For a "despicable," "slimy," "scummy," "lousy," "irresponsible," "treasonous," "dying," "sweatshop" of a web site that you'd never invite to your child's birthday party, Gawker sure does supply a lot of material for Fox News! Last night, RedEye picked up our item on a forthcoming New York Times story about how Barack Obama haz a sad.
A brave coalition of centrist senators defiantly took the stage today to save America, by asking for larger, more painful budget cuts to lower- and middle-class social programs in a horrible time of economic agony and uncertainty. Thirty-six of them, there were! Can you just feel the red, white and blue coursing through your veins?
According to Guinness World Records, the largest natural afro in the world has a circumference of 4 feet and 4 inches, and belongs to a 36-year-old social worker from New Orleans. Seated in a room full of disco balls, atop a giant mirrored platform, Aevin Dugas describes the drawbacks of having the world's biggest afro:
In your workmanlike Thursday media column: Megan McCarthy to the NYO, Ana Marie Cox and Nick Davies to The Guardian, a new EP at ABC News, Jon Meacham to Time, and ruthless morning news bookers.
The Germans have a long history of, well, "dabbling" in every sort of racism or prejudice imaginable. Much like every other country! But they have a special, recurring knack for representing Barack Obama in ways that they think are innocent, but are actually casually racist. It's sweet, in a way. (Maybe not.)
Cancel tomorrow's date night at Olive Garden immediately! The Darden Restaurant Group, which runs fine dining boutiques Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and other strip-mall destinations is getting itself healthy with Michelle Obama's help. That just ruins everything.
Remember coning? It's the dopey web video stunt made popular this summer in which people at the McDonald's drive-thru grab their ice cream cone by the ice cream instead of the cone, making a mess and confusing everyone, and then they drive away laughing. Hilarious! Well, no more, says one New Jersey McDonald's manager.
In our ongoing quest to be servicey and fill the maddening expanse of open pixels with something—anything—that might be useful to you, the reader, it's time for another edition of "Advice questions, reconsidered." Today: coupons! Dating! Cheapness! Sexxx!
The concept for NBC's Up All Night, which premiered last night, is a great one: get a hip pair of thirtysomethings like Christina Applegate and Will Arnett and show what happens when they decide to become parents. The problem is it's a great concept for a movie—not a TV show.
All three Kardashians blow off Kris Humphries' plus-size model sister. Mila Kunis gets hacked. A naked man with a Fudgesicle broke into Nicolas Cage's house. Padma Lakshmi bombs at an open mic night. Thursday gossip turns up its nose.
Writing for the Atlantic, reporter Marc Herman has meticulously reconstructed the story of Qaddafi loyalists deliberately murdering three civilians—including a six-year-old and an eight-year-old—in cold blood and at point blank range. "The soldier fired, shooting the six-year-old boy through the side of his chest as Abrar held him. The boy slumped over and the soldier fired again into his back, sending the bullet to exit through the child's stomach." Awful.
October, 2010: lifelong media grenade-thrower Michael Wolff is appointed as the top editor of advertising industry trade magazine Adweek. April, 2011: the new Wolff-ified Adweek debuts. Our prediction at the time: "It'll go along just fine for a month or three, until the publisher starts getting calls from the advertisers, who say, 'I find all of that media reporting very interesting but by the way, we are in the advertising industry. Not the media. So I'm, you know, taking my business over to Ad Age, which really, let's be honest, covers this industry that I'm in (advertising) better than you guys do.' And that will be the end of the great media-reporting-heavy advertising trade magazine experiment!"
This reality fixture can't help but pass noxious gas when shopping in Beverly Hills. This actor has stopped playing beard to a famous lesbian and found a new lady, and this actress was a total mess at a fashion show. As long as she didn't stink up the joint, she's in good shape.
Yesterday, we brought you the story of Sarah Grunfeld, the 22 year-old student at York University who ran out and publicly accused her (Jewish) sociology professor of anti-Semitism when he said the phrase "Jews should be sterilized"—as an example of a bad opinion. Grunfeld's reasoning: "The words, ‘Jews should be sterilized' still came out of his mouth, so regardless of the context I still think that's pretty serious."
The use of standardized test scores as a proxy for actual intelligence is a lazy, misguided, classist and culturally discriminatory tactic that makes the jobs of policymakers easier at the expense of the future of our children. That said, kids these days are more jaw-droppingly stupid than ever before. We're getting it from all sides.
