HUNKS OF BEEF Fabio, Clooney(Photo: Getty Images)

Conventional wisdom maintains that the person, place, or thing left standing at the end of a fight is the winner. In Beef of the Week, Radar unravels the most prominent spat of the last seven days, deconstructing its causes and effects, and issuing a final verdict on the battle's victor. Let the games begin.

Is there a more prime pair of beefcakes to begin with than George Clooney and Fabio? Early this week, Fabio (48, an animal rights activist) was seated in a restaurant behind Clooney (46, a left-wing Darfur-ist). George believed the flashbulbs popping at Fabio's table—those of Fabio's many female guests—were secretly aimed at him. (This is conceivable to us.) Geo in his ire pulled a sarcastic-clap routine, issuing a colorful invective and middle-finger in the ladies' general direction. Fabio, ever the gentleman, took umbrage and stepped to Clooney. (Clooney's bird-flipping style? Fem by most comparisons: tall and straight between two fingers bent sharply at the knuckles, the thumb jutting out like a hitchhiker's.)

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