• Barack Obama gave Leonard Nimoy the Vulcan hand sign at a campaign event. In case we needed confirmation of his complete dorkhood. [P6]
• NBC News' David Gregory is married to the former general counsel for Fannie Mae, which is now under FBI investigation. News Corp'.'s Page Six wonders if he maybe shouldn't give up journalism forever, in shame. In the meantime, watch out for his dangerous advocacy journalism. [P6]
• Britney Spears would very much like to acquire that sex tape of her that doesn't exist, so she can make it not exist to an even greater extent. [Sun]
• Janet Jackson postponed some more concerts due to illness. Meanwhile, her fiancé partied until 2 am, albeit for a charitable fundraiser.

Halfway through his stint at the 6 p.m. hour on MSNBC, Mr. Gregory’s numbers are solid but not remarkable. For the second quarter of 2008 (from late March to late June), Race for the White House averaged roughly 526,000 total viewers and 161,000 in the 25-54 demographic—roughly twice the audience that Tucker Carlson averaged during the second quarter of 2007.

Twice Tucker is a form of damnation by faint praise.

...over the past several months, the show has rarely made news.

The Observer said it doesn't help that Gregory's show relies on the network's own political contributors as talking heads instead of on actual newsmakers.

This results in a pogram so unmemorable that even NBC's Tom Brokaw screwed up its name, calling it Road To The White House, when ending an episode of Meet The Press. Brokaw also indicated the other NBCer on Meet The Press that morning, political director Chuck Todd, would be making frequent appearances "in the weeks to come" — a sign that Todd, also rumored to be in the running for Russert's job, was well ahead of Gregory.

Another of Gregory's competitors for Meet The Press, former far-right congressman Joe Scarborough, has received laudatory coverage in the Times and New York magazine lately for his MSNBC show Morning Joe, a far cry from the way the Observer is treating Gregory.

This all goes to show that sometimes being a hard-working, aggressive reporter is not always enough to advance in TV news. But don't count Gregory out yet — if this 2006 Tonight Show clip of Gregory imitating George W. Bush is any indication, the correspondent has a wide range of untapped skills.

[Observer]

I was an intern for Charlie Rose back in '03, and at that time David Gregory was a frequent guest, usually on remote from Washington. I would watch the less-than-congenial, highly abusive, and generally abrasive Rose do the usual pre-show banter with Gregory; whereby they'd both bask in their own sense of self-satisfaction for a while, then make jokes about President Bush (not that everyone doesn't, but it did destroy the illusion of journalistic objectivity for me).

My best guess is Gregory is definitely taking 'star' lessons from the diva/mentor himself, Charlie.

The dude is a total jerk.

Once, I was hanging with some friends in DC and we decided to go to the Capitol. We agreed to meet at a certain point at the front steps when we were done. There were maybe 8 of us. Well it turns out that David Gregory was reporting from the lawn of the Capitol around the spot where we were meeting up. The guy did his report, turned around, and proceeded to berate us and curse at us for being fame seeking assholes for ruining his shot and then asked if we wanted his autograph.

Whiner, arrogant, pious, self centered puke - that's him!!

And Fitted Sweats asks the important question: what if you were stranded on a tropical island with him?

David Gregory would insist being stranded was all your fault in the first place. He'd make a weird headband from an old dress shirt. Go jogging. Then start asking about what Presidents you've met. "Come on," he'd say. "Has to be at least one, right?" You'd say no. Meekly. Then he'd say "What was your GPA in college?" And spend the whole time undermining you. And being his typically douchey prematurely gray self. If he dies, after writing some bad poetry on a cave wall with a rock, he's too pasty to cannibalize.

Gregory generally came off as awkward when trying to lighten up during his gig guest-hosting Today—he also did quite a bit of dancing. He also once called in to Don Imus either terribly jet-lagged or comically drunk. And some people claim he's hated by his staff and, uh, mouths off to the help.

He might well be hated by his staff and mean to wait-staff. He's smug, self-important, and largely humorless despite his on-air geniality (it's almost like he's in television!). But we bummed around DC for a little while doing not much of anything in particular and from what we heard at the time, from people who might happen to know him, he's not Chris Matthews bad.

We could be wrong. Anyone work with or for the man? Or served him dinner? tell us how it went.

End of segment, cut to Al Roker, who sure does look fantastic after that gastric bypass surgery!