Katie Couric's Single; Derek Jeter's a Huge Cad

Katie Couric's a single woman, Derek Jeter needs to work on not being an awful cad, and Mitt Romney and Chris Christie had a very big night last night.

Welcome to the Smart Set. Every morning we bring you the gossip coverage, filtered. Today: Katie Couric's a single woman, Derek Jeter needs to work on not being an awful cad, and Mitt Romney and Chris Christie had a very big night last night.

• Katie Couric has apparently said good luck and goodbye to Brooks Perlin, her "boy-toy boyfriend" of five years Sources say the couple's May-December romance has been "rocky" for several months and that "handsome Brooks, 17 years Katie’s junior" is going to move out of their home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A friend of Couric says: "Brooks is a great person and a real gentleman. But after five years, they have decided it was time to go their separate ways. Brooks is in the process of moving out of her home." Or at least he was as recently as three months ago, when another source says Brooks "stopped looking because they decided they were going to try to make things work.” That apparently didn't take, though if it did, they would have been the first couple in the history of coupledom to successfully "try to make things work." [Page Six]
• Since breaking up with longtime squeeze Minka Kelly in August, New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter has apparently been "bedding a bevy of beauties in his Trump World Tower bachelor pad" and then sending them home "with gift baskets of autographed memorabilia." It goes without saying that uch behavior is unbecoming of a Yankee captain and a gentleman (it's more like something we'd expect out of Nick Swisher), but a friend tells the New York Post that Jeter's "wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kiss-offs came to light when he mistakenly pulled the stunt twice on the same woman — forgetting she had been an earlier conquest." Jeter's friends describes the circumstances of the inadvertent double-gifting. "“Derek has girls stay with him at his apartment in New York, and then he gets them a car to take them home the next day. Waiting in his car is a gift basket containing signed Jeter memorabilia, usually a signed baseball,” explained the source. “This summer, he ended up hooking up with a girl who he had hooked up with once before, but Jeter seemed to have forgotten about the first time and gave her the same identical parting gift, a gift basket with a signed Derek Jeter baseball.” On the plus side, at least it wasn't a ball signed by A.J. Burnett. [New York Post]
• Mitt Romney and Chris Christie raised $1.1 million for Romney's presidential campaign during a fundraiser last night at the Hilton Parsippany in New Jersey. How did the exact figure come out so fast. According to a donor who attended the event, Christie announced the total to the crowd." General admission tickets for the event were going for $500, while photos with the two VIPs were going for $2,500. It cost $25,000 to be listed as a host for the event, up from the $5,000 it would have cost you to host a Romney fundraiser in Richmond last week. In defense of the latest event, check out the handsome typesetting on the invitation. [Influence Alley]

• Michigan Rep. Thad McCotter -- he of the blink-and-you-missed bid for the GOP presidential nomination -- apparently suffered an exodus of staff late last week when three senior employees left the office abruptly." Among those to depart: chief of staff Jack Daley, deputy chief of staff Nate Pendley, and spokesperson Michaela Huntley, who took a a job at Glenn Beck's new online show GBTV. A former McCotter staffer told Politico: "After the failed presidential run he’s cleaning house. In the face of a tough primary and a tough general election campaign, he’s starting over." That's not something entirely new to the five-term Congressman. Two sources say that "[a]t least 21 staff members have left McCotter’s office since Fall 2009, ten of whom were senior staff." [Politico]
• Justin Bieber was in D.C. Saturday taping a special for the National Building Museum -- because nothing gets the Beliebers going like the National Building Museum -- when he spied the American Apparel store in Georgetown from his limo on Saturday afternoon. Accompanied by "a few burly bodyguards" while girlfriend Selena Gomez remained in the car, her brow no doubt furrowed, since that's what people do when one person wants to run into a store that their companion could care less about and probably thinks is stupid. Once inside, spies say Bieber "browsed around the store and picked up hoodies and other pieces. But no wait at the register for him, we’re told: Store employees comped the whole haul. Biebs didn’t pay a dime. A company spokesman confirmed that he left with a selection of T-shirts, hoodies, thermals, underwear, beanies and a Henley." Wait, what? This isn't the luxury lounge at the Golden Globes. It's just the Goergetown American Apparel with too much merchandise that makes us all itchy every time we walk by it. "We’re told that staff called their boss as soon as Bieber walked in," reports The Reliable Source, "and company CEO Dov Charney authorized the giveaway because Bieber is a loyal customer of the brand." This is both a reasonable and hilarious explanation. Bieber's manager Scooter Braun -- who we will generously assume is not a 6-year-old boy -- says Bieber has a "great relationship" with the retailer because he wears their too-tight hooded sweatshirts in public. "It’s unclear how often [Bieber] pays; Braun said Bieber’s staff never asks for free items." Really? Not even the occasional deep v-neck shirt or lime green leggings? [The Reliable Source]
• Cameron Diaz and Sean Combs -- who swore they just had to keep meeting in romantic, date-like places to discuss an upcoming movie project "were caught kissing Saturday night at PH-D at the Dream Downtown Hotel." A source says they seemed "very affectionate" while dancing and necking which is lovely to hear, even though her rep continues to insist "they are friends and not dating." To which we say: oh yes they are! [Page Six]
• Time Washington Bureau Chief Michael Duffy has been promoted to executive editor. Duffy's been with the magazine since 1985, but the real is question is: will he get a Person of the Year vote this year? [FishbowlNY]