Consumer Reports' first-ever thorough lab analysis of raw ground turkey meat and patties discovered that more than half the packages tested positive for fecal bacteria. So much for that "healthy" turkey burger, huh?

The Sundance Channel's series Rectify unfurls so slowly that it's audacious. It risks losing viewers by taking its time to allow its central, fascinating character, Daniel Holden, to feel his way around a world from which he was absent for 19 years (he spent that time on Death Row and was let out thanks to new DNA evidence). At one point, he describes time as moving differently for him. It does for the show as well. The medium is perfectly tailored to its protagonist.

This scene above from the episode's third episode, which aired last night, is a perfect example of the show's almost surreal stillness. Its three minutes are wordless, aside from the Cracker song "Low" that Holden listens to on his old Walkman. Faced with the shock of the future, he clings to the past. He's malformed so specifically — he's in many ways the teenager that he was when he went into prison, and yet, was exposed to things in there that most men don't see if they live 100 years (not the least of which was the knowledge that he would soon be executed). I can't think of a better word for Aden Young's performance as Holden than "soulful" — there is so much life and pain in his eyes, as he takes in this altered world with astonishment and terror. There is so much there in Holden's few words that it provokes empathy despite the uncertainty as to whether or not he actually committed the heinous crime of raping and murdering his high school girlfriend. It is this miracle of a performance that makes Rectify what few TV shows are: beautiful.

It's time someone addressed the real victims of America's decline in traditional family values. I speak of our national shame: unwanted firearms. If Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer could, she'd adopt them all, no matter how broken. But she's doing the next best thing: finding loving homes for orphaned hand-cannons.

The conservative governor—who's bounced back nicely from those DUI hypocrisy allegations—signed a bill into law Monday that bans police in the state from destroying any firearms collected in gun buy-back programs. Rather, these poor unwanteds will have to be sold back to licensed dealers, so they can be placed in new homes with loving parents on the streets of Arizona.

That's right—there will be no melting down of sawed-off shotguns, Saturday night specials, rusty target plinkers, busted BB guns, or the occasional rocket launcher and top-flight semi-auto pistol. Arizona fosters a culture of life—for its guns! (But not, incidentally, for orphaned cats and dogs.)

Having attended a few gun buy-backs myself, I can see some negatives to the plan: Not every weapon will find a nurturing home, since "60-80% of the guns turned in are CRAP, not worth the $100 bucks given," as one pro-gun California comment-boarder notes. "Grandads [sic] rusted shotgun, that davis 25 auto you took apart and dont know how to reassemble."

Online commenters being what they are, I must take issue with him: Junk guns probably constitute closer to 90 percent of the haul in most buy-backs I've seen. Gun-lovers, always looking to adopt a promising young specimen, tend to agree. But it's a great way to get cash for that starter's pistol you stole from the JV track coach during senior week!

And think of the plus side: For that lucky 10 percent of well-oiled, still-performing Colts and Rugers and AK knockoffs, they can find a motivated, cash-carrying daddy or a mommy (but probably a daddy) of their very own to baby these guns, to love them and clean them and put rounds through them, into targets on ranges. And maybe elsewhere.

Who are these daddies and mommies? You'll never know, because Brewer signed another law Monday that "bars cities, towns and counties from collecting or maintaining any identifying information about a person who owns or sells a firearm." Thanks, Aunt Jan!

[Image via AP]

Anonymous posters on Greek Life forums have long swapped rumors about the horrific hazing at Young Harris College, a tiny private college up in Appalachia run by former Georgia Secretary of State and failed gubernatorial candidate Cathy Cox. Now, a potent new lawsuit alleges that YHC administrators turned a blind eye — and some even joined in the fun — as sorority members made rushees sit naked on washing machines while they marked the jiggling parts of their bodies, male pledges engaged in human centipede-style "elephant crawls" through freezing cold creeks, and students dropped out of classes due to the emotional and physical stress of participating in Greek Life.

We spoke with the plaintiffs — one former pledge and two former instructors who say they were fired for challenging the administration— who are suing Young Harris for "reckless indifference" to a "widespread and well-known culture of abusive and sexually charged hazing."

1,035 undergraduates attend Young Harris College, a liberal arts college in the heart of the North Georgia Appalachian Mountains that was founded in 1886 but earned its four-year accreditation just five years ago. YHC advertises both its sustainability initiatives and religious life offerings on its website, but campus culture is dominated by Greek Life — even professors don lettered shirts — and has been for decades, as evidenced by a 1989 hazing-themed edition of Enotah Echoes, the student newspaper. "The actions of some of our campus organizations continue to fly in the face of all moral and legal sense," a professor wrote to his colleagues at the time, urging them not to ignore hazing practices.

It's easy to ignore hazing at YHC because most of the Greek houses are local; this year, only two out of the nine Greek houses are national chapters, and that's an unprecedented number. Students and alumni gushed about the tight-knit community on a Facebook page called Young Harris Students/Alumni Against National Fraternities/Sororities, launched in 2009 when a small group of freshman started pressuring the administration to allow national sororities and fraternities to open on campus. "People, what is our paradise turning into?" one student wrote. "Looking back, nothing was more meaningful than the local greek organizations," an alum recalled. "Together, they brought a sense of absolute unity to the entire college."

But that "absolute unity" also fostered "a widespread and well-known culture of abusive and sexually charged hazing" among the local fraternities and sororities that lack even the bare-bones oversight given to national chapters, according to a recent lawsuit filed against the college by current sophomore Jo Hannah Burch, a former Gamma Psi pledge, and two faculty members who claim they were fired for trying to expose the administration's failings.

