Haaay to the Chief: The Military-Industrial Complex Conquers the Homos

Steven W. Thrasher · 04/30/13 05:03PM

Last week, it seemed that the San Francisco LGBT Pride Committee was planning this year’s march with an enormous set of ovaries. As the Bay Area Reporter wrote, "Pride's electoral college, which is made up of former grand marshals, has selected Army Private First Class Bradley Manning as its choice for grand marshal. Manning has admitted to leaking 700,000 classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks and is facing court-martial.”

Popeyes Founder's Kin Seek Elegant Memorial Statue Involving Speedboat

Caity Weaver · 04/30/13 04:25PM

At long last, a little chicken-fried class may be coming to roost in the New Orleans metropolitan area. Some descendants of Popeyes Chicken founder Al Copeland are hoping to commission a tasteful memorial statue of their patriarch in a local park in Metairie, Louisiana. That's "tasteful" not as in "The national World War II memorial is understated and tasteful," but as in "Mmm, this Popeyes Bonafide® fried chicken sure is taste-ful and also featured in this garish memorial statue."

The Queen of Versailles Says She Is Doing Fine, Ruins Her Documentary

Rich Juzwiak · 04/30/13 04:18PM

Jackie Siegel, the subject of last year's brilliant and harrowing Queen of Versailles documentary, appeared on last night's episode of Watch What Happens Live after Bravo premiered the doc. The film, which chronicles Jackie and her husband David's abandoned attempt to build the largest single-family house in the country as well as their timeshare company's financial ruin, ran with a disclaimer tagged to its end that read:

Tom Scocca · 04/30/13 01:54PM

Corrupt fraud-lizard Lanny Davis comforts jabbering bigot Tim Brando about Twitter meanies who "spew hate and venom—almost always anonymously." You're both stains on humanity. Signed, Gawker.

Jan Brewer Signs "No Shitty Inoperable Gun Left Behind" Into Law

Adam Weinstein · 04/30/13 01:31PM

It's time someone addressed the real victims of America's decline in traditional family values. I speak of our national shame: unwanted firearms. If Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer could, she'd adopt them all, no matter how broken. But she's doing the next best thing: finding loving homes for orphaned hand-cannons.

Here's the Scene That Made Me Fall in Love With Rectify

Rich Juzwiak · 04/30/13 01:06PM

The Sundance Channel's series Rectify unfurls so slowly that it's audacious. It risks losing viewers by taking its time to allow its central, fascinating character, Daniel Holden, to feel his way around a world from which he was absent for 19 years (he spent that time on Death Row and was let out thanks to new DNA evidence). At one point, he describes time as moving differently for him. It does for the show as well. The medium is perfectly tailored to its protagonist.

Cord Jefferson · 04/30/13 01:06PM

Consumer Reports' first-ever thorough lab analysis of raw ground turkey meat and patties discovered that more than half the packages tested positive for fecal bacteria. So much for that "healthy" turkey burger, huh?

Publisher Sells Pulitzer-Winning Paper's Headquarters To Be Mean

Ken Layne · 04/30/13 12:51PM

Life as a newspaper journalist is a crushing series of indignities ending only with your final layoff from the last print newsroom within a hundred miles of your (foreclosed) condo. For California's Pulitzer-winning daily the Press-Enterprise, today's comically tragic news is that the paper's headquarters is being sold off for $30 million, with the remaining employees destined to be shuffled over to some leased office space in Riverside.

Nitasha Tiku · 04/30/13 12:48PM

Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy says that the N.Y. District Attorney has requested access to her Twitter account. The request is related to her 2012 arrest for spray-painting over a bigoted pro-Israel subway ad that equated Muslims with "savages."

Mark Zuckerberg's Self-Serving Immigration Crusade

Adrian Chen · 04/30/13 12:40PM

Having solved the problem of people not wasting enough time on the internet, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is now tackling his first real-world political cause: immigration reform. With a slick new non-profit group funded by tech millionaires, Zuckerberg is rallying Silicon Valley's elite into a political force they hope might one day rival Wall Street. Zuckerberg's political moves are of a piece with his career as a tech mogul: hugely ambitious, painfully awkward, entirely self-interested, and surprisingly successful. And he's just getting started.