A finger painting is at the center of an almost half-a-million dollar lawsuit after an Upper East Side couple claims they were tricked by their children's pricey private school into paying $50,000 for a finger painting by kindergartners.

Michelle Heinemann and her investment-banker husband Jon have sued the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine after they won a benefit auction with a bid far higher than they had intended to pay. They are also pulling their son and daughter out of the school, suing for money to relocate their children to a new school, as well as $60,000 to pay for their chauffeur to help bring their children to their new school.

The Heinemann's believe the school rigged the auction by having a first-grade teacher, “Ms. Bryant," drive up the bill to $50,000. Because the Heinemann's were out of town, and had given instructions to a proxy to be the highest bid, they believed the largest possible damage for a finger painting (which are priceless) would fall around $3,000. But Ms. Bryant desperately wanted that finger painting and drove up the price to that ridiculous figure.

“This is essentially a painting done by 5-year-olds,” explained a source to The Post. The Heinemann's son was involved in helping make the piece of art.

The school is standing by the validity of the auction, and have also tried to respond to the Heinemann's concern that their son was being treated improperly by the school.

Reads the lawsuit about little Hudson Cornelius's maltreatment:

“On one occasion, plaintiffs’ 5-year-old son was relegated to the role of ‘door-holder’ and ordered to hold the door for all of the other students.”

Hudson was obviously coming from a place of great pain while working on the piece of art, which is probably why it's so brilliant and wonderfully expensive.

[via Gothamist/Photo by Amber De Vos]

Monsters University ($46.1 million) was the top movie again this weekend, followed by The Heat ($40 million). White House Down bombed, making just $25.7 million and finishing in fourth place.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Sunday, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa cast some doubts on Edward Snowden's reported plans to seek asylum in his country, saying the Ecuadorean consul in London made a “serious error” when it issued a letter of safe passage for Snowden.

Correa also said the NSA whistleblower's request for asylum will only be "analyze[d]" if Snowden can reach Ecuador or an Ecuadorean Embassy, which seems unlikely considering that Snowden is trapped indefinitely in the Moscow international airport and, according to Correa, "under the care of Russian authorities."

"This is the decision of Russian authorities," Correa told the AP during a visit to this Pacific coast city. "He doesn't have a passport. I don't know the Russian laws, I don't know if he can leave the airport, but I understand that he can't. At this moment he's under the care of the Russian authorities. If he arrives at an Ecuadorean Embassy we'll analyze his request for asylum."

Russian authorities denied Correa's claims that Snowden was in Russia and under their control, instead insisting that, since he hasn't passed customs, Snowden remains in the airport's international transit zone, which isn't officially part of Russia.

Correa also claimed that, despite widespread reports, he had no idea that Snowden intended to seek asylum in Ecuador when Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow last week.

Correa's apparent change of heart comes just two days after a phone conversation between Correa and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

"I greatly appreciated the call," [Correa] said, contrasting it with threats made by a small group of U.S. senators to revoke Ecuadorean trade privileges. "When I received the call from Vice President Biden, which was with great cordiality and a different vision, we really welcomed it a lot."

…

"If [Snowden] really could have broken North American laws, I am very respectful of other countries and their laws and I believe that someone who breaks the law must assume his responsibilities," Correa said. "But we also believe in human rights and due process."

None of this is especially good news for Snowden, who has been presumably living in the Moscow airport for over a week now as he faces charges of espionage from the US government. Despite his isolation and uncertain future, Snowden's leaks are still making news; earlier today, Der Spiegel published Snowden-leaked documents about the NSA's history of eavesdropping on the European Union.

[Image via AP]

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

In early June, the wife of a Belgian diplomat attempted to breast-feed her young daughter on the terrace of a New York country club, setting off a chain of events that would lead to the woman and her husband being escorted from the club and treated like "terrorists" by police.

According to Tom Neijens, the first secretary of the Belgian Mission to the UN, the Metropolis Country in White Plains, New York allowed his family, who are not members, to eat lunch on the club's terrace. Once the family was seated, Neijens's wife, Roseline Remans, began to breast-feed their daughter, Luka.

Almost immediately, a manager at the club approached Remans. "She said, ‘Please leave immediately, you are disturbing the members,'" Neijens told the New York Post.

Remans said the feeding would only take a few minutes, but the manager insisted that she finish in the restroom. "You don’t ask a person to have lunch in the restroom — why would you ask a baby to have lunch there?" Neijens said.

So the club, being reasonable, called the Greenburgh police department, who arrived minutes later, reportedly shouting “Close the doors!” and ordering other diners to leave the club's terrace.

“[Detective Scott Harding] was walking as if he was acting in a Western movie,” Neijens said. “He had one hand on his gun, one hand on his taser.”

The police's reaction was caused, in part, by reports from other diners at the club, who said Neijens's black backpack made him look like a "terrorist." As for the baby, Detective Harding reportedly told Neijens that, "In Sri Lanka, babies are used by terrorists.'

Once Harding saw Neijens's State Department-issued ID, he calmed down, becoming almost apologetic, and the family was eventually escorted out of a backdoor, without any arrests or charges.

After the incident, Neijens wrote a letter to the country club, asking for an apology.

"I am deeply worried about your staff if they cannot distinguish between a European couple looking for a quiet place to breast-feed a baby and suicide terrorists carrying a backpack," he wrote.

The club didn't respond, and its general manager declined to comment to the Post.