Burch, 20, told Jezebel she rushed the local house as a freshman because it was one of the largest and most popular sororities on campus. Gamma Psi girls were known for their high GPAs, but they were also known for hazing hard — although the sisters tactfully called it "education period" instead. On five or six nights in February/March 2012, Burch and her fellow pledges were taken to the nearby woods where they were screamed at, spit upon, and forced to crawl through mud into a freezing creek, often at 2 A.M. on a weeknight. Once, Burch alleges, there was a lightning storm while the girls shivered in the water; the girls still weren't allowed to get up. Burch told Jezebel that two current YHC admissions counselors and alums helped scream at Burch and the other pledges as they kneeled in the mud. (Only one is referenced in the complaint.)

Burch, bruised all over, finally reached a breaking point in mid-March. When she told Gamma Psi’s President and Vice President that she planned to de-pledge, they asked her if she was okay because they didn't want to "wear orange" — as in, go to prison — if she tattled. "Orange isn't my color," Burch recalls one joking. A few days later, Burch reported her ordeal to Susan Rogers, YHC's Vice President of Student Affairs, who eventually decided that Gamma Psi would be suspended for one year but that no individual student or staffer involved in the hazing would be punished, even though Burch could easily identify many of them. She told Burch not to bother filing a police report — if she did, the sorority members would probably sue her.

Burch developed severe depression and couldn't stand to be around the students and staffers who hazed her, a challenge at such a small school. When her father called YHC President Cathy Cox around Easter 2012, she told him that "these things happen." The case seemed closed whether she liked it or not.

But Burch had one more hope: plaintiff Theresa Crapanzano, then a YHC visiting instructor in Communication Studies and Burch’s advisor on the school paper. She opened up to Crapanzano the same day she quit rush, and, unlike Rogers and Cox, Crapanzano was disturbed.

Burch "didn't seem well," Crapanzano told Jezebel, but neither did many of her students that spring; it was only Crapanzano's first year at YHC, but she had already gathered that second semester rush was the reason why kids were coming to class late and withdrawn, if they showed up at all. "The administration wasn't taking it seriously," Crapanzano said. "So we did."

Crampanzo, her colleage Joseph Terry — the case's third plaintiff and a former tenure-track instructor in Communication Studies — and some Enotah Echoes student reporters interviewed students, asked faculty about reports of hazing they had received, and obtained copies of online exchanges among sorority members. The investigation resulted in a list of "highly disturbing" allegations of sexually abusive conduct associated with hazing at YHC, including:

• Forcing female pledges to take part in a “panty run,” in which they are required to run across campus in their underwear as other students, including male students, look on;

• Forcing “sweethearts” (female members of male fraternities) to stand naked and be judged by the fraternity members;

• Forcing “sweethearts” to hump the ground and moan as if having sex, as the fraternity members look on;

• Forcing both female and male pledges to stand in a pool of water in which the older pledges have urinated or defecated in;

• Forcing male pledges to engage in “elephant crawls” through a creek, during which the pledges crawl one behind another, with each pledge’s face planted between the buttocks of the pledge in front of him;

• Forcing female pledges to sit unclothed on running washing machines while members of the sorority use a permanent marker to mark areas of their bodies that jiggle;

• Interrogating students who are believed to have “ratted” on fellow Greeks and making derogatory and sexually explicit personal insults. In one particular instance during the Spring semester, a female student was screamed at to the point of tears in front of an entire sorority and called sex-specific insults such as “cunt” and “whore.”

Crapanzano and Terry instantly took action, circulating a petition among faculty and calling a meeting of the Faculty Forum to discuss why it was (obviously) problematic that there was currently no effective way to penalize individual students and staffers involved in hazing. Some administrators were supportive, but others seemed more concerned about shushing it up.

On April 25, 2012, Crapanzano spoke at a faculty meeting at which YHC President Cathy Cox said the staffer formally accused by Burch wouldn't be penalized because — even though Burch wasn't blindfolded entire time and heard the official repeatedly scream her own name at the pledges (following a “what’s my fucking name?” rally cry) — they were "unable to substantiate" the allegation because eyewitness testimony was “inherently unreliable.” When Crapanzano challenged Cox, Cox threatened her, suggesting that she and Crapanzano should “step outside and fight.” (You can listen to the audio here; it's at 2:03.)

The same week, Crapanzano and the Enotah Echoes student editors were informed that the hazing article they were working on would have to be sent to YHC’s attorney to be “screened” before publication. After Crapanzano argued the decision, she was told that President Cox had ordered that the newspaper not be published at all. Less than a week after Crapanzano and Terry wrote separate emails to President Cox and other members of the administration protesting the censorship, Crapanzano received a termination letter. On May 11th, Terry got one, too.

YHC's spokesman Jay Stroman told Jezebel in an email that there were so many "false and outrageous" allegations in the lawsuit that it was hard to know where to start, but that YHC "emphatically insists all matters pertaining to this report were handled immediately and properly." Crapanzano, he wrote, was on a one-year nonrenewable contract; Terry was given three extensions to finish his Phd and never did.

"I believe the two disgruntled faculty members or their attorney must have convinced [Burch] to be part of their lawsuit to help promote their case," he wrote. "The two faculty members want to extort money from the College and we will not stand by and allow this to happen."

It's true that Crapanzano’s one-year contract would have expired on August 1, 2012, but she was terminated three months early on May 3, 2012. She was barred from attending graduation activities, denied access to her school email, and escorted to her office to retrieve her personal belongings by campus police nearly three months before the natural end of her one-year contract with no explanation.

Terry had informed his department chair on many occasions throughout the Spring 2012 semester that he intended to graduate in August 2012, and this graduation date was approved; it was specifically listed on annual review forms.

Both Crapanzano and Terry consistently received outstanding teaching evaluations from both their students and their supervisor, and were selected by senior student-athletes to receive “Most Outstanding Professor” awards.

YHC has until May 28th to formally respond to the case, which accuses the administration of violating Title IX by knowing and condoning a culture of pervasive sexual harassment among the Greek student groups on YHC campus, subjecting Burch to harassment on the basis of her sex, and retaliating against Crapanzano and Terry for complaining about sex discrimination.

