Australian tabloid king Rupert Murdoch has been...

Australian tabloid king Rupert Murdoch has been accused of trying to change the face of journalism. Now he’s changing bodies, too.

This week’s issue of Murdoch’s TV Guide features a very slim Oprah Winfrey in a gauzy dress sitting on a pile of money alongside the headline, “Oprah! The Richest Woman on TV?”

But TV Guide admitted Monday that the portrait is actually a composite. The head is Oprah’s while the body belongs to actress Ann-Margret--a circa 1979 Ann-Margret at that.

It’s just the kind of stunt the magazine condemns each week in its “Cheers ‘N’ Jeers” section.

TV Guide, purchased by Murdoch’s News Corp. last year, acknowledged that the illustration could be mistaken for a photo. But David Sendler, one of the magazine’s editors, added: “Ann-Margret should be thrilled because she’s got another TV Guide cover. And Oprah should be thrilled because she looks terrific.”

Winfrey, who appears to have regained some of the 67 pounds she lost in a well-publicized diet last year, was on vacation and couldn’t be reached for comment.

However, Winfrey spokeswoman Christine Tardio, said: “Oprah had no part in it whatsoever. . . . Oprah would not pose on a pile of money like that.”

Ann-Margret apparently wasn’t thrilled, either. TV Guide said its artist used a publicity still of her from a decade-old TV special for inspiration.

“I think she was shocked,” said her publicist George Kirvay. “If you look at the two pictures, they’re identical. It’s even her ring on Oprah’s hand.”

The revelation comes just a week after a TV Guide article on television shows asked the question: “Who’s Got Egg on Their Faces?”

Greeting cards measuring 4-by-6-feet were personally delivered to the homes of four county supervisors over the weekend. But the senders, members of Social Services Union Local 535, weren’t in a festive mood.

The cards repeated the union’s demand for a limit on the number of cases involving abused children and adults that can be assigned to each county social worker. Local 535 vows to go on strike Oct. 3 if no limit is agreed upon.

The only supervisor to escape the deliveries was Pete Schabarum, whose house no one could find.

At the residence of Supervisor Deane Dana--who wasn’t home--the visitors tied balloons bearing the message “Put a Cap on Caseloads” to bushes in the front yard. A Dana spokesman said that the supervisor’s wife, Doris, “wasn’t happy about having her flowers bothered” or about the footprints left behind in the garden.

Sign on a cigarette machine in a trendy restaurant in West Los Angeles:

“We do not sell cigarettes. Cigarette machine for sale.”