So! Tonight! Pennsylvania's Primary! The current CW sez Clinton will win—her internal numbers have her 11 points ahead, public polling has a slightly narrower margin. But she needs a HUGE win to, uh, overtake Obama in the popular vote. The delegate thing? Well, that's a much harder gap to close. Hey, remember how Hil was inevitable? Anyone? It was less than a year ago that she was the unstoppable presumptive nominee. What happened? We went back in time, with our magic Googling time machine, to dissect 18 months of campaign spin, media narratives, and pundit bullshit to figure out how Senator Hillary Clinton went from our next President to this increasingly desperate-looking figure.

The Mohammad cartoons, the purposefully extra-offensive South Park episodes, and Bill Maher: not funny. Also, if you ignore them, they can't hurt you! SO WHY DON'T PEOPLE EVER IGNORE THEM? Bill Maher said something OUTRAGEOUS about the Pope, and the Catholic church. The outrageous thing he said is argurably true, if inelegantly put. Specifically, he called the Pope a Nazi, which he very briefly was when he was a little boy, and he called the Catholic Church a "child-abusing cult," which, if you have a broad-enough definition of cult, is basically what they are. Anyway—the American Life League has launched a website calling for Maher to be fired from his little HBO show. Ok guys! Jesus, you're getting all worked up about Bill Maher? There is a rich history of virulent anti-Catholicism in this great nation, but it pretty much ended once we all decided the Irish were allowed to be White. Attacking the Pope is no more "hate speech" than calling George W. Bush a war criminal. But: confidential to Bill M: you're taking on the Pope? You got nothing better to do with your time? He's not that bad! Seriously, as Popes go, he's one of the least damaging ever.

Today, New York plays a little game to make you feel like a moron. What if you had had $100,000 to invest in 1998? Well, you would probably still be a rich person now, but bear with them. They offer a number of examples of investments you could've made instead of spending all your time getting wasted and listening to the New Radicals (was it really that long ago!). Sure, they include a couple ringers that woulda lost you money (theglobe.com stock! A BMW!), but otherwise it's a rich catalog of things you were too poor to afford then that now you are all the poorer for not having bought. 3,300 shares of Apple! A townhouse just about anywhere in New York! Gold! Investments they missed, after the jump.

Opening today at New York's Film Forum: Stalags, a new documentary about pornographic paperbacks that were quite popular in Israel in the 1960s. They took place in Nazi concentration camps. They were full of pervy sado-masochism. They made the Holocaust sound like kinky fun. They were written by, and for, Israeli Jews, under American-sounding pseudonyms. The books were all about male prisoners being raped and tortured by "curvaceous female Nazi guards." The film argues that they perhaps helped Israeli Jews "discuss" the Holocaust for the first time since the war ended. So: Holocaust porn, for Holocaust survivors. Surely this beats cancer jokes for uncomfortable discussion topics. How does it stand up against American Marines killing puppies? What does it mean that as a culture it took us almost a decade longer to laugh about the Holocaust than to jerk off to it? [NYT]

Not only is today the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination; as both news stories and commenters have pointed out, it's the 41st anniversary of his historic speech opposing the Vietnam War. That speech was groundbreaking in the truest sense; there was bitter division within the civil rights movement over whether King should take on the war at all. Many felt it would distract from his core goal of racial equality. "And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened," King said. "For such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live." Below, you can listen to his entire speech. It's long. But there's nobody alive in modern day America who can make such a plea with equivalent effect, despite our need for one now. And that's the end of the serious items for the week.

Researchers have figured out how to play back a rare audio recording from 1860 of what they insist is a person "singing" a "song," though it sounds suspiciously like someone abusing a pigeon. The discovery predates Thomas Edison's phonograph by almost twenty years, and it was produced by "a little-known Frenchman," so there's one more entry to the list of things Edison didn't invent that you were lied to about as a child. The Times piece on the discovery is by Jody Rosen, music critic for Slate—which could maybe possibly be a hint as to who will replace critic Kelefa Sanneh now that he's jumped ship to the New Yorker. (We've embedded the "Phonautograph Recording" after the jump. It's not very good.)