[New York Post/Image via Shutterstock]

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

Nighteen firefighters battling a massive wildfire in Yarnell, Arizona have died. The Yarnell Hill Fire started on Friday, likely from a lightning strike, and has since burned over 2,000 acres and forced the evacuation of at least 50 homes.

The Prescott Fire Department confirmed the deaths late Sunday night. We'll update as more information becomes available.

UPDATE 11:30 PM: The Daily Courier reports that all 18 were from the Prescott Fire Department's Granite Mountain Hotshots crew. Only one member of the crew survived and is reportedly injured, though the extent of the injuries aren't yet known.

And there are now reports of a 19th death:

BREAKING: AZ Forestry confirms 19 bodies found, SE side of fire. Some in shelters. 18 from Prescott hot shot crew. 19th identity unknown.

— Michelle Lee (@myhlee) July 1, 2013

UPDATE 11:35 PM: An Arizona forestry official has confirmed that 19 firefighters were killed. All were reportedly part of the Prescott Fire Department.

UPDATE 11:54 PM: The Daily Courier profiled the Granite Mountain Hotshots just last week. From the article:

"Their crews of 20 are typically among the first ones in there - they're on the front lines, and take a direct line of attack to the fire," [spokesman] Ward said.

The surviving member of the crew suffered burns to majority of his body, according to reports on NBC 12 News. The station is also reporting that over 250 homes were destroyed in the fire.

UPDATE 12:36 AM: Another Daily Courier profile of the crew, from 2008.

UPDATE 12:51 AM: At a press conference, the chief of the Prescott Fire Department said that the one survivor from the hotshot crew was not with his team at the time. Earlier reports about his injuries were apparently false.

The 19 killed makes this the deadliest wildfire in 80 years, and the worst loss of life for firefighters since 9/11.

[Image via AP]

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

A day after millions of Egyptians gathered to protest President Mohamed Morsi and the ruling Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist party's headquarters were ransacked and set on fire, killing as many as six people.

Not far from the Brotherhood's headquarters in Cairo, Morsi received the resignations of four of his cabinet ministers, all reportedly doing so in solidarity with the protest movement that flooded Tahrir Square on Sunday, the first anniversary of Morsi's inauguration.

The Tamarod, or rebellion, Movement, an alliance between Egypt's left, liberal and secular parties, has harnessed increased anger at Morsi and his party, whose roots in political Islam are regarded as suspicious by many Egyptians, and whose management of the economy is seen as a failure by even more. Protestors are calling for Morsi to resign, and for early presidential elections (parliamentary elections are likely to happen later this year regardless):

“Enough is enough,” said Alaa al-Aswany, a prominent Egyptian writer who was among the many at the protests who had supported the president just a year ago. “It has been decided for Mr. Morsi. Now, we are waiting for him to understand.”

Early Monday morning, dozens of looters and attackers tossed Molotov cocktails at the Brotherhood's headquarters in Cairo, smashing windows and dodging birdshot fired from inside. Police, openly feuding with Morsi, refused to help; the building was eventually set on fire, and six were reportedly killed. At least nine have died since the protests began on Sunday, and activists reported "dozens" of sexual assaults in Tahrir Square.

Morsi, whose margin in last year's election was helped by the well-organized Brotherhood's long status as an oppositional organization under former president Hosni Mubarak, has continued to call for a "national dialogue":

"If we are saying that we have a majority, and the opposition are saying that they have a majority, how can they decide?" asked Nader Omran, a spokesman for the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

"What is the other solution for this dilemma, except the ballot box?"

Collect call for Nick Lachey from a Miss Jessica Weaddababi-Eitzaboi.

Former popstar and ancient Norse fertility goddess Jessica Simpson gave birth to a baby boy on Sunday, her second child in just over a year (14 months) with fiancé Eric Johnson. The baby's name is Ace Knute Johnson. According to Simpson's rep, "Knute" was chosen to honor Johnson's Swedish grandfather. Ace was chosen to honor...who knows? Ace from Real World: Paris, probably.

PEOPLE magazine announced the birth by declaring "Jessica Simpson's tiniest fashion star has arrived!" because when you have the luxury of freedom of speech, you sometimes forget that words matter and sentences are supposed to have meaning.

Simpson's daughter, Maxwell Drew Johnson, turned 1 on May 1st.

[Image via Splash]

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

Here's how thinking about the world works in Silicon Valley: when public transportation is disrupted (in the old sense) due to labor disputes, that's not an inconvenience! It's an opportunity to plug your app and offer helicopter rides—literally fly over society's problems.

San Francisco's BART service is frozen today after pension, salary, and healthcare negotiations broke down. It's a complicated issue—unless you're Avego, which peddles "ridesharing" across the Bay Area, and sees promotional windfall where others see a complete headache.

Forget about the inordinate number of San Franciscans who'll struggle to get to work because of the strike. Forget about the striking BART employees who want a better deal from their employers. In Valleythink, "crisis" is just another way to push downloads—and so Avego cannily registered BARTstrike.com to exploit the mess.

You might think that's a little... insensitive. I sure do. But you have to hand it to the Avego team with their latest marketing, one of the most myopic promotions in the history in the long bleak history of tech marketing myopia. The following email was sent to a prominent tech journalist (emphasis added):

Hi XXXXXXXX!

Not sure if you have the week off for the holiday, however, I am helping out Avego, a company with a ride sharing app that enables people to quickly find people nearby to catch a ride with. Their user base in the bay area is exploding right now in light of the Bart Strike. They are also doing a promotion to give four commuters a lift via helicopter from San Francisco to the east bay, every day until the end of the strike. See here. Not entirely sure this is a fit for you, but given the bay area tie-in, perhaps it is a good way to share how technology helps out during “crisis?”

