Gawker

Photo Disaster: No Full Frontal of Levi! [Levi's Johnston Watch]

Brian Moylan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:08:02 -0500

There is no wang. We repeat, there is no wang! Playgirl's now seen the results of last week's photo shoot, and while there may beglimpses of Levi Johnston's baby maker, there is no full-frontal shot. Let the blame game begin!

Playgirl spokesman Daniel Nardicio has released a statement blaming Levi's manager Tank Jones. "He did not give 'full-frontal' as his manager Tank Jones reported he would. We're thrilled with the photos we got, and are confident people will love them. Although there may be glimpses, we did not get full on frontal nudity."

That is very sad news indeed. Playgirl had one job to do: get a photo of that famous hockey stick and it failed to do so. Maybe ironically-named photographer Gregory Weiner couldn't make an intimate connection with his model and convince him to bare all. Maybe Tank Jones was trying to keep him covered to protect his client's image. Maybe Levi just got shy at the last minute and couldn't go through with it.

Still, after all the hype Tank created about how "fearless" Levi is and how he was ready to show us everything, we feel very let down and a little bit lied to. Tank was totally the madam that said we would have the full run of all the girls in the house, but when we arrived, all we got was a scratchy hand job from a buck-toothed cross-eye in a closet.

That said, we still can't wait to see the pictures.

[Illustration by Steven Dressler]

The Three Weirdest Things in Twitter's New Office [Cubicle Culture]

Ryan Tate — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:01:39 -0500

Twitter employees have been uploading pictures of their new digs in San Francisco. Looks like the microblogging startup is more concerned with catching up to its rapid growth than with coherent interior decoration.

It's hard to blame them. Still, some of the pictures compiled by TechCrunch — from Twitter, naturally — have us scratching our heads. Click on any of the first three items in the gallery below to see what we mean.

The mirror in the toilet stall. Bill Farner, who took this shot, is confused about this oddly-located "vanity" mirror's purpose. Can't say we blame him!

The lone "at" symbol on this wall. Wouldn't "@wall" be more appropriate? Or "@couch!"By Ryan King.

The DJ booth in the dining room. It's not just lunch, it's a party! By @caroline.

DJ booth in context (it's in the back). By Bill Farner.

This isn't one of the "weird" things, but it's noteworthy because of the subject: That's Ev Williams' wife Sara Morishige. So this, presumably, is the CEO's own office. Anyone know what the "795" is about? In any case, it's generous of the new mom and longtime designer to handle the interior of her husband's office. That's going to be a crowded wall, judging from the density of what's up so far. By @caroline.

Oprah's Secret Message? [Magazines]

Gabriel Snyder — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:00:00 -0500

Maybe this is just a Rohrschach test for whether you're a gay leftist gossip site, but we think the holiday-card treatment on the Ellen Degeneres cover of O makes the word "Joy" look like "Gay." (Or "Goy" if you're Jewish.)

Heroic Loser Conservative To Become Upstate New York's Norm Coleman [Campaigns]

Pareene — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:44:28 -0500

Fantastic news, New Yorkers: Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate who won the endorsement of real Republicans and then lost the race for Congress because he did not live in the district or know much about it? He has unconceded.

Democrat Bill Owens originally had a 5,000 vote lead over Hoffman. That vote shrank to 3,000. There are 5,800 of absentee votes left to count! And though Hoffman would need to win 75% of those votes, and though presumably many of those votes were cast before Republican Dede Scozzafava withdrew from the race (and endorsed Owens), Hoffman has decided that his concession was premature. Well, Glenn Beck decided that Hoffman's concession was premature. And Hoffman just does whatever Glenn Beck says. Because he is a true conservative.

Newspaper Box Enlivened One Last Time [Print Is Dead]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:14:27 -0500

Artist Jason Eppink turns empty newspaper boxes into flashing little disco parties. "When the last vestiges of a collapsed empire litter the landscape, there's only one thing to do: throw a bumpin' party and dance on the ruins." [BoingBoing]

This Video Contains Every Awesome Illusion of New York [Things We Actually Like]

Brian Moylan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:06:28 -0500

When the young dreamers out there conjure images of Manhattan they think of beauty, art, fashion, socialites, the skyline, and all-around general fabulousness. Well, most New Yorkers don't get that on a daily basis, but this video has them all.

"Consumed," a "fashion short" written and dirtected by Bradley Young—former photography director at Interview, GQ, Instyle, Talk and Radar—and shot on the roof of The Standard Hotel, features socialite and model Lydia Hearst looking her most gorgeous and bored. She vamps for the camera in various killer outfits and interesting tableaux while subway busker Luke Trumble croons "St. Louis Blues" in the background.

There is a sad and gritty undercurrent to the action that reminds us a bit of what life in New York is really like. Sure, there are plenty of glamorous things here in the city, but often attaining them isn't worth the trouble to get them, and sometimes those fabulous parties are just full of lonely people waiting to pounce on a Rubix cube on a silver platter. Still it reminds us of the wonderful luster of the city, and the danger of being swept up in it. Be sure to check out the whole video (and the surprise ending!) at Gravure Mag.

If You Lie on Your Expense Report, Maybe Don't Tweet About It [Twitterati]

Ryan Tate — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:01:25 -0500

A CBS News personality lied on his expenses; Mary J. Blige severely mis-typed an impassioned defense of her "intelligents;" and Billy Bush made some confusing Sarah Palin statements. The Twitterati were terrible correspondents.

Slate's John Dickerson complained about the "lying on your expense report" part of his job. He's presumably OK with the "have work give you money under false pretenses" part.

The New York Times David Carr, meanwhile, provided some perspective on the terrible ordeal of expene reports.

When she's not having such a rough time, singer Mary J. Blige will look back on tweets like "people always understand estimate my intelligents" and laugh.

Yes, that was really actress Haylie Duff in your spin class.

A sloppy copy/paste job made George W. Bush's cousin sound like a critic of Sarah Palin's recent media appearances.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets - or send us more Twitter usernames.

Rumors of Ken Ober's Death Turn Out to Be Sadly True [And Now He's Dead]

Richard Rushfield — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:44:16 -0500

After a flurry of rumors and counter-rumors, it appears that Ken Ober, the former host of MTV's Remote Control, has in fact passed away at age 52.

In his passing, Ober broke a great internet boundary, turning the traditional internet paradigm on its head and becoming the first subject of a false death rumor, wherein the rumor of its falsehood was what turned out to be fake, and the death itself was sadly real. While the false death rumor is a venerable online genre, having prematurely claimed the passings of Jeff Goldblum and Patrick Swayze among others, the false rumor of a false death rumor has been until today, an unexplored frontier of the internet.

Ober was best known for his work hosting MTV's trivia show from 1987 - 1990. He went on to host several other game shows including Make Me Laugh and Smush before fading from the airwaves. Recently he worked off-camera as a writer/producer on shows such as The New Adventures of Old Christine and Mind of Mencia.

Enjoy the clip below for a taste of the wry, mop-topped, sardonic host in his prime.

Hit a Bitch to Stop Domestic Violence [Wtf]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:38:06 -0500

You know what would be a good way to stop domestic violence? Set up a free website called "Hit The Bitch" where you can use your computer's mouse to simulate beating that mouthy bitch till you're "100% Gangsta." But then!

