An "unsanctioned fraternity pledging event" hosted by Baruch College students turned deadly after one of the pledges suffered brain trauma during a hazing ritual known as the "Glass Ceiling Game."

Some 30 members of the Manhattan-based school's Pi Delta Psi chapter had been staying at a vacation home in the Poconos for a weekend "group retreat" when the incident took place.

The Asian-American frat was reportedly rushing a four-person pledge class without the college's knowledge.

Freshman Chun Hsien “Michael” Deng, one of the pledges, was participating in a backyard hazing ritual when he sustained life-threatening injuries.

CBS 2 describes the so-called "Glass Ceiling Game" as follows:

Pledges are blindfolded and a bowling ball-type weight is put into a bag and tied to their backs. They are then forced to walk through a human “tunnel” while others try to tackle them. The goal is to make it all way through the tunnel.

Police sources told Brown Deng was knocked down several times during the game, causing his injuries.

Authorities in Tunkhannock Township say the frat members took the injured 19-year-old into the house, but did not call 911.

It was only "after some time" that someone bothered to drive Deng to the closest hospital.

Deng, who suffered major brain trauma, was subsequently placed on life support, but ultimately passed away on Monday.

The fraternity's National Executive President called the event "unsanctioned" and "strictly prohibited," and condemned the hazing.

Pi Delta Psi pledging has since been suspended across all chapters pending the results of an investigation.

Baruch College released its own statement, saying it has "a zero tolerance policy regarding hazing" — a policy which Pi Delta Psi has sworn to abide by.

"Michael’s death is a deeply painful reminder that no individual should ever be put into a position where his or her personal safety is in jeopardy," the college's statement continued. "Our deepest sympathies go out to Michael’s family and his friends both at Baruch and at home."

Baruch also announced that the fraternity's rights and privileges had been suspended indefinitely.

[screengrab via CBS New York]

The Bible has been called an historical document, a guidebook for moral living, and a work of fiction. No matter how you view it, there is no question that certain parts are confusing. We'll take a look at the possible meanings of the nine strangest passages in the Bible.

9. The Many Begettings

One of the features of the Bible, which have been satirized many times, are the long passages that say things like, "and Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse." The longest begetting streak is at the beginning of the book of Matthew. It starts with Abraham and ends with Joseph, the father of Jesus. This is puzzling, not just because the Bible is keeping track of people's sex lives, but because it includes Joseph at all. The supposed intention of the passage is to link Jesus, son of Joseph, to Abraham, father of the people of Israel, and yet the entire point of Jesus is that he is God's son by the virgin Mary. Joseph had nothing, biologically, to do with it. If anything, the Bible should be linking Mary with Abraham, and leaving Joseph out of it. Why the many listed begettings?

Some say that there is a subtext to this passage. Many of the people who were doing the begetting were not married to those who were begat upon. Therefore the sons that they begat held the technical definition of "bastard." Jesus was born to a single woman who was known to be engaged to a local man, and who was also in occupied territory. This kind of thing gets people talking. Although the begettings link Jesus to Abraham, they also necessitate acceptance of paternity that was outside the norm, negating questions about how, exactly, Mary got pregnant. Whatever happened, Jesus was God's chosen son and connected with God's people.

8. Jesus Gets Mad at a Tree

One day, Jesus is strolling along with his disciples, and he's feeling a little peckish. As Jesus walked, "he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away." In another book, which repeats the story, it is stressed that "the time of the figs was not yet." There was no real reason to expect that the tree would have fruit. So it looks like Jesus, the son of god, had a tantrum and wrecked a tree because it didn't have out-of-season fruit for him.

Some people point to this passage as an example of Jesus's humanity. He was supposed to be divine, but human, and have his cranky days like any other human. Others note that this was an emotional time for Jesus in general. He was four days away from crucifixion - which he knew was coming - and just about to take a whip to some moneylenders in a temple. It's also noted that figs and fig trees were often used as a metaphor for the people in the area. The fig tree, like the people, wasn't spiritually ready. This passage was meant to show that something extreme had to happen to make people righteous, and to demonstrate what would happen to people who didn't turn righteous.

