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Chicken McNuggets to Become Less Artificial But Still Exist Somehow

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Chicken McNuggets to Become Less Artificial But Still Exist Somehow
Photo: Ludovic Bertron/ Flickr

McDonald’s will soon be rolling out a new, “cleaner” version of its Chicken McNuggets. Ronald McDonald, please don’t monkey with the Dimethylpolysiloxane!

From Ad Age:

The new recipe contains ingredients McDonald’s says are more recognizable to consumers, such as lemon juice solids and rice starch.

McDonald’s declined to provide the full list of ingredients for the overhauled McNuggets.

Damn that sounds good.


Caitlyn Jenner Takes a Piss on Ted Cruz

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Caitlyn Jenner Takes a Piss on Ted Cruz
Photo: Getty

Once upon a time, Caitlyn Jenner dreamed of being Ted Cruz’s “trans ambassador.” Many people pointed out that this was silly because Cruz is a virulent bigot, and virulent bigots make terrible bedfellows for LGBT people. Cruz reiterated his bigotry last week, by voicing support for bathroom bills like North Carolina’s H2, which stigmatize trans people under the false notion of “protecting” women and children. “There is no greater evil than predators and if the law says that any man, if he chooses can enter a women’s restroom, a little girl’s restroom and stay there and he cannot be removed because he simply says at that moment he feels like a woman, you’re opening the door for predators,” said Cruz.

In an apparent response in form of a video posted on Facebook last night, Jenner pissed in a woman’s room. She then said, “And by the way, Ted, nobody got molested.” That’s so great. Good for her. My heart swells with pride of the specific LGBT variety and pumps rainbow blood. It seems like the obstinately, illogically, willfully ignorantly conservative Caitlyn Jenner is finally seeing the light, right?

Heh. Not quite.

The public bathroom she chose to baptize was in Trump Tower. On one hand, the video functions to hold Trump to his word—last week on the Today show, Trump decried H2 and, when asked about Jenner specifically, said that she’d have the right to chose whatever bathroom she wanted to in Trump Tower. And so she did. “Thanks, Donald, I really appreciate it,” says Caitlyn in the video. (Cruz later mocked Trump for his foray into good sense.)

On the other hand, these thanks come from a woman who said that Trump would be “very good for women’s issues,” and that “every conservative guy out there believes in everybody’s rights.” So take what she says with a grain of salt. Endorsing one Republican candidate and clapping back at another, in the same video? That’s so Caitlyn.

But at least she got to pee in peace.

Ted Cruz, We've Caught You in a Lie

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Today, after former Speaker of the House John Boehner directly compared him to Satan, Ted Cruz pulled a hard Mariah and said he simply doesn’t know Boehener: “I’ve never worked with John Boehner… I’ve never known the man.” But Ted, you were his lawyer.

http://gawker.com/john-boehner-t...

A Seattle Times article from June of 1998 makes clear reference to Cruz working as Boehner’s lawyer. Cruz even provided a quote about his client:

But Ted Cruz, Boehner’s attorney, said the fund-raising letter demonstrates nothing and highlights the weakness of McDermott’s defense. Boehner alleges that McDermott gave the taped phone call - which Republicans argue did not violate any promise made by Gingrich - to The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal and Roll Call, a semiweekly congressional newspaper.

“The fund-raising letter is much ado about nothing,” Cruz said. “Congressman McDermott has consistently attempted to delay the litigation and drive up the expense. It is reasonably expected that Congressman Boehner will use the means at his disposal to raise the funds to pursue this lawsuit.”

Boehner also referred to the arrangement in a January 23rd, 2014 appearance on Leno. It seems overwhelmingly likely that, given the fact that Ted Cruz worked as John Boehner’s lawyer, he has “worked” with him, and almost certainly does “know” him. The alternative, that Ted Cruz can’t remember the events of 1998, is almost more alarming than the blatant, lazy lie.

FBI Arrests San Bernardino Shooter's Older Brother and Two Others in Marriage Fraud Investigation

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FBI Arrests San Bernardino Shooter's Older Brother and Two Others in Marriage Fraud Investigation
Photo: AP

Three people connected to the San Bernardino shooting were arrested Thursday after the FBI conducted searches at multiple residences in California, the Los Angeles Times reports, including the home of Syed Rizwan Farook’s older brother Raheel. An unnamed law enforcement official tells the paper that the arrest was tied to a marriage fraud investigation unrelated to the mass shooting.

This is the third search warrant federal agents have executed at Raheel Farook’s house since his brother, Syed Rizwan Farook, and his brother’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people late last year. The FBI searched Raheel Farook’s home shortly after the shooting, and then again in February, looking for the hard drive to his brother’s laptop.

But Farook—a decorated U.S. Navy veteran—also came under suspicion for his marriage to a Russian woman. From the Times:

The elder Farook and Enrique Marquez — a friend of Syed Rizwan Farook who has been charged with buying weapons used in the assault — were married to a pair of sisters from Western Russia: Tatiana and Mariya Chernykh.

Tatiana was married to Raheel Farook, while Mariya was wed to Marquez in 2014. Late last year, Marquez was charged with marriage fraud after federal prosecutors accused him of receiving money to marry Mariya Chernykh.

Records have shown Mariya Chernykh resided in Ontario and did not live with Marquez.

According to the Associated Press, the Chernykh sisters were also arrested Thursday. Prosecutors say the three lied under oath to obtain immigration benefits.

Squabble at Palm Beach Pro-Trump Social Club Pits "Trumpette" Against "Trumpette"

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Squabble at Palm Beach Pro-Trump Social Club Pits "Trumpette" Against "Trumpette"
Photo courtesy Toni Holt Kramer

First, Donald Trump’s candidacy for president tore apart the Republican party. Now it has thrust Trumpettes USA, Palm Beach’s premier organization for talking about Donald Trump while sipping white sangria, into a brutal power struggle over naming rights with Trumpettes Global, a Palm Beach-based Trump “support organization.” Does the world need two of these? Probably not. And yet, here we are.