Burch, who is currently finishing up her last week as a sophomore and plans to transfer to another college in the fall, told Jezebel she's glad she spoke out even though she's been harassed by the student body for doing so all year. "I should've been protected by my college," she said.

(Stroman told Jezebel that YHC was surprised to see her name on a lawsuit because she had never complained — her family was "well pleased with the outcome," in fact — and currently attended the school; he never mentioned her decision to transfer as quickly as she could.)

Crapanzano said she wished someone had spoken up years ago. "It just breaks my heart," she said, her voice breaking as she recalled "great kids" who were too afraid to come forward "just fall apart, fail out of class" thanks to hazing.

"It's not something you could ignore," she said. "At least I couldn't, because I was watching it happen."

If you know anything about hazing at YHC and the response/lack thereof by the administration, you can contact the lawyers here.

Corrupt fraud-lizard Lanny Davis comforts jabbering bigot Tim Brando about Twitter meanies who "spew hate and venom—almost always anonymously." You're both stains on humanity. Signed, Gawker.

Residents of Greeley, Colorado, say they are outraged over two billboards displaying a historic photo of Native Americans in an effort to make an implicit pro-gun point.

"Turn in your arms; the government will take care of you," read the words above and below a photo of three Native Americans, one of whom is holding a rifle.

Denver-based Lamar Advertising, which owns the ad space, says the group that purchased the signs wishes to remain anonymous.

"I think it's a little bit extreme, of course, but I think people are really worried about their gun rights and what liberties are going to be taken away," Lamar Advertising rep Matt Wells told the Greeley Tribune.

"I thought it was pretty cowardly that someone would put something like that up and spend the money for a billboard but didn't have the courage to put their name on it," said Greeley resident Maureen Brucker, an honorary member of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, who added that the billboard brings to mind the infamous Wounded Knee Massacre, which took place at Pine Ridge.

"It wasn't just about our guns," notes Irene Vernon, a Native American who chairs the ethnic studies department at Colorado State University.

Still, despite the outcry over cultural insensitivity and historical revisionism, some still support the tactic.

"Where can we send a check to support more?" asked Rocky Mountain Gun Owners executive director Dudley Brown.

[screengrab via KUSA/CNN]

Downton Abbey wants to cash in on itself—and plans to launch an apparel, furnishings, and beauty line. So now you can have all the elegance that comes with Dowager Countess's exercise in maroon, Lady Mary's never-wrinkled chiffon, or the American grandmother's fussy feather headbands.

Gather round, campers, turn down the lantern, and prepare for a story from our friends at Bloomberg. A story of two rich, good looking men, ripped by the claws of fortune and fate as they struggle to create a website for other rich people. This is a true story.

Bloomberg's Max Abelson introduces us to Philipp Triebel and Beri Meric, whose newest venture—called IvyConnect—is some sort of website. It has friends, like Facebook, it has discounts, like Groupon, and it has rich people, like Princeton. What does it do? We're not totally sure, but the two backers sure like to throw parties:

A former GE Capital associate with a fuchsia handgun on his $185 lilac tie gave out his business card near a Danish man twirling a Turkish woman. An American International Group Inc. (AIG) employee left out his firm’s name when he said he works in risk.

They had come to a lower Manhattan classic-car gallery.

[...]

IvyConnect has led a ski trip to Vermont’s Mount Snow, held a dinner at Gemma restaurant in New York’s Bowery Hotel, hosted a reception at an art gallery and a Paris-themed Meatpacking District cocktail party and put together a Soho talk featuring five members.

You won't necessarily be invited to any of these parties if you pony up the $500 annual membership fee, but you will get "preferential table reservations” at the Dream Downtown hotel’s rooftop lounge" and "discounts to the Guggenheim Museum and Juice Press, which sells unpasteurized smoothies and cleanses." Sounds a little light, but they have history on their side: a past venture, IvyDate, raised over a million in funding last year, so millions more isn't outlandish. Also on their side is the entire history of white Ivy League people.

If this sounds like dilettantism, then shame on you: Bloomberg wants you to know that this is the road less traveled. "Post-Goldman Sachs startup life isn’t easy. IvyConnect is competing with the Ivy Connection, the Ivy Plus Society and IvyLife for Ivy League-themed dating, drinking and networking." The Ivy League Internet sector is hot-hot-hot. One problem for these two dudes, however, is that only one of them went to an Ivy League schoolCorrection: Triebel attended Harvard Business School, which sort of counts, I guess. Either way, he's undeterred:

“I think there’s something to be said about building your own business,” he said. “It’s a more touchable impact that you have on other people’s lives than on Wall Street.”

Plus, you'll get a free writeup on a very popular business website. [Bloomberg]

An elderly couple in Stockholm, Sweden, faces charges of harassment after they allegedly blasted Iron Maiden tracks at full volume in an effort to exact revenge on a noisy neighbor.

After being forced to endure many sleepless nights due to a ceaseless "whistling sound" emanating from the direction of their neighbor's property, the husband and wife, who are 81 and 71, respectively, decided to give the whippersnapper "a taste of their own medicine."

They reportedly set up two speaker systems — one on the balcony and another in the basement — and pointed them toward their neighbor's home.

The couple then proceeded to blare Iron Maiden tunes at all hours of the night — sometimes as late at 4 AM.

It went on like this for months until the neighbor, having become "broken down" and on the verge of moving, finally called the cops.

Officers arrived to find the song "Afraid to Shoot Strangers" playing at "top volume," and charged the couple with harassment.

Incidentally, Iron Maiden is scheduled to tour Sweden in July. It is unknown at this time if their oldest fans plan to attend the concerts.