7. What did Ruth Do?

Here's one that only gets more confusing with explanations. Many people know the basic story of the devoted Ruth. When her husband died, she followed her mother in law, Naomi, to Naomi's land and dedicated herself to Naomi's people and faith. This was a problem, as now Naomi and Ruth were living without a lot of money on leased land. Enter Boaz, the wealthy kinsman of Naomi. Naomi had a suggestion for Ruth, instructing that she should, "Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking. And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie and thou shalt go in and uncover his feet and lay thee down, and he will tell thee what thou shalt do." Ruth did so, Boaz woke up in the middle of it, and she and Boaz got married soon after that.

If that sounds suggestive, it's because you're paying attention. Some people say that Ruth simply lay at Boaz's feet in submission, but that leaves a few things unexplained. Why did he need his feet uncovered for her to lie there? Some say that "feet" can also be translated as "legs," which cover the lower half of the body. This explains why Ruth had to "uncover" them to get a marriage proposal. By far the most wholesome explanation hinges on possible slang. Boaz was staying away from home at the time. Finding out where a person was staying, some say, was referred to as, "uncovering their feet." But why was the passage in there at all? Basically, because the ethnic and political situation in the middle east was as complicated then as it is now. Ruth, some claim, was a gentile, and she wasn't from that area. Boaz and Ruth were in the genetic line that lead to Jesus. Jesus was meant to be a local boy. So there needed to be a compelling reason why Ruth was in the line that lead to Jesus. The story stresses that she was a dutiful daughter-in-law, and that she married the kinsman of a local woman.

6. Beware of dogs! And circumcision!

A surprisingly small amount of the Bible is actually dedicated to what Jesus did and said. After that's over, the rest of the book consists of letters from various apostles to various groups of followers. The most famous (and extensive) correspondence is that of Paul. If you read through them, you'll notice a trend. At first, Paul talks about circumcision in reassuring tones. He explains that circumcision is fine - and he himself performed one on Timothy, whose mother was an ethnically Jewish convert and whose father was Greek - but it's not mandatory. Feel free, he says, to abstain. After a time, Paul cools on the idea, saying that people should concern themselves with the spiritual, not the physical. Towards the end of his letters, though, you get lines like, "Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, and beware of the circumcision." It's like they're all going to jump out at you from a closet.

Why the slide towards circumcision hatred? It turns out that, during Paul's lifetime, a group known as "Judaizers," sprang up. They wanted the new Christians to conform to existing Jewish law. This alienated outsiders, and Paul's vision of religion was one that was based on conversion. What we see in his letters was not a dismissal of existing laws, but an increasingly desperate attempt to turn the tide of a political movement inside his religion.

5. Protect Yourself From God With Foreskins

Moses had a wife named Zipporah. Zipporah gave him two sons. They all traveled around together, and one night, at an inn, God decided to kill Moses. I'm not sure how long it takes God to kill someone, but apparently that day He was taking His time. How much time? Quite a bit, because, according to the Bible, "Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me."

Zipporah's quick thinking apparently saved the day, because God stopped trying to murder Moses and went on His way. The thing that is meant to catch the reader's eye is not Zipporah knowing how to make God feel better (or possibly gross Him out), but that Moses's sons still had their foreskins. Moses was attacked because he was neglecting religious law and when you procrastinate, sometimes you have to make do with whatever is to hand at the last minute.

4. Jesus Forms a Psychic Connection to a Donkey

The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all deal with the life of Jesus, and they all mention his entrance into Jerusalem. Before he enters the city, Jesus tells his disciples to go to a certain place, where they'll find a donkey and the donkey's colt. They are to bring both animals back out, and he'll ride into the city on them. They do so, with Jesus getting on one of the donkeys, and the disciples piling their extra stuff on the other. And Jesus comes into the city.

Previously, Jesus had fed the hungry, healed lepers, raised the dead, walked on water, and calmed storms at sea. Knowing where to find a nice donkey is not impressive, in comparison. And yet every book mentions that damn donkey. Why? Because in the book of Zechariah, in the Old Testament, it was said that the messiah would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. Jesus didn't just appear and say he was the son of God. He claimed to be a specific messiah that people had been making predictions about for some time. Much of the more bizarre stuff that Jesus does (in one version of the story of the Last Supper he actually confirms aloud that Judas will betray him and no one does anything about it) are done to conform to an existing legend. This was the ancient world's version of proof of identity.