Last time we checked in with Toni Holt Kramer, resident of Palm Beach, Florida and one of the two people claiming to be the founder of women’s organizations calling themselves “The Trumpettes,” she confirmed that she had made a $150 donation to Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, in December. “It was a token contribution. Just something that was a nice thing to do,” she told me over the phone. And while Kramer still considers Clinton a friend, she doesn’t believe the former secretary of state would make as good a president as Trump. “There’s business, and there’s friendship, and never the twain—well, sometimes the twain can’t meet,” she said. “I love my country. I love my country more than I love my girlfriends.”

http://gawker.com/trumpettes-fou...

According to Kramer, the Trumpettes have a standard origin story: The idea of gathering friends to support Trump’s candidacy came to her at an Animal Humane Association fundraiser in September. “We don’t want eight more years of not knowing where we stand,” Kramer said. “I see this country as really important. I see it like a business.”

Kramer’s Trumpettes aren’t a fundraising group, or even a get-out-the-vote group: Civil conversation, she believes, is the best way to convince an undecided voter that they should vote for Trump. “We just want people to talk,” she said. “Women are the best networkers. All we do is talk!”

“Let’s see, you want to know what I think about Cruz and Kasich?” Kramer asked, unprompted. “If you put the both of them together they still don’t make one Donald Trump.” Later, lamenting high unemployment rates, she said, “It’s not just the dumbing down of America, it’s the poor-ing down of America.”

Kramer said she and Clinton have known each other for almost 15 years—they met, apparently, at the last party the Clintons threw at the White House before Bill left office. (The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.) The original title for Kramer’s self-published memoir was Hollywood, Hillary & Me; now, it is My Men, My Mother & Me. “Hillary really pushed me to write the book,” Kramer said. “She told me, ‘Women will listen to you.’ And women do listen to me. I was on television for 30 years. Good Morning this, Good Morning that. I tell women the truth. I tell them what will help them.”

As I was speaking to Kramer on Tuesday evening, I received an email from a second person claiming to be the creator, founder, and operations officer of the Trumpettes organization. Kramer’s organization wasn’t even the real version of the Trumpettes, he explained. “The Trumpettes is based in Palm Beach, Florida and is a national TRUMP SUPPORT organization in all 50 states with 5000 + members. Toni Kramer had NO ROLL in founding ,developing, participating in or organizing the Trumpettes,” Ralph Branscomb, who works for a nuclear consulting firm, wrote to me. “She was a member for 3 months, but she was asked to leave the group. She then unsuccessfully attempted to hi-jack the group name and charter … LOL LOL LOL.”

Shortly after Trump announced his candidacy, Branscomb started “Palm Beach for Trump.” Some of the women involved in that group wanted to help raise Trump’s favorability ratings with women, so Branscomb helped them set up a website. (According to Whois, Branscomb’s site, Trumpettes.global, was registered on October 17, 2015; Kramer’s site, TrumpettesUSA.com was registered on March 30, 2016.) “We’ve got 5,000 members and 10 regional directors,” he told me over the phone. “I’ve probably put fourteen to fifteen hundred man hours of my personal time into this.” Everyone is involved on a volunteer basis: “Nobody’s getting paid.”

In late December 2015, he said, he got a call from Kramer. “She and her friends wanted to jump on the band wagon. They’re all members at Mar-a-Lago, but they’re not so well-liked. They just wanted to get in with Donald.” (Kramer confirmed that she is a member at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, as are two of her three purported co-founders.) “It’s the Palm Beach gang,” said Boscomb, “They married rich old guys, they eat lunch, and they tell each other how great they are.”

“Toni just wanted to promote her book,” Branscomb said. “She just wanted to use it for her own gratifications.”

I asked Kramer whether there was any truth to these allegations. “I don’t know if my attorney would let me answer that,” she said, before answering anyway. “I’m not the one who has to defend myself. There’s nothing to defend. I don’t have time for that.” She continued: “I remember when Trump announced. I was standing on board a ship, a cruise, a European cruise. I remember we all said to each other, ‘This is a dream come true.’”

Contrary to what he told me, Kramer said that Branscomb approached her with an offer to build a website, having heard—somehow; she couldn’t recall—about her Trumpettes group. “I gave him my blessing. I think it’s wonderful. Who cares? Isn’t this about working our fannies off to get Trump in the White House? I’m thrilled that anyone would work to get Trump elected. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, what his problem is. I wish him well. God bless him. I’m a little offended that you would make me answer these questions, you know. I do not like to be challenged,” Kramer said. “I mean, does he have a picture with Trump?”

Witness: Teen Said "It's Not Real" About BB Gun Before Baltimore Cops Shot Him

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Witness: Teen Said "It's Not Real" About BB Gun Before Baltimore Cops Shot Him
Baltimore Police Department Commissioner Kevin Davis. Image: AP

A teenager carrying a BB gun who was nonfatally shot by a Baltimore police detective Wednesday said “It’s not real” before the detective opened fire, according to one eyewitness. The boy’s mother identified him to the Baltimore Sun as 14-year-old Dedric Colvin.

http://gawker.com/baltimore-cops...

Baltimore Police Department Commissioner Kevin Davis told reporters yesterday that two plainclothes detectives were driving down E. Baltimore Street when they spotted a boy carrying what Davis identified as a “replica semiautomatic pistol.” The detectives exited their car, identified themselves as officers, and told the boy to stop, he said. Colvin began running; the detectives chased him for about 150 yards, and one of the officers shot him twice in his lower body. He is expected to survive the injuries, police said. Davis has not shared the detectives’ names with the press.