[H/T: Uproxx]

Jackie Siegel, the subject of last year's brilliant and harrowing Queen of Versailles documentary, appeared on last night's episode of Watch What Happens Live after Bravo premiered the doc. The film, which chronicles Jackie and her husband David's abandoned attempt to build the largest single-family house in the country as well as their timeshare company's financial ruin, ran with a disclaimer tagged to its end that read:

The Siegels have provided the following statement to Bravo: "Westgate Resorts is currently financially sound and very profitable. The loan on Versailles has been paid off and construction has resumed."

Siegel spent much of her WWHL time reiterating this and, in the process, refuting the documentary. Westgate, she says, just had its most profitable year in 33 years. She also claims that they're going to resume building that disgustingly massive house, that she doesn't live amongst piles of dog feces (deliberate feces editing will get you every time), that she knew all along that she and her husband were financially "solid." Part of what makes Jackie an ultimately likable figure in the film is that she is mostly down to earth and gracious when her family's financial bubble pops. Now it would seem that her head is back in the clouds, and an abundance of cash is her rocket fuel.

The Siegels have expressed disdain for this film since before it was released when David sued both its director Lauren Greenfield and the Sundance Film Festival for defamation over promotional language stating that his empire had collapsed. When that was changed, he took issue with it being labeled a "rags to riches to rags" story, even though he says essentially the same thing in the film. ("This is the reverse of a rags-to-riches story. This is a kind of riches-to-rags story.") The lawsuit raged on as one big shit show — he eventually threw his son under the bus to claim that parts of the documentary's filming were unauthorized. A federal judge ruled in favor of Greenfield, calling Siegel's position "quite bizarre."

(You may remember David Siegel, by the way, as the CEO who built himself America's largest house [that] just threatened to fire his employees if Obama's elected. Great guy, that Siegel.)

And yet, despite all this litigation, there was Jackie was last night, on TV promoting this thing that she claims is inaccurate and yet is the cause of her pop cultural relevance. It's the kind of hypocrisy that makes sense in the world of reality TV, which would be the next logical step for the Siegels. Toward the bottom of a Reuters article from last year that corroborates the claims of a Westgate upswing, Jackie is quoted as saying, "I like the camera and doing projects. I don't know if it's my five minutes of fame, or it's going to develop into a mini-career."

At long last, a little chicken-fried class may be coming to roost in the New Orleans metropolitan area. Some descendants of Popeyes Chicken founder Al Copeland are hoping to commission a tasteful memorial statue of their patriarch in a local park in Metairie, Louisiana. That's "tasteful" not as in "The national World War II memorial is understated and tasteful," but as in "Mmm, this Popeyes Bonafide® fried chicken sure is taste-ful and also featured in this garish memorial statue."

According to the Times-Picayune, the family's original proposal stated that the statue would be life-sized. It would feature Copeland holding a box of Popeyes Chicken. And a checkered racing flag. He would be standing in front of a speedboat. On top of a wishing well. On top of a pedestal. Surrounded by columns arranged in the style of an ancient Roman plaza.

Lafreniere Park Advisory Board Chairman Ginger Crawford described the overall effect, captured by a concept artist in the illustration above (larger here), as “almost a Roman forum-type setting.” Imagine: Christians fighting lions for a piece of golden Popeyes chicken, marinated in Louisiana seasonings, then breaded in Popeyes uniquely Southern crispy coating. (Also, a speedboat.) For reasons unknown, the Lafreniere Park Board felt that the decadence and glamor of ancient Rome (plus speedboat) was “not in keeping with being complementary to the park and its master plan.”

They suggested another memorial idea: a labyrinth sponsored by the Copeland family in the park’s elegant parterre.

Al Copeland, Jr., the son and namesake of that great man whose proposed box of stone-rendered chicken parts would not lose their crunchiness for a hundred, a thousand years, “didn’t feel that reflected his father’s personality,” said Ginger Crawford. Maybe a labyrinth with a life-sized statue of fried chicken kingpin Al Copeland at its heart, standing in front of a speedboat, on a wishing well, clutching a box of Popeyes chicken and a checkered racing flag, in the center of a Roman Forum-type structure. And maybe they could get rid of the labyrinth part, so that the statue and Roman column structure would be easier to get to and see. That sounds more in keeping with Copeland's famously loud personality, which manifested itself as million-bulb Christmas light displays and public feuds with the novelist Anne Rice.

So the park Board moved on to plan C: perhaps the Copeland family would like to sponsor the construction of a performance stage in the park’s meadow?

That sounded okay. And maybe, in addition to the Al Copeland Statue of Al Copeland Standing in Front of a Speedboat Holding a Box of Fried Chicken and a Racing Flag on Top of a Wishing Well in a Roman Forum-Type Structure Memorial Park, the family could also commission a memorial statue of their patriarch, Al Copeland.

According to the Times-Picayune, the Jefferson Parish Council is scheduled to vote Wednesday whether or not to approve construction (funded by Copeland’s trust) of a stage, an arched entryway, and “a paved and brick walkway leading to the Al Copeland Memorial Statue,” location TBD.

If the resolution is not approved, the family may have to settle for a more subdued memorial idea.

Like a platinum box of chicken that's perpetually exploding with the flame of a thousand suns.

(Plus speedboat.)

[Times-Picayune]

To contact the author of this story, email caity@gawker.com

Well, it looks like 1,794 Netflix titles will disappear tomorrow forevermore because Warner Brothers wants them back. Better get to watching Goldfinger, Stardust Memories, or other cinematic treasures like 1999's Big Daddy.

Last week, it seemed that the San Francisco LGBT Pride Committee was planning this year’s march with an enormous set of ovaries. As the Bay Area Reporter wrote, "Pride's electoral college, which is made up of former grand marshals, has selected Army Private First Class Bradley Manning as its choice for grand marshal. Manning has admitted to leaking 700,000 classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks and is facing court-martial.”