3. Jacob Takes God's Lunch Money

Well, not literally, but he could have. One day, Jacob goes out into the desert to think and gets tackled. It's late, and he doesn't know who is doing the tackling, but he isn't about to be out-wrassled. He struggles all night, and at dawn, the stranger does something weird. He touches Jacob's hip, which immediately dislocates. Jacob realizes that it's God he's fighting, but decides that he didn't go out into the desert to take silver at the spiritual Olympics. He refuses to let go of God until God gives him a blessing.

Some might call this defiance. Others consider it redemption. Jacob wasn't wandering in the desert for fun. His relatives had divested him of all his money and were still gunning for him. One interpretation of this is Jacob realizing that God could kill him, but hanging on because having the favor of God meant more than his own life. It's a redemption story wrapped up in a story about mixed martial arts.

2. Jesus Drowns Some Pigs

In multiple books Jesus comes the edge of a lake. Near the lake, in a cave, lives a man who is possessed by many demons. Jesus decides he's not going to put up with that, and orders those demons out of the man. The demons beg Jesus not to just turn them out, but to send them into a herd of pigs who are grazing nearby. (Some versions of the story number the pigs in the thousands.) Jesus decides to give the demons what they want, and sends them into the pigs. The pigs then run into the water and drown.

This is, to put it mildly, weird. And no real explanation is given for it in the text. There is one interpretation of this story that hinges on the personality of Jesus. He's generally snarkier and more a fan of word play than he's given credit for. There are a lot of passages that show people trying to force him into saying something that would amount to treason or sacrilege, and him cleverly evading the answer. This might be another form of evasion. The demons don't want to be sent to hell, and Jesus says he won't send them there . . . and then the pigs send them there instead. The key to understanding the passage, though, might be what the demons say. Jesus asks who they are, and they say, "We are legion." There is also another "legion" in the area - a Roman legion that was not fastidious about eating pigs. The story is often interpreted as a symbolic casting out of the Romans, represented as dirty swine bent for hell.

1. Why Did Cain Kill His Brother?

Cain and Abel were the children of Adam and Eve, and were the participants in the first murder. What's never made clear is why the first murder even happened. The Bible describes the events leading up to the murder - "And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell." God talks to Cain, encouraging him to try again, but instead, "Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him."

There's a myth, regarding that passage, which claims that Abel offered up his best, while Cain gave god the discards, but the text doesn't support it. We don't know why God rejected Cain's offering. Nor is it specified what the brothers talked about before Cain killed Abel. What's interesting is that Cain is a farmer, while Abel is a herder. A herder had an easier life than a farmer. There are some theories that state that Cain was trying to live God's punishment, toiling for a living, and resented Abel for his easier life. Cain believed that Abel should be punished by God, and did the punishing himself. This did not go over well with a deity who specified that "Revenge is mine." Other theories have it that this was a symbolic tale of the traditional animosity between settled farmers and nomadic herders. Still another variation of the story holds that the brothers were to marry twin sisters, and whoever had the better offering got the pretty sister. This finally explains why Cain would even bother to kill his brother. Cain couldn't possibly have thought that he could hide a murder from God (especially since there were only about six people in the whole world) but he might have thought that he could have the bride of his choice. Maybe that was worth committing the first murder.

After an investigation by the inspector general, NASA says what we already knew: Google's top brass use tax-subsidized gas to go on pleasure trips around the world, saving millions of dollars it could easily afford.

Charitably, NASA chalks the arrangement up to a "misunderstanding" between H211, Google's fleet-managing dummy corporation, and the feds:

We found that a misunderstanding between Ames and DLA-Energy personnel rather than intentional misconduct led to H211 enjoying the discounted fuel rate for flights that had no NASA-related mission. From September 2007 until August 2013, H211 purchased fuel at Moffett from DLA-Energy either directly or through NASA for both its personal (non-NASA related) flights and NASA science flights at a rate intended only for government agencies and their contractors. Even though Ames officials accurately reported to DLA-Energy the nature of the Center's agreement with H211, DLA-Energy misunderstood that H211 was drawing fuel for both private and NASA-related missions. While this arrangement did not cause a loss to NASA or DLA-Energy, it resulted in considerable savings for H211.3 Specifically, we calculated that since inception of its lease H211 paid approximately $3.3 million to $5.3 million less for fuel supplied by DLA-Energy than it would have paid to buy fuel at market rates.