The timing of the shooting was eerie. On the same day, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a rally across town, in East Baltimore, to mark the one-year anniversary of protests and riots that followed Freddie Gray’s death in police custody.

Davis said he had “no reason to believe that these officers acted inappropriately whatsoever,” and noted the realistic appearance of the gun the boy was carrying. “I looked at it myself today, I stood right over top of it, I put my own eyes on it,” he said. “It’s an absolute, identical replica semiautomatic pistol. Those police officers had no way of knowing that it was not, in fact, an actual firearm. It looks like a firearm.” A photograph of the gun, which the Sun identified as a Daisy’s PowerLine Model 340, confirms this: it looks exactly like the real thing.

But an eyewitness account given to the local NBC affiliate WBAL complicates the commissioner’s contention that there was no way for the detective to know the gun wasn’t real:

A witness, who identified himself as Bryan, said he saw the shooting as he was in his truck on Baltimore Street. The first thing he claims he saw was the boy running, drop a basketball he was carrying and then he saw to people chasing him.

“(The teen) turned towards them but he wasn’t turning the gun towards them and I’m positive I heard him say, ‘It’s not real,’” Bryan said.

Bryan said police yelled at the teen to drop the gun as they approached him before he motioned the gun upward, not toward the officers.

“He said, ‘It’s not real. It’s not real,’ and that quick, the male officer shot him twice in the leg,” Bryan said.

Bryan told WBAL that he contacted police about what he witnessed, and that he has not heard back.

A Child Shares His Thoughts on the 2016 Election

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A Child Shares His Thoughts on the 2016 Election

Earlier today, Gawker’s Chief Youth Correspondent, Sam, stopped by the office to give us a little insight into the 2016 election through the eyes of our nation’s youth (and also because it’s take your kid to work day).

In the most substantive election discussion you’ll see all season, Gawker Senior Writer Sam Biddle talked to little Sam about Bernie’s economic platform, Syria, and boogers.

Remember When Dennis Hastert (and His Character Witnesses) Voted for a Bill Eliminating the Statute of Limitations for Child Sex Abuse Crimes?

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Remember When Dennis Hastert (and His Character Witnesses) Voted for a Bill Eliminating the Statute of Limitations for Child Sex Abuse Crimes?
Hastert presides over the House on April 10, 2003, the day the chamber passed The PROTECT Act. (C-SPAN)

This week, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert finally admitted to sexually abusing teenagers when he was a high school wrestling coach in the 1970s, and he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for steps he took to pay off one of his victims.

Prior to his sentencing, old friends and colleagues of Hastert flooded the court with messages of support for Hastert, urging a lenient sentence. Among the most fulsome was former Rep. Tom DeLay, who said Hastert “doesn’t deserve what he is going through.”

Other former members of Congress who urged a light sentence for Hastert included John Doolittle, David Dreier, and Thomas Ewing.

Some of those messages were written before prosecutors released detailed and disturbing descriptions of the accusations against Hastert. Even after those details were made public, some still stood by Hastert. Former Rep. Doolittle was particularly adamant on this point, telling Buzzfeed:

“We don’t actually know what has happened,” he said. “We know that a few people, a handful of people, have come forward and made an allegation 30-some years after the event and well beyond the statute of limitations, which exists to protect people from these kinds of latent claims.”

He continued, “I think it’s unfair to in essence sentence him for crimes for which he was never charged and never got a trial on. That’s what’s going on here. The people who are making this issue want to sentence him for something that he was never tried and convicted of. And that’s wrong. And I’m outraged by it.”

Hastert has been accused of abusing five boys, but he will never be charged in connection with any of those cases of abuse, because, as Doolittle says, the statute of limitations to bring charges in Illinois expired years ago.

If Hastert had violated federal law, though, the story may have been much different.

There are not many child sexual abuse cases that fall under federal jurisdiction. As the Justice Department explains: “Except in limited circumstances, federal laws typically do not apply to child sexual abuse matters that takes place wholly inside a single state.” Essentially, the abuse has to have happened on federally owned or managed lands or properties.

But current law stipulates that there is no federal statute of limitations for sex crimes involving children. And that is all thanks to the House Republicans of the early 2000s, led by then-Speaker Dennis Hastert.


In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Republicans, who controlled the House of Representatives, repeatedly passed bills mandating life sentences for repeat sexual abusers of children—so-called “two strikes” laws, all of which would have severely toughened federal laws and sentencing requirements around sexual abuse of minors, child pornography, and kidnapping. None were taken up by the Senate.

Then some national news changed the political situation. You may recall the story of Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped, at age 14, in the summer of 2002, and rescued in March of 2003.

At the time, the AMBER Alert system, an emergency broadcast system for missing children, was established in numerous states and municipalities, but not nationally. Smart’s father Ed furiously lobbied Congress to establish AMBER Alert nationwide, even imploring Congress to do so on television mere hours after his daughter was found.

At that point, an AMBER Alert bill had already passed the Senate, with support from President Bush. In the House, though, Republicans decided to use the popularity of the AMBER Alert proposal to cram through a new version of a “two strikes” bill they had failed to advance last year. This strategy was not popular—Ed Smart personally attacked Rep. Sensenbrenner for his political opportunism—but it worked.

The amalgam of the AMBER Alert proposal and the “two strikes” bill became the Child Abduction Prevention Act. It was, in part, an all-purpose conservative wish list of tougher anti-crime measures. One of those measures, interestingly, was the total elimination of the statute of limitations for sex crimes involving minors.

The Child Abduction Prevention Act passed the House, with support from the aforementioned Rep. Doolittle, Rep. Dreier, and Rep. Delay. As speaker of the House, though, Dennis Hastert didn’t vote for it.

The House had made it clear that it would not support a plain AMBER Alert bill, and out of the conference committee came a bill, now called the “Prosecutorial Remedies and Tools Against the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003” or “PROTECT Act,” that looked much more like what the House had passed than what the Senate had passed.