Oh ho! Not so "Gangsta" after all, are you? In fact you are 100% of something else, which you may not be so pleased with, tough guy! It takes about ten virtual bitch slaps in the girl's face to get to this screen so don't give up before she's thoroughly bruised. You'll want your kids to play again and again. [Adfreak]

Dead Animal Helps Pan Book Decrying Animal Death [Journalismism]

Ryan Tate — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:28:09 -0500

Yes, that was a real pig's head illustrating the New York Times' negative review of Jonathan Safran Foer's anti-meat-eating book, Gawker contributor Joshua David Stein has confirmed. The letters to the editor should be especially entertaining next Sunday.

Those of Us Who Aren't Killed and Eaten Have a Bright Economic Future [Recessionomics]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:06:32 -0500

The Way We Live Now: Rearranging the fundamental tenets of reality until everything is just fine. GM's losing billions, which is a huge success. Our wallets have totally disappeared, which is a mark of progress. We're cannibalizing each other. Delicious!

Here's the lead to a news story: "General Motors said on Monday that its finances had improved to the point that..." It was profitable? No, finances have improved to the point that it lost $1.15 billion in the third quarter.

Wonderful!

Money has disappeared. There is no money. Nobody has money. We are all completely without money. But now thanks to PayPal technology, your "digital wallet" "lives in a cloud."

Good!

As long as most economists have lived, Mexicans have come to America to do the shitty jobs that Americans don't want so they can send money back home. Now, the employment situation in America is so atrocious that impoverished rural Mexicans are selling off their livestock in order to raise money to send to their relatives here in America, so they don't starve to death.

Invisible Hand!

In Moscow, the homeless are mastering economics and nutrition all at once: "Three homeless men ate parts of a 25-year-old man they had butchered and sold other bits of the corpse to a kebab restaurant."

Entrepreneurial!

Looks like everything's fine.

Rupert Murdoch's Purge of Roger Ailes' News Corp. Enemies Is Nearly Complete [Purges]

John Cook — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:06:23 -0500

Gary Ginsberg, the chief flack and token leftie at News Corp., is leaving his job, the New York Times reports. The move doesn't come as a huge surprise, but signals that Rupert Murdoch may be doubling down on unhinged anti-Obamaism.

Ginsberg was the genius who convinced Murdoch to cooperate with biographer/scorpion Michael Wolff. Murdoch spent 50 hours with Wolff and even granted access to his 99-year-old mother, and Wolff's biography ended up portraying him—surprise!—as manipulative, petty, and, worst of all (for Ginsberg at least) embarrassed by the unabashed white rage on display at Roger Ailes' Fox News Channel.

According to Wolff, Ginsberg was deeply involved in overseeing the access he had to Murdoch and "sat in on many of my interviews with Murdoch with head in Blackberry while Rupert ran at the mouth." Murdoch was apoplectic at the result, perhaps on Ailes' behalf. What followed the book's publication, according to Wolff, was an internal effort to purge News Corp. of Ginsberg's leftist influence.

"The person who really became his antagonist was Ailes," Wolff told Gawker. "Ailes has been telling people he was going to get Ginsberg. Also, Ginsberg was [former News Corp. chief operating officer Peter] Chernin's guy, so when Chernin left handwriting was on wall."

With Chernin and now Ginsberg gone, Murdoch's brief flirtation with sanity—remember when the New York Post endorsed Obama in the New York primary?—appears to be over, and Ailes has the run of the place. Which may explain why Murdoch just publicly agreed with Glenn Beck's contention that the first black president of the United States is a racist. Ginsberg won't be around next time to explain how he didn't really mean it.

UPDATE: We found a bit of behind-the-scenes evidence of how Ginsberg operated as a communications corridor to the left wing in the Spitzer Files, our collection of correspondence between Eliot Spitzer's flacks and the media at the height of Spitzer's hooker crisis. Three days after the story of Spitzer's prostitute habit broke, New York communications consultant Jordan Tamagni wrote Ginsberg to complain about a Post story that called Spitzer's wife Silda Wall a "doormat" and accused her of "sending her daughters a message that it's acceptable for a woman to behave like an object on which men wipe their shoes":

Hi, G. Far be it from me to question the editorial control of the NY Post, or heaven forfend, to lay it at your doorstep, but today's two page spread about Silda Wall was so egregious that I can't stop myself from writing. There's an especially loathsome piece by Andrea Peyser so utterly lacking in compassion or understanding that it literally took my breath away. It is so cruel and unnecessary that the mind really boggles. What the hell are they thinking over there? The paper treats the hooker WITH MORE COMPASSION THAN IT DOES SILDA.... I am really so mad that I can't see straight. Please advise.

Instead of dismissing or ignoring the criticism, Ginsberg brought it to Post editor Col Allan's attention and offered something of a peace pipe. Ginsberg responded to Tamagni just over an hour later:

Col Allan, the Post editor-in-chief, has invited you to submit a piece that he will run. Interested?

Tamagni forwarded Ginsberg's invitation to Spitzer's communications director Christine Anderson to discuss the idea, which is how it ended up in our public records request. As far as we can tell, no such op-ed, by Tamagni or anyone else, ever ran in the Post. But Ginsberg's role was clearly in part to mollify angry Democrats and bring them into the fold to the extent that he could. No more.

Pic via AFHU

Liveblogging Book-Writin' Sarah Palin Chattin' With Oprah [Liveblogging]

Pareene — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:03:50 -0500

Noted author Sarah Palin is on Oprah, right now. Let's watch it together!

First, Oprah would like to get this out of the way: remember the actual outright lie that Drudge printed about how Oprah "snubbed" Sarah Palin? Sarah Palin says it was a whole lot of nonsense! And she didn't even think about it! Lies about lies, already, and it is two minutes in. Palin's hair looks even bigger than it did in 2008 btw.

Sarah Palin says getting vetted was fun! She has a joke about it: she got a D once, in college (which college?) And Oprah is like, wait, your teenage daughter was pregnant why are you pretending that anyone cared about a D? And Sarah Palin is like "they did not give us an allowance to take care of Bristol," and also a lying PR person lied to her about how she loved being a grandma. Sarah Palin did not love being a grandmother!

Oh, hah, Chris Lehmann is doing this, too. He is funemployed!

"Of course, though, not knowing how intriguing it would be, for SOME OF THE HATERS, for some of the critics, to really delve into our personal life, and really make MORE of some of the issues that were there." Also the story where Barack Obama said that Sarah Palin's kids were off-limits? In Sarah Palin's imagination, that was Barack Obama telling the media that his kids were off-limits but that everyone should just go fuckin' nuts on Sarah's kids.

4:13 Oprah is pretending that the things in Sarah Palin's book are true! Now they are doing the famous "a fat man told me to eat a balanced diet" routine. Also: Sarah Palin doesn't like to shop. And: it wasn't a controversy where other candidates got their clothes, why was it a controversy for Palin? BECAUSE OTHER CANDIDATES WEREN'T GETTING NEW CLOTHES WITH CAMPAIGN FUNDS, SARAH.

4:16 Hillary Clinton! Drink!

4:17 The staff was hired to write the script. But her staff couldn't find the script! So they couldn't stay on the script. She was told to stay on the script, "and that was always puzzling to me."

Now she is doing a hilarious impression of someone (McCain?) saying "you screwed up, you went rogue on us."

4:19 Sarah Palin doesn't think she could be blamed for winning the race any more than she could've been credited for winning the race, if they had won! This is an official acknowledgment that she lost the race I think?

4:21 Oh man, a LIBERAL MEDIA ELITE MOVIE TRAILER just MADE FUN OF SARAH PALIN, during the commercial break! But don't worry, The Corner: Hugh Grant and Carrie SexintheCity will learn important lessons about the superiority of life in Real America, in the course of their wacky misadventures among the hicks of Wyoming, all of whom will be played by famous movie stars, like Sam Elliott.