Emphasis added. The report, which you can read in full below, says Google will pay "market prices" for, say, flying Eric Schmidt to Martha's Vineyard, and a discounted rate for "scientific" flights that provide NASA with atmospheric data. "As a result of this new arrangement," the report continues, "the Government is collecting more money than it costs to provide the fuel to H211." Well that's good—it only took several years to straighten this all out.

The price of Iowa farmland is $8,716 an acre, the most expensive it's ever been. What would you buy if you had $8,716?

How many months does the average full-time McDonald's, Starbucks, Gap, Target or Best Buy worker need to work in order to match what the CEO makes in an hour? Place your bets, then hit the link for knowledge. Depressing, awful knowledge.

Bears! Sure, 2013 is technically the Year of the Deer, but what would the past 12 months have been without Gawker.com's groundbreaking bear coverage? Answer: Not much. So as Gawker Media's premier source for all news bear-related, we're proud to present: The Year in Bears, 2013 Edition.

This year's bear stories covered the full spectrum of emotion. There was triumph and tragedy, laughter and tears. We've witnessed new cubs playing and old bears dying. But if we've learned one thing in particular this year, it's that bears love to pretend like they're human. Just look at this little bear on a slide!

And here's a tiny bear trying to take a picture! Meanwhile, his friend is over in the driveway trying to fix a car.

And in 2013, this grizzly bear celebrated his 11th birthday, just like a person! Happy birthday, bear!

We learned that some like to wrestle each other. Take, for instance, these two grizzlies, play fighting in Katmai National Park in Alaska. Wouldn't want to get between those two!

Some bears, though, aren't content to hang out and play with other bears. They prefer to live in the fast lane and ride around in exotic Italian sports cars. Just look at this guy, sitting in a Lamborghini like it's no big deal.

It wasn't just wrestling or driving sports cars for bears in 2013, though. Nope. Some bears did some dancing as well. Like these three cubs, holding hands and possibly singing.

Nothing helps you get in the dancing spirits like a drink or two. Here's a bear celebrating 2013 by walking around in a bar in Colorado and patiently waiting for service. But the poor guy had trouble ordering his drink, in part because no one even noticed he was there! Bad business decision for the bar, considering bears are known to drink 100 or so beers in one sitting.

If you've ever wondered what bears do for fun after a few drinks when no humans are around to take pictures, here's your answer: They party in the woods:

Which is much better than what one bear in China did earlier this year. Here's video of that bear eating a monkey that fell off a bicycle :(

And in September in Los Angeles, one bear led the LAPD on long, televised chase! Luckily for everyone, this bear was caught and is doing okay.

Of course, there was some tragic bear news in 2012. In August, Gus, the depressed polar bear at the Central Park Zoo, was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor and euthanized. He was 27. RIP, Gus.

But we can't end on a sad note. Here's a Russian bear doing all sorts of tricks, including playing the trumpet!

(See also Gawker Media's terrific amateur bear resource, bears.kinja.com)

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Matt Taibbi's new street-level study on the crumbling of America is a shocking, important read. It focuses on Camden, New Jersey, which has all the crime problems of Detroit and none of the fancy expensive art to sell.

To make sure everyone buys everyone the best gifts ever, this year Gawker has divided the universe of potential gift recipients into readers of our Gawker Media brother and sister sites.

Life: a problem to be solved. A challenge to overcome. A quandary not to be squandered. Do you allow life to trap you in its tentacles, slowly suffocating you in weight and worry? Or do you HACK your way through life's tentacles—preferably with the help of the latest consumer electronics and time-saving apps?

I think we all know the answer (the last one). Lifehacker readers tend to be highly motivated, organized, peppy, well-groomed, business-minded, and possess a "can-do" attitude about finding, identifying, and implementing the most efficient possible way to make coffee. They bear little resemblance to the cranky alcoholics that constitute the majority of Gawker Media readers and writers. If someone close to you is a Lifehacker reader, be grateful. Yes, the spreadsheets they email you daily outlining a faster driving route to work can get tedious. But it could be worse. They could be reading Deadspin. (And drunk) (Needless to say).