The PROTECT ACT sailed through the Congress, over the objection of a few lonely dissenters (including, surprisingly, Chief Justice William Rehnquist):

Despite the lopsided votes, some leading Democrats sided with Rehnquist — a conservative Republican — in complaining about the provisions that would constrain the sentencing authority of federal trial judges.

Republicans rebuffed the criticism.

“Those who try to stop this bill are subverting the will of the American people who want us to put kidnappers in jail and protect our children,” said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). “It is time to help parents protect their children.”

Because of their willingness to exploit the Smart kidnapping, and to hijack the debate around how to respond to it, conservatives scored a series of major policy victories that, less than a year earlier, looked to be totally dead in the Senate. This is the sort of clever maneuvering that defined Dennis Hastert’s tenure as speaker of the House.

In this case, of course, he was exploiting the understandable nationwide disgust felt toward people who do what he himself had done. And if the states had done as Congress had, and eliminated statutes of limitations on all child sexual abuse crimes, Hastert might currently be serving out a life sentence, rather than wondering if he’ll survive 15 months in prison.

On the final House yeas and nays vote on the conference report for the PROTECT Act, Hastert actually voted with the rest of the chamber. Rep. Hastert’s aye is duly recorded in the Congressional Record.


Dennis Hastert is old, ill, and frail. The statute of limitations for the crimes he is accused of expired many years ago. Because of this, his friends think it is unfair that he be imprisoned. Hastert’s friends, as you can see, did not display much sympathy for aged sex abusers until their former colleague turned out to be one.

When these people, and Hastert himself, were actually in a position to determine how the law would treat people like Hastert (only then, of course, they never imagined that one of their own would end up here), they made it plain that they did not think those people should ever escape justice for their crimes. Now, they show a bit of nuance. Ex-Rep. John Doolittle, who explicitly voted to eliminate them, suddenly understands that the statute of limitations “exists to protect people from these kinds of latent claims.” Maybe sometimes, I guess they are now saying, certain sex offenders should get to escape justice?

Meanwhile, absurd sex offender laws much less defensible than extended statutes of limitations have ruined the lives of many people much more sympathetic than Dennis Hastert, from juveniles convicted of sex crimes for consensual relationships to people placed on sex offender registries indefinitely for crimes as minor as public urination. Some of those people probably wish Hastert’s friends had felt this sympathy a bit earlier, when they and people like them were making our laws.


It Was Me and a Gun 

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It Was Me and a Gun 

The solution came to me while watching the evening news: guns. I’d heard of people doing fire walks, beating pillows with baseball bats—even taking hallucinogens in the Peruvian rainforest. But I needed something more potent than an Amazonian shaman could provide.

At 23 I was raped. Fresh out of college, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, which at the time revolved around working a few shifts a week as a bartender, going out afterward—and debating whether I had enough money left over at the end of the month to buy those discounted designer shoes. (The answer, true or not, was always yes.)

One night, I went to the apartment of guy I knew from work to smoke a joint and listen to music. I only liked him as a friend, but I let him kiss me anyway. He lived in a studio, and I decided to take a quick nap before attempting to drive home. I never would have worried about being raped by someone I knew. Why would you?

When I awoke, I found that he had unzipped my pants and stuck his fingers inside of me. I froze. He kept going. While it was happening, my mind completely checked out. Afterwards, I told myself that it had all been a big misunderstanding—because that was simply easier than confronting the truth.

My denial allowed me to ignore the panic attacks I suffered over the next year. Even now, as a 33-year-old woman living in a different city with a successful career, the hair on the back of my neck still stands up whenever I’m in my office building’s elevator alone with a group of men.

But pretending like it never happened worked so well for so long. I didn’t even wonder why I hadn’t gone on a date for almost a decade. Instead, I had two long-term relationships with men who had both been my friends, and I married the second. He became the first person I ever told—and only because I felt I owed him an explanation after bursting into tears during sex.

“I was raped.”

The words just fell out of my mouth.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he responded.

I wasn’t willing to discuss the details—I found them too painful. And he didn’t push me. Eventually, I went to see a therapist for my chronic anxiety. When she asked if I’d ever been sexually assaulted, I offered only a “maybe.” Still, it took whole year for me to tell her what exactly had happened.

Talking about it was like draining an infected wound. And after several months, I saw the first flaky signs of a scab—in the form of anger.

The original twinges arrived by way of violent revenge fantasies. Like the flashbacks I’d experienced when I first started talking about my sexual assault in therapy, they crept in from uncharted corners of my mind. I found myself picturing my rapist’s head—except it was no longer attached to his body. Having been violated in an irreversible manner, I wanted to somehow do the same to him. Also, I happened to be binge-watching The Walking Dead. My anger presented itself as a form of healing. I wanted to pick at this new scab, and relish my newfound ability to bleed.


I would have never even considered guns, had they not been constantly popping up in my Facebook feed between photos of my baby nieces at a pumpkin patch and family portraits of people I barely knew in high school. The stream was unrelenting: article shares, status updates, and daily comments. Guns had become so embedded in our culture that I was almost surprised curiosity hadn’t gotten the better of me sooner.

Sure, a kickboxing or self-defense class may have offered a similar release, but what I really wanted was access to something that I felt had been taken from me when I experienced rape: control.

As a young liberal living in city with strict gun laws, it had never occurred to me that there might be people attending target practice just a block away from my office on Fifth Avenue. A quick Google search revealed that the only shooting range in Manhattan happened to be down the street from where I’d been working as a copywriter for three years at a women’s fashion brand.

I imagined myself presenting snappy headlines about this season’s Italian cashmere in the morning, firing off a few rounds over lunch, and then returning in time for my afternoon e-commerce connection meeting. I thought that if I took on a new secret—like leading a double life as a markswoman—it might somehow override the shameful one that had lived inside of me for so many years.