Might it be of interest speak with someone over there today?

Kimberly Angell

Wish Public Relations, Principal

(415) 471-7272

Kim.angell@wishpr.com

Google hangout: kim.angell

Great angle, Kimberly. Tech really does really prove itself during crises—if only we'd had GetGlue during 9/11. Just a note though: it's things like using labor strikes and helicopter commutes as promotional tool that makes people think you're out of touch with our planet.

Here's a good journalism #protip: If the main source for your bombshell NSA article is a guy who thinks that President Obama is gay and that President Bush has his poop classified, you may not actually have the scoop you think you do.

As the Observer and the Guardian learned the hard way this weekend, with an Observer front-page article, published on the website it shares with the Guardian, claiming that European governments were planning on handing over data on their citizens to the NSA. Its source for the article? One Wayne Madsen, whose name should be familiar to anyone who's spent time in the fun parts of the web, as Michael Moynihan details on the Daily Beast:

People in Egypt, in case you haven't heard, aren't too happy with the state of things under President Mohamed Morsi. Cairo has been beset with protests and riots since Sunday.

But things got weird last night. From this video, posted over at The Aviationist, we can see hundreds of laser pointers being shined on helicopters and other military aircraft hovering over their protest site.

As many of you know, you're not supposed to do that because the light is absolutely blinding to pilots. It's illegal in the U.S. and has netted some steep punishments for perpetrators due to how dangerous it is.

Of course, the protestors have a relationship with the military that's sometimes hard to comprehend. While the military regime was repressive under the Hosni Mubarak administration, many see the military as a separate and almost co-equal branch that can check the excesses of the current Morsi government. The military just gave Morsi a 48-hour ultimatum to shape up or they will intervene.

I can't imagine what that must have looked like from the cockpit. Unless those pilots were properly protected from the light, it probably wasn't a pretty sight.

Photo credit AP

Hat tip to Creative Accidents!

A judge dismissed the three child molestation suits brought against Elmo creator Kevin Clash this morning, stating that the statute of limitations had expired. Wondering how to explain this final chapter to the kids? Gawker can help.

New York City is proud of its LGBTQ community, and it showed at this year's Pride parade. With more than 10,000 marchers sashaying down 5th ave, still high from the recent SCOTUS decisions, you could feel the excitement in the air. Millions of supporters lined the streets cheering along the floats, drag queens, wigs, and witches—it was an incredible site to see.

[Images by Victor G. Jeffreys II]

A 31-year-old Cirque du Soleil acrobat plummeted 50 feet to her death on Saturday during the finale scene of the company's Kà show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Hers is believed to be the first stage death in Cirque du Soleil's nearly 30 year history.

The Los Angeles Times writes that audience members saw Sarah Guillot-Guyard suddenly go into a "free fall" from her position dangling in the air above a hidden catwalk, dropping down into a pit below the show's vertical stage. Spectators reported hearing screams through the music, which continued to play for a few minutes after the accident until it was silenced. The other performers paused, dangling from their own safety harnesses for several minutes until they received a message in their earpieces from the show's production.

About 10 minutes after the fall, audience members were escorted from the theater as a pre-recorded announcement offered them refunds or vouchers to a future performance (pass). Guillot-Guyard was removed to Las Vegas' University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead shortly before midnight. While a cause of death has yet to be determined, the Las Vegas Sun reports Guillot-Guyard was still wearing her safety harness when she fell, which suggests that it may have become unattached from the cable to which it was clipped.

Upcoming performances of Kà have been canceled until further notice. Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte issued the following statement over the weekend:

"I am heartbroken. I wish to extend my sincerest sympathies to the family. We are all completely devastated. We are reminded with great humility and respect how extraordinary our artists are each and every night. Our focus now is to support each other as a family."

Guillot-Guyard was born in Paris, and a member of the Kà cast since 2006. She leaves behind two children, ages 5 and 8.

[L.A. Times // Las Vegas Sun // Image via Getty]

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

What have we learned from Paula Deen, really? The TV chef and animal-fats enthusiast has paid a certain price for the revelations, following from a harassment lawsuit, that she had used the word "nigger" in the past, and that she had allegedly envisioned a slavery-influenced Southern plantation wedding for her brother Bubba, complete with "little niggers" in bow ties serving the guests. Despite Deen's two rambling apology videos, the Food Network announced it was terminating its relationship with Deen, and Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, and the Smithfield Foods pork empire all followed suit.

Ultimately it seems like a wise business decision for anyone with professional ties to Deen to sever them as quickly as possible. Though Deen’s fan base bubbled and frothed like boiling butter, angry at her many dismissals, the simple fact is that openly admitting to saying "nigger" simply isn't tolerated in polite society anymore, not even by Virginia-based ham producers.

But in a society obsessed with so-called "teachable moments," what has this tear-filled and low-drama mess taught us about contemporary racism? For the New York Observer, former Gawker writer Joshua David Stein decried what he saw as people "bullying" the wounded Deen. "Instead of acting with moderation, somberly stripping Ms. Deen of her power, wealth and influence ... we—me, you and everyone we know—have howled ourselves into a meanie frenzy," he wrote. "We’ve turned Ms. Deen from a creepy crazy racist fat-monger into a victim."