U.S. Army Master Sergeant Robert McLaughlin's obsession with Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace paid off when he found an original watercolor of the young noble, daughter of the poet Lord Byron, for sale on eBay. Widely credited with having created the first computer program, a system of calculating Bernoulli numbers for Charles Babbage's steam-powered Analytical Engine, "The Enchantress of Number" is a dashingly romantic figure. She's made numerous appearances in novels, including steampunk ur-text The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Cisco Systems is the main sponsor for the History Channel show "Modern Marvels," but being the main sponsor wasn't enough. Now, Cisco is actually having themselves magically inserted into old episodes of the show, with just a little bit of new footage and some re-editing. The result is a three-minute "mini-documentary" in which Cisco execs talk about the show's topic, which will be "seamlessly woven in" to the show's commercial breaks. Um, scary! Next thing we know, the Gorton's Fisherman will be rescuing Gilligan on Nick At Nite. Could this ultimately lead to our dead heroes having their memories dredged up just to sell useless dreck? Oh, too late. [TVWeek, History.com]

Incoming New York governor David Paterson will indeed be state's first black governor, but reports that he will be the nation's first blind governor neglect the amazing true story of American hero Bob Riley, the blind man who was president of Arkansas for 11 days in 1975, until it was revealed that the charmingly absent-minded old man had just accidentally stumbled into the governor's office while walking his dog around a construction site without wearing his glasses. Riley remained the head of state, convinced he was attending an amusing vaudeville show, until he was retrieved by his nephew Waldo. [Wonkette]

Back in more civilized times, the New York Times never once mentioned the name Jennifer Fitzgerald. That name, Times vet R.W. Apple famously explained in Spy, was "known everywhere, and it is not used." Fitzgerald was the woman who supposedly had a lengthy affair with former President George H. W. Bush. The Times never even looked into the story. "All you've got is sordid gossipy bits," explained another reporter. The first reports of Bill Clinton's alleged extramartial affair didn't name the "Arkansas employee" who made the allegations herself. (Not until the tabloid The Star used her name was it safe to also do so.) Before the Post broke the story of Judith Nathan, the Times coverage of the end of then-mayor Rudy Giulaini's marriage to Donna Hanover was obnoxiously winking. Elisabeth Bumiller only named the mayor's good friend after Rudy and the Post beat them to it. Basically, how insane is it that the Times broke the story of Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the hooker who took down Eliot Spitzer? And how insane was the story that broke it, what with its links to her MySpace profile and bizarre criticism of her "rhythm and blues" music? Arthur Suzlberger truly is "the prophet of the high church of journalism."

Like perhaps everyone who has a website of any kind, we recieve TMZ blast email alerts all day, every day. This is not a complaint—they're often entertaining, if just as often completely inexplicable (TMZ EXCLUSIVE: Alleged 'Entourage' Victim Says "Never Mind!" TMZ: Miley Cyrus' Achy Breaky Stomach! TMZ EXCLUSIVE: Paris Has Too Many Bitches?!! TMZ EXCLUSIVE: Hoff to Pam: One French Maid, Pleeeze! TMZ EXLUSIVE: Randy Quaid's Wife — Nazis Out to Get Randy). This, though, is the weirdest one we have ever received. It's a sighting of Fawn Hall. The noted Iran-Contra figure. Ollie North's old secretary apparently works in a bookstore now, guys, in case you were wondering. Now someone get on the Eugene Hasenfus beat! (Click to enlarge)

Since time immemorial, or since maybe 2004, we have received missives from a person called The Earl Grey, the greatest social documentarian of our time. As frequently as possible, we print these letters as a service to society. Today, he takes us on a journey through the past, recreating the intimate details of New York life in the halcyon days of the fin de siècle 1990s.

The influence of Maureen Dowd, formerly important New York Times opinion columnist, is dead, at the age of 13. The Pulitzer-winning columnist is still blamed, in some circles, for killing Al Gore's shot at the presidency with her relentless, belittling, emasculating, and most importantly media consensus-shaping columns. She used to be inescapable—on the Times home page, on Sunday morning politics shows, in every political blog on Earth—but now it's hard to gin up outrage about her scrubbing negative quotes from columns or mistaking black women for other black women. In 2004, those stories would've been all Atrios talked about for days. (Maybe they still are, does anyone read Atrios anymore either?) In 2000, they wouldn't have been outrages at all, because everything she said was immediate conventional wisdom. So what happened?