The range required that I pass a background check and attend a short safety lesson before I could handle a .22 caliber rifle. The laws in NYC restrict citizens from even renting a handgun without a license—a disappointment for my fantasy, which had me in red lipstick and leather pants, my legs hip-width apart as I fired bullets out of a silver pistol and into the heart of a shadowy male figure.

Instead, I wore jeans and a sweater and recruited my husband to tag along.

“But you hate guns,” he said.

He had a point. After the shooting in Sandy Hook, in my mind guns had gone from a danger to society to downright detestable. If owning a firearm led to either nothing or death, why take the risk? As a proponent of animal rights, I also despised hunting. When confronted with a spider of almost any size, my response was usually a loud squeak followed by, “Don’t kill it!”

I’d never even seen a gun up close. But suddenly couldn’t wait to get my hands on one, in this desperate attempt to reclaim something that I’d lost. I scheduled our safety session for the next available Saturday, and we arrived 15 minutes early to a basement on 20th Street lined with photos of gun-wielding celebrities like 50 Cent and Robert De Niro. A group of mustached men sat near the check-in window discussing Texas’s open carry laws, their sentences punctuated by loud popping noises from the shooting range.

“Rifle lesson?” one asked.

He pointed us toward a classroom that reminded me of middle-school detention, except with weapons training. The first thing we did was sign releases stating that we understood our visits might result in death.

Fine, whatever—get to the guns. My hyperactive safety instincts tried to kick in, but I kicked them straight back out, only momentarily picturing what my parents’ reactions to the news of my untimely death might be.

She died at a gun range? And without protective eyewear? There must be some mistake.

A man with full-sleeve tattoos and Vans slip-ons gave a 20-minute demo, during which I learned how to load my weapon, operate the safety, and probably avoid accidentally shooting anyone. The experience was surreal: grasping the basics of handling a firearm alongside four other couples who would appear less out of place squabbling over thread count in the bedding department at Macys.

Next, we moved on to filling our magazines, which I learned meant shoving bullets into little plastic containers that looked like powder-keg Monopoly hotels. I was nervously lining mine up along the table when I noticed our instructor setting up the lanes with standard archery targets. I raised my hand to ask the goblin tattoo on his neck a question.

“Is there any way I could shoot at the outline of a person?”

This felt important to my healing process.

He disappeared into an office and reappeared with a stack of shaded-in male figures. “Take as many as you like.”

I needed only one, which I clipped to the cord above my shooting booth and wound out into my lane about 25 feet. I loaded the first rounds into my rifle, set my line of sight at the center of the silhouette, braced myself, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Oops—safety. I clicked the switch to red (“red=dead,” I’d learned in the lesson), refocused my aim, and then pulled the trigger again.

The bullet went straight through my target’s neck.


To free yourself from blame after a rape, you have to get rid of the idea of alternate possibilities—to accept the absence of any thread connecting you to an alternate universe in which you may have had access to a different fate. For me, that thread was spun from fibers like “I didn’t have to drink that night,” “I didn’t have to go into his apartment,” and certainly “I didn’t have to kiss him.” Fear of whatever grief might reveal itself once that thread finally snapped was precisely what kept it in place.

Shortly after my original lifeline of denial and Xanax broke, I found myself grasping for any proof that that I could have somehow prevented what happened. Only when I let go of the self-blame was I able to let in the anger. It washed over me like a torrent. I suddenly wanted to scream at every person I passed on the street. I was angry that my life had been forever changed for reasons I would never understand. I was angry that for years, instead of hating the person responsible, I’d actually hated myself. I was even angry that I hadn’t gotten angry sooner.


I had falsely assumed that shooting would work out for me like bowling or darts—that is, poorly—so I was surprised when I was able to hit my target at all, let alone 50 times through the chest. Who’s incapacitated now? It felt oddly serene, looking down the barrel of a rifle while holding my body as still as possible and calmly pumping out a round per second.

I was interrupted only when the gun jammed—if a bullet loaded incorrectly or a shell casing failed to expel properly. By the time I’d ripped through all of my allotted ammo, there were two extra bullets from failed attempts. I pocketed them as souvenirs and swept up the brass-colored casings from the floor.

I decided then to check in on my husband in the next booth over, who seemed to have forgotten why we were there in the first place. He was gleefully pulling the trigger on something called a bolt-action rifle, which had a slower fire rate and was taking longer to unload all of his ammunition.

He had to manually pull a lever (the bolt action) before each shot, which caused the gun to kick back into his shoulder. It released .38 caliber bullets, which blew visibly larger holes in his circular target than my .22s, which suddenly appeared puny by comparison.

I decided I wasn’t quite ready to go home either. Perhaps I feared that my anger would be fleeting. That if I let my rage slip away, I would fall back into sadness. Or maybe I was even more afraid that I might get better. That one day I would move on with my life and no longer wonder if the man who raped me had a wife or a daughter or if he even remembered my name.

I went back to my shooting booth and pulled out the bullets that I’d saved in my pocket. I pressed them into one of my empty magazines, slammed it into the chamber of my rifle, and shot the paper silhouette twice more through the chest.


When I originally suggested the shooting range to my husband as an outlet for my healing, I had been attending a 12-week group therapy for sexual assault survivors. In the first session, a woman said something that stuck with me. She felt like a piece of her soul had been stolen from her and hidden at the bottom of the ocean—and that no matter what she did, she would never be able to find it or get it back.

Over the next weeks, we all were asked to share the details of our assaults. When I told my own story, I thought I might die from shame. But when I heard what had happened to the other women, I became angry on their behalf. When they expressed feelings of self-blame, I felt a long-overdue conviction. If they were clearly not to blame, then neither was I.