I'm not sure that the line between retribution and mob revenge is distinct enough in this case to agree that society has crossed it—Deen still has lots of supporters lining up to eat in her restaurants, for instance—but I will agree that if anyone's goal in regard to Paula Deen was to help expose to her the true error of her ways, somewhere it all went badly wrong amidst the screaming.

At this point, notable people's racism ruinations read like Mad Libs: [Celebrity Name] said [Racist Thing]. Issues public apology on/in [Media Outlet]. Is scolded/fired by [Brand]. The end.

When ESPN anchor Max Bretos asked on the air what Asian basketball player Jeremy Lin's weaknesses were last year, he used the term "chink in the armor," and was quickly suspended for 30 days after apologizing on Twitter. The network also fired a writer for using the same expression in a headline about Lin. In 1997, when golfer Fuzzy Zoeller asked that Tiger Woods not serve fried chicken and collard greens for his Master's tournament victory meal, he hastily apologized, but was soon dropped from a sponsorship deal by Kmart. Last month, when golfer Sergio Garcia made yet another fried-chicken joke about Woods, he offered an apology to "anybody I could have offended." In response, his sponsor TaylorMade-Adidas said it was "continuing to review the matter."

It's not just this way for racial slurs, of course. When rapper Rick Ross made a reference to date rape in a song lyric earlier this year, the normally boastful bear of a man was downright contrite when it came time to own up to his mistake. Reebok still dropped him as a brand representative soon thereafter. Similarly, when director Brett Ratner was caught saying "rehearsing is for fags" in 2011, his apology did little to calm his detractors, and he was forced to resign as producer of that year's Oscars ceremony.

It's rote by now: slur, apologize, briefly suffer shame, repeat. We all know and accept the process, but in the end do we believe any of it has real impact? If it did, one might expect Sergio Garcia to not make the exact same "Tiger Woods likes chicken" joke Fuzzy Zoeller did 16 years ago. One might expect the PGA, if it were actually serious about curbing racism in its sport, to reconsider its historic relationship with golf clubs like Augusta National, which had only six black members out of hundreds in 2010.

But we don't expect that. We expect what we get: Zoeller and Garcia receiving slaps on the wrist while absorbing no real understanding of why it's shameful to reduce a proudly multiracial person to an ugly black stereotype. I have a hard time believing Garcia's or Zoeller's—or Deen's—cares ever extended beyond the thought that they might lose lots of money for publicly spouting the bigotry they normally reserve for private. What celebrities who say racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic things seem to learn in America is that they shouldn't say that stuff because it can be detrimental to their business, not because it is detrimental to the world around them.

What all this immaterial racism-scolding has yielded is a society in which people know it's bad to be racist without having any understanding of what racism actually means. Consider the case of Denise Helms, the California woman who last year went to her Facebook wall to write this immediately following President Obama's reelection: "And another 4 years of the nigger. maybe he will get assassinated this term..!!"

Following an internet uproar over her comments, and a Secret Service statement saying she was being "reviewed," Helms again took to her Facebook page to comment on the controversy: "Apparently a lot of people in Sacramento think I'm crazy and racist," she wrote. "WOW is all I got to say!! I'm not racist and I'm not crazy. just simply stating my opinion.!!!"

This is what America's decades of juvenile and ham-fisted handling of racial discussions has wrought: Helms, having been raised to grasp the very basic lesson that "racism = not good," had convinced herself that there's no way she could be a racist, because racists are bad people, and she's not a bad person. Rather, she was a lady simply stating her totally not racist opinion, which is that the president's a nigger and hopefully he'll get murdered.

I've never been a fan of Paula Deen, and her newly revealed attitudes and beliefs have only served to embolden my distaste. I also don't think it's incumbent upon businesses attempting to portray themselves as open to diversity to keep a known bigot on the payroll. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that the way we go about trying to "fix" these kinds of outbursts is always nearsighted to the point of being inconsequential.

When I was in college, a conservative student group staged an "affirmative action bake sale," something that's become a relatively normal sight on campuses around the country. The gist is that all the baked goods on display can be purchased, but at a different price based on race. White students pay $1 for a brownie, while black students pay 50 cents, and Latino students a quarter. The lesson being that the complexities of affirmative action can be boiled down to the idea that black people get cheaper brownies than white people.

Naturally, the bake sale riled up a significant portion of minority students on campus, some of whom wanted a sincere apology out of the conservative group. They never got one. Instead, a small cadre of sociology professors came together and held an open forum in which all willing students, liberal or conservative, could publicly engage with one another about affirmative action. It was a room of college kids, so the forum ended up being treacly and melodramatic throughout, but it was also enlightening in a way that putting the racists into the stocks in order to shame them and then forget about them would never have been.

There is still a time and place to mock racists (this is fucking Gawker), but if our end goal is eradicating racism, then we need to try and put in efforts beyond finger-pointing and dropped sponsorship deals. What if, instead of forcing Paula Deen to beg everyone's forgiveness through heaving sobs on national television, we instead used that airtime to chat with her about her beliefs? What if rather than giving her the idiotic question, "Would you have fired you?" as Matt Lauer did, we asked her to calmly understand why a white lady calling for black servers at a plantation wedding—a frighteningly common wedding theme in the South—looks so ugly and so awful to a great many people? What if Deen were forced to confront an actual black person who was willing to speak rationally with her about her past racism and its origins? The conversation probably wouldn't result in the Klan disbanding and volunteering for the NAACP, to be sure, but I have to think it would be better than seeing an old lady weep into Matt Lauer's lap for 10 minutes.

