Misguided managers, Luddite corporate raiders, a dramatic hostile takeover from a software giant, a revolving door of employees, a dash of Internet moolah and a tough-talking lady CEO to the rescue! And even some Googzilla action thrown in for good measure.

Of course, it has all the elements of a good story for Vanity Fair magazine!

Actually, Yahoo (YHOO) has all the elements of a good Mexican telenovela, but it’s only a magazine article that is apparently in the cards to chronicle the stumbles and bumbles of the Internet giant.

According to sources at both Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo, well-known Silicon Valley scribe and author Alan Deutschman has contacted the companies about a piece he is doing about the company–and, presumably, its tangles with various Web powers like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft–for the Condé Nast-owned Vanity Fair.

BoomTown’s efforts to contact Deutschman to find out the particulars were, alas, unreturned as yet.

But it goes without saying that our site’s huge archive on Yahoo’s hijinks–with much more to come soon, including memos I tag with secret codes too, much as sources tell me Yahoo does these days under new CEO Carol Bartz to prevent leaks–is free of charge to him for research.

Until then, here is my personal favorite Yahoo-related video about the awkward dinner former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang finally had with me after a year of haranguing:

Called “The Comeback Id” (oh, how pun-ny!), the article has gotten a lot of attention for pointing out the rampant speculation that Clinton’s well-known penchant for marital infidelity had returned.

And the reason for that disturbing development, besides Clinton himself? The piece actually placed a good bit of the blame on Clinton’s close friend, grocery magnate and billionaire Ron Burkle (pictured here), who also has been one of the key directors at Yahoo (YHOO) in its takeover fight with Microsoft (MSFT).

It’s a wonder Burkle can focus on the turmoil at Yahoo, given how busy he appears to be in the article corrupting Clinton both personally and–worse–professionally, via some questionable investments the pair had made through Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies.

Writer Todd Purdum paints a decidedly unattractive picture of Burkle, noting even the tasteless nickname of Burkle’s plane these days, in a portrayal so rough that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s tough treatment by the press recently looks like a walk in the park.

Well, almost.

In what amounts to a rant by Carl Icahn (pictured here), The Wall Street Journal gives the billionaire investor lots of room to kvetch about what he thinks of Yang, including asserting that he will oust the Yahoo founder if he wins his proxy fight against the company.

“I am amazed at the lengths that Jerry Yang and the board went to entrench themselves in this situation,” said Icahn.

Apparently, Icahn was the only one who didn’t get the memo that Yahoo has been consistently obstreperous about Microsoft’s many overtures, since–well, let’s do the exact calculations–forever. And a day.

Still, Icahn perseveres and hangs this old entrenched management chestnut on a lawsuit that was recently filed by shareholders that points to the massive and costly severance plan Yahoo sneakily put into place as a ploy to fend off Microsoft.

“It’s no longer a mystery to me why Microsoft’s offer isn’t around,” Icahn said. “How can Yahoo keep saying they’re willing to negotiate and sell the company on the one hand, while at the same time they’re completely sabotaging the process without telling anyone.”

How? By Yang opening his mouth, that’s how, and then doing nothing much.

As a student of this lugubrious style of Olympic dithering, I would point Icahn to Yang’s 100-day Sacred Cow VisionQuest, well before this soap opera got started.

You need to catch up pronto, Carl!

And speaking of people irked by Yang of late, investor Gordon Crawford (pictured here) also made some news yesterday with his investment in Veoh Networks, part of a $30 million round that included Intel Capital and Adobe Systems (ADBE).

Existing investors in the not-YouTube video service–Shelter Capital, Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs (GS), Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, Time Warner Investments (TWX) and Jonathan Dolgen–also ponied up more money.

Crawford, the SVP of Capital Research Global Investors, manages a massive portfolio, and it is one of Yahoo’s biggest shareholders.

And, unlike Veoh, Yahoo is an investment Crawford has not been happy with recently.

“I am extremely angry at Jerry Yang and at the so-called independent board,” he said in an interview a month ago. “I’m hoping that there is such an outpouring of outrage that the board is embarrassed into revisiting this thing, but I’m not optimistic about that.”

And by independent board, by the way, he meant directors like–you guessed it–Ron Burkle!

At least Burkle’s not to blame for the so-so, lots-and-lots-missing–Google? What Google? (GOOG)–piece in the same Vanity Fair issue, an oral history of the Internet.

Called “How the Web Was Won,” it makes the founding of the world’s most important medium seem awfully dull.

I’d recommend instead–as any sentient being would–the cover story on Angelina Jolie, with this sharp quote from her: “In my father’s generation, the product was 80% of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20%. It now seems that 80% of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.”

Or not wearing, in the case of the pictures of Jolie in this article.

BoomTown has known about it forever and Radar Online gave the lowdown about the creation of the hip-sounding news aggregator Web site–headed by high-profile editor Tina Brown (pictured here)–by Barry Diller’s IAC (IACI) in a report in early April.

Think the Huffington Post, but more culture and less political wonkishness in a bolder and more colorful design.

While still in its planning stages, though, it just hired a new GM to run the business: Caroline Marks.

She was GM of Comcast’s Ziddio, a social video endeavor, and was also head of content development for Comcast Interactive (CMCSA). Marks has also worked in several high-profile mobile companies in the U.K.

Marks will reports to IAC’s Nick Lehman–who works for Michael Jackson, the head of programming at IAC–to get the project off the ground for IAC and Brown, the former Talk, Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor.

The project has already hired Edward Felsenthal, the former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal (and BoomTown friend), to helm the edit side under Brown.

IAC has dabbled a lot in online content initiatives of late with mixed results. Still, it is moving forward with even more.

For example, the company is set to debut a personal financial site in a joint venture with News Corp.’s (NWS) Dow Jones (owner of this site), called FiLife, in June.

It’s time for Vanity Fair’s annual ranking of 100 powerful business moguls, the 2007 New Establishment list, which always make me feel a little oily after reading it for reasons I cannot quite grasp.

Nonetheless, we press on, as it has become filled with earnest billionaire techies in recent years, rather than those scary media barons of yore.

Still, and no surprise, AllThingD.com’s uber-boss Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. leads the list for his audacious $5 billion grab of Dow Jones.

But No. 2 and No. 3 are Silicon Valley stars Steve Jobs of Apple and those separated-at-birth Google twins (Larry Page and Sergey Brin). Reasons: Duh, iPhone for Jobs and the twins’ sheer do-no-evil evil plot to take over the known world and now, apparently, space.

But after these, it’s more of a parade of scarier investment types (except for folksy-but-probably-scary Warren Buffett at No. 5), flashy pols (Bill Clinton, Michael Bloomberg) and the usual coterie of Hollywood and media types (Steven Spielberg, of course, as well as Dick Parsons of Time Warner).

In any case, here’s the number rundown for digital types:

No. 10: Bill and Melinda Gates (for their philanthropy)

No. 15: Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg (him for Net stuff; her for renewed fashion empire)

No. 17: Howard Stringer (Sony struggles, but who doesn’t like Sir Howard?)

No. 23 Jeff Bezos (he managed to lose the Amazon.bomb moniker)

No. 56: Mike Moritz (new entry on the list for the clever VC)

No. 61: Jeff Skoll (but for media and not for Web stuff)

No. 62: Vinod Khosla (another new VC entry!)

No. 71: Paul Allen (just because!)

No. 83: Jonathan Ive (more iPhone mania)

No. 98: Arianna Huffington (Daaaarling, we’re thrilled)