Private Manning, in federal custody, could no more have actually attended the march than he could have planned a trip to visit Julian Assange. The Bradley Manning Support Network announced that Daniel Ellsberg, the famed whistle-blower who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, would attend in Manning’s absence.

It was a delicious setup, with the potential to lead to the most raucous, politically charged pride event since the Christopher Street Liberation Day of 1970 marked the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

But a gay movement born in a riot can’t tolerate protest anymore. Within a day, San Francisco's Pride had revoked the selection, declaring that it had been a "mistake" and "an insult to everyone, gay and straight, who has ever served in the military of this country."

Though it seemed virtually impossible to shove Private Bradley Manning of all people (a young gay man once held for months in solitary confinement in a military prison) even further off the map, the LGBT community has done just that.

Listen up, fellow homos—you have been bought, paid-for and sold to the highest bidder. The military industrial complex is so far up the ass of the LGBT movement that it can feel what is being digested in its upper intestines. Talking points and "messaging," not discussion and debate, are the preferred methods of "communication" in a movement now run and owned by PR-firm trained Professional Homosexuals. Dissent will not be tolerated, and the assimilation of homosexuals into the rest of the militarized American public is complete.

In the fall of 2009, on the eve of the National Equality March on Washington, I covered my first (and only) fundraising gala for the Human Rights Campaign. But before the crowd could be entertained by Lady Gaga, Judy Shepard, and the President of the United States, it was time for a word from our sponsors—the "honor roll": a nearly 10-minute-long video extolling the virtues of player after player in the military industrial complex.

I understood why certain entertainment sponsors were HRC donors, given their audiences. I had no clue at the time why it seemed like nearly every defense contractor under the sun was shelling out money to a gay rights group. (As of today, confirmed sponsors for the 2013 HRC dinner, still six months away, already include Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.)

Were these death peddlers that committed to equality? Were these corporations so harmed by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? After I grew up a bit in covering gay politics over the next few years, I realized that there is no such thing as "gay politics," only "money politics"—and there’s no money in America like military money.

For war profiteers, the issues of marriage equality and gay discrimination in the armed forces were, at best, third in line among their priorities. First, they were paying for access. Since there are so many homos in positions of power on congressional staffs, buying a seat at their gay table was a solid financial investment. If a legislative chief of staff is a power bottom, a quick way for a lobbyist to get access to his boss is to lube him up by schmoozing him at a fundraising gala for his favorite cause.

Second, there was the longer-term investment in buying off LGBT political activists (known to be politically volatile and even, once upon a time, radical) outside the Beltway. It would take time to herd these unpredictable gay cats, who might have some unpatriotic pacifist leanings. And so these donors were, in a sophisticated and calculated fashion, grooming a class of Professional Homosexuals: mercenaries who spend their entire careers in a revolving door between gay organizations like HRC and GLADD, leadership positions at gay "community centers," the Democratic party, the Obama White House, K Street lobbying shops, “public relations” consulting firms, and the military-industrial complex.

When SF Pride's electoral college of former grand marshalls selected Private Manning last week, it was time for these Professional Homosexuals to step in. Lisa Williams, SF Pride Board President, wrote that "even the hint of support" for Bradley Manning "will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride." Get it? Don’t even hint about it!

The Professional Homosexual went on, completely without irony, to denounce her own organization's electoral college as "a system whereby a less-than-handful of people may decide who represents the LGBT community's highest aspirations as grand marshals for SF Pride," completely ignoring that she was one of a different handful vetoing their choice. According to her SF Pride bio, Williams is president of "One Source Public Affairs, a boutique consulting firm that specializes in the management of state, local and national political campaigns and strategic programs for non-profit organizations.” (Kevin Gozstola at Firedoglake wrote over the weekend that the entry had said Williams “organized satellite offices for the Obama campaign,” but that is not in her bio today.)

Professional Homosexuals fill the boards of organizations like SF Pride. As their organizations' chief fund raisers, they are beholden to corporate donors (of any ilk) to keep their outfits going. But Professional Homosexuals like Williams can also build very nice lives for themselves, in serving on these boards, as one of the handful of people who happen to also have a consulting firm that makes “strategic programs for non-profit organizations.” When anything threatens this livelihood—even the hint of support for controversy—a Professional Homosexual knows which cheek her ass is buttered on. (Meanwhile, the same Professional Homosexual has no problem taking a steaming dump on Bradley Manning who, regardless of one’s opinion of him, cannot be charged with profiting in any way for his own personal gain from what he did.)

To the Professional Homosexual, there is no moral quandary in selling out one's own queer soul, liberated by a once-radical movement, by accepting endless militarism and corporate greed in return for personal fortune. And since Professional Homosexuals control so many LGBT organizations and spaces, they threaten to drag the entire community down with them.

We saw a prequel to the Private Manning retraction two years ago, when New York City’s LGBT Center also cravenly caved to the military-industrial complex. Glendda Testone, the Executive Director of New York City’s LGBT Center, had parleyed a gig with GLAAD into a $175,000-a-year job as the shepherd of the center, one of New York City’s biggest LGBT organizations (a typical career move for the Professional Homosexuals who graduate from GLAAD).

In the spring of 2011, the Siege Busters Working Group (made up of gay, lesbian and straight members) sought to use the LGBT Center to plan various activities, including to organize their presence in New York’s pride march. The pro-Palestine group had used the Center, without issue, since at least 2008.

But when gay porn icon Michael Lucas—a staunch pro-Israel Zionist, a major fund raiser for the Center, and the husband of the Center’s former board president—found out about the group, he told the Center to evict them.

Initially, Testone reportedly told Lucas to back off and respect the Center’s open-door policy. The Center had, after all, a decades-long history of hosting groups organized around topics it neither supported nor endorsed, including the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Arab Spring, South African apartheid and the Iraq War.