Slate's Jack Shafer notices a disturbing trend that has more or less saved the ass of every single Gawker editor ever on slow news days: wacky headlines at CNN.com. The tabloidization of CNN.com has Shafer, well, mildly concerned. All the stories are about babies being mauled by tigers and sex offenders setting kindergarteners on fire! "Nuns-and-nude ad upsets Catholics!" Ladies in peril! "CNN.com's, MSNBC.com's, and Foxnews.com's celebration of and reliance on stories like today's "Human Tongue Accidentally Served Up in Hospital," which are explicitly designed to momentarily rouse and titillate the Web audience, says worlds about how the site thinks of us. Life is a freak show, the Web sites instruct, and we viewers just another bunch of freaks." So true, Jack. Life is a freakshow, and CNN just wants to hand you a free ticket. To illustrate: after the jump, Gawker's vast and rich archive of embarrassing CNN.com screengrabs, available in one place for the very first time. Watch it now!Click to view

The 60s are back! Thanks to the candidate for change! Attached, Barry Hussein's new TV ad, set to run right here in New York City—which is briefly important again, did you hear? Barack Obama knows America is sick of the same old ways of doing politics. They're tired of dynastic families remaining in Washington for generations. He knows also that everyone loves the Kennedys! At least, most of the Kennedys. The dead ones mostly, plus the ones we don't see too much of, like Caroline. It was so nice of those Kennedys to adopt Barry and make him one of the family! Just like Brad and Angelina! Or maybe he's infused with the spirit of JFK himself, like Suri Cruise! (The Times notes that the spot references the moon landing, which NIXON did, while leaving out the Bay of Pigs. Seriously? You thought they'd include the Bay of Pigs? Why not a drugged-up Marilyn Monroe getting double-teamed by the President and the Attorney General too!) The full ad is below, watch and pine for the black and white America you don't remember but it seemed pretty awesome.

As you may have read in Vanity Fair, the Village Voice, The New Yorker, or on this very site right here, Rudy Giuliani was kind of a capricious dick back when he was mayor (and probably before then too, but who cared?). Today the Times joins the season-long pile-on, just as it becomes increasingly likely that America's Mayor won't win a single primary. The best illustrative anecdote appears early: When a chauffeur's call to Giuliani's radio show to complain about a police-rigged red light "yielded no results," the driver took his case to the Daily News. It made the front page, and then the chauffeur was arrested, that morning, and taken to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. Then a police spokesman falsely claimed to the Daily News that the driver had been convicted of sodomy. "Then," the Times writes, "Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel."

A new study claims that Columbus introduced syphilis to Europe from the New World, but it was those decadent Europeans who made it sexually transmitted. "It's especially neat when I think about contacts between Europeans and Native Americans," Researcher Kristin Harper said. "As far as diseases go, it seemed like a one-way street: Europeans brought measles and smallpox (to the Indians). But this is an example of disease going the other way. That seems kind of fair." Sure. Europe wiped out 100 million people and the Indians made a couple Ibsen characters go mad. Fair's fair! [Yahoo]

Click to viewAll those people—such as myself!—who complain about what New York City is like today? Too much anecdote, not enough fact. What really happened to New York City? I thought of one way to find out. Over the last month, I have read the Metro section from each issue of the New York Times—starting in mid-2000 and ending with today's paper. Here's what I learned.

Did you know that the nationally respected and historically top-tier U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York was moribund and doomed before a crusading young prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani took it over in 1983? It's true! Rudy said so the other day while defending his criminal BFF Bernie Kerik! And it was news, apparently, to Rudy's predecessor as U.S. Attorney, John Martin. Martin has some crazy idea that Giuliani is taking too much credit for the work of others, though we know the man who single-handedly saved the world on 9/11 and reduced the national crime rate and was so effective as mayor of New York that its much ballyhooed renaissance began before he even took office would never do that. Martin, probably one of those soft-on-crime communist former U.S. Attorneys, went to the liberal New York Times to voice his petty complaints.

Finally, an entire website devoted to our favorite cheap "this thing looks like that thing" posts! "The Times they aren't a changing" seems to have been at it for a month now, but it wasn't until today that its enterprising (Post-employed) proprietor brought it to our attention. The lesson, learned time and time again, is that things were so much awesomer back in the day. 2007's Putting on Weight for Football Glory vs 1910's A game for fat boys? We know which one would make it to the top of our most emailed list. In the interests of fairness, though, we should note that no one is immune to this curse of repetition. Much like n+1, we've dug through the lengthy archives and found a number of ancient Gawker blabberings that read suspiciously familiar.