4:23 A network evening news anchor's interview of a major party's Vice Presidential candidate was supposed to be a "fun, light-hearted" interview about the challenges of being a working mom. And then Katie Couric tricked Sarah Palin with questions about politics!

4:25 Oh, good, Oprah is actually playing a clip of the interview. Let's see how Sarah does when challenged with reality! Remember how she couldn't remember a magazine or newspaper? Oprah: "Obviously you've read books and magazines. Why didn't you just name any books and magazines?" SP: "Obviously, I have been a lover of books, all my life." Conspicuously she still has not named a book or magazine that she has read.

4:29 "Are you asking the same thing that I am asking, why, God?" And Todd said "why not, God?" Oprah was "touched" by this line, from Todd: "I'm happy, and I'm also sad." Touching. Also Oprah is mocking her, right?

4:31 Tomorrow: porn! Oprah has questions for Jenna Jameson that we are kinda wishing she'd also ask Sarah. HOW MANY MEN HAVE YOU BEEN WITH, SARAH?

4:33 Levi Johnston just got a round of applause! (Also, drink?) How does Sarah feel about Levi? "Most of the discussion of Levi has to do with his most beautiful baby son, Tripp." She is disappointed that he is doing the porn. Oprah is laying out most of the things that Levi has said about her, and Sarah says you know he is a liar because he said Sarah never went to hockey games. Everyone knows she went to hockey games. Also, beautiful boy, precious, Bristol in college, at home, and Bristol's mission is to remind her sisters that there are consequences to unprotected sex. Like I guess your boyfriend will lie about your mom and then do porn. Tripp is "the most beautiful child," again. This lady loves babies.

4:39 Haha Andrew Sullivan is liveblogging too!

In the last segment, Palin was actually forced to be more critical of her campaign than Oprah is. One wonders: is Oprah this desperate to boost her ratings? Is anyone on TV actually interested in finding out the truth?

IS ANYONE BUT ANDREW SULLIVAN INTERESTED IN FINDING OUT THE TRUTH?

4.39 pm. Who is Auntie Katie?

THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW!

4:41 Oh no, the package piece from Wasilla. Sarah changing diapers, all by herself! Todd staying home with one of the miracle babies! Sarah at the gym! Oh, it is Halloween. This is a wonderful look at a regular American family. A family where no one has a job. Piper appears to be dressing as her own father, in a "snow machine" outfit, for Halloween.

4:44 Hah. Being "physically apart" from each other has always worked for Todd and Sarah! But what the hell do they do now, when neither of them are working?

4:49 Ok, FreshDirect just came, so I had to pause the LIES ABOUT THE CONCESSION SPEECH for a minute. Sorry. Sarah Palin was disappointed that she was denied one last opportunity to remind Americans that we needed to move forward. And so America was unable to move forward. All because of Steve Schmidt and his lies about VP candidates not traditionally giving concession speeches!

4:51 Sarah Palin's "support system" would blow you away, Oprah!

4:52 "Even after finishing the book, I still don't know why you stepped down?" She does not really have a good explanation! It was because Barack Obama sent in too many FOIA requests. Obama hammered Alaska and she was shackled behind the governor's desk. With FOIA requests. She could not speak about what she believed in. Oprah is still baffled.

4:54 "She's not retreating, she's reloading." That is what dad said. Sarah Palin is concentrating on 2010, because obviously we will be dead, in 2012. Oh, and Trig will be in kindergarten. Space kindergarten, hopefully.

4:56 "One final question: should I be worried?" Yes, Oprah, probably. But you needn't be worried about this inarticulate rabble-rouser having a talk show. Now Palin is sucking up to Oprah, who she used to watch, back when she was a stay-at-home mom (Sullivan you should probably fact-check this). THE END. "Thank you Piper," Oprah says, and then the camera cuts to DAVID LETTERMAN AND A-ROD TAG TEAMING A CHILD, AN UNDERAGED CHILD.

UGH.

5:00 That was the most boring episode of Oprah I've ever watched!

Looking Lively [Open Caption]

Brian Moylan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:01:31 -0500

[Blake Lively completes her transformation into Serena Van Der Woodsen by wearing inappropriate cleavage, a too-short skirt, and a clueless expression to the The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee premiere afterparty in New York last night. Image via Getty]

Visualizing Media Overload [Image File]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:57:20 -0500

Fast Company visualizes "The Biggest Stories of Our Time." Here, a graph of media mentions for panic-inducing stories like disease and the Y2K bug. See them all at Fast Company.

What Ever Happened to January Jones? [January Chills]

Brian Moylan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:50:18 -0500

January Jones was offered a shot to prove that she's not the worst part of Mad Men when she hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend. She totally blew it. Will she be able to recover?

The short answer is probably not, but she sure will try. We speculated that her busty cover of GQ and her SNL gig were a play for career-after-Mad Men because creator Matthew Weiner wasn't bringing her back. (And given the show's relatively low salary, she'd wouldn't mind moving on.) She had an uphill struggle because many people (including plenty of our regular commenters and even her ex-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher) believe that because she plays an icy, passive character on the show that she can't act. While her cleavage did wonders for her public image, she did herself no favors with her lame stab at sketch comedy over the weekend.

Now that everyone thinks she can't act, her chances at movie star fame ruined, and Betty Draper's proximity to the central plot on the wane (if her character isn't cut entirely), what is Ms. Jones to do? Here are her options:

Indie Film: If she gets a plum role in an Oscar-bait indie and knocks the role out of the park, she could redeem herself and establish some much-needed street cred. Just look at what Precious is doing for Mo'Nique (of all people) right now.

Procedural: They must be casting for NCIS: Twin Cities or some shit like that. Actors in these jobs just need to be able to look good and deliver their lines, which we know that she can do. It's not going to win her any awards, but it will be a steady acting job and a big fat paycheck for years to come.

Girlfriend Roles: Join the Judd Apatow crew or play the remarkably attractive love interest for some schlub like Adam Sandler. If the movie hits big no one will confuse you with a Stella Adler devotee, but you'll be able to get some more jobs out of it.

Obscurity: She doesn't have to be an actress. Maybe she would be better suited as a lunch lady who mumbles to herself, "I used to be someone!" We always did see her in hair nets.

Sex Tape: This will get her tons of attention, but in terms of work, the best she can hope for is a reality project (see Hilton, Paris and Kardashian, Kim). Still it would be lots of fun to watch!

[Image via Getty]

2012 's Triumph Tests the Mettle of America's Headline Writers [Metaphors]

Richard Rushfield — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:11:40 -0500

When an apocalypse-themed movie rakes in truckloads of money, no copy editor on Earth, looking to top to a weekend tallies story, could withstand the temptation of the epic cataclysm metaphor waiting for them tied up with a box .

But while the End of the World metaphor may seem a garden path festooned with posies and daffodils, a few yards down and the trail suddenly becomes a headline writer's inferno, a fiery pit of inexact analogy from which no media employee can hope to emerge unsinged.

The problem is that an apocalypse metaphor suggests something terrible has happened, while 2012's $225 million worldwide grosses suggest something incredible has happened. (Actually, of course, if you are a fan of actual living entertainment, the apocalypse is a very apt metaphor for 2012's success, but that's not the tale box-office round-up headline writers have to tell.)

So across the nation this weekend, our brave headline corps searched for the right way to draw on the end of the world metaphor to explain that 2012 did really well.

