According to the Associated Press, Queen Elizabeth II conferred knighthood on Salman Rushdie today, despite protests from Islamic countries.

In 1989, a fatwa was placed on Mr. Rushdie after his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, was deemed an insult to Islam. Mr. Rushdie spent the next decade in hiding.

When Mr. Rushdie's impending knighthood was announced last year at the Queen's 81st birthday, Muslims in Pakistan and Iran responded by burning effigies and protesting in the street. The first deputy speaker of Iran's parliament, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, announced, "Salman Rushdie has turned into a hated corpse which cannot be resurrected by any action.  read more »

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia loves Sex and the City; bums cigarettes from Sarah Jessica Parker. [Intelligencer]

Howard Stern and Beth Ostrosky are getting ready to wed in October. Marchesa's Georgina Chapman is reportedly designing the gown. [P6]  read more »

Last night, Salman Rushdie shared sex tips with a bulging, giddy crowd on the fourth floor of the Union Square Barnes & Noble, during a reading from his newest novel The Enchantress of Florence.

Rushdie began by reading a passage about the effete main character, who has an obsession with tulips; images of the flower are tattooed all over his body, including his “buttocks” and the “thick shaft of his penis.”

“I had to go speak recently at the Ottawa Tulip Festival,” Rushdie told the crowd, laughing and wiping his nose. “They liked this bit.”  read more »

Perhaps you've seen Scarlett Johansson's new video and were impressed by the actress-turned-singer's dirge-like cover of Tom Waits' "Falling Down."

The Daily Mail was less impressed by her singing than her co-star: Salman Rushdie. The author has a blink-and-miss-it cameo in the video nuzzling Ms. Johansson's hair and neck. (Who said writers have it tough?)  read more »

If you remember this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner, you weren't there. Felix Gillette, John Koblin, and Choire Sicha flood the zone in D.C..

Janet Silver is moving from Houghton Mifflin to Nan Talese's imprint at Doubleday. Leon Neyfakh checks in with with Ms. Talese who says, "I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually." That list may include Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer. Plus: Islam observers on Wieseltier's Amis review; James Frey's PR Dream Team; Spitzer's bio; Nabokov's unfinished novel.  read more »

On Friday, April 25, Redbelt, a riveting David Mamet cops-and-con-men drama set in the world of professional jujitsu, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The cool table at the after-party, held at the Honey nightclub on West 14th Street, included Mr.  read more »

“It’s not the best time in the world to be a White House correspondent,” said Bill Plante on the sultry afternoon of Saturday, April 26. This was at Tammy Haddad’s annual pre-White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner lawn party. The blooming wisteria was strangling the woods that surround her house.

These nearly-over final four years of George W. Bush are Mr. Plante’s third second-term presidency in his years as CBS White House correspondent. “I guess he could still drop a bomb somewhere—there are people who think he means to do it,” Mr. Plante said.  read more »

Nina Garcia, You. Are. Out. The Project Runway judge reportedly got fired from her post as fashion director at Elle magazine last week. [US Weekly]

Barry Diller who's recently triumphed in court over Liberty Media chairman, John Malone, has a brand new discrimination lawsuit on his hands. [P6]  read more »

“We’re really lucky, because we went to Socialista early in the week,” said the designer Nicole Miller at the Cinema Society’s screening of The Bank Job, a British heist flick starring Jason Statham and  read more »]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/salman-rushdie-another-sucker-who-liked-juno-supports-saffron-burrows-bank-job-screening#comments Style Saffron Burrows Salman Rushdie Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:39:57 -0500 Meredith Bryan 65996 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/2008/man-booker-prize-celebrates-40th-birthday-best-booker-award

It was 1993 when Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children was honored as the best novel to have ever won theMan Booker Prize for Fiction in the prestigious literary accolade’s 25-year history. Now, Booker has announced it will present a second one-off award, “The Best of the Booker,” to celebrate its 40th anniversary, the BBC reports. A panel of judges will select six eligible books before handing the final decision over to the public, which can vote for their favorite novel via the Booker’s Web site starting in May. Each year since 1969, the Booker Prize has rewarded what it deems the year’s best novel written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland -- in addition to the acclaim and a boost in book sales, the winner also receives 50,000 GBP. Last year, the honor went to Anne Enright for her novel The Gathering, and in 2006, it went to Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss. Both authors have been able to embark on worldwide book tours as a result.