Best protest of the week: Surrealist artworks (including paintings by Magritte and Miró) collected by poet André Breton were auctioned in Paris and brought a record 46 million euros. According to reports, “Intellectuals protested against the auction, accusing collectors of picking over the bones of Breton, who died in 1966. Stink bombs were let off and fake euro notes handed out with the legend ‘your money stinks of the corpse of the poet that you never dared to become.’” Now that’s a protest slogan! (BBC)

P.R. rumors are that Jay Leno will get up early and Katie Couric will be on late on May 12 when th two hosts switch jobs for a day. They want us to think that it was cute Katie’s idea, but has anyone heard of sweeps weeks? (Washington Post)

Where will Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein‘s old notebooks come to rest? Not at a journalism school or the Library of Congress. Nope, Woodstein sold their Watergate research materials to the University of Texas for $5 million. We think it’s a good neighborhood to be in — after all, the Ransom Center (as it’s so wonderfully named) at the university also houses a Gutenberg Bible and manuscripts by Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. And nearby all those handwritten notes about presidential cynicism will lie one of 11 copies of William Blake‘s hand-colored “Songs of Innocence.” Now that’s poetic justice. (Wall Street Journal)

Remember Furio on “The Sopranos”? He was the hit man Tony brought over from Sicily who developed a crush on Carmela. The actor who plays Furio, Federico Castelluccio, is not only a thespian, he’s also a painter. And now for the low, low price of 700 smackers you can be the proud owner of a premium quality Castelluccio (suitable for framing) of the “Duke and Duchess of North Caldwell” — a hilarous take-off on the “Duke and Duchess of Urbino” by Piero della Francesca — with Tony and Carm’s profiles in place of the royals. A perfect addition to any mobster’s den. (Steiner Sports)

From the We Love the Brits File: The Germans captured the World Marbles Championship last week — perhaps because the tournament was held in a West Essex pub. British team spokeswoman Julia McCarthy-Fox said: “The British players have lost their marbles altogether. It was too much alcohol and not enough practise. They have had so much to drink they are not even too bothered at the moment. They are vowing to practise and win next year.” (Ananova)

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And, she says, he had some presidential tendencies: “We felt we weren’t really committing adultery if we didn’t have actual intercourse … [but] we had sex every way you can think of — kissing, caressing, fondling, getting naked, intimate touching, mutual oral sex.”

What’s more, she shares, his pillow talk included a less-than-loving portrayal of his former co-host, Kathie Lee Gifford: “She never shuts up … I don’t know which is worse — that or her huge mop of hair.”

But Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman has leaped to Philbin’s defense, contending that Majerek is nothin’ but a lowdown, dirty money-grubbing opportunist. Oh, and a spendthrift to boot. (A girl’s gotta have her furs, you know.)

Evidence? Her ex-husband says she was flat broke and living on her kids’ child support before she sold her story to the Enquirer. And an ex-lover called her a “user” who treated him like a meal ticket.

Majerek, meanwhile, contends that Regis “made me feel like a million bucks!”

The ubiquitous host may finally have found the answer to his oft-asked question, “Who wants to be a multimillionaire?”

Bet he wishes he’d never asked …

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And they’re so much cuter than Darva and Rick

“No matter how cynical and jaded we are, everybody loves a wedding.”

– Katie Couric on why the “Today” show’s plan to televise a young couple’s wedding is not at all Fox-like.

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Skirting danger, Spice-style

Who wears short skirts? According to London’s Sunday People, not Victoria Beckham.

The paper reports that Posh Spice’s husband David Beckham has “banned” miniskirts from her wardrobe.

“I like short skirts but David says I can’t do that now I’ve got a baby,” she said. “He says if Brooklyn goes to school then all the kids will come up to him and say: I’ve seen your mum’s knickers.”

Good thing David wasn’t among the 60,000 people who turned out to watch Victoria’s Spicy solo show in the U.K. on Sunday. The crowd apparently got an eyeful of more than his wife’s undies, as she popped out of her low-cut cat-suit.

“Her performance was very energetic and allowed people to see one or two things they perhaps shouldn’t have,” said a Radio 1 spokesman.

Oh, dear. What will Brooklyn’s friends say?

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Clooney’s got competition

“I think we’ll be making out — which will be interesting, very interesting. I think we’re going to push the boundaries out a little bit and actually have sex!”

– Mark Wahlberg on his big plans for the bestial love scene he’ll share with Helena Bonham Carter in Tim Burton’s remake of “Planet of the Apes.”

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Mother may I?