When we talked about how to move on with our lives, one woman said to the first woman: “You’re like a phoenix, rising from the ashes.”

This made me wonder what my own life could have been like, had it never been reduced to ashes.


There is a certain finality that comes with having shot a gun. You cannot unlearn how easy it would be to actually hurt someone. You remember that nothing in life can be truly taken back.

I didn’t return to the range in the next few weeks, although I considered it. I kept my shiny new three-month membership card in the outside pocket of my leather backpack next to my keys, secretly hoping it would fall out while I was mid-conversation with a friend or a colleague.

“Oops,” I imagined myself saying with a blush, as I leaned over to pick up the card from Westside Rifle & Pistol with my name on it.

Maybe what I really wanted was to have a reason to have to tell people why I’d taken up shooting in the first place, so that they would understand I was mourning something real. I had lost someone: the version of myself who had not been raped; the person I could have been for the last ten years; a young woman who felt safe in the world. This is the kind of grief you don’t just drop casually into conversation. Sexual assault makes others uncomfortable, which is part of why surviving one can feel so isolating.

Guns on the other hand are somehow fair game. So I sat at home on a Saturday, scrolling through photos my husband had taken of me at the range while I unwittingly focused on my posture and aim. I picked my favorite—one of me in pink noise protector earmuffs, rifle in hand—and texted it to a close friend with the caption channeling my rage. Next, I sent her one of my target, which had been shredded by the tiny bullets. I had to admit, it looked good.


Sarah Kasbeer lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in multiple online publications and received a notable distinction from the Best American Essays 2015. She is currently working on a book of personal essays. Read more on her website.

Illustration by Jim Cooke

SVA Just Sent a Bunch of Grad School Acceptance Emails to People Who Didn't Even Apply

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SVA Just Sent a Bunch of Grad School Acceptance Emails to People Who Didn't Even Apply
Image: Beyond My Ken/Wikimedia Commons

“Congratulations!” reads an email that the graduate admissions department at New York City’s School of Visual arts sent today. “I am pleased to inform you that you are among an elite group of applicants to earn graduate admission to the School of Visual Arts for the Summer 2016 semester.” But the recipients—some of them, anyway—hadn’t been accepted to the elite grad program. Many of them hadn’t even applied.

My friend Kevin posted on Facebook this afternoon that he’d just learned he’d been accepted to SVA’s Visual Narrative MFA program, without even having put in an application. I thought he might have been kidding, but then another person commented with a screenshot of his own acceptance letter, which he hadn’t applied for either.

Searching Twitter for “SVA accepted” revealed a river of jokes and complaints from people who’d had the same thing happen.

There are many more.

Perhaps the whole thing was a withering critique about the intersection of commerce, technology, and education, wrapped in a piece of new-media performance?

Sadly not. Jeffrey Perkins, SVA’s director of communications, told me a database error was to blame. “This afternoon the SVA Admissions Office sent an acceptance letter to the MFA Visual Narrative program to those who requested admissions information from SVA,” Perkins wrote in a statement. “This email was sent in error due to a database glitch which defaulted to an incorrect distribution list. We apologize for any confusion this might have caused.” Perkins did not immediately respond when asked how many people had received an incorrect email.

Kevin, my friend who got the bad acceptance letter, said he’d requested information about an SVA grad program at least two years ago, and assumed that’s how his email address ended up in the system.

About an hour after he learned of his erroneous acceptance, he received a very real denial. “This afternoon you received an email from our Admissions office congratulating you on your acceptance to the MFA Visual Narrative program at SVA. This email was sent in error due to a database glitch and we apologize for any confusion this might have caused,” the second email read. “If you have applied to the MFA Visual Narrative program, you will be contacted separately about your application.”

Man in Animal Onesie and Fake Bomb Vest Shot by Police Outside Baltimore TV Station

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Man in Animal Onesie and Fake Bomb Vest Shot by Police Outside Baltimore TV Station
Screencap: WBAL-TV

A man in hedgehog pajamas and a bomb vest made of chocolate bars was shot by police on Thursday after threatening to “blow up” a Baltimore news station, WBFF-TV reports. Police say the suspect is in serious but stable condition and is expected to survive.

According to WBFF-TV security guard Jourel Apostolidies, a man wearing a hedgehog onesie, a surgical mask and combat boots tried to enter the studio at around 1 p.m. The man said he had a flash drive containing information about a vast government conspiracy involving “black holes and the Sun.”

After noticing the man had what appeared to be a bomb, Apostolidies called 911 and told his coworkers to evacuate the building. From USA Today:

After a lengthy standoff, the man, described as a white male in his 20s, left the building and walked to a nearby street, where he was shot and injured by a police sniper, according to police spokesman T. J. Smith.

Although he dropped to the pavement, he continued to keep a [hand] in his pocket, raising fears that he might still trigger a bomb. Officer communicated with him through a robot designed to detect explosives, but the man refused to cooperate, police said.

WBAL-TV reports that the man was first hit with three non-lethal rounds—footage of which the station aired live—before being shot with a conventional bullet.

After determining the man’s bomb was made of “chocolate bars and wires” with a bomb disposal robot, police took the man to a local hospital. Police say they also found a car burning nearby they believe belonged to the suspect.

“He had a flash drive, said he had information he wanted to get on the air,” WBFF-TV News Director Mike Tomko told reporters. “He compared it to the information found in the Panama Papers. I told him, ‘I can’t let you in, you’re going to have to leave the flash drive here and slide it through the opening.’ He wouldn’t do that. Apparently he had made some threats before.”

This Rumor About Senator Barbara Boxer's Views on iPhone Encryption Is Too Amazing to Be True

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This Rumor About Senator Barbara Boxer's Views on iPhone Encryption Is Too Amazing to Be True
AP Images

The complex battle between Apple and the FBI over the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone was tough for most people to fully grasp. But for Senator Barbara Boxer, who represents Apple’s home state of California, it’s as easy as swiping her finger across her phone.