Variety walked right into the trap with "2012 destroys worldwide box office." 2012 destroyed world box office in the sense of it put a lot of money in them, and although "destroy" may be contemporary lingo for "won at" even that usage suggests an opposition as though it were 2012 vs. the box office...which takes you down a whole other rabbit hole. The Huffington Post followed Variety off this cliff (or perhaps it was the other way around) reaching for the box-office destroying imagery.

Both the Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times tried to come at the problem sideways by going with variations on "2012 explodes at boxoffice." This variation however, while more on the nose in terms of what the films grosses did, attempts to sidestep the apocalypse metaphor, not getting at all at the fact that the film is not just about someone placing a sparkler in a mailbox, but about the whole world collapsing, and if you want to get technical about it, the world doesn't actually explode in the film it more..crumbles.

Taking a second stab at it, in a second box office story, however, the LA Times proved the power of the do-over and pretty much managed to get both the metaphor and the enormity pretty much on the nose with: 2012 spells doom for its competition at the box office."

The Associated Press got the epic scale right but in doing so really walked away from the entire end of the world theme and got pretty clunky in the process coming up with: 2012 has worldwide box-office bang of $225M.

The Wrap played with the theme while avoiding the metaphor with "Master of Disaster: $225M Worldwide for 2012."

The New York Times showed either wisdom or incredible cowardice and walked away from the metaphor entirely, hitting us instead with the heart-stopping lush imagery of "2012 Opening Earns $65 Million." And we can't imagine the Wall Street Journal's headline is an example of the sort of gumption Rupert Murdoch was hoping to inject into the place when he bought it up: "Disaster Film 2012 Opens Atop Box Office."

Our congratulations go out to all those who made the effort to work with this slippery analogy. To use another one, in headline writing as in life, as in football or baseball, sort of but not exactly, you only lose by not playing.

Double X to Be Folded Back into Slate [Feminism]

John Cook — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:07:35 -0500

Six months after the Slate Group launched Double X as "a new kind of women's online magazine," it's being transformed into a section of Slate.com, a very old kind of men's online magazine.

It's unclear what, if anything, that means, but it's strange that the Slate Group—the unit of the Washington Post Co. that publishes Slate, the Root, Slate V, and The Big Money—would reverse itself so soon after launching Double X to much fanfare just a few months ago. The site grew out of the XX Factor, a group blog launched in 2007 that was, um, a section of Slate. When we heard a rumor that Slate was pulling the plug on Double X, we asked Slate Group editor in chief Jacob Weisberg about it, and he responded, "It's going to become a section of Slate, but otherwise pretty much as it has been. Not sure readers will know the difference—most think it's a section of Slate now. There will be still be a homepage at doublex.com."

We asked Weisberg if there would be any layoffs associated with the switch and he said, "Emily Bazelon and Hanna Rosin still co-editing and running it with a semi-autonomous editorial team a la Slate V." Very strange. As you can see from the logo, Double X never made it out of beta.

If you know of any more about what's happening at Double X, let us know.

Update: Shortly after this post went live Bazelon and Rosin posted about the coming changes to Double X. They echo Weisberg in saying that while they'll no longer be editing a standalone site, people won't notice the difference. But they add the change is being done for "business reasons" — making us suspect that there may be some job cuts as part of the move. Here's there statement in full:

After some deliberation, we have decided to fold DoubleX back into Slate. The site will now become its own section, with our XX Factor blog, articles, and special projects already in the works. Our aim is to create a more intimate version of the community we have built, with many of the same voices and passions.

For many of you, this won't much change your experience of reading us. We will have many of the same bloggers and writers, and Hanna and Emily will continue to run the project. The decision is being made for business reasons rather than as an editorial judgment. In fact, it's the editorial quality of the site, and the way in which it so perfectly embodies the Slate DNA, that makes this a natural next step. This is a new phase, not an ending-since we came out of Slate, where we started XX Factor, it's a return to our roots.

To give us time to map out the details, the site will live in its current form until sometime around the end of the year. We will tell you when we're ready to pack up our virtual boxes and move back into Slate. When we do, we will have a new commenting feature on Slate that will allow us to improve on the thoughtful and smart commenting many of you have been doing. It's been an absolute pleasure, and we look forward to continuing it.

All Wine Is Crap [Bullshit]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:58:01 -0500

Wine criticism: Bullshit. Add it to the list.

The Google Princess' Fairy Tale Wedding [Marissa Mayer]

Ryan Tate — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:41:40 -0500

Marissa Mayer, Google's data-driven planner extraordinaire, has gone to work on her personal life: Friends of the VP are showing off the fancy wedding invites she just sent out — and talking about the three-day nuptials she's planning.

Mayer's union with real estate investment manager Zach Bogue will take place as part of a wedding stretching from Dec. 11 - 13 at the San Francisco Four Seasons, we're told. Mayer and Bogue bring out the competitive overachievers in one another, and the event sounds like an extension of their mutual mania. Even the invitation came wrapped in a heavy red velvet box, said a tipster.

The lengthy wedding should only further Mayer's reputation for aggressive well-roundedness: She was on both the debate team and pom-pom squad in high school, and today her master's degree in computer science makes a geeky contrast to the Oscar de la Renta clothes and fashion spreads in Vogue and Glamour. In keeping with the theme, we'd expect her fairytale weddings to have some geeky twists (laser tag, anyone?). If you have any further details — or better yet, a picture — we'd love to hear from you.

UPDATE: Added location of the Four Seasons.

UPDATE: We failed to mention that Mayer lives at the SF Four Seasons, in a penthouse, as we've reported previously. So maybe she's having the wedding at home.

(Pic by JD Lasica)

Ken Auletta Is Not Funny [Media Crack]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:39:10 -0500

In our meritorious Monday media column: Judd Apatow questions Ken Auletta's wit, a reporter tries to pretend he is not a vicious murderer, Americans are cheap bastards when it comes to news, and all you need to know about Playboy.

Ha, New Yorker media man Ken Auletta moderated some panel about "The Future of Funny," which of course sounds the opposite of funny, but it turned out to be funny mostly because of Judd Apatow mocking Ken Auletta's questions. Be warned: Anything about funny things should be funny or it will be made funny at the expense of the least funny person. And that person will inevitably be you.

Houston Chronicle reporter Moises Mendoza: "I'm not on death row. Stop with the e-mails, the dirty looks and the questions. I'm not Moises Sandoval Mendoza. I'm a different Moises Mendoza - a law-abiding one." Yea right, Mendoza. Google don't lie.

About half of cheap-ass Americans say they're willing to pay for online news content, and those who would pay said they're only willing to pay an average of $3 a month. This means that half of America will soon stop reading newspapers online, and the other half will pay just enough to ensure newspapers go broke.

"Is Playboy's Print Future In Jeopardy?" Yes.

Sarah Palin's Goin' Rogue An American Tail, Also : A Review [Books Of The End Times]

Pareene — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:26:29 -0500

No, we have not read Sarah Palin's new book, Goin' Rogue. But we can say with some authority that it is the most moving and affecting memoir published in the English language since Speak, Memory.

It can best be described as a stunning piece of experimental metafiction. What if a rote, ghost-written political memoir by a second-place vice presidential candidate was penned by a Faulknerian unreliable narrator? It's like The Turn of the Screw, only the ghost is Steve Schmidt. Our protagonist, "Sarah Palin," deliberately withholds and exaggerates, even dropping into italicized internal monologue to signify that a real whooper's on the way.

