Nothing says "Comeback" like full-on, baby-oiled nudity! Britney Spears' hotly (?) anticipated "Womanizer" video is out. She dances, she sings, she beats up dudes while wearing really high heels. What more could anyone ask for? Check it out after the jump.
Yeah, this whole Depression thing sucks miserably. But have a little perspective. It's a miracle that we're even here at all. Huge, angry balls of ice and rock have been soaring through space trying to kill us forever. But they have failed every single time! Well, okay, they nailed the dinosaurs, but dinosaurs were too big and stupid and we needed their flesh for fuel. Anyhoo, here, courtesy of the Discovery Channel, are just a few of the heavenly bullies that have failed in their dastardly plans to wipe out life on earth. 1. Asteroid: Tunguska event Year: 1908 Proximity to Earth (number of times Earth/Moon distance): Exploded metres above ground in the Russian wilderness In a nutshell: This asteroid or comet fragment was thought to have burned and flattened trees with a 10-15 megaton explosion just before it would have made landfall. Scientists estimate such an event happens every 300 years or so. 2. Asteroid: 1937 UB Year: 1937 Proximity to Earth (number of times Earth/Moon distance): Twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon In a nutshell: Long before this asteroid could have been detected in time—at the time—it passed razor-close to Earth—it's diameter? 1.2 km—more than enough to cause plenty of worldwide damage. 3. Asteroid: 4581 Asclepius (1989 FC) Year: 1989 Proximity to Earth (number of times Earth/Moon distance): 700,000 km (About twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon) In a nutshell: Most frighteningly, this 1 km-wide asteroid passed precisely where the Earth had been only six hours before. 4. Asteroid: 2002 MN Year: 2002 Proximity to Earth (number of times Earth/Moon distance): 0.3 (120,000 km) In a nutshell: This passed inside the Moon's orbit, missing Earth by a wide margin within the orbit. That's good news, as the 80-metre-wide asteroid would have caused damage over 2,000 square kilometres if it actually made contact with Earth. 5. Asteroid: 2002 FH Year: 2004 Proximity to Earth (number of times Earth/Moon distance): 0.1 (42,000 km) In a nutshell: LINEAR, the asteroid tracking robot telescope showed this 30 metre object would pass within the ream of some earth-orbiting satellites - the closest pass ever predicted up to this point. Well, that's the good news. The bad news? More are on the way!
Joerg Haider, the extreme right wing Austrian politician who once said the Nazis had "an orderly employment policy" and referred to the concentration camps as "the punishment camps of National Socialism," died in a car crash last night. He was 58. "Haider was pronounced dead in a hospital shortly after his Volkswagen Phaeton veered off the road outside Klagenfurt in southern Austria and overturned several times after he successfully passed another car, police said. Authorities said an initial investigation showed no signs of foul play. At the time of his death, Haider was governor of the province of Carinthia and leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria—a party he formed after breaking away from the far right Freedom Party in 2005." Haider always denied having a soft spot for the Third Reich and its Neo-Nazi spawn, but when he got into national government with 27 percent of the vote on an anti-immigration platform in 1999, the rest of Europe rewarded Austria with months of EU sanctions over Haider's statements—seen by less Alpine nations as anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler. Strangely, Israel's relations with Austria suffered after Haider's election, and the Israeli ambassador was pulled from Vienna. Though Haider and his gang left the Freedom Party for the gentler Alliance for the Future of Australia in 2005, Haider met with the Freedom Party's leader last month when they realized their combined votes in the last national election were nearly equal to that of the winning Social Democrats. Said Freedom Party boss Heinz-Christian Strache, "Joerg Haider achieved great things ... he was a great figure." [AP]
A tipster wonders what music Gawker readers are turning to now that our economic world has drawn to a close. So let's have it. What are your top music choices for enduring this thing? Oh, and the image at left? Just getting you primed for the only tried and true method of solving global collapse—a world fucking war, people! C'mon, it won't be that bad! Russia will fight itself. Who cares about Middle East? And China's space program is garbage, so their missiles probably won't get anywhere near us. Plus, their Air Force has nothing that can stay in the air against our F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. So we'll be fine! In the meantime, what music are you listening to? My picks after the jump.
Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman is a scummy asshole and also, usually, a surprisingly good politician. (You'd kinda have to be to be a New Yorker with a sham marriage to a wannabe Hollywood actress and still win in Minnesota.) He's the "which way is the wind blowing" style of campaigner, and now he's suspending his campaign to... no, sorry, he's "suspending all negative campaign ads" as of today. It's a great little stunt, actually. Coleman's running against Al Franken. Franken basically didn't have a chance in hell of winning, until a) Obama began surging and b) the economy went into a tailspin. Suddenly, Obama is occasionally polling in the double digits in Minnesota (a double-digit Obama victory may be the only way for Franken to get into office), and, even worse, Franken is sometimes outpolling Coleman (Franken is up 9 points in the most recent Star Tribune poll, which is an outlier, but Coleman's lead seems to be shrinking everywhere else). The campaign's been vicious and negative by any standard, but especially for Minnesota, where campaigns have always seemed a little more polite. All this was before a video of Coleman's spokesman disastrously not defending Coleman's gifts from wealthy businessmen swept across the internet. Finally, MSNBC points this statistic out:
Yesterday we brought you the epic, outraged email chain that ensued when Hip Hop Weekly mistakenly sent an invite for a fancy party it was throwing to a list of freelancers who hadn't been paid for their work. It only took one day for them to propose a class-action lawsuit and a protest march. Energetic! And while half of HHW's leadership is apparently trying to calm everyone down, the other half is dealing with the situation by screaming threats over the phone: From an unpaid photographer on the email list:
Either our nation's elite reporters are all snoozing, or our nation's young new bailout chief Neel Kashkari is a pretty boring guy (likely). But the WSJ today, after an exhaustive investigation, did manage to dig up this nugget: "'Everyone at Goldman has a full head of hair and went to prep school and Dartmouth and played lacrosse. That’s not Neel,' said an investment banker who knew him." Hey, remember Kevin Pollak in The Usual Suspects? "Did you put that together yourself, Einstein? Whattaya, got a team of monkeys working around on the clock on this?" [WSJ]
Fox Business Network is so happy for this whole Wall Street meltdown thing. Why just recently they finally got an audience that's actually big enough to measure! But even if you agree with many economic experts that Fox Business Network is the financial news equivalent of The Learning Annex, you have to admire their plucky use of ads to snipe at CNBC. They have a new one about how wrong Jim Cramer has been about everything involving money! Which is factually true. Here it is:
♦ Sumner Redstone is being forced to sell about one-fifth of his stake in CBS and Viacom to meet the terms of various loan agreements. Also: Shares in Viacom plunged after the company announced third-quarter earnings fell short of estimates. [Bloomberg]
♦ It's official: Hearst's Cathie Black announced CosmoGirl will fold. [Portfolio]
♦ A little perspective: Time Warner is now less than one-quarter of what AOL alone was worth before the merger. [SAI]
♦ After much drama (and a few leaked emails), Scott Rudin has decided to talk away from The Reader. [THR]
Who's to blame for this mess? That's what the American people want to know, right? Nobody wants to hear about intricate economic factors that combined in unforeseen ways to predicate an economic collapse. We want scapegoats! The media, politicians, and plain old dumb people on the street who don't know what the hell they're talking about have all picked out their favorite villains in this national crisis. We take a look at the top ten, after the jump:
Jeff Bercovici is reporting that CosmoGirl, Hearst's teen-targeted girlie mag, is folding. It was just confirmed by the company, which says it's consolidating the mag with Seventeen. At least it lasted slightly longer than Teen People and ElleGirl! But this could just be the first of many titles to succumb to the horrible new economic environment for mid-tier media outlets, in particular. So what other magazines are going to fold next? We have a couple of guesses. Do you?: Men's Vogue? It's been getting thinner and thinner lately, and could be on its last legs, judging by outward appearances. Details? The men's mag recently came out of the closet—which is nice, but no guarantee of success. It's in a challenging place, and it's not that strong. (Though we hear it's on slightly firmer footing these days than it has been at times in the past). Your thoughts about who could be next in the comments, please. This may be the beginning of something bad.