Back in 1985, in an interview for the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize, the late Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth spoke to one of the mistakes he and other organizers had made when initially trying to defeat racism in the United States. "We thought that you could just shame America," he said. "Say, 'Now, America, look at your promises. Look at how you treated your poor Negro citizens. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.' But you know...you can't shame segregation. Rattlesnakes don't commit suicide. Ball teams don't strike themselves out. You gotta put 'em out."

In other words, when it comes to killing bigotry, effecting real change means one must put in real, complex, and dogged work, work many prefer to eschew in favor of making fun of Paula Deen, watching her blubber mindlessly about "those without sin" on morning shows, and depriving her of sponsorship deals.

I think today Paula Deen is sorry she ever said the word "nigger." But I remain unconvinced that she doesn't still sometimes look at black people and think they would look cute in white coats and tap shoes at a down-home Georgia weddin'. I'm glad that we got another racist off our TVs and our hams, I suppose. I'm just not so sure we've gained any ground when it comes to getting racism off our earth.

[Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Getty]

I Want A Million Dollars A Year For Illegally Having My Mind Read And Privacy Stolen

— Amanda Bynes (@AmandaBynes) July 1, 2013

In the aftermath of the revelations about the NSA's secret spying programs, there is plenty of anger to go around. American citizens are pissed that they were spied on. European governments are pissed that they were spied on. Nobody, it seems, is happy with being spied on. So why is spying such an accepted institution?

The utility of spying is obvious: it gets our government information that our government wants. But utility is not a justification. Stealing, for example, has the same utility as spying— it gets someone something they want— yet we understand that stealing is wrong. It infringes upon the rights of the person whose possessions are being stolen. Spying is much like stealing, except that it is secrets, rather than possessions, being stolen. Spying infringes upon the basic right to privacy. Governments implicitly acknowledge this, by keeping all their spying activities secret.

Upon discovering that the NSA was collecting metadata and possibly more on virtually all communications in America, we Americans had the (quite reasonable) gut reaction: Hey, stop that. That's fucked up. We believe that we have a natural right to privacy. We believe that, absent extenuating circumstances of a very rare kind, that right to privacy should be respected by our government. It offends our sense of fairness. It strikes us as an unwarranted intrusion. We do not volunteer to be spied upon. We do not appreciate being spied upon. We do not approve of being spied upon.

Governments, likewise, do not want to be spied upon. European nations that are ostensibly our allies are outraged at this weekend's report that America bugged their diplomatic offices. The U.S. government displayed a sense of righteous outrage at the Chinese government's rampant online spying and computer hacking; now, our government finds itself in the position of having to justify the same behavior. All of these countries spend billions of dollars on their own spy agencies, and billions more to try to prevent other countries from spying on them.

We, the people, generally take a glib attitude towards our own government's massive spying infrastructure. Until it's directed at us. We live in a nation in which more than 850,000 people have top-secret security clearances, and 50,000 intelligence reports are published each year. This is the spying-industrial complex of America: massive, pervasive, and operating almost totally out of the public eye. We enjoy movies about CIA spies. We devour fiction about intriguing spy plots around the world. But we rarely stop to question the cognitive dissonance inherent in our blithe acceptance of something that we all object to, when we are its targets.

No one is under the illusion that public disapproval can instantly eradicate— or even meaningfully slow down— such a massive and powerful system of what is euphemistically called "intelligence." In the long term, though, all grey-area government activities depend upon the acquiescence of the public, or at least the public's willingness to look the other way. This is far bigger than "antiterrorism"; this is worldwide electronic spying that extends to our closest allies. Our general acceptance of the institution of government spying is an unspoken acceptance of the proposition that our government's interests are so important that they justify invading the privacy of foreign nationals and foreign governments simply because they are not us, and therefore not perfectly aligned with our own interests. And it implies acceptance of an even less savory truth: our government will be given our permission to lie to us.

For if we accept and approve of the government secrecy that is a fundamental part of spying as it now stands, we also must allow for the fact that our elected leaders and their appointed functionaries— the ones with all those top secret security clearances— will breezily lie to us about what all those spying programs are doing. Of course they will! And we will happily accept it, because we have given them our permission to deceive us, when we decided to approve of a massive and publicly unaccountable spying infrastructure in the first place. It's not just James Clapper flatly lying to Congress about the NSA's domestic spying activities; it's Barack Obama saying that "if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls and the NSA cannot target your e-mails,” an example of dishonest verbal ju-jitsu if there ever was one.

To the extent that spying can prevent wars and make the world a safer place, it has value. To the extent that it erodes civil liberties, eats away at privacy, makes a mockery of the concept of open government, destroys trust between allies, and sets each country on earth against one another in an unnecessary and unending low-grade Cold War of information theft, it is problematic. Either way, government spying as a concept and an institution is certainly deserving of more scrutiny than we generally give it. And there's no better time to start talking about it than right now.

[Photo: Flickr]

Bebo was supposed to be a very, very big social network—so big, AOL paid $850 million for it back in 2005. Ha, ha, ha. That never happened. It's dead. But today, the site's founder says he's buying it back for 1/850th of the sale price, just for "fun." Fun! This is what's fun, now.

I guess, looking back, this might be the day These People decided money doesn't mean much of anything anymore:

We just bought Bebo back for $1m. Can we actually re-invent it? Who knows, but it will be fun trying...

— Michael Birch (@mickbirch) July 1, 2013

Will this amount of money I just spent end up mattering at all? Who knows.