Palin's grasp of American dialect is more S.E. Hinton than Twain, of course (while occasionally stunning in its experimental ambition, it is her first published work). But what it occasionally lacks in conversational verisimilitude ("a big darn deal"?) it usually makes up for in unexpected humor. Here she is describing the moment when "Sarah Palin" first learns that she's "pregnant" with the mysterious talisman "Trig":

Slowly a pink image materialized on the stick. Holy geez!

"Trig" inspires this delightfully batty biblical allusion:

Yes Lord, I thought. My name is Sarah, but my husband isn't Abraham. His name is Todd!

Did Todd offer Sarah to the Pharaoh and come away with rewards and riches? When Todd asked for another son, did Sarah offer him her handmaiden, Meg Stapleton? So many questions!

Every so often, the tone abruptly (and cleverly) switches to a savage parody of the pretentious poetics that the sort of person who'd attempt them would call "high-falutin.'" Kakutani highlights a winner from the first page (didn't finish before your deadline, Michiko?)

I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier.

Exposing the useless charade of an loser would-be Veep expounding on history and foreign policy (as if anyone cared! as if we believed they came up with their insights on their own!) Going Rogue presents a 15-year-old high school basketball team captain's thoughts on the Iran Hostage Crisis, and what it revealed about leadership:

I had followed the Iran hostage crisis and remember wondering why President Jimmy Carter didn't act more decisively. From my high schooler's perspective, I thought the question was, Why did he allow America to be humiliated and pushed around? The new president being sworn in radiated confidence and optimism. The enemies of freedom took notice. In years to come people would ask, What did he have that Carter didn't? To me the answer was obvious. He had a steel spine.

She uses the Dan Rathermism "high on the hog" and complains of being called a demeaning term for the lower classes that she wears with pride:

"My family was made to look like a herd of hillbillies who had come to the big city and started living high on the hog, and that hurt me for them."

"And that hurt me for them." Brilliant.

In this bravura passage, "Palin" complains that a fat man told her to eat well.

He then launched into a discussion of nutrition physiology, holding forth on the importance of carbohydrates to cognitive connections and blah-blah-blah. As he lectured, I took in his rotund physique and noted that he used nicotine to keep his own cognitive connections humming along.

I interrupted his lecture. "Steve, you know what I really need? Half an hour to go for a run in these beautiful cities we're visiting. Also, seeing my kids does wonders for my soul."

He barreled on as if I hadn't spoken. "Headquarters is flying in a nutritionist, and for three days you're going to be on a diet balanced in carbohydrates and nitrates and —"

I'm a forty-four year old, healthy, athletic woman raising five kids and governing a large state, I thought as his words faded into a background buzz. Sir, I really don't know you yet. But you've told me how to dress, what to say, who to talk to, a lot of people not to talk to, who my heroes are supposed to be and we're still losing. Now you're going to tell me what to eat?

A fat smoker told "Sarah Palin" to eat a balanced diet and that made her mad. We cannot recommend this book highly enough. And you can get it for free!

Page scans via Celtic Diva, Wonkette.

Oh, and PS: It turns out that Sarah Palin talks like that because of Government Socialism. Seriously! Alaska's Mat-Stu valley region was populated by upper midwestern farmers relocated to Alaska as part of a New Deal agricultural program. This was basically exactly the sort of thing Stalin would do, and though most of those 200 Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan families who were resettled in Alaska to farm hated it immensely and eventually left, they left behind a legacy of talking like a goober. (Palin also has a western influence in her accent, because her family is from Idaho. And also, obviously, she talks like even more of a goober when she is on television trying to prove that she is as much of a reactionary moron as the reactionary morons she is trying to appeal to. We all know Real Americans don't fully pronounce the suffixes of present participles, etc. etc..)

After Mad Men : Our Fruitless Search for Something to Watch on Sunday Night [Change That Dial]

Brian Moylan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:13:23 -0500

Last night was the first time in several months that we had to face a Sunday evening without Mad Men. What to watch? There are plenty of options, but how will they stack up against the critic's darling?

The biggest lesson is that there isn't much out there that is as great as Mad Men. It's going to be a long wait until the show returns next summer, but until then, maybe we can all keep ourselves warm with one of these substitues, but it's doubtful.

The Prisoner
Similarities to Mad Men: Mining '60s culture for a modern day story.
Differences from Mad Men: This remake seems to be scared of its heritage, avoiding the pseudo-psychedelic, swinging London vibe of the original.
Reasons to Watch: AMC thinks it's a worthy replacement to Mad Men, placing The Prisoner in Mad Men's time slot cage for its six-episode run. Ian McKellen is pretty awesome in everything, espeically when he plays the villain.
Reasons to Avoid: We were underwhelmed with the first installment, and it's only six episodes long. That will barely get us through the first month of MM withdrawl.
Replacement Analogy: The Prisoner is to a Rolling Stones cover band as Mad Men is to Mick Jagger live in concert.

Dexter
Similarities to Mad Men: An intelligent drama with a dark mood and characters with questionable morality that every so often has some grisly blood spray.
Differences from Mad Men: Showtime's serial killer drama doesn't have the subtlety that we get from Draper and company.
Reasons to Watch: It is an interesting and suspenseful take with a very distinct point of view. This season John Lithgow is doing a knock-out job playing the calm but crazy Trinity Killer.
Reasons to Avoid: There's lots of back story to catch up on, and if you don't like blood, guts, and murders, you're better off cracking open a book.
Replacement Analogy: Dexter is to a bludgeoning as Mad Men is to a slow death by poison.

Brothers and Sisters
Similarities to Mad Men: Lots of family drama and intrigue in the work place.
Differences from Mad Men: Ojai Foods is a far cry from Sterling Cooper, and Betty Draper couldn't care less about her kids where as meddlesome Nora Walker can't go 10 minutes without calling them on the phone.
Reasons to Watch: ABC's ensemble drama has a look inside some fun and wacky family dynamics. Also, Nora has a hot new boyfriend.
Reasons to Avoid: This season has the two story lines that make all TV shows boring: cancer and pregnancy. Every episode is kind of the same: there's a secret, the family has a dinner party, the secret comes out at the party, everyone fights, then they make up. Yawn.
Replacement Analogy: Brothers and Sisters is to a family funeral as Mad Men is to an Irish wake.

Curb Your Enthusiasm
Similarities to Mad Men: A wealthy, creative, annoying man driving everyone crazy.
Differences from Mad Men: Larry David only dreams he could be as handsome as Don Draper, and when Mad Men makes you cringe, it's from finely crafted emotional storytelling, not wacky embarrassing stunts.
Reasons to Watch: Haven't you heard, there's a Seinfeld Reunion and it's only on HBO.
Reasons to Avoid: Larry David.
Replacement Analogy: Curb Your Enthusiasm is to Bruno as Mad Men is to Borat.

Family Guy
Similarities to Mad Men: Um...
Differences from Mad Men: This ubiquitous, animated Fox comedy that is a string of non sequiturs, absurdest rants, and silly ditties is about as far away from the '60s advertising drama as you're going to get.
Reasons to Watch: In case you need to have a conversation with a straight boy between the ages of 16 and 28.
Reasons to Avoid: It's Family Guy.
Replacement Analogy: Family Guy is to beer bongs as Mad Men is to scotch.

60 Minutes
Similarities to Mad Men: CBS' news magazine also features bunch of people who have been working since the early '60s.
Differences from Mad Men: The people are old now (and don't dress as sharply) and think they still know what goes on in the world.
Reasons to Watch: Inappropriate crushes on Leslie Stahl and nostalgia for the ticking watch.
Reasons to Avoid: Andy Rooney.
Replacement Analogy: 60 Minutes is to Parade as Mad Men is to vintage Esquire.