Hot naked man-on-man pornography supports Obama! Not that there's anything wrong with that. But Page Six would like you to know that one of Obama's big donation "bundlers" is Terrence Bean—a real estate developer who owns a holding company that receives revenue from the sale of a gay porn company. Why, Obama himself is practically sucking cocks on camera, with connections like that! The important thing to remember in the midst of this pornographic—and gay—journalistic bombshell, is that the word "taint" must always receive prominent placement:
Even before the recent collapse of Wall Street, the media was changing. Newspapers dying! Blogs exploding! But back then, in the halcyon days of a couple months ago, the difference was that there were winners and losers amongst the various media sectors. Now, there are only losers. And a few who will hold the line and claim success, because, hey, flat is the new up. After the jump, a brief guide to the important parts of the media, and how they're getting screwed by financial reality: Overarching point: 39 of the 50 members in the Admarket 50—the most important companies to the advertising industry—saw their stocks open at 52-week lows this morning. Ok!
Barack Obama purchased a full half-hour of airtime on CBS and NBC. His very special infomercial is set to air Wednesday, October 29. John McCain probably can't afford to do this! It's also not unprecedented: Ross Perot did it, and it was hilarious and awesome. Also they used to do it all the time in the 1960s. But jeez, a half-hour is a long time! We hope he has a musical guest or something? Here is the best part of this news: "The buy will push CBS comedy 'The New Adventures of Old Christine' to 8:30 p.m. and pre-empt 'Gary Unmarried.' NBC typically airs the hourlong 'Knight Rider' in the slot, and will likely throw in a comedy repeat at 8:30 p.m." Thank you Senator Obama for preempting Gary Unmarried! Change you can believe in! In response, Senator McCain is going to co-host an infomercial for the Flavor Wave Over Turbo, which will air at 5 a.m. the following morning on Lifetime.
Everyone in the Australian ad industry is a drunk cokehead! Well, not quite everyone. But according to new survey, "Asked if they knew of work associates who had an alcohol problem, only 7 per cent of those working in media agencies were able to answer 'no.'" Thirty-six percent of the Aussie ad industry said either "yes" or "possibly" when asked if they drink too much. And a fifth said they've used drugs at work. This raises four very important sociological questions:
The LA Times is considering a redesign. One of their most prominent proposed changes: changing bylines from "Times Staff Writer" To "By (Person), Reporting From (location)," as shown. The sad, likely reason for this change: the fact that Lee Abrams, Tribune's "Innovation" officer and maker of comical pronouncements about newspapers, came into his job not even understanding what bylines and datelines mean: From an Atlantic interview with Abrams via LAObserved:
♦ Some 66 million tuned in to Tuesday's debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, up from 55 million for the first debate on Sept. 26th. [NYT]
♦ A recap of Michelle Obama's appearances on the Daily Show and Larry King last night. [NYT]
♦ Barack Obama's campaign purchased a half-hour of airtime from CBS for a primetime special on October 29th. [THR]
♦ CBS's Dean Reynolds isn't happy about how the Obama campaign treats the media; fellow reporters take Reynolds to task. [CBS, Radar]
♦ Arianna Huffington: Not such a nice boss! [Gawker]
♦ Haute Living: Not such a fun place to work! [Jossip]
If the Democrats pull this off and win the presidential election, the Republican "noise machine" will not simply give up and devote themselves to charity. They will need to undermine and delegitimize President Obama as much and as loudly as possible, non-stop, for the entirety of his term. Early predecessors of this strategy include claims that John Kennedy stole the 1960 election with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's corrupt machine and reminding everyone that Bill Clinton didn't win a majority of the vote in 1992. But the 2008 version will be even nastier and so much more toxic! Thanks, then, to Roger Stone, old-school GOP Political Operative, for giving us a sneak preview of the complaints you'll be hearing until 2012:
