More specifically, Sanders will be speaking at the Church’s annual Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences conferences, where he’ll be discussing “an issue that is very dear to my heart, which is how we create a moral economy that works for all of the people rather than just the top one percent.” Oh good. Something new.
Sanders also plans to touch on the “planetary crisis of climate change,” which may or may not exist depending on whether or not you’re Ted Cruz.
It’s still unclear whether or not the presidential candidate will actually have an opportunity to meet the Pope. But Francis is notorious for being a bit of a Jew fanboy—Jesus Christ’s, specifically. In which case, noted Jew Bernie Sander’s chances look good.
Help, I’m lost inside an alternate reality crafted for me by the Ted Cruz campaign and I cannot escape.
Here’s how it works. Several times a day I receive in my inbox an email that, at first glance, looks like something I really want to open. But it’s not. It’s a fake email from the Ted Cruz campaign.
(I signed up for them in an effort to better cover Cruz’s campaign, but I can’t say the same for all of my fellow recipients. The campaign mines data from users who of the CruzCrew app, which also tracks users’ physical movements. They can run but Ted Cruz will find them.)
But the most incredible thing about the Ted Cruz campaign emails is they’re almost, but never quite, what real emails look like. At this point I have to assume Ted Cruz has never actually used email and is basing his understanding of what they should look like on a bootleg VHS copy of “You’ve Got Mail.” Still, I want to click on every single one.
Because I know this is not a voicemail.
And I know this is not what missed emails look like.
And even though I know this is not what flagged emails look like, I still want to check, just to be sure.
Because this is not Ted Cruz’s personal email address.... but what if it is?
He didn’t send me a confidential email... probably. Maybe I should click?
No. And I did not do this favor for Ted Cruz, even though it was urgent.
That one still haunts me. What did he need so badly? Should I have helped him? Maybe he lost his passport and needed me to wire him money—that happens, right? I literally can’t tell what’s real anymore. Help.
CIA Director John Brennan just wants to freshen up his complexion! (AP)
The CIA is very interested in skincare products. It wants to stay up-to-date on all the latest tips and trends—do you think the spooks have tried those crazy looking sheet masks?—because it knows the secret to aging well is taking good care of the skin.
Ha ha, just kidding, it wants to use skin cream to collect your DNA.
A new report from the Intercept details the CIA’s investment in Skincential Sciences, the Oprah magazine-approved cosmetics company behind a non-invasive product that takes off a very thin top layer of skin. Oh, and it also exposes “unique biomarkers that can be used for a variety of diagnostic tests, including DNA collection” in the process.
The CIA is funneling the company money through In-Q-Tel, its venture capital operation that has also invested in technology and security companies. According to Skincential CEO Russ Lebovitz, the CIA is very interested in the DNA collection capabilities of his company’s products, although he demurred when asked why.
“If there’s something beneath the surface, that’s not part of our relationship and I’m not directly aware,” Lebovitz told the Intercept. “They’re interested here in something that can get easy access to biomarkers... [they’re] specifically interested in the diagnostics, detecting DNA from normal skin.”
Totally harmless! Nothing weird happening there!
In-Q-Tel declined to give an interview, probably because it’s too busy covertly testing your DNA.
The CIA, of course, is no stranger to weird, vaguely (or wildly) suspicious operations. Just a few weeks ago, it accidentally left explosives on a school bus; more recently, we investigated its efforts to recover rare earth minerals from the bottom of the ocean. Beauty products that collect DNA, while distinctly James Bondian in nature, are par for the course. Or maybe John Brennan just needed a new nightly routine.
What do former First Lady Laura Bush, IMF chief Christine Lagarde, Cambridge classicist Mary Beard, and comedian Mindy Kaling have in common? They are all women. And... and??
And? I confess that I cannot answer the question. Though not for lack of trying. I spent yesterday at Tina Brown’s Women In The World Summit, a summit celebrating—as far as I could make out—women, with no further claim to intellectual coherence.
The event was held in the David Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, which is just past the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center and across from the David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, at the epicenter of America’s worst billionaire Davids. Pink neon lighting from the theater’s stage gleamed off the curving metallic side walls, which gave the feeling of sitting inside a giant grapefruit. The lavish three-day summit was sponsored, we were reminded from the stage, by Toyota, Flex, MasterCard, PepsiCo, and many others—which may or may not have contributed to the editorial decision to include in the program several documentary clips “Presented by Toyota,” a panel discussion on technology with a Flex executive, and separate onstage interviews with the CEO of MasterCard and the CEO of PepsiCo.
Then again, they’re all women. That could have been it, also.
The event, attended by many hundreds of determined-looking women who looked ready to solve world hunger in the morning and pilot a Fortune 500 company at night, certainly offered sustenance in discrete bites. It is only in the search for some sort of overall theme or message or unifying philosophy that its frustrating aspects seeped out. Yesterday morning, in order, we heard from IMF chief Christine Lagarde on global economic and humanitarian issues (newsworthy!); a panel of Turkish political leaders and activists spoke on Turkey’s alarming rates of violence against women (distressing!); famed British scholar Mary Beard discussed how trolls on Twitter resemble misogynists in ancient Rome (odd—but interesting!); anti-hunger activists spoke about fighting hunger (inspiring!); two documentary filmmakers from Saudi Arabia and China described the perils they and their subjects faced in those repressive regimes (frightening!); journalists and an elephant expert told us of the dire poaching and ivory-smuggling problems in Africa (sad!); Mindy Kaling was interviewed about being Mindy Kaling (funny!); and then several women, including the mothers of murder victims, discussed the rash of murders of thousands of Canadian indigenous women in the past three decades (not funny). Then lunch. Any of these panels alone would have been enlightening. But presented one after the other with no segue gave the same disconcerting and slightly queasy feeling as a smoothie with all of your favorite breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods combined, gulped down at once to save yourself time.
Of the morning’s presentations, you could at least say that they offered a warm feeling of empowerment and inspiration to change the world for the better, albeit in seemingly disconnected ways. After lunch, though, things took a turn. Following a foot-stomping song by Afro-Cuban singer Dayme Arocena, four chairs were placed on stage for an intimate chat between Today show host Savannah Guthrie and “three women I’m lucky enough to call friends.”
Photo: Getty
“They’ve left Washington,” proclaimed the video screen looming over the dark auditorium, “But they’re still campaigning. For literacy. For health care.” Now, who would you guess came out next? That’s right, it was Laura Bush and her two daughters, Jenna Bush (a Today show colleague of Guthrie’s) and Barbara Bush Jr. You may know these women as “part of the ultra-powerful family that launched an unjust war in the Middle East and profoundly eroded American civil liberties,” but that is not at all how they were presented at the Women in the World Summit. They were presented as Laura Bush, advocate for Afghan women; Jenna Bush, loving mother and educator; and Barbara Bush, founder of the nonprofit Global Health Corps, crusader for health care for the global poor. This was a neat trick. These three women appeared on stage because they are famous because they are family members of George W. Bush. George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, directly caused hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Middle East to die, and did nothing to institute public health care in America. And yet these women were allowed to not only trade on their association with the Bush White House, but also to claim to be advocates for Afghan women and the poor and people without health care. “We have the medicine we need to save lives,” Barbara said with no trace of irony, “yet systems are broken.” This is the first family of the party that is seeking to dismantle Obamacare. As I said, a neat trick.
Savannah Guthrie, who may even be considered a journalist (?), went on to say this, to the family of George W. Bush, who many nonpartisan historians consider one of America’s most disastrous presidents: “You all remind me of a time when politics was a higher calling.” An interesting notion. “I have a six month old baby,” Jenna chimed in, “and I worry about her future—because you want smart, capable people to run, but now you have this.” I suspect that Jenna Bush’s child will be well taken care of regardless of who the next president is, but again, we were offered the spectacle of the family of George W. Bush calling for competence in politics. It was really something. Did Savannah Guthrie challenge them at all? Not unless you consider a follow-up question about “motherhood and sisterhood—and all of you represent that” to be a challenge. Guthrie was too busy laughing over the fact that her expensive Manhattan apartment looks into Jenna’s expensive Manhattan apartment to issue any challenges. And anyhow, that would have interrupted the pro-woman, pro-mother, pro-sister lovefest that we had going in the arena. It was indeed glowing with pro-Bush warmth in there. And after some heartfelt chatting about the importance of family and several instances of Jenna Bush choking up over the sheer amount of love on display, Savannah Guthrie summed it all up with her benediction of Laura Bush. “If you raise your kids right,” she said, “nothing else matters.”
Forget the Patriot Act. The Bushes raised their kids right. We had gotten to the heart of the problem with the Women in the World Summit. When you purport to celebrate all the world’s women, you end up putting brave activists who risked their lives to fight against violence and repression on the same stage as the Bush family the CEO of PepsiCo. And you clap for all of them equally. And at the end you have a moral whitewashing of powerful interests under the cover of empowerment and equality.
Everyone in the fucking world does not deserve applause.
Hillary Clinton already knows the truth is out there. But now, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta confirmed that Hillary wants to get that truth out to the people, too. Does this mean that aliens are real and Hillary knows it? Almost certainly, yes.
Pulling Podesta aside after an interview, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him to expand on what Clinton’s plans are “when it comes to Area 51, and whether or not the US government knows of aliens.”
Podesta responds without missing a beat:
Well, what I’ve talked to the Secretary about, and what she’s said now in public, is that if she’s elected President and she gets into office, she’ll ask for as many records as the United States federal government has to be declassified. And I think that’s a commitment that she intends to keep, and that I intend to hold her to.
When asked if he himself has ever seen the documents, Podesta remarks that Bill Clinton had asked for information on Area 51 when he was in office (and for whom Podesta was a former chief of staff). That, however, was not the question, Podesta. Why won’t you answer the question?
He later notes “that the U.S. government could do a much better job in answering the legitimate questions that people have about what’s going on about unidentified arial phenomena, and they should know that the American People can handle the truth.”
“What do you think personally?” Tapper asks.
Podesta smiles a knowing smile. “What do I think? I think there’s a lot of planets out there.” All of which is to say: Yes, aliens exist. And yes, Hillary Clinton knows it.
Hillary, make good on your promise. Tell us what you know—or better yet, what you are.
What does it take for Donald Trump to give up on an employee? He seems to be cool with staffers who manhandle women, casually use the term “half-breed,” and maybe, who knows, possibly literally sleep with the enemy. But jeeeeeez, lose one state and all of a sudden he’s hiring “professionals” to take over his clusterfuck of a campaign.
For Trump to avoid a contested convention, he has to secure 1,237 delegates, which means he can’t afford lose any more states. Unfortunately for him, that’s exactly what happened on Tuesday, in the GOP Wisconsin primary, where he picked up only six delegates to Ted Cruz’s 36. He also expects to lose in this weekend’s convoluted Colorado primary.
According to the New York Times, that was the tipping point for Trump, who this week, officially hired GOP old hand Paul Manafort as his convention manager. But not before the pair had a “lengthy and, at times tense meeting” essentially demoting Corey Lewandowski, who was recently arrested for battery after grabbing a female reporter at a Trump rally.
The private meeting with Mr. Lewandowski, Mr. Trump and the media-averse Mr. Manafort, at Trump Tower in Manhattan, was described as “slightly contentious” by someone briefed on the gathering who was not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Manafort urged Mr. Trump to focus on immediate tasks and to retool his approach, another person briefed on the meeting said Within hours, Mr. Trump scrapped a Friday trip to California, which will not vote until June.
Michele Bachmann, a mother-of-five in town from a flyover state, successfully operated a New York City subway turnstile this morning, and on her first try no less—much better than can be said of Hillary Clinton.
Bachmann—who owns a Christian counseling business, makes a mean hotdish, and enjoys uncomfortable conversation about “fascist” liberal politicians like Clinton with anyone willing to listen—took just one swipe at the card reader as she entered the station this morning, assuming this was the first take of the video. It’s not every day an out-of-towner makes it through the turnstile without holding up a single harried commuter.
Just that easy, just that quick. Agree with her strange midwestern views or not, New Yorkers should be thankful for tourists like Michele Bachmann.
One does not simply walk into Grumman Studios, site of Wednesday night’s Donald Trump rally in Bethpage, Long Island: one takes a shuttle bus packed to the bursting point with peoplewho want to make America great again.
Car and foot traffic was blocked starting about a mile around the venue (a measure that temporarily closed down a nearby crisis center for victims of rape and domestic abuse, with no advanced notice), so for two hours, I stand freezing in line outside a Dunkin Donuts as three buses pull up, fill, and depart without me. In line, a lady in a knit hat is upset about De Blasio’s executive order to let “cross-dressing men” “rape” women and children in bathrooms. A 20-year-old from Commack, in shorts, explains “the Breitbart thing” to me. Apparently, Michelle Fields “wasn’t supposed to be there anyway.” Everyone is smiling, excited for the rally.
Then, a local man with a hand-written “YOU’RE ALL MORONS” sign appears in a parking lot across the street, standing on the roof of his car. The line: “You’re the moron!” and “I hope you fall and break your legs.”
Photos: Bucky Turco
There’s some discussion about whether the “very rude” “lowlife” is “instigating violence” from across the street. I disagree. The lady in the knit hat smiles and tells me that I, a reporter, am taking up space on a bus intended for supporters—buses that Trump was so classy to pay for.
Finally, onto a shuttle bus I go, accompanied by Bucky Turco, Gawker’s sometimes escort into potentiallyhostileterritories. “Nothing but first class with Trump!” says a disembodied female voice from a tightly packed aisle.
Earlier this week, Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter said, of the upcoming rally, that “violence will not be tolerated.” He said that the Trump campaign is “a bit of anomaly for law enforcement” because of the “different dynamic and the sheer size of this.” Roads would be blocked starting at 2pm and guns and bags would be banned from the venue to prevent, what NBC has called, “bad behavior.”
Commissioner Krumpter estimated that the overtime will cost police between $300,000 and $400,000 for the night. (The Trump campaign is not expected to compensate the city.) It’s just one part of the very visible effort to keep the protestors, the press, and the Trump supporters separated by metal barricades, squad cars, and plenty of space.
On the bus, we pass a mobile road sign frozen on “area” as in the “free speech area” housing protestors. As per Krumpter’s plan, a separate bus had dropped protestors off into a designated barricaded zone about half a mile from the rally. It’s too crowded inside to see the protestors from where I’m sitting. The bus rattles with boooos.
Off the bus, we’re funneled onto a path between a fence and a line of barricades. (“The silent majority is BACK, BABY!”) We pass tiny Trump swag vendor booths. (“YEAH, free market capitalism!!!”) We walk around a giant block of the former assembly plant for Grumman, a major defense contractor, who, for decades made military aircrafts—Top Gun planes and torpedo bombers—and toxins which are now in a SuperFund site. The plant is now a movie sound studio and the rally attendees seem very pleased to know this, chattering about how Bethpage is “definitely” the new Hollywood. Inside, I overhear a young man say, “Yeah, Angelina Jolie went to that Applebee’s across the street!”
There are many more cops along the way, some in fancy leather motorcycle riding coats, security personnel with crisp suits and dangling earpieces, police in black beanies and “secret service” vests. There are TSA agents checking people through about ten metal detectors. Inside the packed airplane hangar, I make a useless attempt to get closer to the stage at the front.
Bringing in signs isn’t allowed, so people make their own.
It’s hot and sweaty and tense, though mostly for me. People holler “Hey, you!” and high-five. Construction workers sing along to “Tiny Dancer” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” playing over the loudspeaker. Before anything even begins, an older Guardian Angelis buzzing around someone in trouble for a pre-made sign that reads “30 million people are starving!” Before I could ask what side the red-jacketed vigilante from NYC is here to help, he’s gone in the crowd. There’s a commotion. One of the first of the six people that would, by the end of the night, be taken to the hospital for exhaustion is carefully led out. There’s more noise. I can’t tell who was just kicked out, but a woman riding her companion’s shoulders unfurls a “White Lives Matter” sign in response.
Bucky hangs back, talking to two black women in fur coats about Revelations, One World Order and the greatness of Donald Trump. We later agree that, these women aside, the thousands of people in here are virtually all white.
There’s spontaneous, chanty yelling throughout the crowd: “Build! The! Wall!” “Nuke! I! Ran!” and “Turn! On! The screens!” The stage is too low and the screens are off. I can’t see anything.
“What a great place for a concert!” a couple giggles by me. They say the last time they saw so many people together was at a country concert in a town over. “Who played?” “Everybody!”
They’re wrong. The hangar is not a great place for a concert. The acoustics are garbling Carl Paladino, a former New York State gubernatorial candidate, and he’s cutting in and out of the noise, saying something about the War on Christmas. (“BOOOO!”) Ivanka comes on to lionize her father who built “the tallest towers in New York” and “will never take no for an answer.” The people like that.
There’s a festive aggression in the air. Everywhere, people talk about protesters and look around for them wistfully, (“They can come, maybe they learn something.”) I overhear a man with tree-trunk forearms say “These are elbows for protestors.” I ask what he means. “Oh, nothing. Just got elbows for protestors.” I take a bad picture for which he poses happily and reassures me, “Hey, I wouldn’t do that to nobody!”
It feels like people are anticipating confrontation. Not just here, but in their lives in general. “What’s happening in this country!” shouts one. “Tell me about it. My oldest is going to college in two years.” Adds a third, “I told mine, NO! I am not paying that. You’re going to military school.”
Finally, Trump comes out to “Y’all ready for this?” He’s late, but cheers cheers cheers. It feels like a bad play, a Trump karaoke. He’s doing all the hits: “Who’s gonna pay for the wall?” (“MEXICO!”) “We are going to knock the hell out of ISIS. Believe me.” “Taxes.” “Jobs.” “China.” “China.” “Japan.” “China.”
More protestors are led out through the crowd and the booing radiates. People are saying there was a fight and two people were arrested. “Get him out please. Don’t hurt the person. Do not hurt the person,” Trump booms flatly. “Is a Trump rally the greatest?”
I try to catch eye contact with someone not booing. A white teenager with pastel rainbow hair and her Latina friend stand nearby, looking very uncomfortable. When Trump shouts, “I LOVE HISPANICS,” the Latina girl shudders and laughs. They tell me that they just came to watch the craziness, but they didn’t expect the crowd and no, seriously, the town isn’t all like this.
Trump launches into a cringe-worthy, semi-poetic reading of Al Wilson’s R&B song “The Snake.” It’s about a “tender woman” who takes in a frozen snake, which is now his go-to metaphor for Syrian “terrorist” refugees. It, of course, ends in betrayal. “You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going TO DIE!!!” he bellows. The mic cracks. “You knew DAMN WELL I was a snake before you took me in!” The crowd goes wild.
Then, suddenly, the crowd starts to leave in waves. Trump is about two-thirds through his speech but the crowd is thinning quickly. They say they want to “beat the traffic.”
Bucky and I head out, walking between two fences. School kids behind us are still riled up from the show, and Bucky goads them on: “I hear there is a Bernie supporter here!” “WHERE?!!! Fuck Bernie!” Bucky yells, “Bernie is a Socialist!” They yell, “Yeah, Bernie you geriatric Socialist fuck!” Bucky yells, “Bernie is from Brooklyn! FUCK Brooklyn!” They don’t fall for that one and now are suspicious of us. I walk faster.
Half a mile later, the protestors are hanging out in their pen, the “free speech zone.”
There’s a road-sized buffer full of SWAT’ed-out police officers standing in a neat line between two lines of barricades—one for the protestors and one for the rally crowd. They’re yelling at each other. “Get a job!” “I’m in college! How about you?” “I’m Hispanic and I’m voting for Trump YEEAAAH!!!”
The kids on the protester side are mostly college freshmen and high school seniors, but a girl who was kicked out earlier for unveiling a white t-shirt with Sharpie-scribbled anti-fascist hashtags says she’s fourteen. “Hey, guys, do you want to chant ‘Black Lives Matter?’” akid in a Yeezus hat asks his friends.
For a long time, a high school senior who came out from Glenn Cove, an affluent town on North Shore, talks about how Trump is dividing the country and how that’s bad. His friend holds a Zoidberg meme sign that reads “Your campaign is bad and you should feel bad.” I feel better. The kids protesting, on average, are younger. There has to be some sort of factually comforting math there.
It’s getting late and the cops seem weary, directing traffic through half-blocked roads, eager to get this whole thing over with. No one got punched in the face at this rally, it seems. Good job, everybody. Nothing to do but head home and beat the traffic. There’s just deflated anger now, a phobia without specificity. No signs that America is any greater (or worse) than it was before the rally began. Both sides are tired. It’s a weeknight. The kids get up to leave and someone on the other side of the barricades yells “Go back to... wherever!!!”
Peggy Noonan’s body may be in Manhattan, and her soul may be in Ronald Reagan’s coffin—but her mind, now and forever, is in Brooklyn, at a street fair she went to a few years back.
In 2012, Peggy Noonan went to Brooklyn. An American place. Specifically, she want to a street fair in Bay Ridge, and was so moved by the profusion of “Young Asian kids with I phones” and “a really loud kind of rap group” that she was moved to write a rather patriotic blog post about it, winning plaudits from fellow Americans, white and non-white alike.
What matters is what is within. A rainbow of souls.
That was 2012. Here we are now, today, in 2016, in the midst of another presidential election. And what does Peggy return to in her column today?
What Republicans especially fail to appreciate is that New York more than ever is full of legal immigrants. If you sit on the side of a street fair in non-hipster Brooklyn—in Bay Ridge, for instance—you’ll see all the world passing by: people from China, Ireland, Lebanon, Poland, South and Central America, Asia, Africa, Arabia. They are young. They’re expending all their energy doing what people do to establish themselves—finding the job, keeping it, paying the rent, finding someone to love, making a family, making it all work.
A street fair in... let’s just say, for example... Bay Ridge. What of that? It simply cannot begone from the mind of Peggy. There, she saw America. There, she saw the people of the world. There, she saw the rap. The rapping rappers— rapping tales of America.
Never has been back since. But still talks about it.
To Senator Ted Cruz, Governor John Kasich, and businessman Donald Trump: Gawker is proud to invite you to its 2016 GOP Presidential Town Hall: Your Vape, Your Voice.
We want to provide a forum for an open, transparent discussion about the future of vaping regulation—an issue near and dear to the country’s 10 million devout e-cigarette users. As Americans For Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist said just this past February, “I think that the next election, at the presidential level, and a lot of other levels, is going to be determined by the vaping community.”
At this point, the American people know full well where you stand on tax reform, ISIS, global warming, reproductive rights, gun control, health care—you name it. What we don’t know, however, is where you stand on electronic cigarette taxation and regulation. Should states raise taxes on e-cigs? Are vaping prohibition proponents going too far? And are cloud chasers ruining the vaping movement’s good name? As the future leader of an army of American e-juice enthusiasts, you owe your vaping constituents answers. We want to help you see that duty realized.
Granted, the GOP candidates and Gawker have not always seen eye-to-eye. But it’s our hope that in our mutual pursuit of truth, we can put the past behind us for the greater good, and for the freedom of vapers everywhere. That the vaping movement’s founders shall not have vaped in vain. That this nation, under God, shall have a new mod of freedom. And that government of the vapers, by the vapers, for the vapers, shall not perish like so many sick clouds.
We promise to facilitate an honest, fair discussion about the future of America and its vapes. All you have to do is show up. You can accept the invitation by emailing me here, at which point we’ll finalize the details. I look forward to hearing from you.
And to everyone else, remember: Your vape, your vote, your voice.
As your mom has no doubt already texted you, Bernie Sanders appeared on “The View” this morning. Sanders told Raven-Symone that Martin Sheen’s work on “The West Wing” was his favorite fictional portrayal of a President, a position on this issue that solidly aligns him with the nation’s College Democrats presidents and Model UN delegates. He likes it because he “thought that was actually fairly reflective of what does go on in the White House.”
The staff of Gawker.com—which has collectively been on four official White House tours (at press time), watched all seven seasons of the show on DVD, even after it got bad, and yes, reported from the actual White House—is willing to concede that sure, there are probably some similarities between “The West Wing” and the West Wing.
According to reports, Bill Clinton was visibly disturbed today to learn that a teenager had stolen his face and switched it with another one.
The report first appeared on my grandma’s homepage, AOL.com:
“As I was talking [sic.] the selfie, he looked a little confused but went along with it,” college sophomore Ivan Olivio tells the website. “Afterwards, I put my phone down to add a caption and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and Bill asked me, ‘What did you do to my face?’”
What did you do to my face?
“I started sweating and tried to explain what face swap was but he still seemed angry,” Olivio said.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY FACE?
“One of his body guards backed me up and said that it’s just an app that the kids use nowadays,” Olivo said. “Bill looked at me, looked at the photo again, nodded, and kept taking photos with people.”
Maybe he nodded, but I don’t buy it. Bill Clinton still has no idea where his face went.
This week, video surfaced of a Floridian named Cara Jennings berating Scott for his cuts to health services in the state, which, she said, left her and other workers without access to Obamacare. “You’re an asshole!” Jennings shouted at His Cosmic Highness in the video. At the time of this writing, the short clip has over 2 million views.
You’d think that Scott, being exalted royalty on his home planet Zorblart, could handle being called a few names, but apparently not. A new video published on his official YouTube channel today smears Jennings as an “anarchist” and a “former government official”—the second of these epithets considered a grievous insult in a state whose government is presided over by the former “Dark Prince of Galaxy X-2-GH7,” a “man” who has a laserdisc player for a heart and a barrel of industrial byproduct for a soul.
If you know why the army of newt slaves that act as Scott’s closest confidantes didn’t step in to advise him to keep his mouth shut, let us know in the comments.
Since North Carolina is now a haven for legally sanctioned LGBT discrimination, it’s about to become a living hell for anyone who doesn’t fit the bill. Which is why Bruce Springsteen just announced that he’s canceling this Sunday’s concert in Greensboro, saying that he wants to “show solidarity for those freedom fighters [working against the bill].”
As you, my fans, know I’m scheduled to play in Greensboro, North Carolina this Sunday. As we also know, North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are referring to as the ‘bathroom’ law. HB2 — known officially as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act — dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use. Just as important, the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace.
No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden. To my mind, it’s an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress. Right now, there are many groups, businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and overcome these negative developments.
Taking all of this into account, I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters. As a result, and with deepest apologies to our dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show scheduled for Sunday, April 10th. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has reportedly banned his daughter, a founding member of the “Snapchat Bunch,” or whatever, from using social media after he discovered she had been leaving rude comments on an Instagram account belonging to 500 Days of Kristin creator Allie Jones. Dads—they have neither chill, nor the ability to find their daughters’ backup accounts.
An enigmatic tweet from the Boston Globe suggests that the paper’s Sunday edition will contain an imaginary dispatch from one year in the future, presumably meant to warn current-day readers of some misfortune waiting to happen. What’s the headline they hope to never publish?
Some ideas:
WICKED BAD NEWS: TRUMP WON
ALL PACKIE STORES TO CLOSE INDEFINITELY
HEIST GONE WRONG LEAVES ALL AFFLECKS, WAHLBERGS DEAD
STUDY SHOWS MOXIE ACTUALLY DISGUSTING Tastes like soap, doctors say