Going to the Movies
Similarities to Mad Men: Decadent and at times either serious or comedic, depending on the mood.
Differences from Mad Men: It's the movies, not TV, so every time it's different. This week we went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was smooth, sylish, and visually interesting, like Mad Men, but its overwrought hipster vibe couldn't be different from the show's cool detachment.
Reasons to Watch: Going to the movies every week will keep you culturally relevant. If you catch the late show on Sunday night when MM is usually on, the cineplex is also less crowded than the rest of the weekend
Reasons to Avoid: Leaving the house on Sunday night, $12.50 a pop, and the empty calories from all that pop corn.
Replacement Analogy: Going to the movies is to Twizzlers as Mad Men is to Betty's meatloaf.

Mad Men on DVD
Similarities to Mad Men: Well, it's Mad Men, just all the ones you've seen already.
Differences from Mad Men: No commercials, watch as many as you want whenever you want, bonus material.
Reasons to Watch: With a show as difficult as this, you can't catch everything the first time around, so a rewatch is definitely rewarding. Knowing what happens in season three puts everything in seasons one and two in a different context.
Reasons to Avoid: There are no surprises.
Replacement Analogy: Mad Men on DVD is to your wedding day as Mad Men on TV is to your first date with your future spouse.

Communist China Tries to Protect Obama from Being Called a Communist [Oba-mao]

John Cook — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:08:17 -0500

China banned these "Oba-Mao" T-shirts, which were selling at a brisk pace in Beijing, last week in an apparent effort to avoid embarrassing Barack Obama during his visit. The weird thing is, in China, it's a pro-Obama shirt.

The generational and cross-cultural refractions obscuring exactly what a T-shirt depicting Obama as a Chairman Mao is supposed to mean are positively cosmic. So the Chinese authorities decided to just ban the things outright. And they're taking this so seriously that security guards at a subway station, apparently aware of how Glenn Beck would use pictures of young Chinese people wearing T-shirts comparing our president to their great leader, detained a CNN reporter for two hours yesterday after she tried to tape a report about the banned T-shirts.

In China, according to the Christian Science Monitor, the shirts are popular with hipsters who get the joke of comparing Obama to Mao, and apparently like to mock Fox News:

In China, the image comes across as witty and cool.... [They are] popular with young people who admire Obama and who get the Andy Warhol-esque joke about icons.

"Mao is kitschy and cool," says Mr. Jenne. "He gets a pass" in a way that other 20th century dictators don't.

But in the U.S., some folks are importing them from China and selling them to the teabag crowd, who wear them to announce their genuinely held belief that Barack Obama is literally like Mao Tse-Tung and will soon begin collectivizing farms. So a shirt that Chinese kids wear ironically because they understand a) how silly it is to compare Obama to Mao, but at the same time b) how Obama has through his style and rhetoric become nearly as iconic as Mao, and c) that even though Mao was a monster, through the passage of time the imagery associated with him has taken on a different, more light-hearted meaning, is also worn in earnest by American teabaggers who understand none of the above and think "kitschy" is Hebrew or something. This reminds us of stories about Christmas displays at Japanese malls featuring crucified Santas. We can't quite wrap our heads around it.

Anyway, the Chinese government was so terrified Politico might see one of these T-shirts that they banned them, and detained CNN's Emily Chang for two hours when they caught her walking around with one in a Shanghai mall. How long before the same thing happens here?

The Inalienable Right to Smoke [Smoking]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:56:21 -0500

Several large NYC landlords are moving to ban smoking inside their own apartment complexes, and on the sidewalks outside them, as well. Clearly, this violates our just-made-up list of Places People Can Always Smoke, No Takebacks.

Your Own Apartment: You can't smoke in your own apartment? Get the fuck outta here. You live in a dorm? No? Get the fuck outta here.
The Sidewalk Outside Your Apartment: They tried to just sneak that in with the apartment ban, as if it wouldn't make people quadruple times as mad.
Any Other Sidewalk: If someone smoking on a sidewalk bothers you, stop standing directly in front of them and sucking the smoke from the tip of their cigarette into a large hose attached to your mouth. That's bad for you.
The Park: There is so much fresh air out there. Come on.
Concerts: Other than, you know, the Symphony Orchestra. Any concert venue without chairs, definitely. Hardcoreness demands it.
Your Car: Open the windows to be nice.
Anywhere Else Where There Is No Physical Barrier Between the Tip of Your Cigarette and The Sky: It's all about dispersion.

We look forward to making one of these lists for Where You Can Watch Porn soon, now that the war on "secondhand smut" has been declared, too.
[Pic: Finnmacginty]

Adam Lambert Tries to Play It Straight on the Cover of Big Gay Magazine [Adam Lambert]

Brian Moylan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:25:08 -0500

After his Details shoot with a naked woman and talking about his deep lady love, Adam Lambert continues to do a shitty job convincing us he has any interest in female genitalia. This time it's for homo mag Out.

Lambert is one of the annual Out 100, the best, brightest, and biggest in the gay world as chosen by the very queer magazine. While Lambert is very open about his love for the men, it's still thrilling for interviewers to hear him talk, awkwardly, about having sex with women. Check out this quote about the time he tried to go down on a woman:

"It was a little gross because I don't think she was as clean as she could've been. It wasn't the act of it that really turned me off. I don't really remember. I was 18 and I was drunk. Or maybe I was 17... The point of the matter is that I would not rule it out. The idea is intriguing.

We love that you're trying to blur the lines of sexuality, Adam, but you're not especially convincing when you say "Ew gross, it smells like fish!" in one sentence and then, "I'd still hit it," in the next. And you're doing this wearing eyeliner and a bowtie in a magazine that is about as straight as a piece of spaghetti in boiling water. Why not just be happy being a man-loving homo? There's no shame in that. Especially for Out readers who would much rather hear about what Kris Allen looks like in his boxers than about your lady lust.

Speaking of women, it seems like Out may be ending their own inappropriate love affair with women. After having two straight women on the cover for their Out 100 issue in 2006 and 2008, last year they were down to only one (Katy Perry). We have another straight lady on this year's cover, Cyndi Lauper, as well as Wanda Sykes, a real live lesbian! It's great that the two women on the cover this year aren't just some pop tarts who want to sell more records to the gays, but a long-time gay activist and one who had the strength to come out on the national stage after the Prop 8 nightmare in California.

In fact, the list seems gloriously devoid of straight girls and full of actual homosexuals. Other honorees include: director Rob Marshall, "don't ask, don't tell" activist Dan Choi, actor Neil Patrick Harris, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, recently out Kelly McGillis, Rep. Barney Frank, the transitioning Chaz Bono, and Broadway's Arthur Laurents.

New Moon 's Obliteration of All Media Begins Today [Trade Roundup]

Richard Rushfield — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:51:14 -0500

We hope 2012 is enjoying its 15 minutes. Sure the movie had a humongous weekend at the box office, but even a Mayan-prophesied can not withstand an assault by a certain group of of teenage vampires.