Then Lucas threatened to lead a boycott of the Center’s donors, and Testone and the Center’s board caved. Rather than figure out a way to facilitate political discussion and debate in a publicly subsidized community center, Testone and her board banned discussion of Israel and Palestine completely from the center’s walls. The Center’s line became that only “queer focused” topics could be discussed in the Center, and “non-queer” topics—like military occupation, U.S. foreign policy, or pacifism—weren’t gay enough and were “too divisive” to the LGBT community.

Under Testone’s “leadership,” not even a hint of support for anything controversial will be tolerated. This isn’t surprising in organizations run by Professional Homosexuals, who not only have to protect their institution's budgets, but their friends’ six-figure salaries (not to mention their own future job prospects). A movement that once overlapped with the labor, sexual, and anti-war movements now won’t even question—won’t even let anyone question, for fear of being associated with their questioning—anything as controversial as military occupation or corporate greed.

The boys and girls from GLADD make a living (and a rather good one, at that) shaking down the likes of South Park and Ron Howard improperly using the word “gay.” At the same time, their organization nearly imploded in 2011 when it came out that, after AT&T gave them $50,000 and while an AT&T lobbyist sat on their board, GLADD came out for an AT&T/T-Mobile merger and against net neutrality.

The real sins of GLADD are twofold. First, the people who pass through there—who consider their job to be the "public relations firm" of the LGBT community, as if it needs such a thing—learn how to manipulate media on behalf of other gay groups. They then—coincidence!?—land good jobs for themselves at the same groups for whom they have groomed fawning coverage.

Their other, more egregious sin is that they have perpetuated this stupid idea that covering the LGBT community responsibly means only writing and reporting nice things about gay people (and their sponsors). This fosters a new generation of impotent journalists who don’t realize that, if you’re doing your job as a journalist, people don’t "like" you.

Last August, I addressed the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association with a screed about the evils of LGBT press flacks. Before I spoke, a representative from one of NLGJA’s sponsors, Wells Fargo, got up on stage to talk about how he had always wanted to be a journalist; instead, he said without irony, he was glad to be at Wells Fargo, so that he could "work with" gay journalists to tell good stories about all the great things Wells Fargo is doing for the LGBT community.

Wells Fargo is also one of SF Pride's corporate sponsors. It was left up to Glen Greenwald, amid the braying about Private Manning being a traitor, to point out in the Guardian that the bank:

is also being "sued by the US for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages over claims the bank made reckless mortgage loans that caused losses for a federal insurance program when they defaulted." Last year, Wells Fargo was fined $3.1 million by a federal judge for engaging in conduct that court called "highly reprehensible" relating to its persecution of a struggling homeowner. In 2011, the bank was fined by the US government "for allegedly pushing borrowers with good credit into expensive mortgages and falsifying loan applications."

In accepting this vile hypocrisy—in which an individual like Private Manning is shamed by the LGBT community while corporate raiders like Wells Fargo are praised—the average homosexual becomes as culpable as the Professional Homosexual in selling out the movement.

A regular homosexual can give Dan Savage handjob after handjob for his anti-bully “It Gets Better” campaign if he wants, and he can even scream from the rafters that Savage should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for saying that something must be done to protect the powerless who are bullied by the powerful. But that same homosexual becomes as beholden to the military-industrial complex as the Professional Homosexual when he fails to call out SF Pride as a bully. The powerful group found perhaps the most marginalized, powerless homosexual in the nation, pulled him into the spotlight for a few hours, took a giant shit on him, roughed him up a little, called him names, and then kicked him back into the gutter.

The entire LGBT community— not just the Professional Homosexual class—is to blame for the militarization of the movement, when it exalts breaking the law to preserve the status quo and denounce it as traitorous when it challenges the status quo. Imagine, for a minute, that you are the Military-Industrial Complex. You’d be very happy that a bunch of homosexuals at SF Pride named as the 2009 Grand Marshal Lt. Dan Choi, who broke the law repeatedly while trying to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In honoring Lt. Choi, the homosexuals at SF Pride were furthering the status quo in militarizing a larger percentage of the American population.

Now imagine how happy you’d be that the very same homosexuals denounced their own choice of Private Manning as Grand Marshal because—wait for it—he broke the law! (Alas, he did so to ends that made people question, not expand, the concept of American militarization.) Then marvel as the same fairies go to the parade and pass out flyers from Pride corporate sponsors like AT&T and Verizon, who cooperated with illegal eavesdropping.

The corporatization of LGBT political discussion knows no party, but its lack of outrage about (or even interest in!) American militarism is due to how embedded the movement is with the Obama White House. Can you imagine how differently Bradley Manning would be perceived by traditionally Democratically aligned homosexuals, were he being detained by President Bush? How different the debate about drone warfare would be if Albert Gonzales, and not Eric Holder, had suggested that President Bush could potentially order drone strikes in the states?

Yet there are LGBT "political activists" (these people exist, I have interacted with them) who will complain about drone warfare, never even question Obama about it, and completely ignore facts like, oh, two of the top three drone manufacturers lobbying Washington right now are HRC corporate donors.

The shameful treatment of Private Manning is an embarrassment for President Obama, as it should be, and the gay establishment just helped him to sweep it under the rug. Yes, Obama has perhaps done as much for gay legal rights as LBJ did for racial legal rights. But Martin Luther King took LBJ's support for the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, then turned around and excoriated him in his final years about the Vietnam War. He was not liked for this at the time, but history (aided by Daniel Ellsberg’s leaks) proved him right.

Now homosexuals who protest the will of powerful gay donors and corporate sponsors are getting systemically warned to shut the hell up, by the people claiming to lead them. In the same manner in which the Obama administration’s aggressive treatment of Private Manning creates a silencing effect for other would-be whistleblowers, Glendda Testone of the LGBT Center and Lisa Williams of SF Pride have created a silencing effect for queer political activists. That Private Manning’s fling with SF Pride ended faster than a Grindr hook up proves that the homosexuals in charge are terrified of anything remotely politically controversial.