You can't just buy a Lifehacker reader a bottle of cheap vodka and call it a day, as you would for a Deadspin reader. You have to get creative(ly precise)! Please put your suggestions for Lifehacker-themed gifts in the discussion section below. A few rules:

1. Begin with the name of the gift, in bold, followed by the price.

2. If there's a photograph, post that below the name and price.

3. Describe the gift and why the sort of person who reads Lifehacker would like it.

4. Indicate where an interested reader can purchase the gift, linking out to an online retailer if appropriate. Which online retailer? That's up to you. But if you link out to Amazon.com, a nifty little box will appear allowing readers to click a little thingie and buy it right there, which is pretty neat. Even neater, Gawker will get a cut of the purchase price. Do what you will with that information. Get gifting!

Things HBO does well: hardcore drama, softcore porn, amazing holiday gifts. Things HBO does not do well: hashtags, roasts, trying to make things go viral. And so begins the first limp and pathetic HBO Twitter roast of Game of Thrones' King Joffrey.

Marketed as the first ever "internet roast," HBO launched RoastJoffrey.com this morning as a means to capitalize on the social buzz the show's most vilified character tends to attract. HBO Connect, the network's beta portal for fan chatter, launched the e-roast and enlisted an odd mess of C-list celebrities to get #RoastJoffrey trending. Some make sense, like comedians Alex Borstein and Joe Rogan, and Game of Thrones cast member Kristian Nairn. Others, like Diplo and Good Charlotte's Benji and Joel Madden are headscratchers. Fans can join in on Twitter, and HBO Connect is continually curating and featuring the "best" jabs on the Roast Joffrey homepage. At publication, 22,664 "roasts" have been tweeted. None of the featured ones seem to be particularly funny.

Odd assortment of celebrity roasters aside (many of whom haven't even participated in the roast despite being featured on the website—Project Runway's Nina Garcia has tweeted up a storm this morning, but not once about King Joffrey), the project is half-baked because of all the effort being put into willing something into virality, a phenomenon that should be seemingly effortless even when it's not so. Ad Age reports that the Roast Joffrey concept was designed by HBO and ad agency 360i after seeing how much social media buzz "The Rains of Castamere" (informally referred to as "The Red Wedding") episode of season three garnered, an episode that would have indubitably performed well on Nielsen's new Twitter TV ratings. While #RedWedding took off as an organic hashtag, engineering virality is nothing new—Comedy Central's new show @midnight has a segment entitled Hashtag Wars, designed solely to get hashtags trending (a goal it often achieves). Yet HBO's attempt comes on far too strong, with a dedicated website, celebrity brand ambassadors, and an ever-running tally of tweets, that is meant to trumpet how viral the hashtag has gone, but really just underscores how hard HBO is trying, rather than attempting an effortless cool.

The other major reason that the social experiment is more clunky than clickable is that it's not pegged to anything specific taking place in the zeitgeist. Sure, Jack Gleeson's King Joffrey is indeed widely disliked, but other than Gleeson mentioning that he wanted to quit acting a random seventeen days ago, neither the show nor Gleeson have been in the news of late. Season four doesn't premiere until the spring, with no specific premiere date even set yet, so the manufacturing of the virality is even more painfully obvious, given that there's nothing to anchor it to. While I cannot reiterate enough how manufactured most viral phenomenons are these days (2013 has become quite the year of the hoax), this effort seems far more like a parent joining Facebook, well after Facebook has gone out of vogue, than a marketing campaign that's so cleverly implemented, it comes off breezy and effortless.

If the Roast Joffrey jabs were hilarious, the campaign might have a shot at life, but in absence of that, all it's providing is a case study in fizzled campaigns. It may not necessarily be a failure, given the subjectivity of what constitutes failure to HBO and 360i (less than 50,000 tweets? less than 100,000?) and the fact that clunky or not, fans are participating and writers like myself are analyzing the effort. But given how much of a cultural cornerstone Game of Thrones has rapidly become—especially for a cult favorite book series that was first published almost two decades ago—this viral push seems a swing and a miss.

