Last week, the blog world picked up an LA Times news story about a scientific study that had just been published in an academic journal, Communication, Culture and Critique. The title of the study: "Women (Not) Watching Women: Leisure Time, Television, and Implications for Televised Coverage of Women's Sports."
Everyone knows that conservative magazine National Review is not racist. Sure, it used to publish John "avoid concentrations of blacks" Derbyshire — but it's also treated race with sensitivity and restraint, as in this column about how President Obama isn't really black and this all-white symposium on black unemployment. So why is writer Jay Nordlinger using the ethnic slur "wetback" in his column today?
Following a judge's ruling allowing its release, prosecutors just made public testimony from an anonymous witness in the case of George Zimmerman — who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old, in February — as well as phone calls Zimmerman made from jail.
Influential guy with thoughts David Brooks has some thoughts today, about Chris Hayes' new book Twilight of the Elites. And, to be honest, he raises some good questions! Like, is David Brooks literate?
Ever wonder what happened to Kyle McDonald, the artist who had the Secret Service sicced on him last year for installing spy cam software on computers in New York City Apple Stores that took pictures of unsuspecting Apple customers? He's written a long, fascinating account of his ordeal for Wired. Turns out it all ended for the best.
Last week, Daniel Tosh, a 37-year-old professional comedian, told a heckler that it would be funny if she were "raped by like five guys." The incident launched a week-long interent-based discussion about the limits of stand-up and several comedians came to Tosh's defense. In any event, it was one heat-of-the-moment joke, Tosh himself has apologized, and he can wash his hands of the incident, right? Yes, sure, as soon as he finishes taking all of the rape jokes out of the pilot for his new show. Via RumorFix:
The Daily is a daily newspaper that is available only on iPads. This was, and remains, a terrible business model. Consider:
At the internet culture conference ROFLCON in May, the assembled geek digerati were asked during one panel if they were readers of 4chan, the legendary butthole of the internet. A bare smattering of hands went up in the MIT lecture hall.
Above, on the right, you can see the hoodie that Trayvon Martin was wearing the night he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. On the left his his shirt, on which a bloodstain is clearly visible. Prosecutors released the photographs today along with documents detailing the Sanford police response to Martin's death; among them include a statement from lead investigator Christopher Serino holding that Zimmerman "profiled the unarmed teen because he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, not because he was black." [WTSP]
Elite Gymnastics is going to bring ska back. This might be sort of surprising if you've ever heard an Elite Gymnastics song: the stock in trade of the Minneapolis band (James Brooks, 27, and Josh Clancy, 24) is a kind of heavily compressed rave revivalism — shoegaze with breakbeats, maybe. But if you ask the band, they've already started.
Ray Kelly, the head of the NYPD, is just so full of shit. His police department has a massive "stop and frisk" program which, by the NYPD's own statistics, is existentially programmed to stop and frisk hundreds and hundreds of thousands of completely innocent young black and Latino men with no real cause. It is a minority dragnet, so blatantly racist that not even the police chief can quibble on that point. He can merely say: it's for the black people's own good.
Sure, it's true, cities and counties from Alabama to California have given up and declared bankruptcy due to this ongoing Recesssion of Doom. Hell, San Bernardino just declared bankruptcy yesterday. But those cities are quitters. They've taken themselves out of contention, the losers. For an American city that is still trying to survive financially, and failing miserably, there is no better example than Scranton, PA—the jewel of Lackawanna County.
Are you aware of Daniel Tosh, who hosts a sort of viral-video version of The Soup on Comedy Central called Tosh.0 and is much-beloved on certain corners of the internet? His schtick is, basically, "being a huge asshole," both in a general way and in a racist or classist or sexist way. Some people think he is hilarious (they are wrong) and some people think he is really grating and unfunny and difficult to watch (they are right). You can watch his classic joke about the hypothetical rape of his sister in this video.
We did not expect Mike Daisey to disappear after his non-fiction monologue about Apple was revealed to be full of fabrications, as feverently as we may have wished it. Mike Daisey is a serial liar, but he is a talented, famous liar, which in no way precludes him from participating in American public life and actually makes him a pretty good candidate for political office.
Last weekend may have witnessed the geopolitical equivalent of the Kanye West-Kim Kardashian Date of the Century, when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un showed up at a couple events with a mystery woman in tow. But was it his wife, his mistress or just his boring sister at his side? And what does it all mean?