Am I saying Private Manning is above protest, criticism, disagreement? No. But imagine that Manning had been named Grand Marshal of SF Pride, and that Ellsberg had appeared in his place, as (briefly) planned. Why not watch gay and lesbian service members come out and decry Ellsberg at Pride, if they want? Why not watch Private Manning’s supporters defend him? Wouldn’t that be a great argument to watch in what is supposed to be a political march (and not just a human ad for Bud Light)?

It will never happen, though, as long as Professional Homosexuals are running the movement—and as long as average homosexuals think gay pride means clicking that you “like” Starbucks on Facebook because they support gay marriage. No serious debate (or even the hint of a cause for a debate) will be tolerated. The idea that "queer focused" causes (like HIV research and housing for homeless LGBT youth) might be better funded if tax money was not being spent so disproportionately on corporate tax breaks and unnecessary, sometimes criminal military largess can’t even be discussed.

One gay man has probably given the American people more insight into this last point than any other: Private Bradley Manning. Love him, hate him—you cannot pretend that he is not part of the modern gay American story, nor can you deny that his actions form a key component to why anyone knows certain truths about the last two American wars.

This past weekend confirmed for me what older gay and lesbian activists have been telling me, correctly, for years: that the modern gay pride celebration is not a political march about free expression, but a corporate trough. In just a day, SF Pride marked the occasion as a time to further silence a gay man already locked away in prison.

Hopefully, in the same way the police’s attempt to silence a bunch of queers in a Greenwich Village bar four decades ago backfired, perhaps the attempt to further silence Private Manning will backfire, as well.

Steven W. Thrasher was named Journalist of the Year 2012 by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his staff writing for the Village Voice and his freelance contributions to the New York Times and Out magazine. Two weeks after receiving this award, he was laid off by the Voice. He is currently traveling through Europe and Asia on a religious pilgrimage.

[Image by Jim Cooke.]

"There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it." —Republican Senator Pat Toomey on why some members of his party opposed expanding background checks for gun sales.

In advance of the royal birth, Britain's Tatler magazine (think Gossip Girl, on paper, for rich British people) has published an earth-shattering profile of Kate Middleton’s mother, Carole, in which it is revealed that her children were VERY WELL BROUGHT UP and had FINE MANNERS.

For instance, as teenagers, Pippa and Kate were dressed presentably…TO THE POINT OF INSANITY.

"Every pristine item of their clothing would have a beautifully sewn-in name tape, for instance.”

The devilish spinster spinning these vicious yarns is the mother of one of Kate’s old classmates at Marlborough College, the tuition of which runs to nearly $50,000 per year ($46,000 with Marlboro Miles).

The mother, who has chosen to remain anonymous because some of the truth bombs she’s lobbing hit hard—“It was unthinkable that they would resort to a marker pen on labels,” she adds, in her meditation on labels sewn inside Kate Middleton’s clothing almost twenty years ago that she...saw somehow—describes the experience of sending one’s own sperm-and-egg omeletmonster of a child to school alongside human diamonds Kate and Pippa Middleton as “galling.”

Maddening.

A true test of a mother's strength.

"[The girls had] the smartest tennis rackets, that kind of thing."

The sleepiest bookbags. The most charming rulers. That kind of thing.

But if you thought the “~* K A T I E M. *~” label sewn onto Kate Middleton’s crewneck sweatshirt was intimidating, buckle up quick before you hear tell of the “huge” picnics the Middleton children would throw in celebration of sport.

“There were huge picnics at sports day.”

Flashy finger food bacchanals. Potato salad for days. Two kinds of potato chips (plain/barbecue). A giant pancake that covered the school.

“Pancakes aren’t even a picnic food,” the less impressive students would grumble as they sat down to their own meager picnics at the edge of the staff parking lot, barely enough picknickins to go around.

And then, in the distance, a voice would ring out, clear as a bell.

“I love sports day!” Kate Middleton would sing, floating by in an inner tube down a river made of lemonade.

"It made other families feel rather hopeless."

Now Kate Middleton lives in a castle while all the other alumni live in crackhouses.

Their mothers weren't thoughtful enough.

[Tatler/Telegraph // Image via Getty]

To contact the author of this post, email caity@gawker.com

Over the past 12 years, New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs has banned nearly 80 names deemed unacceptable to the government.

In looking out for the welfare of Kiwi kids, the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has prohibited parents from naming their newborn babies things like "Justice," "Lucifer," "Mafia No Fear," "Anal," and "A.J."

According to the registrar, names are considered unacceptable if they might "cause offense to a reasonable person," are "unreasonably long" or "resemble an official title and rank."

Which explains why Princess, Prince, King, and Christ have all been placed on the prohibited list (though it doesn't do much to explain why parents picked those names to begin with).

As CNN points out, New Zealand is not the only country that nixes weird names: Sweden and Iceland do too.

In the US, a child named "Adolf Hitler" was removed from his New Jersey home in 2009 along with his sister Aryan Nation.

In New Zealand, a similar incident occurred when a local family court ordered a 9-year-old girl be placed in court guardianship because her parents named her "Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii."

Below is a complete list of names that have ended up on the no-no registry since 2001, along with the number of times they've come up since:

Justice:62

King:31

Princess:28

Prince:27

Royal:25

Duke:10

Major:9

Bishop:9

Majesty:7

J:6

Lucifer:6

using brackets around middle names:4

Knight:4

Lady:3

using back slash between names:8

Judge:3

Royale:2

Messiah:2

T:2

I:2

Queen:2

II:2

Sir:2

III:2

Jr:2

E:2

V:2

Justus:2

Master:2

Constable:1

Queen Victoria:1

Regal:1

Emperor:1

Christ:1

Juztice:1

3rd:1

C J :1

G:1

Roman numerals III:1

General:1

Saint:1

Lord:1

. (full stop):1

89:1

Eminence:1

M:1

VI:1

Mafia No Fear:1

2nd:1

Majesti:1

Rogue:1

4real:1

* (star symbol):1

5th:1

S P:1

C:1

Sargent:1

Honour:1

D:1

Minister:1

MJ:1

Chief:1

Mr:1

V8:1

President:1

MC:1

Anal:1

A.J:1

Baron:1

L B:1

H-Q:1

Queen V:1

[photo via Shutterstock]

According to the FBI affidavit (which you can read in full here), one of the suspects arrested today for obstruction of justice texted Dhokhar Tsarnaev when pictures of the Marathon bombing suspects were released. Tsarnaev's response: "lol."