If this story turns out to involve meth, it might be among the most Oklahoma things to ever happen. Cattle ranchers on Tuesday found a wet, nearly naked man hiding from extreme weather in a guitar case near the town of Muskogee, cold but alive.

The man claims he was walking from Gore to Checotah, a distance of over 25 miles, in order to meet a woman. The freezing conditions were not a surprise; the entire state has been on ice since last week. Nevertheless, he set off.

Along the way, he apparently got lost and fell through an icy pond, after which he stripped off his wet and freezing clothes. The man then realized that it can get pretty cold when you're standing in an icy forest in nothing but a pair of soggy boxer shorts, so he logically decided to spend the night in his guitar case.

He was found the next morning by a couple tending their cattle. They called authorities and found the shed clothes, which by then had frozen solid. He was treated and released upon the world to make more questionable decisions.

Before you accuse Gawker of stereotyping flyover country from its cushy New York perch: I am from Oklahoma. We aren't a bunch of backwoods yokels. But even the city kids know at least one person who has cows, and a meth lab has probably exploded somewhere near their neighborhood at some point. I can confirm that this is, in fact, an extremely Oklahoma thing to happen.

Police believe the man was on something when he started out, but they're not sure what it was.

I'm guessing meth.

[image via AP]

Megyn Kelly is on a roll. Earlier this week, the Fox News anchor sat down with Jay Leno, telling him that “Straight-news anchors like myself give a hard time to both sides.” And today Dan Zak of The Washington Post, in a long profile of Kelly, claims that she “interrupts and challenges guests whenever they resort to talking points or petty distractions.” The point of this campaign, one finely engineered by Fox News’ meticulous press shop, is to paint Kelly as a serious person and a straightforward reporter. The problem is that Kelly is neither.

Kelly is, in her employer’s parlance, a race hustler. Throughout the first half of the Obama administration, Kelly was all over the utterly false story that a rogue group of black supremacists called the New Black Panther Party were trying to scare off white people from voting. In the first two weeks of coverage, Kelly anchored 45 different segments about the New Black Panthers. (Glenn Beck, by contrast, devoted merely 15 segments to the story.) When it turned out the charges against the Panthers were baseless, Kelly spent less than two minutes addressing the news.

But old habits die hard, and Kelly continued to host the New Black Panthers “whistleblower,” J. Christian Adams, giving him a free platform to push whichever secret Obama conspiracy he can convince Kelly is so groundbreaking, so scandalous, that the rest of the media is conspiring to suppress it. As recently as December 7 of this year, Adams went on Kelly’s show to report that the Obama administration was poaching lawyers from “radical open-borders organizations.” Kelly, of course, described Adams as a “well-known Washington whistleblower.”

Kelly’s alleged tough-as-nails interviewing style—Zak describes her as “always the smartest, always in charge, but in a way that’s ultimately endearing”—doesn’t apply here. Take her interview, in late October, with Rudy Giuliani. After the former mayor of New York claimed that black people should be thankful for the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy, under which black people are systemically targeted for harassment, Kelly simply moved on to the next segment.

Just this morning Kelly claimed that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus—the first a Semite born in Judea, the second a mythical figure with a flying sled—are both white. Her point was: Santa shouldn’t be black. This and the rest, according to Kelly and the Washington Post, is “straight news.”

In a coda inspired by Kelly’s Jesus-was-white argument, Zak admitted regret for not asking Kelly about a November 21 segment where Kelly suggested that, because Oprah won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, we can safely ignore the historical legacy of racism. (“Let’s put aside the thorny topic of Jesus Christ's ethnicity, the absurdity of debating Santa Claus on primetime, and the ridicule and allegations that such a segment invites upon a TV host.”) The writer also reproduced Kelly’s answer—not included in the original profile, I wonder why!—to a question about her New Black Panthers coverage.

“In my experience,” she told Zak, “the people who believe all the negative things about you want to believe them.”

And the people who don’t believe—despite the negative things that are written—are fans of yours, people who watch and get you, and they’re not going to believe that stuff no matter what. Earlier on in my career, when I covered the New Black Panther case, some of our critics were saying I was racist covering them. And that really bothered me. That was the first time anyone had said I was a racist. And it was because I was covering this story. It was like, ‘But I’m just covering a story and it happens that people at the heart of the case are black.’

