What's it take for New York sports-team leaders to get fired anymore? In the eighties, the Yankees switched managers thirteen times (although Billy Martin took three different turns). Davey Johnson, three years after winning the World Series with the Mets, didn't make it through May. This wasn't limited to baseball, either. The Giants loved cycling through coaches, and Jets fans still feel a visceral thrill when they remember the execution of Pete Carroll after one season.

But look what's happened to Axe City: It has been the worst season for New York baseball in a generation, but the Mets responded to the tragic end of their season by extending the contracts of manager Jerry Manuel (for two years) and general manager Omar Minaya (for three). The Yankees? The Place Where Only Championships Matter Even Though They Haven't Won One in Eight Years inked general manager Brian Cashman for three more years. The Giants decided to give Tom Coughlin one more year, and were rewarded. Jets coach Eric Mangini seems safe for next year too, barring a complete implosion. (As for the Knicks, well, the Knicks are an exception to every organization on earth, including Lehman Brothers, Enron and the USFL. They actually fire people years too late.)

She's hardly been in a Palin-like bubble since being fired from HarperCollins in June, but ex-CEO Jane Friedman had still begged off any on-the-record interviews these past four months. Until last night, when she submitted to the questioning of close friend and Knopf associate publisher Victoria Wilson at the New School. Wilson announced early on that there'd be "no trick questions," just a litany of past successes and memories for the benefit of the student-filled crowd.

Friedman reminisced about her role in inventing the author publicity tour in 1970 ("If you remember, Julia Child was the French chef," she clarified for the students), and watching 1,000 women line up in front of a department store to watch the telegenic cook whip up simple mayonnaise. She told one anecdote about how the fire marshals busted into a marketing meeting because it was so overcrowded with eager staffers. "I have not really been talking too much to the HarperCollins employees," Friedman added. "I feel like it's good for them to be doing this all on their own."

Remember when John McCain plucked Sarah Palin out of the tundra obscurity and made her his running mate, and then everybody was immediately like, "but we don't know anything about her!" And then after like two days suddenly we knew more about her and her family than we ever wanted to know? Well, that's basically what happened this week with Neel Kashkari, the new interim assistant Treasury secretary who was appointed by Hank Paulson. Paulson chose Kashkari to head the Office of Financial Stability, which basically means he's going to handle the congressionally approved bailout and figure out how to spend that $700 billion dollars. But nobody knew this Paulson protégé because he had been quietly working for Paulson on the crisis at the Treasury, and before that he was a mere V.P. at Goldman Sachs. So then the media panicked (the public was obviously reassured by his efficient haircut and confident eyebrows), and we learned all sorts of things about him in a short period of time. For example:

• He "lives in the pleasant Washington, D.C. suburb with wife, Minal, 32, and their enormous brown shaggy Newfoundland dog, Winslow — named after former Browns star tight end Kellen Winslow." [NYP]
• Prior to his career in finance, Mr. Kashkari was a R&D Principal Investigator at TRW in Redondo Beach, California, where he developed technology for NASA space-science missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope. [Treas.Gov]

When someone who has barely spoken the entire campaign suddenly goes on the attack two days in a row, it's hard not to notice. Cindy McCain — whose previous newsworthy efforts this campaign have come in the form of stealing cookie recipes and giving a 21-minute convention speech that was about twenty minutes too long (no, seriously, watch it) — sprung into action yesterday with one of the most preposterous statements of this campaign, which, let's be honest, is really saying something. At a visit to a children's hospital in Tennessee, McCain told reporters that Barack Obama has "waged the dirtiest campaign in American history." Jesus, it's hard to even know how to process that. Coming from the campaign which at this very moment is trying to convince America that Obama is a friend o' terrorists, it's not even a case of the pot calling the kettle black — it's the pot calling the kettle a pot.

Things are good in Giants land these days. They’re the defending champs, undefeated so far in 2008, and even the mild Plaxico Burress controversy hasn’t had much negative effect, other than giving Gary Myers the chance to offer up a few unsolicited parenting tips. So, forced to write an endless stream of positive stories about a local team for once, the press has taken the opportunity to officially deify Eli Manning. (Or, if you will, "Jeter" him.) And how better to do that than to claim he’s better than his brother, future Hall of Famer Peyton?

It's not a secret, so we're just going to say it: John McCain showed his age last night. The contrast onstage with Barack Obama in mobility and appearance was obvious to anyone watching. As Ezra Klein put it, "He moves like a 72-year-old man because he is a 72-year-old man." And as with most debates – especially one pretty much devoid of any noteworthy substance – it's the candidates' images that will affect viewers' opinions the most. In that respect, McCain didn't help himself by repeatedly doing and saying things that, frankly, made him seem even older than he already appears. Here are the top five moments:

5. "That one." Only because we don't really know what McCain meant last night when he referred to Obama as "that one" instead of, say, "Senator Obama," "Barack," "Barack Obama," "my opponent" — really, anything — does this land at No. 5. But regardless of what he intended, a common reaction is that McCain sounded like a cranky old man scolding a misbehaving child.

Hale House, the charity informally launched by Clara Hale in 1969 when she started taking babies born to drug addicts into her home for foster care, will no longer be taking in orphans. Ms. Hale's charity — while she was alive it was mostly informal and often actually illegal — grew and grew until her death in 1992. It was rocked by scandal in 2001, when Eliot Spitzer indicted Hale's daughter Lorraine and her husband for financial wrongdoing and neglecting the children in Hale House's care. Today the Daily News tells us that the charity, facing a citywide decline in AIDS-infected and drug-addicted newborns, will shift its focus to more community services. For those of you who don't know the story of Mother Hale, the Daily News has dredged up its obituary of her. It's the kind of thing the tabloid does right — simply worded, civic-minded, a little punchy, and sentimental. We recommend you give it a read.