When Jerry Hall dropped her towel before a crowd of curious critics and eye-straining audience members the other night in her maiden voyage as Mrs. Robinson in the West End production of “The Graduate,” at least one person was horrified: her mother.

Mama Hall apparently did everything she could to keep her daughter from flashing her stuff — and even tried to enlist the help of her ex-son-in-law, Mick Jagger.

“My mother spent 30 minutes of the phone to Mick saying, ‘How can she humiliate herself. She’s a mother of four. She’s been to events with the royal family. Now she’s going to ruin it all,’” the model-turned-actress tells the U.K. Mirror.

But royal visits aside, Hall herself had something of a personal epiphany as the terry cloth slipped away. “It was one of those moments — not the most pivotal in the play, but one of the most pivotal in my life.”

She was surprised, however, when flash met flash — and photographers started snapping pics. “Playboy offered me $1 million to pose nude, which I turned down,” she says, “and here were these guys getting the pictures for free!”

Unless, of course, you count the price of admission.

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Will Griffith best Bezos?

Never mind the direction e-commerce stocks have been going lately. Melanie Griffith is feeling bullish.

Griffith tells the Los Angeles Times she’s pinning her family’s long-term financial hopes on One World Networks, a Web site she co-founded that sells celebrity-endorsed products like cosmetics and health products.

“It’s a great place for celebrities to be able to control their image,” the actress contends.

But, alas, perhaps not their fortunes.

Specials

Wim Wenders’ Oscar-nominated 1999 documentary Buena Vista Social Club (9 p.m., check local times, PBS) profiles some of Cuba’s musical giants.

Sports

Baseball:
Braves at Marlins (7 p.m., ESPN)
Cardinals at Diamondbacks (10 p.m., ESPN2)

Talk

Rosie O’Donnell (syndicated) Michael Douglas, Tracy Chapman (rerun)
David Letterman (CBS) Ben Folds Five (rerun)
Jay Leno (NBC) Katie Couric, Mena Suvari
Politically Incorrect (ABC) Mindy Sterling, Corey Feldman
Conan O’Brien (NBC) Famke Janssen, Steve Earle anos

Perhaps most humiliating was the observation, made by both the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, that “The Early Show’s” numbers were significantly worse than those posted for “CBS This Morning” in the same period last year. That program was the Tower Air of morning shows — no frills, no stars, no audience — while “The Early Show” launched last November with a new $30 million studio and all the hype the network could muster.

The list of suspects in this case is short. It is Gumbel’s show, and almost everyone pins its seeming failure on him, or at least on people’s perceptions of him. Clayson, a former L.A. correspondent for ABC, may have seemed out of her depth at first but now holds her own in interviews and hands-on features. (Her chemistry with Gumbel is almost nonexistent, though insiders say they really don’t dislike each other.) And the show’s formula — a bit of news, a bit of service, a bit of fluff — is no worse (or better) than its competitors.

Indeed, it’s a formula the two men helped perfect. Friedman was a producer on NBC’s “Today” when Gumbel was a co-host (with Jane Pauley), from 1981 to 1987, and then again in 1993-94 (when Gumbel was less successfully paired with Katie Couric). If you can’t blame the recipe, critics figure, you have to fault the chef — or the main ingredient.

In the interest of establishing what most of us intuited, Brill’s Content hired a research and consulting firm to conduct several focus groups testing viewers’ responses to Gumbel. The conclusion: People don’t like him. They find him arrogant, condescending, uncaring. They feel that if they were drowning, Gumbel would not throw them a life preserver — or, at the very least, would ask them what they had done to deserve it.

Conditional love is tough to sell before coffee.

Oddly enough, CBS knew this going in. Friedman’s pitch for the truculent host was met with all kinds of negative research within the network (most obviously his failure to take prime time by storm in CBS’s 1997 “Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel”). But Friedman persisted (armed with his own data), and Jervey makes a good case that it was his single-handed efforts that carried the day.

But such powers of persuasion won’t amount to a hill of coffee beans in the anemic, decaffeinated world of morning television if Gumbel doesn’t turn this boat around soon. For the record, both Friedman and CBS say they are committed to the show and its star for the long haul, and cite the slow growth of the Kate-and-Matt, Diane-and-Charlie pairings as evidence.

“I think a case can be made that the increased ratings for ABC in prime time translate into better ratings in the morning,” said an ad executive at another network. “If the last thing you watch at night is ABC, then the first thing that you watch in the morning is ABC.” And ABC, with the ubiquitous “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” rules prime time these days.

“Today” hosts Couric and Matt Lauer have achieved a kind of mythic status among their viewers (how else explain those people in the snow outside Rockefeller Plaza, Dr. Zhivago icicles dripping from their faces as they wave to folks back in Springfield?) But even the most dynamic of duos break up and try to move on. Witness Kathie Lee. Or, for that matter, Gumbel.