This might be true if, say, Kelly mentioned the voter intimidation allegations on two or three reports. But her New Black Panther Party coverage, to which she has devoted several hours of coverage, was much less “reporting” than it was a political campaign designed to stoke white peoples’ fears of black men. After all, black-on-white crime, regardless of veracity, is ratings gold.

Kelly knows exactly what she’s doing. And as her new slot shows, her boss Roger Ailes is very pleased.

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

[Photo credit: Associated Press]

Who would have guessed that a man's Internet campaign to track down a mystery girl he'd spent the night with nearly one year ago would end badly?

Probably everyone, but that didn't stop Reese McKee from doing it anyway.

The Wellington man revealed last week that he had launched a web-assisted manhunt for a girl whom he had met last New Year's Eve in Hong Kong, and who had left him with few clues as to her true identity.

All Reese claimed to have was her alleged first name, her alleged city of residence, a photo, and two words: "Find me."

Two days after he started a Facebook event called "a new years promise," Reese had over 4,000 people on the case.

Several thousands more joined the effort after his story was published around the world.

"The situation was so intense that we bonded in a way that you could mistake for being more romantic than it was," Reese told the New Zealand Herald this week. "The thing bloody exploded, God, the article went everywhere."

The Internet being the Internet, it wasn't long before things "got a bit out of hand," according to Reese.

Rather than help reunite Reese and Katie, the self-styled sleuths began stalking every woman named Katie who lived in the DC area.

Reese tried to do damage control by pulling the plug on the Facebook event page, but it was no use: The mob monster could not be contained.

Finally, the real Katie was tracked down, and, suffice it so say, it was no happy ending.

"We found the girl. She is from DC, she's not there at the moment, but she's sorta taken all her public profiles offline for a little bit," Reese wrote on his own Facebook page.

Shortly thereafter, he deleted that page too.

And so ends the story of Romeo and Juliet 2.0.

[H/T: BroBible, photos via Facebook]

After months of controversy bombarding Saturday Night Live and its blatant lack of diversity, executive producer Lorne Michaels has made a better attempt to address the lack of black females on the show than just having Kerry Washington absolve Michaels by playing Michelle Obama, Beyonce, and Oprah all in one sketch.

Gothamist picked up an interview between comedian Bresha Webb and the blog The Jasmine BRAND, in which Webb revealed that Saturday Night Live held impromptu auditions for black female cast members in early December. According to Webb,

"The audition came about from an inside source from SNL. I don't think any of us had a clue about the showcase until two days prior. It was an awesome opportunity even though it was such a short notice but, if you stay ready you ain't gotta get ready and we were READY! Lol But we were all honored to be selected."

Webb's comments hit particularly close to home in light of comments SNL castmember Kenan Thompson made in October, about the black female comedians who were found to audition for the show not being ready enough. In addition to Webb, a few of the eleven comedians who auditioned included Tiffany Haddish, Simone Shepherd, and Darmirra Brunson—the latter who was namechecked by Jay Pharoah in a September interview with The Grio about the lack of diversity on the show, and who he felt should be a cast member.

While the idea of quietly held auditions that were so secretive even participants weren't made aware of them until just two days prior seems slightly icky, Michaels has been forced into somewhat of a catch-22 in terms of how to proceed. By not trying to find talented diverse female castmembers, he would continue to stoke the flames of racial outcry, but the first move he made—in this case, the Los Angeles auditions—are likely to be immediately decried as a bandaid attempting to cover a bullethole. While it remains a fact that it shouldn't take national rebuke for a producer like Michaels to realize the inherent benefits of having a diversified cast, even the first highly scrutinized step forward is ultimately a step in the right direction.

[Image via Instagram]

Do you love Doritos®? Do you love Taco Bell®'s Doritos® Loco Taco®? Do you love Buffalo Wild Wings®? Have you ever wondered why they have like a bajillion wing flavors, but no Doritos®-related corporate tie-ins? Well, friend, do I have good news for you.