• With fans already camped out awaiting its Friday opening, New Moon, the latest installment in the Twilight cycle, has already broken its first record, becoming the all-time leader in advance ticket sales, according the Fandango's rankings. The ticket seller reports that a full 86 percent of its sales over the past week were for New Moon. The US government has advised all citizens to prepare a safe room in their homes that will be kept free of all media, warning the incoming vampire tsunami over the next week will overrun every available crevice of television, newspapers, magazines, internet and human speech, flooding the populace with a deluge Twilight propaganda. [Deadline]

• Use whatever big bang metaphor you like, 2012 did that at the box office this weekend, hauling in $225 million worldwide. Precious also impressed on a much smaller scale, taking the number four slot with $6.1 million while running on only 174 screens. The weekend also gave some hope to Disney's promise that A Christmas Carol would prove to have legs through the holiday season despite its tepid opening. Carol dropped off a mere 26 percent from its opening weekend. [Variety]

• The Academy of Motion Pics met in a low-key, old fashioned, just-among-friends ceremony to give out its special awards off-camera this year. Special Oscars were handed to Lauren Bacall, cinematographer Gordon Willis and producers Roger Corman and John Calley. The evening was full of low-key speeches and tableside toasts to the honorees. Warren Beatty heralded the wonder of attending an Oscar event where "Nobody's worried whether 36.9 million people are watching us, or 29.2 million." The off-camera nature of the event apparently inspired the stars to their most-long winded heights. Time it took to hand out four awards: three and a half hours. [NY Times]

• Variety chronicles the keeping the trains running resigned mood at MGM as the company waits to be auctioned off and wonders whether it will continue to be a standalone studio. While the wait goes on, development work continues on The Hobbit, James Bond 23 and a Poltergeist reboot. Audiences will rejoice at the news that the studio is guaranteeing it will release the already completed Red Dawn, Hot Tub Time Machine and a 3D retelling of Cabin in the Woods. [Variety]

• Mediaweek reports on "Growing Pains at Hulu." The portal is apparently demonstrating why joint ventures in show biz are fraught propositions as conflicts have been springing up between the ABC, NBC and Fox staffs whose companies co-founed the site. [MediaWeek]

Michael Yon Walks Back His Accusation That David Rohde Was Ransomed [Clarifications]

John Cook — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:49:21 -0500

Independent warblogger Michael Yon created a minor furor earlier this month when he claimed, via Twitter, that the New York Times had "paid millions" to secure reporter David Rohde's release from the Taliban. Now he says he didn't mean ransom.

Yon sourced the report to "numerous very well placed sources," and said ex-CIA officers were involved in doling out millions to secure Rohde's release. This is of course at odds with Rohde and the Times' account of his ordeal—Rohde and his translator Tahir Ludin say they escaped serendipitously and without any outside help, and the Times says it paid no ransom. Yon seemed to be calling them liars.

"Not the case," says Yon. He wrote on his blog this morning that he was referring to the large amount of money spent by the Times on bribes sent "through Dubai to Pakistan" and money spent on "consultants and other expenses."

Ivanka Trump Whining: The Sound of the Future [Power Couples]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:47:02 -0500

Ivanka TrumpKushner is very upset about a profile of her and her new husband Jared that Crain's ran yesterday. Thanks for bringing that story to our attention, Ivanka! Also: The KushnerTrump brand is the future of the New York Observer.

The Observer is, at heart, a small little paper written by very smart people. It's not really the ideal pawn in a game of New York media mogul social climbing. Which will not stop Jared Kushner and his new bride from using it for that purpose!

Ivanka (who declined to give Crain's an interview for their story, although her dad did) twitted conspiratorially, "Do you think it's because of late Jared's new paper, The Commercial Observer, has stolen the last of Crains' few remaining advertisers?" Somehow we doubt that is the case! The story is mostly a pedestrian and factual recounting of the last few years of Kushner's and Trump's uniformly laughable rise to DIZZYING HEIGHTS of business moguldom or something, despite the fact that both of them are silver spoon kids with no discernible talent for actually making money, apart from slapping the "Trump" brand on various shitty baubles. Jared is actually astoundingly good at losing money, so far.

What Ivanka calls "misinformed and pointless" is actually just a roundup of the various inanities and business failures she and Jared have racked up in the recent past. The worrying thing here is not that Ivanka (who, her dad says, "loves the public, she loves to be out there") is upset; it's that she and her husband seem to be totally enveloping the New York Observer in the Trump Brand. Ivanka's book ads were just the beginning. The fact that it's now impossible to discuss one of New York's most literary weeklies without being one degree of separation from discussing Donald Trump does not portend a happy future.

And get off Twitter, Ivanka. That will be one million dollars.
[Pic via]

New Contender for Survivor: OK! Magazine [Gossip]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:45:15 -0500

Getting an editorial job at OK! Magazine has proven to be similar to riding a merry-go-round where you get your head chopped off after one go-round. That said, we'd like to welcome OK!'s new editorial boss! We hear many things.

We hear that Sheryl Berk, formerly editor of Life&Style, is coming in as the new top editorial person. We're not sure what her title will be, but the staff is supposedly being informed right now. Our tipster says that this was all finalized over the weekend by Paul Ashford, editorial director of Northern & Shell, the British publishing group that owns OK!.

How prestigious is this position? Well, we hear that Sheryl will be allowed to work from home. Because the competition for the gig wasn't too stiff. Among those who turned down the job, we hear: Dan Wakeford, current EIC at Life&Style; Alpha Kitty Atoosa Rubenstein; and In Touch editor Richard Spencer.

And Sheryl has a fun work environment to look forward to: We also hear that she doesn't get along with OK!'s Mark Pasetsky, who she used to work with at Life & Style. Allegedly, Berk once had an argument with him that ended with her vowing, "Karma is a bitch." She was right!

[Have any additions/ corrections/ denials? Email us.]

Michael Clemente — [Pullquote]

Gabriel Snyder — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:44:37 -0500

Shepard Smith's boss and Fox News senior vice president on the many talents of the guy Fox News puts on the air to prove it's not a network entirely full of crazy people, to the Washington Post.

Google's New York Office Is a Glorious Catalog of Dot-Com Clichés [Cubicle Culture]

Ryan Tate — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:44:14 -0500

Techie office accoutrements like razor scooters and free food faced mass extinction at the end of the last dot-com boom nine years ago. Google brought them back in full force, judging from pictures of its New York office.

Business Insider has the full, 29-picture photo tour. Google has been outfitting its various offices like this for a while, but it's always an eye-openingly retro experience to actually see the office trappings of the hugely profitable company. Below, find our five favorites, the ones that really take us back to the days of Webvan and Pets.com. We mock, of course, because we're insanely jealous.

The reception area is straightforward enough...

Google takes a systematic approach to free snacks. A less successful dot-com would just have pre-wrapped candy and open/stale cereal boxes and so forth.

"We've hired a substitute short-order cook named David Chang. Apologies in advance if he screws up your lunch."

Of course there are razor scooters.

The requisite exposed brick. Plus a can of of kerosene in case you should ever feel disgruntled. Don't be evil!

Nation's Biggest Publisher of Gay Newspapers Closes [Print Is Dead]

Brian Moylan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:20:45 -0500

Ending its long slog toward death, Window Media, the company that publishes a number of gay newspapers throughout the country—including the country's oldest, the Washington Blade, in D.C.—has ceased publications of all their titles.

Window Media owns the Southern Voice and David in Atlanta, the South Florida Blade and 411 Magazine in the Fort Lauderdale area, the Houston Voice, and the Washington Blade, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in October (and where I worked for a number of years). This morning Atlanta gay blogProject Q Atlanta reported that a sign had been placed on the office of the Southern Voice and David, stating, "It is with GREAT regret that we must inform you that effective immediately, the operations of Window Media, LLC and Unite Media, LLC have closed down." In a sad indignity, employees are told to return to the office on Wednesday with boxes to pick up their belongings. We hear that employees are currently huddled in the parking lot in Atlanta, not sure what to do with themselves and dealing with the local media that has come to report on the closure.