Birch, who created Bebo and has long since massively profited from its sale and implosion, just bought it as a goof. A hobby purchase. Like someone might purchase an old junker car, or a broken lamp, and maybe tinker around with it on weekends in the basement, Michael Birch spent $1 million to play around with a dead website. Maybe it'll become a real thing again—it very well could be. Maybe not. More importantly, who cares—if we live in a word where $850 million can be shifted around so weightlessly, why wouldn't you treat web properties as a diversion?

It'll be worth it just to talk about at The Battery, the geeky private social club for other rich people Birch is bankrolling. Remember when I bought Bebo back? Guffaw. Birch, you crazy son of a bitch. AOL will not be laughing.

A RIDDLE: Who is stronger? Jeff, whose huge biceps pop up when he makes a "flexing" motion, as he frequently does; or his brother Jeremy, who has huge triceps thanks to endless skull crushers and "tricep kickbacks"? The answer may surprise you.

The answer: It's their unassuming brother Albert, who boasts neither big showy biceps nor arm-engorging triceps, but whose forearms are real strong, in an understated way, because he's been a carpenter his whole life, while his wastrel brothers both opened tanning salons and sold Ecstasy on the side. Albert, through a lifetime of hard work, developed the actual most useful arm muscle of all: THE HUMBLE FOREARM, home of the mighty GRIP.

Dudes think they need big arms to be strong. You don't need big arms to be strong. You don't need big arms for anything except filling up T-shirt sleeves as a visual representation of your own vanity. You don't need to be wasting hours doing curls, just so you can make the joke about "two tickets to the gun show"—which, come on, fellas, is not even that funny any more. You don't need to be wasting hours doing all those weird little tricep isolation exercises to give "bulk" to your "pythons." If you want to know the truth, my friend: I would be more scared of a dude with strong forearms than a dude with big huge biceps, because the dude with strong forearms probably actually does some shit that requires strength.

What are arms good for, really? Besides displaying tattoos of dragons, that is. In terms of strength, arms are good mostly for hanging on to things. No strong person's source of strength is his arms. Strength comes overwhelmingly from the big muscles in your body, like the back, and the hips, and the legs, and the glutes, and the chest, and—most importantly—the love. Arms have very little to do with a goddamn thing. You want to bench press? You're moving that weight with your chest, bro, not your arms. You want to lift a huge rock and/or a coworker's lifeless body off the ground (don't ask why)? That's your back and legs, not your arms. There is a name for dudes in the gym who spend all their time getting big arms, and that name is "something unkind I would not deign to publish in a family newspaper."

The single most important thing that arms do is hold stuff that you want to move somehow. Arms are the connectors that translate the source of your real power onto the thing you're manipulating, be it a barbell, a friend's couch, or your brother Jeremy, who just needs to get thrown through a plate glass window every once in a while. The arms do not generate most of the power, but they do translate the power. And to do that, something must be held. It must be gripped. Enter: grip strength (The Unsung Hero of Varieties of Arm Strength™)!

Your back may be strong as hell. Your legs may be strong as hell. Your back and your legs, working together, may be able to lift 500 pounds off the floor. But guess what, my macho friend: If your hands cannot grip 500 pounds and hold 500 pounds as it comes off the floor, then those 500 pounds are staying on the floor. The grip is quite often the weakest link in the strength chain. And, as many wise men have pointed out when they were imprisoned inside gyms for many years, "The chain is only as strong as its weakest link because the weak link breaks first, and, at that point, even if the rest of the chain is super strong, it's like, who cares?"

When some people think of "grip strength," they think—for some reason—of some old-timey strongman tearing phone books in half and bending quarters between his fingertips, all while wearing a leopard-print loincloth. I guess that's why you shouldn't depend on "some people" for a proper definition of grip strength!!! Old-timey strongmen are great and all, and I encourage all of you to actively incorporate phone book-tearing into your training regimens, but grip strength is generally built through more mundane activities: namely, anything in which gravity is trying to open your hand. Carrying something heavy with a handle on it? That's building grip strength. Pullups, rows, deadlifts, and any other pulling exercise? That's building grip strength. Literally just standing there, holding some kind of weight in your hand, with your arm at your side? That's building grip strength. Anything that causes your forearm to start burning as if it had been injected with Drano is probably building your grip strength. No, you don't have to be squeezing on a Captains of Crush™-brand Hand Gripper in order to be building your grip strength, although there is no particular reason not to be squeezing on a Captains of Crush™-brand Hand Gripper at any given moment, because what are you really doing right now, anyhow? There's no excuse not to always be building grip strength.

Grip strength! The unheralded keystone of all other strengths, residing mostly in the humble forearm, sorely forgotten by the vain muscle-flexers. A small, barely noticeable ripple in a forearm is often indicative of more real-world strength than a bicep the size and shape of a Big Mac. Grip strength! The only type of arm strength worth being obsessed with. Grip strength! A small bit of muscular ability that is a prelude to an entire set of physical-sophical beliefs, i.e. that strength is only meaningful insofar as you can actually do shit with it. Shit other than posing at the beach with your shirt off. Just because Sharon likes it doesn't make you smart, because—guess what?—Sharon herself has not even formulated a coherent philosophy of the mind-body connection, so who cares how pretty she is, anyhow? Not me.