After watching “The Early Show” the past several mornings, I think I see something other than arrogance in Gumbel’s manner. Call it ennui, perhaps, rising at times to the pitch of despair. As he shuffles the papers before a commercial, touting an upcoming visit with George Clooney and Noah Wyle (“talking about their relationship on and off the screen”), he seems barely able to feign interest.

This may work for David Letterman (who’s actually been quite a bit peppier since his heart surgery — nothing like a brush with death to focus the mind!), but at 7 a.m. it’s disquieting. So much of morning programming is public-service oriented (here’s Donna Shalala promoting national “Kick Butts Day”) that someone needs to act like they care or we’ll all be committing suicide (while ignoring the 12 Warning Signs).

Tuesday found him interviewing, via satellite, a Dutch family that had been attacked on high seas by modern pirates. A 13-year-old boy, Willem Van Tuijl, was shot and paralyzed as his parents stood by, helpless. They then waited 20 hours for help.

The kid, stretched out on a hospital gurney, was the object of Gumbel’s admiration. “We’re all struck here by how remarkably poised young Willem is — how are the rest of you coping?”

“Not so good,” the parents confessed. For an empathic presence like Couric, this would have been a slam-dunk: Milk that moment, baby. What did you feel when you saw your son being shot? But Gumbel had eyes for the stoic 10-year-old.

“What’s been the worst part of this ordeal?” he asked him.

“It’s all been pretty similar,” says kid. “Nothing worse, nothing better.”

The boy’s mother, with great emotion, added, “Willem prayed with his heart that the pirates would change their lives.”

Gumbel merely nodded distractedly. (“A pirate’s life doesn’t sound so bad …”)

The desire to run away from it all (even when “it” includes a salary estimated at $5 million a year) seems a leitmotif in Gumbel’s interviews lately. His divorce from his long-estranged wife has been fodder for the tabloids and a running gag on Don Imus’ radio show. The show’s ratings are a matter of public record. And, according to the Brill’s article, he isn’t thriving on the fellowship of staff members, who are under strict orders to refrain from direct contact with the star.

On the street, outside the swanky new Central Park studios, even the bystanders were walking away …

On Wednesday, Gumbel talked to Gloria Reuben, who left her role as an HIV-positive nurse on “ER” and is now singing backup for Tina Turner. (Talk about career changes.)

“I jumped into the abyss of the unknown,” she told the anchor, who seemed to envy her chutzpah.

“If she were to say to you, ‘Come on the road with me,’ would you say no?” Reuben asked Gumbel, turning the tables on the interrogator.

“I’d say I can’t dance.”

Well, maybe it’s time to start learning. Just put one foot in front of the other — that’s it! — and start moving from side to side. And remember, you can’t really embarrass yourself if no one’s there to see you fall.

This would be cause for outrage or at least monopoly-conspiracy theories in almost any other spectrum of the media. But because of the sleaze factor and the guilty pleasure anyone with more than a high school education feels in reading the tabs, media watchers have been to slow to react. And when they have, it has been with characteristic condescension.

“Aliens Take Over the Tabloids!” Time magazine trumpeted in a parody of tabloid style. “Exclusive! New Exec Grabs No. 3; Jonbenet In Danger!” it concluded. The new exec is David Pecker, head of American Media and the former CEO of Hachette-Filipacchi, and the “No. 3″ refers to the Globe (which follows the Enquirer and the Star in sales). Time talks to the executive about his plans for his family of sensationalistic siblings (“If there’s a Hollywood scandal, the investigative portion will be done by the National Enquirer,” says Pecker. “The impact on celebrities, on their careers, that will be done by the Star”) and noted that the genre itself is in trouble. Before the Globe acquisition, American Media titles sold a combined 4.4 million, which is flat from last year and down 35 percent from four years ago. The company has been trying to diversify, adding a National Enquirer TV show and Web site to its mix.

Part of Pecker’s mission has been to clean up the tabloids. He hired Roger Black to redesign the Enquirer and the Star, and though the difference between the before and after versions is rather subtle, the assignment itself is significant. Black is a ubiquitous figure in mainstream media (I did a book with him myself) and probably best known for his groundbreaking magazine face lifts. Rolling Stone, Newsweek, New York and Esquire all got the benefit of Black’s designing talents. And it’s safe to say that if any of these magazines had legs, they would probably run screaming from the room if you sat them beside the National Enquirer at a dinner party.

