstart gossip site notices how TMZ bows to our criticism of its dangerous, offensive auto-asphyxiation primer

In one of our recent mentions of the latest offense perpetrated by the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com and its shaved bronzed midget frontman, the television attorney and tabloid pretender Harvey Levin, we acknowledged frisky newcomer Hollywood Rumor Rat, and today Rumor Rat responded in kind:

"There’s a behind the scenes battle a-brewing in the online world of tabloid journalism. The proprietors of www.tabloidbaby.com are going after TMZ with a vengeance over recent reports regarding the untimely death of actor David Carradine. Yesterday, Tabloid Baby took a few jabs at TMZ honcho Harvey Levin ('the shaved bronze midget,' as TB refers to him) and his staff, over their 'obviously first-hand step-by-step guide to auto-erotic asphyxiation.' Ouch! That was yesterday – Sunday. Today – by sheer coincidence, we’re certain – TMZ is now attributing it’s how-to guide to a 'scientific expert.'

"Surely nobody on the TMZ staff would have knowledge of the masturbatory pleasures of depriving one’s self of oxygen at just the right moment, right? The Big Cheese is certain that giant TMZ would like to make it seem as though it's brushing off the barbs of a pesky little website.

"Fact is, the man who brings us Tabloid Baby is one of the brains behind modern tabloid journalism. You can bet that on some level, Harvey Levin is taking all of his criticisms very seriously."

Huzzahs to Rumor Rat. A few clarifications:

* This is no war. TabloidBaby.com is world-renown as the premier critic of TMZ.

* TMZ has never brushed off any of our barbs, and its corporate overlords have responded to each of our criticisms, as they did in the case of the Carradine offense.

* Shaved bronzed midget TMZ frontman Harvey Levin takes ALL of our criticisms very seriously, for he is our dog.