Though the Washington Blade is still online visiting the websites for any of the company's titles lead to an error message, and no one is answering the phones at the Washington Blade. Several gay websites are reporting the Blade is also closed. The Blade's website posted a notice on Friday looking for an editorial intern, so this must have been quite a surprise to all employees. A call to the Blade's editor, Kevin Naff, was not returned. Update: The Blade staff just confirmed the closure on the newspaper's Twitter.

Window has been in financial trouble for some time, and was placed in receivership by the Small Business Association in February because it violated it's contract with the SBA and didn't have capital from individual investors equaling half of the $38 million it had borrowed from SBA. It's not a shock that this happened and, without niche newspapers in major markets, the gay media will continue to move online, just like everyone else. It's sad to see a big gay landmark close—especially one with the reputation for excellence that the Blade had—but isn't that the greatest form of equality?

The New NIMBYs [Urban Anthropology]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:03:37 -0500

Here is how cities work: Seedy neighborhood+Gentrification= Only a faint romantic halo of former seediness, which is used for real estate marketing purposes. Any attempt at neighborhood reversion to pre-gentrification standards will be terminated with extreme affluence.

Like so: A few short decades ago, the area above Tribeca ("Hudson Square," said the realtor) was a fucking dump. Now, it's populated by De Niro and Jay-Z and, you know, a plethora of other rich and famous Manhattanites. The city wants to put a garage for garbage trucks on the far West side of the neighborhood. So a group of concerned average citizens including Roger Sterling from Mad Men and various artists—presumably drawn to the neighborhood for its wonderful halo of long-gone industrial grit—are fighting the plan. For the good of everyone.

"We're no Nimbys," said Jana Haimsohn, a performance artist and neighborhood advocate. "Always in our dealings we look at the needs of the broader community."

Did you know that Louisville, Kentucky, has its very own version of the Meatpacking District, called Butchertown? Same story: former butchering district close to downtown that's now "being spruced up with art galleries and fancy shops," according to the Wall Street Journal. Now the Butchertown Neighborhood Association is working to move the last slaughterhouse out of the neighborhood, "Butchertown," with its wonderful halo of long-gone industrial grit.

"It's been an ongoing nuisance for people in the area," says Jonathan Salomon, a 34-year-old Butchertown resident and attorney representing the group. "We don't want to see anybody, especially during these times, put out on the street. But...we have to look at what kind of economic growth is good for the neighborhood."

Look, we're not against these people having jobs. But let's be honest—this neighborhood is not the place for those kinds of people. We're not against the city parking its garbage trucks somewhere—but they don't really fit in with the character of this neighborhood.

This is for the good of everyone. Reversals of gentrification will not be tolerated.
[Pic via]

Brit Writer Mainlines Crazy Twitter [Twitter]

Pareene — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:52:28 -0500

British writer Ian Martin (The Thick Of It decided to unfollow all of his real Twitter friends and replace them with racist psychos. American conservatives, in other words. He calls this project "wrongtwitter." It is eye-opening.

The "Black People Tweet Like This" thing does not hold a candle to the "antisemitic British National Party members tweet like that" thing, in terms of windows into confusing and unfamiliar worlds.

It's all here: death, UFOs, swine flue as UN extermination plot, and typos.

‘Antarctica's Icy Lakes Home to Plethora of Viruses' ‘American Exceptionalism' 'Brit Tapes UFOs Beaming Up Water Buffalo'

from the UK today: 'IM NOT BEING RACIST BUT ETHNICS ARE PANDERING TO ETHNICS AND GAYS' 'I think am on another plant with you'

‘UN GLOBALIZED tyranny' ‘Flu Found In Denmark Minks' ‘FROM OUR PIG WITH LIPSTICK IN CHARGE' ‘FBI Boss Taken To School On Marijuana Reality'

'seek medical help & stop ur filthy acts & golden showers' 'Palestinians used by Arabs 2incite vilence Comeon Israel just build the Temple'

'#bestfeeling the joy when you see the look on someones face when they call you a "racist!" & you reply I KNOW!'

'Lucifer is Mechanical – God Miraculous: keep this in mind' Keep that in mind when? When you read the words *deus ex machina*? Actually...

'govt using Sesame Street/"elmo" to indoctrinate kids on H1N1' 'White Pride Emails' 'MightBeALiberal if u think hilary clinton isn't a dyke'

So. Here are some more data points for the "what Twitter does to your brain" scientists.

MSNBC Wants You to Call Your Congressman and Yell at Him, Just Like Fox News [White Lies]

John Cook — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:51:30 -0500

In a New York Times story portraying MSNBC is independent and not at all like those ideologues at Fox News, Rachel Maddow says, "we're not saying ‘Call your congressman, show up at this rally!" This is not true.

Here's a video clip of MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan literally saying "call your congressman" last month, during one of his screeds about "corporate communism." And here he is literally writing "tell your congressman" on the Huffington Post.

Indian Kids Work Cheap for Google [Outsourcing]

Ryan Tate — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:49:39 -0500

It's great that Google has contests awarding money and computers to schoolchildren. Less great: It gives the victor in India 1/20th of what an American kid gets for winning the same contest.

Puru Pratap's design to spruce up the Google logo for a day (see below) beat out designs from other Indian contestants. It ran on the home page Saturday and Pratap got a laptop for himself and the equivalent of $2,100 for his school. His counterpart in America, meanwhile, will take home a laptop, $15,000 for herself and $25,000 for her school. Granted, a dollar goes further in India than in the U.S. But $2,100 vs $40,000 is a huge divide.

Asked Shalini Singh at the Indian website TechGoss: "Are we children of a lesser Google?" Maybe. Or perhaps Google is trying to deliver India's kids a lesson in the harsh realities of globalization.

(Pic by Anil Jadhav)

Needle in a Gaystack [Open Caption]

Brian Moylan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:38:22 -0500

[Pink piano, hot guy in a tux, fashion, butterflies, handicrafts—Lady Gaga's performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art anniversary gala in L.A. last night was pretty queer even for her. Image via Getty]

Barack Obama Has Better Things to Do Than Tweet [Shut Up, Twitter]

Ryan Tate — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:17:17 -0500

You would have been delusional to think that the president didn't use a ghostwriter to update his Twitter account, @BarackObama. Still, it's now been confirmed that he didn't write any of his 418 tweets. Geeks are scandalized.

Obama just said the following in China, according to TechCrunch and various other news outlets:

"I have never used Twitter but I'm an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access."

Some of the Twitterati are taking it hard. Just WHO have they been Following??

@netWire "Shocking, given that his account with 2.6 million followers has even been "verified" by Twitter headquarters' !!!

@BuzzEdition "WHOA...I thought Obama HAD used twitter...so sad now....."

@Amadeus3000 "I thought he used his account himself in early campaign days.."

@funuhu "Shocking! I am sad."

The rest of us can take solace in the fact that the most powerful man in the world knows he has far bigger issues on his plate than cranking out tweets. The only person who should be embarrassed is his ghostwriter, who is averaging less than two tweets per day. HOPE needs to spread faster than that!

How to Turn a Correction into an Exclusive [Journalismism]

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:11:20 -0500

New York Post, November 13: "Lou Dobbs walked away from more than $9 million when he quit CNN." And today, the Post has a brand new "EXCLUSIVE".

CNN was so sick of Lou Dobbs, it gave him an $8 million severance package to leave, The Post has learned.

They don't teach you that move in J-school.