There are many people at "the gym" who wear straps on their wrists, which they use to wrap around heavy weights, and then lift those weights, which are too heavy for their hands to hold, but which their larger muscles can move. Can these people actually lift these weights? No. They cannot hold them, therefore they cannot lift them. They use straps (or sometimes even hooks, like a bunch of extra-muscular pirate captains cast ashore and forced to deadlift their buried treasure) to cut their grip—the weakest link in their chain—out of the lift, allowing them to "lift" more, using only their bigger muscles. And the more they lift in this manner, the bigger the gap becomes between what their big muscles can lift, and what they can actually hold, in reality. Do you see the functional as well as philosophical problems with this state of affairs? Bueller? Great, you can lift a huge weight, and your traps are all swole up, but when the car falls off the jack and onto your friend's head while he's changing the tire, all that super "strength" will be for naught, because you can't grip the car to lift it up, because you neglected your grip strength in order to put up some gaudy numbers for your own ego. Now your friend is dead.

You thought you could cut out the weakest link in the chain. Looks like the weakest link in your chain ... cut out ... you, or something along those lines. Or, oh, looks like it cut off your friend's head. That's what I should have said. In any case, grip strength is highly functional.

This is an occasional column about fitness, and how you're doing it wrong. Image by Jim Cooke.

A blogger for The New York Times has been requesting thousands of dollars in "expenses" and travel airfare from a public relations firm trying to get its clients covered in the Times, according to emails obtained by Gawker.

"This is a minimum investment and shows the company has some skin in game," wrote the blogger, Cliff Oxford, in an email last week to a PR executive representing tech companies. "My daily rate is 10 grand per day so I am putting my time on line."

Oxford, a former VP at UPS who sold his technology outsourcing company in 2003, once tried to run for senator in Georgia and currently manages an education company called Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. He also writes for "You're the Boss," a group blog on the web site of Times' business section that dispenses advice on how to grow companies. The Oxford Center's homepage prominently links to Oxford's Times posts at the top of the page.

When a PR executive representing tech companies reached out to Oxford in January to try to get his clients covered in "You're the Boss," Oxford responded by asking for the tech company to cover his travel costs. As the two continued discussing coverage, Oxford's demand increased to $1,188 per company for travel expenses, including flight, hotel, food, parking, and car.

Oxford's blog posts may seem like an odd choice of publicity for budding tech companies, but the value of a New York Times logo to your small startup's press page can't be overstated. And he does occasionally mention outside companies, like Tumblr. "That’s what I call a winner," he wrote of the CEO of an indoor trampoline park company. In December, he profiled an ear, nose, and throat facility in his home city. Oxford also devoted an entire post to an accounting firm that sponsors the Oxford Center, noting the relationship in a parenthetical disclosure.

Oxford first requested airfare and hotel reimbursement from our PR tipster in February, in exchange for agreeing to meet and research one of the PR firm's clients for a potential "You're the Boss" post. The flack scrounged to meet Oxford's request with Starwood Points and Delta Miles, but the plan fell through after he had already purchased the ticket. (Gawker obtained a receipt for both.)

But when Oxford tried again in June, he upped the ante, requesting expenses as well:

"The only way we can make my visits fair, efficient and substantive is to to charge each company a minimum And flat rate for expenses. We will do all the bookings, upgrades etc"

Oxford did not promise coverage in return for paying his way. "There are no guarantees other than my time and focus to learn about these companies," he wrote in an email on Friday.

Asked if there may have been some confusion between Oxford's role as a consultant and his gig for the Times, the PR exec was clear: The flack was interested in getting Oxford to write about clients on the Times' web site, and Oxford was demanding expenses and travel to even consider it.

"[Coverage] was exactly what I'd been pushing the entire time," the exec told Gawker. "I was never asking to get this dude to do consultancy. I don't even know what he consults on." The flack's initial email to Oxford (reproduced below) was sent to the email address—nytblog@oxford-center.com—listed on Oxford's profile at "You're the Boss."

In an email from January regarding the aborted February trip, Oxford appeared to blur the line between his role as a consultant and blogger, and made clear that the expenses-paid trip was for his "own understanding" and would only become a Times story if he sees "a worthy story":

[Redacted] and Team

I look forward to it and my specialty is high growth. If you have some time please take some time to read past 3 or 4 blogs I basically help fast growth entrepreneurs "Scale or Sale" I would like to be very clear that this trip is for my own understanding and I am not representing NYT this time. If I see a worthy story, I will engage in that capacity. I do find what you have quite remarkable and [redacted] is quite brilliant in his approach. I think we will have an enjoyable and productive time. Best Cliff

But the PR exec insisted to Gawker that in phone conversations, Oxford said he was traveling as a representative of the Times.

The Times policy on ethics in journalism states: "When we as journalists entertain news sources (including government officials) or travel to cover them, our company pays the expenses." It's unclear whether the publication's notoriously strict guidelines apply to Oxford.

We've reached out to small business editor Loren Feldman and the New York Times public editor. A representative said they were looking into the matter. We have also reached out to Oxford and will update the post when we hear back. The full correspondence is below (emphasis ours):

————— Forwarded message —————
From: Cliff Oxford <cliff@oxford-center.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 11:13 AM
Subject: Re: companies...

To: xxx@xxxx.com

????? The Oxford center is not going to pay expenses to learn about your companies. This has worked well with other companies and without one Hitch.

From: xxx@xxxx.com
Date: Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: companies...
To: Cliff Oxford <cliff@oxford-center.com>

this whole situation has kinda skeeved me out the more i think about it......

