Bradley Cooper Is Single Again; Tom Shales Returns

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Welcome to the Smart Set. Every morning, we bring you the gossip coverage, filtered. Today: Former Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales tells Post publisher Katharine Weymouth what he thinks of her via Facebook, Michelle Williams and Jason Segel are dating, while Zoe Saldana and Bradley Cooper most certainly are not.

Former Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales was none-too-pleased when Post publisher Katharine Weymouth, who canned Shales in 2010, a couple months after he wrote a mean review of Christiane Amanpour's This Week, recently popped up among his list of Facebook friends. Shales registered his displeasure in a Tuesday night status update, posting: “Clearly Facebook is out of control when someone like Katharine Weymouth, whom I loathe beyond all measure, can be represented as a friend of mine, or me as a friend of hers. This is beyond farce. This is bitter sick tripe.” (Gosh, it's good to have Tom Shales back.) In case Weymouth somehow misses the Pulitzer Prize winner's message in her timeline, or that new, hyper-annoying little box they have going in the corner, Shales took the fight directly to Weymouth's wall. “How did you of all people, ooze your way onto my Facebook page?" he asked. "Something is horribly, horribly wrong." She didn't respond (of course), prompting Shales to go back and clarify the reference to tripe in his original status update. "Tripe," he explained, “can mean something ‘poor, worthless or offensive.” Again: it's good to have Tom Shales back. [Gatecrasher]

Bradley Cooper are Zoe Saldana are kaput, finished, dunzo. Friends are insisting they "weren't super-serious at all," but they certainly seemed serious at the Weinstein Co.'s pre-Oscar bash last month when they were feverishly making out at a table in front of Cooper's mom. Sorry, that's still very weird for us. More power to them, and to all future couples who want to make out in front of one of their parents, but it's not for us.  [New York Daily News]

Ah, well, on the non-breakup front, it seems Jason Segel and Michelle Williams are an item. Friends say she's "smitten" and he put one of his giant arms around her when they were out for a walk. What more can you ask for? [Page Six]

Rihanna is denying that that late-night, multi-hour visit she made to Ashton Kutcher's a few weeks back was for canoodling purposes. When the subject came up during a press conference for future summer flop Battleship, Rihanna snapped back at her questioner, "I'm happy and I'm single, if that's what you were really asking." (That was what he was asking. Rihanna, she is very good at this.) For what it's worth, a source close to the singer insists Rihanna and Kutcher are "not hooking up," which makes sense, because if they were, that's all they'd be talking about. [Us Weekly]

The Washington Post -- Katharine Weymouth's paper -- is making a push to hire John Temple, editor and publisher of the sadly now-defunct Rocky Mountain News as managing editor. (Fun fact: the Post has two managing editor slots. We did not know this.) According to a source at the paper, Temple has been offered the job and "apparently accepted." An official announcement is expected to be made before everyone drifts off for the weekend. [JIMROMENESKO.COM]

Friday is the first day on the job for new Billboard editor Joe Levy. He arrives from Maxim, where he was "chief content officer." He also used to be editor-in-chief of Blender and executive editor of Rolling Stone.  [Fishbowl LA]

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.