This morning, Gizmodo received a tip from someone who claims to have sat near Senator Boxer on a February 22, 2016 flight from San Francisco to Dulles International Airport. According to the tipster, Boxer was on the phone (an iPhone, no less) with her staff, trying to come up with a statement to give a reporter regarding the Apple vs FBI fiasco. Our tipster said they wrote down what Boxer said on the phone.

They also passed along a photo of Sen. Boxer (for our eyes only) as further evidence that she was in fact on the flight in question.

According to the tip, this is what Sen. Boxer told her staff to use as her official statement:

Uh, let me think let me think. What’s my statement on this...ok here’s my statement. So I’m sitting here using my iPhone about to take off on my flight. I can unlock my phone. I can lock my phone. I can do it with my finger. There’s absolutely no reason why Apple can’t unlock that phone, complete bullshit.

That is, of course, not what the FBI was asking Apple to do. Apple was being compelled by court order to create a specialized version of their operating system, iOS, that would allow FBI forensics investigators to brute force the passcode on the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone.

A spokesperson from Senator Boxer’s office told us that “She has no recollection of this specific private conversation, but I do know that she believes we have to find the right balance between privacy and security.”

A few days after this alleged conversation allegedly occurred, a statement from Boxer regarding the Apple vs FBI case appeared on Calbuzz, a website that covers political news in California. It’s a little different from what our tipster told us:

We have to find a way to prevent a crime — whether it is terrorism or murder — by getting into a phone without jeopardizing security and privacy for everyone. It needs to happen on a case-by-case basis, and each case should be decided in a court of law.

Maybe our tipster was totally wrong. Or maybe Sen. Boxer’s staff knows more about encryption than their boss.

Satanists to Boehner: Please Don't Associate Us With Ted Cruz

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Satanists to Boehner: Please Don't Associate Us With Ted Cruz

When John Boehner called Ted Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” last night, he probably wasn’t trying to be rude, just honest. Unfortunately, the former Speaker of the House failed to consider how Lucifer might feel.

http://gawker.com/john-boehner-t...

On Thursday, blogger Hemant Mehta asked The Satanic Temple what they thought about Boehner’s comparison. According to Raw Story, the Dark Lord’s representatives were mad as hell.

“Cruz’s failures of reason, compassion, decency, and humanity are products of his Christian pandering, if not an actual Christian faith,” Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves told Patheos in a statement. “It grows tedious when pedophile priests and loathsome politicians are conveniently dismissed as Satanic, even as they spew biblical verse and prostrate themselves before the cross, recruiting the Christian faithful. Satanists will have nothing to do with any of them.”

Of course, it’s not exactly surprising that Satanists don’t want to be associated with Ted Cruz. Much more surprising is that other people apparently do.

Secret Service Plans to Give White House Intruders Five More Feet of Fence to Climb

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Secret Service Plans to Give White House Intruders Five More Feet of Fence to Climb
Photo: AP

In a move that’s sure to spice things up for the building’s endless stream of intruders, the Secret Service has proposed almost doubling the height of the White House fence, from 6 feet tall to over 11, NBC News reports.

By 2018, the agency hopes to not only raise the fence and enforce its foundation, but also provide the president’s uninvited guests with an array of exciting new “anti-climb” features.

“The preliminary concept for the fence around the White House and grounds considers a taller and stronger fence that incorporates anti-climb and intrusion detection technology,” said the Secret Service in a statement, “while respecting the historical significance and visitor experience at the White House.”

Naturally, future president and wall fantasizer Donald Trump approves:

Secret Service Plans to Give White House Intruders Five More Feet of Fence to Climb

In a meeting with federal officials, Secret Service representative Tom Dougherty blamed America’s culture of jumping for necessitating the new fence.

“[The fence] is entirely scale-able, depending upon the circumstances,” said Dougherty, according to NBC News. “And we have now a society that tends to want to jump over the fence and onto the 18 acres.”

Trump Repeats "Shooting Muslims With Pig's Blood" Myth, Calls Ted Cruz a Liar

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At a campaign rally in California on Thursday, Donald Trump once again told a chilling, long-debunked story about shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.

http://gawker.com/donald-trump-a...

According to Trump, General John Pershing discovered the final solution to the terror problem over 100 years ago, when he mass executed 49 Muslims with bullets dipped in pigs blood.

“The fiftieth person, they said, ‘Take this bullet and bring to back to all of the people causing the problem,’” said Trump. “And for 42 years they didn’t have a problem.”

Except, of course, that never happened. It was almost the exact same (completely false) anecdote Trump told back in February, with one important difference: On Thursday, Trump followed up his hoax story with some criticism of “Lyin’ Ted Cruz.”

“We have problems what you wouldn’t believe,” said Trump. “We have this guy, Lyin’ Ted Cruz. We know Lyin’ Ted, right?”

Right?


192 Days and a Wake Up

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192 Days and a Wake Up
Ted Cruz forces his daughter to feed him a cherry as a young man leers on. Image: AP

Advisors to Trump and Cruz Previously Worked for a Bloodthirsty Guatemalan Multimillionaire Who Promised to Broadcast Executions

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Advisors to Trump and Cruz Previously Worked for a Bloodthirsty Guatemalan Multimillionaire Who Promised to Broadcast Executions
Photo: AP

Today, Tim Clark and Ron Nehring run Donald Trump and Ted Cruz’s California presidential campaigns, respectively. But four years ago, the Guardian reports, the two men spent six weeks in Guatemala as paid advisors to Manuel Baldízon, a multimillionaire rightwing populist who promised to broadcast executions on television and lead the Guatemalan national soccer team to the World Cup.