On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Cliff Oxford <cliff@oxford-center.com> wrote:

I totally understand and appreciate it but it is too complicated. Maybe another way another time. Thanks

On Jun 28, 2013, at 2:37 PM, xxx@xxxx.com wrote:

They were planning to use miles a lot of them...

On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Cliff Oxford <cliff@oxford-center.com> wrote:

For travel expenses including flight, hotel , food,0 parking, car etc it will be 1188 per company the stop over in Austin is 877

On Jun 27, 2013, at 7:06 PM, xxx@xxxx.com wrote:

Ok let me. Know

On Jun 27, 2013 6:39 PM, "Cliff Oxford" <cliff@oxford-center.com> wrote:

There are no guarantees other than my time and focus to learn about these companies.

We don't know yet about costs but it should be relatively a low amount

On Jun 26, 2013, at 4:18 PM, xxx@xxxx.com wrote:

When you say bookings, what do you mean? how much will it all cost? And what can you guarantee will be the outcome?

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 4:17 PM, Cliff Oxford <cliff@oxford-center.com> wrote:

xxx

The only way we can make my visits fair, efficient and substantive is to to charge each company a minimum And flat rate for expenses. We will do all the bookings, upgrades etc Thanks

On Jun 25, 2013, at 10:47 AM, xxx@xxxx.com wrote:

great thank you

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Cliff Oxford <cliff@oxford-center.com> wrote:

Yes we are also working on this so we will not have in problems or time gaps. My team is looking at it. I might hit Chicago in middle but they would be at my expense. Will let you know

On Jun 25, 2013, at 9:34 AM, xxx@xxxx.com wrote

Okay so from what I gather it's

July 31: ATL-NY

Aug 5: NYC-SF

Aug 7: SF-ATL? or SF-AUS

And are they handling your nights' stay in NYC? I'll need it spelled out to get them to organize it otherwise something will go wrong

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:19 PM, xxx@xxxx.com wrote:

Great. Send me dates and everything and i'll book.

On Jun 24, 2013 6:19 PM, "Cliff Oxford" <cliff@oxford-center.com> wrote:

Yes

On Jun 24, 2013, at 6:01 PM, xxx@xxxx.com wrote:

Ok so they pay travel and that's it...?

On Jun 24, 2013 6:00 PM, "Cliff Oxford" <cliff@oxford-center.com> wrote:

[Redacted]

Travel is required but should be paid by company and not by you. This is a minimum investment and shows the company has some skin in game. My daily rate is 10 grand per day so I am putting my time on line. Next, I am focused on fast growth companies so if they are start ups or mulling along, I do not want to see them. The company pays travel on the same metrics as suggested by IRS. The travel is prepaid and I never have cancellations. We can talk more later

On Jun 24, 2013, at 5:43 PM, xxx@xxxx.com wrote:

sounds good to me. are you interested in these? is there definitely a piece in there? do i have to pay travel again?

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Cliff Oxford<cliff@oxford-center.com> wrote:

I can be in NY Aug 1st and 2nd. Calf aug 5 and 6thand Austin aug 7th

Here's the initial email between Oxford and the PR executive:

————— Forwarded message —————
From: xxx@xxxx.com
Date: Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 2:44 PM
Subject: Hello, a few sentences, not a pitch
To: Nytblog@oxford-center.com

Hey there Cliff,Yes yes, I'm in PR and I'm sorry.Short and sweet question: do you ever care to hear from interesting (I have boring ones too) founders? Or products that might help 'em? If so, what kind?

Alright, that's it, sorry if that was annoying.

UPDATE: The parable of Cliff Oxford seems to be a lesson in the kind of degradation of quality—and ethical standards—that can happen when a news organization cedes content to contributors.

Reached by phone, Oxford repeatedly insisted that his demands for airfare and travel expenses were only related to the Oxford Center. “We’re disappointed that [redacted’s] companies didn’t qualify for the Oxford Center and he’s upset. The New York Times was never mentioned once—all conversation was 100 percent on Oxford Center,” he told Gawker.

When we read Oxford back the line from his own email stating: “I am not representing NYT this time. If I see a worthy story, I will engage in that capacity,” he said that was also related to his full-time business. “I write stories for the Oxford Center all the time. I make it clear that it is not for the New York Times.” However, the Oxford Center’s “Don’t Miss” ticker is only filled with his posts from the Times. There is also a prominent “NY Times Blog” link at the top left of the homepage.

Our source vehemently disputes that this correspondence was related to the Oxford Center. According to Oxford, the center has 450 company members. “We could possibly connect you with other people that can help. We provide a curriculum. We provide an online education,” he said.

Typically, said Oxford, if companies agree to pay expenses, then he does a review. “We have a three hour program we take them through and review it with their company—what is their growth rate, what is their leadership team—to see if they qualify.”

Oxford also insisted there was no cost associated with his service. “They’re not paying me, they’re paying expenses,” he said. Sounds like your typical consultant doublespeak, but this is not how journalism, or people holding out an editorial carrot, should function.

Oxford said he would send emails confirming that these requests for expenses and travel were not related to the New York Times. We will update the post if he provides them.

UPDATE 2: A representative from the Times emailed the following comment:

Editors have reviewed this situation in detail with Cliff. He says these exchanges were strictly regarding his role as a consultant with his company, the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. He did not make any suggestion that he would be covering the companies for You’re the Boss and in fact specifically noted that he was not representing The Times.

The representative has yet to respond to follow-up questions about whether the Times' editorial policy applies to Oxford.

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

[Image via Vimeo]

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