But Pecker sees a brighter day dawning for the Enquirer, if not its ilk. He has spoken of going after People’s audience — and here Time Inc. just thought it had Jann Wenner’s Us, which goes weekly in March, to worry about. And though the People people probably aren’t losing a lot of sleep over the prospect of a new, more mainstream National Enquirer, it’s worth noting that the tabloids are definitely on the radar of many slick publication editors. I have attended editorial meetings at People, In Style, Entertainment Weekly and even Vogue at which copies of the Enquirer and the Star were referenced, if not actually brandished. The general feeling has been that there’s usually something to the stories they report. And after the Enquirer proudly announced a few weeks ago that no celebrities were currently suing them, their reference value can only rise.

Or can it? Pecker has been known to squelch a few stories in his day. He famously fired the editor of Hachette’s Premiere years ago over a story about Planet Hollywood going broke, long before the theme restaurant chain actually went bankrupt, and never denied rumors that his friendship with the restaurant chain’s investors had anything to do with it. Are the days of deep-dish dirt in peril? Can the tabloids survive a “controlling authority” with friends in high places — or aspirations of class? And perhaps more important, where will the more mainstream magazines (which are sometimes indistinguishable from the tabloids in subject matter, if not presentation) get their gossip?

Hell if I know. For what it’s worth, I took a quick sample of this week’s tabs so you might not have to. And then I wrote it all off in the name of research.

The National Enquirer: If no one is suing it right now, it certainly isn’t making many friends among the celebrity set. From the cover story on Katie Couric’s wife-beating boyfriend, to the inside dirt on Sean Penn’s marital problems, the Enquirer is still the one most stars love to hate. Most sources are anonymous, of course, but given the mag’s legal bills you can imagine there’s a little something to every bit of dish in here. For the insufferably curious, for instance, there are pictures of Jodie Foster’s longtime companion plus this carefully worded sentence: “And she is so loyal to her best friend Cydney Bernard — who was by her side when [Foster's son] Charles was born — that the two wear matching wedding bands.”

Billed as “The New” Star, this tab is actually more celebrity friendly than the Enquirer. Sure, they managed to find photos of Cameron Diaz looking kind of like a bag lady and they say Michael Jackson’s marriage was a hoax (did you ever?) but a lot of the display text oozes concern. (This must be the “impact on celebrities” angle Pecker was talking about.) The Star’s story on Jodie Foster, supermom (running the same week as the Enquirer’s), makes no mention of the actress’s romantic life. And a piece on Paul McCartney’s new squeeze, Heather Mills, casts the loss of her leg six years ago in acceptably sentimental tones (“Brave beauty who captured McCartney’s heart”) but shows us only her beguiling face.

No such niceties for the third-rated Globe. The tab’s big spread on “Paul’s New Love” features a full-page shot of her sans prosthesis, smiling at the camera. (While many shots in the tabloids are bought at great price from paparazzi — ask Princess Di — quite a few come from stock.) The Globe is closer to most people’s conception of a supermarket tabloid, and in that bears more resemblance to some of the British dailies. An ex-boyfriend of “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” star Melissa Joan Hart peddles his memoirs (and a few mementos) herein, and it was the Globe that set Frank Gifford up with that stewardess — an act that outraged even the Enquirer.

The National Examiner mixes such soft fodder as “a day in the life” of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston with a cover story on the less-than-stellar pasts of Judge Judy and a half dozen other TV judges. There’s a story about one teenager’s quest to feed the homeless of the world alongside a roundup of serial-killer couples (not Brad and Jennifer) and part one of a six-part series on what to do after the rapture comes and you’re stuck on a godless earth with the rest of Satan’s tools. With this kind of identity crisis, the Examiner looks like the Talk magazine of the tabs.

Both the Sun and the Weekly World News have apocalypse on the brain, leading with “Billy Graham’s Doomsday Warning” (Sun) — or his “End Times Message,” as the News’ headline-speak would have it. (Clearly not an exclusive.) The Sun offers a rather ho-hum mix of tabloid fare: pictures of really fat people, a photo of an “unmistakable image of Christ” that appeared on a man’s patio door, an article on the “new devil’s triangle” (bye-bye Bermuda, hello Nova Scotia). For the real deal, check out the Weekly World News — the paper that rocked Washington with its photograph of Bill Clinton shaking hands with a space alien. This is the tab that could give Salon lessons in headline writing. Witness “Topless, Fire-Breathing Transsexual Knocks Out Power to 5,000 in Seattle” (they’re not making this stuff up) or “New Remote Control Device Gives Women Orgasms At Up to 80 Yards Away” or my favorite, “How to Tell If Your Dog Worships Satan.”

Then try looking for that story in People.