One of the most insidious aspects of revenge porn—the non-consensual erotica pioneered by the likes of Hunter Moore—is the fact that victims have typically had little legal recourse to stop porn websites from profiting off their most compromising images. But a new wave of revenge porn victims are speaking out and organizing. One of the most prominent is the woman behind the advocacy group End Revenge Porn. She's been anonymous until today, when she was profiled by BetaBeat and revealed herself to be 29-year-old Florida PhD student Holly Jacobs.

Jacobs' story is typical among revenge porn victims: she claims her ex spent years tormenting her by sending the nude photos and explicit videos she made for his private enjoyment to coworkers and friends, and posting them on revenge porn websites. It got to the point where she changed her name to try to escape her embarrassing Google results and quit a job as a teaching assistant after her employer learned of the pics. Now she's become the first person to file a criminal suit against someone for distributing revenge porn—whom she tells BetaBeat is her ex boyfriend Ryan Seay.

Not only that, she's sued a number of websites that distributed content, including their service providers, in civil court. This tactic was also used by a host of women who found themselves on the revenge porn site Texxxan.com. Going after the secondary distributors, rather than the asshole who first posted the stuff, is a sketchier prospect thanks to the expansive protections afforded to sites that host user-submitted content under Section 230 the Communications Decency Act.

But all this attention will help the push for anti-revenge porn laws like the one proposed in Jacobs' home state of Florida. As more people advocate for legal protection from revenge porn, you can expect some debate between anti-revenge porn activists and free speech crusaders who are skeptical of any government move to regulate content on user-generated sites. Even law professor Mary Anne Franks, a strong supporter of anti-revenge porn legislation, cautions that the Florida Law defines Revenge Porn so broadly it "could potentially include a photograph of someone standing next to a picture of Botticelli’s Venus.”

But Jacobs' story further supports the case for new laws specifically addressing revenge porn, which overwhelmingly hurts women while enriching terrible people like Hunter Moore. It should be easier for normal people to get their leaked photos taken down from porn sites than starting an advocacy group and spending thousands on legal fees.

“I hope that I’ll set an example and show this is how you overcome this," Jacobs told BetaBeat, "by coming forward.”

The internet got excited yesterday when an old man living in a Vietnamese jungle identified himself as Sgt. John Hartley Robinson, a US soldier who disappeared in Laos in 1968. Interest spiked in an upcoming documentary about the man, who'd raised a Vietnamese family. There was only problem: He was a liar.

Robinson, a Special Forces soldier who disappeared at the height of America's involvement in Southeast Asia and had his name inscribed as a casualty on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, was reportedly discovered by the producers of Unclaimed, a documentary about the missing man that was set to premiere at the DC-based GI Film Festival later this week.

The man they'd found—who exhibited Western features but was "unable to remember his birthday, his American children’s names, or how to speak English," according to the credulous Daily Mail—told researchers his helicopter had crashed during a Laotian firefight, and he'd been held prisoner by North Vietnamese soldiers for four years, before escaping into the jungle.

Except that the man they'd found had been telling a similar story for more than 20 years, and the US government had determined he was a charlatan seeking military back pay and benefits, the Independent reports:

According to a memo sent to a UK news organisation yesterday evening, the man claiming to be Sgt Robertson is in fact Dang Tan Ngoc – a 76-year-old Vietnamese citizen of French origin who has a history of pretending to be US army veterans...

In 1991 Ngoc attracted the attention of former CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer Billy Waugh, who was involved in the capture of Carlos the Jackal and who later tracked Osama bin Laden through the Tora Bora Mountains in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Waugh led a team of investigators into the Vietnamese jungle and was able to take DNA from Ngoc.

After Waugh’s visit, Ngoc’s name became synonymous with conmen impersonating US army veterans that are missing in action. There is still a huge amount of anger among legitimate Vietnam veterans at the deception.

As of this afternoon, there was no public response from the producers of Unclaimed, and they hadn't added any updates to their Twitter and Facebook accounts since news of the hoax broke.

Still, it's possible they knew something was up; they'd named their production company "Myth Merchant Films."

[Image via movieunclaimed.com]

Shortly after finishing first in an obviously rigged 1,000-meter horse race this past Sunday, Turkmenistan's "superhero" president Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov was caught on camera getting thrown off his trusty steed "Mighty."

But for the 5 million who live in the autocratic Central Asian nation, the race, honoring the homegrown Akhal-Teke horse breed, went off without a hitch.

That's because government officials have been spending every waking hour since their leader took a tumble scrubbing any mention of the incident from the local press, and even going so far as to shut down access to social media sites and slow down the entire Internet in order to prevent the video from being seen.

Berdymukhamedov has spent the past seven years in office cultivating a cult of personality bequeathed to him by the country's previous ruler, the similarly "eccentric" Saparmurat Niyazov.

Reuters reports that local media outlets have shown the man they call The Patron flying jets, driving tanks, and even removing a person's tumor.

The AP says it spoke with the man who recorded the footage of Berdymukhamedov's blunder, and he claims the uninjured president returned to the scene of the fall some 30 minutes later to collect his prize: $11 million.

The money, according to Berdymukhamedov, will be used to advance local horse breeding.

[H/T: The Daily Dot]