Hale House Shuts Doors to Orphans [NYDN]
Clara 'Mother' Hale's amazing grace: She founded Hale House to care for babies born into addiction [NYDN]

Every day (or close to it) until November 4, a series of writers and thinkers will discuss the election over instant messenger for nymag.com. Today, Think Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias and Garrett M. Graff, author of The First Campaign and editor-at-large for the Washingtonian, discuss the generational split among voters, how our economy might be transformed for the better, and why, in the election, technology and innovation are the elephant in the room.

M.Y.: I wonder what you make of the generational divide in the election this year — your book seems germane, and McCain looked more old-mannish than ever to me last night.

G.G.: This election, even more than we realized, is shaping up to be a generational election — will the Millennials take over or the Greatest Generation rule one more time? McCain is really struggling to not come off as a cranky old man, but he has the problem of, well, being a cranky old man — out of touch with the world and the trends of the last decade.

The ongoing consolidation of the New York Times into an increasingly efficient, cost-effective entity continues with word that the Website of the International Herald Tribune, the Times’ international sister edition, will shut down and, by process of phagocytosis, be engulfed by the Times Website. Though a Times exec tells Forbes that the decision is "absolutely, positively not about cost savings," a memo to employees acknowledged that some “hard decisions about jobs at the IHT” will have to be made.

Coincidentally, yesterday was the first day of the Times reorganization of the "Sports" and "Metro" sections, which are being combined with the "Business" and "A" sections, respectively. So it seems like everything in Times-world is getting tighter, more compact. We don’t want to cause alarm, but we’ve also heard that they’re planning on fusing together the bodies of Maureen Dowd and David Brooks; the resulting freakish monstrosity will be known as Mavid Browd and will be forced to write one utterly schizophrenic opinion piece a week which will be simultaneously flirty and professorial. But in reality, the person who should really be concerned is shadowy Internet overlord Matt Drudge, who makes a habit of purposefully linking to stories on the IHT Website instead of the Times whenever possible due to what we can only assume is his personal animus toward the Times. Will Drudge swallow his pride and — (gulp) — link directly to the Times articles? Or will they simply disappear from the site, and, therefore, the Earth?

Times to Shutter IHT Site [Forbes]

Despite being down in the polls and running short on time, John McCain seemed “unwilling or unable,” as Barack Obama likes to say, to create a game-changing moment last night. And with a lack of stunts, surprises, policy gaffes, major confrontations, or, frankly, interesting questions, one moment stood out from the rest of the debate. It came when McCain was talking about a pork-laden energy bill: “Who voted for it? You might never know — that one,” McCain said, gesturing at Obama. “Who voted against it? Me.” The phrase “that one” is being dissected by political observers, who, in a testament to the moment’s weirdness, haven’t come close to a consensus on its meaning. (Get Heilemann's take here.) Was it an intentional sign of disrespect? Unintentional? A regrettable use of a common old-people term? Was it … racist?

This Friday, ABC will air Barbara Walters's 20/20 interview with Peter Cook, in which he tries to clear a bit of his reputation. Cook is currently known as the guy who cheated on Christie Brinkley with a teenage employee and got pilloried for masturbating in front of a Web cam. Well, after Friday, he'll be known as just another celebrity who cries in front of Baba Wawa, which probably won't change anything. Still, in the previews to this interview, we learn a little bit from Cook about why he thinks his marriage to Brinkley fell apart:

"I think the emotional aspect of our lives had changed. I think we were both feeling more like we were living with a brother and sister than a life partner. … I think I just suddenly realized when I was getting attention from someone else that this is something that is missing in my life … I wanted a little acknowledgement, a little attention, a little thank you every now and then for my efforts, for the amount of time I took to care for her and my family, for the wealth I was building. Just the tremendous amount of work I was putting into my family. … My world became her world. It had to be that way. … There came a time when I pulled up [to] the driveway to the home that I found, that I built, that I lived in, and I felt like I was a guest in someone else's life."

We suppose we shouldn't be surprised that Cook so easily turns the blame on Brinkley. But by the same token, how could he have been surprised that his marriage to one of the world's most famous models didn't turn out to be all about him?

Barbara Walters Exclusive: Peter Cook on Affair [ABC News]
Related: This Year's Model [NYM]

The hot play August: Osage County has offended Jews with its ads sort of joking about Yom Kippur and the whole idea of atonement. Condi ate at Le Perigord, near a table where former Fed chair Paul Volcker ate Dover sole with fourteen powerful global men of finance. Madonna told some guys sitting in the front row of her show at Madison Square Garden to get off their asses to show their appreciation. Halle Berry has taken responsibility for her own orgasms. Robert Wagner had a hard time writing the part in his memoir where Natalie Wood falls off the yacht and drowns. Steven Soderbergh says it doesn't matter if his four-hour movie Che does well in the U.S. because it will be a smash in Latin America. Cindy Adams is disappointingly placid this morning.

After yesterday's afternoon collapse, the Federal Reserve came through on promises to reduce rates this morning, announcing a half-percent cut. At the same time, the Bank of England, European Central Bank, and the central banks of Canada, Switzerland, China, and Sweden announced rate cuts in a broad move to stave off a (further) global economic crisis. “The committee took this action in light of evidence pointing to a weakening of economic activity and a reduction in inflationary pressures,” the Fed said in a statement after a unanimous vote for the measure. Already European markets are reflecting the move and are stemming losses, and the S&P 500 futures index indicates U.S. markets will open up 2 percent.

Central Banks Coordinate Cut in Rates [NYT]