Clark, Trump’s state director in California, said that Nehring had the contract with Baldízon, and invited him down to help out on the campaign. “We had bodyguards. We had translators. We drove around in a black SUV full of semi-automatic machine guns in the back,” he said. “Glad I came out alive.”

On his website, Nehring boasts his experience working with “government officials and candidates in regions including Bosnia, Serbia, Morocco, Egypt, Guatemala, and Iraq.”

Clark said the pair were paid to advise Baldízon about “business interests.” Just last week, the business tycoon, who refuses to identify his campaign donors, was accused of skimming $10 million in public funds off government works contracts. From the Guardian:

Clark said he and Nehring met with Baldízon and advised his campaign, traveling the country with him and attending rallies. But Clark said they were “a step removed” because their work was paid for by corporate interests and they were not formally part of the campaign.

“In many ways it felt like you were the shiny object in the room: ‘Oh, the American strategists are here’. But Ron did a really good job of helping set him [Baldízon] on message, I felt,” he said.

While Nehring took care of political messaging around free-market issues, Clark said, his role was “to assist Ron, to run the metrics, to look at it, to see where and what and how”.

Later, in an email, Clark wrote, “I am unaware of his platform regarding public safety.”

Cher Just Accused Donald Trump’s Son of Killing Her Friend

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Cher Just Accused Donald Trump’s Son of Killing Her Friend

Late Thursday night (or early Friday morning, depending on where she was), Cher tweeted. This should not surprise you, as Cher tweets all the time, but this particular tweet was different. It was in all caps (her trademark) and was a little hard to decipher (another trademark), but the journey her tweet took across its 114 characters (plus an image) contained a sharper turn than usual, and—by the end—sent its readers careening off a cliff into the inescapable depths of Cher’s mind.

Here it is.

Cher Just Accused Donald Trump’s Son of Killing Her Friend

What appeared to be a joke about the size of Donald Trump’s penis—complete with two of the most lighthearted of all emojis—suddenly transitions into an accusation of murder. “Ps. HIS SON KILLED MY FRIEND.”

I mean, well, first of all, “PS”? You’re gonna “PS” that, Cher? That’s called the lede, my friend. If I approached Emma or Kate or Jia or Julianne about covering a story and said, “Yeah, OK, so I’m hearing rumblings that Donald Trump has a tiny little dick and really want to write about it. You know, I’ll go into his dick size, average dick sizes, what he’s claimed his dick size to be, and then maybe transition into the fact that he killed my friend”—they’d most likely narrow their eyes and say, “You should probably skip the dick part and focus on the murder.”

Anyway. If you know more about the friend of Cher’s allegedly murdered by Donald Trump’s son’s (or whether the murderer was Donald Jr., Eric, or Barron) shoot me an email at bobby@jezebel.com with the subject: “MURDER.”

UPDATE: It’s looking like the “murderers” are Eric and Donald Jr., and that Cher’s “friends” are wild animals.

[Twitter]


Here’s a very satisfying video of Kris Jenner telling Kim and Khloe to “fuck off” after they ask her to stop supporting Rob financially.


Imagine being a 37-year-old hanging out with a 17-year-old at a 21-year-old’s birthday party.


  • This is my favorite headline of the week. [Page Six]
  • Don’t you DARE criticize Paris Jackson’s treatment of wild bunnies!! [Daily Mail]
  • Someone who hates HGTV put one of the Property Brothers in a choke hold. [TMZ]
  • Justin Theroux wears eyeliner, and looks damn good in it! [Page Six]
  • Kaley Cuoco is having a great time dating that horse man. [Celebitchy]
  • Giselle did not have a great time dating Leonardo DiCaprio. [Celebitchy]
  • lol [ONTD]

Watch Ted Cruz’s Daughter Literally Run From Her Father’s Touch

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Watch Ted Cruz’s Daughter Literally Run From Her Father’s Touch
Image: YouTube

At a rally in South Bend, Indiana yesterday, Ted Cruz continued his “I am a human” tour with newfound running mate Carly Fiorina. And as he took to the stage with his companion and progeny, loving, human father Ted Cruz reached down to his daughter, Caroline, to show the cameras just how much he cares. As any rational person would do in this situation, Caroline ran.

You may remember Caroline as the Cruz daughter who previously screamed “ow” at her father’s touch and later narced on him to Anderson Cooper on national television.

All of which is to say, Caroline Cruz—you have our vote.

About 20 People Arrested After Donald Trump's First California Event in Months

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Approximately 20 people were arrested following a Donald Trump campaign event in Costa Mesa, California, last night, according to police, after peaceful protests in conservative Orange County turned violent.

Hundreds of young demonstrators—waving Mexican flags and posing for selfies, the Associated Press reports—blocked cars trying to leave the Pacific Amphitheatre event, provoking confrontations with Trump supporters.

About 20 People Arrested After Donald Trump's First California Event in Months

“We’re going to stop drugs from coming in,” Trump had told his supporters inside the arena. “The drugs are poisoning our youth and a lot of other people.”

He also repeated a long-debunked myth about General John Pershing shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.

The event was Trump’s first in California since February, as the campaign ramps up for the June 7 primary. From the Los Angeles Times:

Orange County is a major target for Republicans. It remains the state’s biggest GOP stronghold, but it’s less conservative than it was in the days when it anchored the careers of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Orange County’s population has diversified, with an influx of Asian and Latino residents slowly diminishing the political clout of whites.

A decade ago, Republicans were 48% of Orange County’s registered voters; now they are 40%. Democrats have risen from 30% to 32%, while nonpartisans grew from 18% to 24%.

At least one Trump supporter was left bloodied after an altercation with protestors. Another man smashed in the windows of a police car.

“Build the wall!” Trump supporters chanted at a man who’d draped himself in the Mexican flag, the Times reports. “I love Trump,” retired carpenter Brent Fisher said. “He’ll stand up and fight and do the things he’s talking about.”

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