The ubiquitous wing joint and PepsiCo—the second-largest food and beverage company in the world, which owns Frito-Lay, Quaker, Tropicana, Gatorade, and much more—just inked a partnership deal guaranteeing some potentially ghastly new uses for partially hydrogenated soybean oil, phenylalanine, and other awesome ingredients in Pepsi products:

That means items on the restaurant menus might someday include a Dorito-crusted wing or a Mountain Dew cocktail...

Buffalo Wild Wings executives visited PepsiCo's innovation center in Westchester County, N.Y, where they were treated to what the restaurant chain's chief executive called "some incredible food combinations."

"They have some incredibly creative culinary innovation, and we're taking a look at Doritos, Tostitos, Ruffles and Fritos, which fit up very well with our demographic"...

How to make sense of this corporate and cultural tremor? Here's the analysis of one of the country's most-often-cited economic commentators: "Fritos are great."

Here's another perspective: If you want a vision of America in the 21st century, picture a fat ex-college bro parked at a butter-and-hot-sauce clouded hightop on a football rivalry Saturday, gnawing on a Dorito-crusted wing forever. Cheered on, of course, by PepsiCo executives and often-cited Fritos-munching economic commentators.

[Photo credit: AP]

Lisa Frank is the woman responsible for Trapper Keepers covered with majestic unicorns prancing over rainbows. She’s also responsible for a failed business empire plagued with scandal, greed, and abuse.

A man who filmed himself having sex with a woman while she slept and then uploaded the footage to Facebook has been cleared of rapes charges by a jury of his peers.

Stephen Brawn, 22, confessed to police that he both did the deed and uploaded video of the act to his Facebook page, but claimed the woman had agreed to allow him to have sex with her sleeping body and to record the intercourse so she could watch it later.

The woman told a different story, claiming she never consented to either the sex or the recording and certainly not to having the footage posted on Brawn's Facebook page.

"She says she wouldn't have consented to sex between them being videoed while she was asleep," Prosecutor Charles Myatt told a jury of eight men and women at the Ipswich Crown Court in Ipswich, England.

But Brawn insists that not only did the woman consent, she even asked to watch the video upon waking, and then proceeded to have sex with him again.

When asked by his own attorney why he uploaded the video to Facebook, Brawn responded, "I don't know."

The unemployed transient was arrested on June 4 and charged with rape.

Brawn told the court he laughed when police picked him up because he couldn't believe he was being accused of rape.

Brawn claimed he and the woman had been exchanging intimate photos for a time before engaging in intercourse, and he had filmed her at least once before performing fellatio on him.

Judge John Devaux instructed the jury to ignore the fact that Brawn had uploaded the footage to Facebook, and focus on the rape allegations.

"He is charged with rape and you won't convict him simply because he put footage of the act on Facebook," the judge is quoted as saying. It took the jury one hour to return a not guilty verdict.

"This case should never have gone to court if the police had done their job properly," Brawn said upon his release.

He said police should have looked at the woman's cellphone, which would have proved they had an ongoing sexting relationship.

[photo via Facebook]

It took Donald Trump until 4:32 p.m. ET today to suggest that Barack Obama miiiiiiiight have orchestrated the death of Loretta Fuddy, the Hawaiian health director who produced his birth certificate and who died earlier this week in a plane crash.

Since March 2007, the CIA has insisted publicly that Robert Levinson was merely a private citizen when he disappeared in the Iranian resort getaway of Kish Island. Today, weeks after Levinson became the longest-held American hostage ever, that story was revealed by the AP as a lie.

According to the report by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, Levinson — a retired FBI agent — was working under the direction of rogue CIA analysts who authorized an intelligence gathering mission related to the Iranian government without the permission of their supervisors. Those analysts reportedly had no authority to handle a spy, but they nonetheless were able to contract Levinson anyway.

Per Apuzzo and Goldman, the CIA initially denied any involvement with Levinson. Soon, though, a Congressional committee discovered the connection, and behind closed doors the CIA fired three employees and paid Levinson's family $2.5 million in order to preempt a lawsuit that could have made details of the operation public.

As recently as last month, the Obama White House was reiterating that Levinson had no current connection to the government at the time of his disappearance. According to the AP, they were on the verge of publishing the story three times before obliging the government's request to hold off because it was pursuing leads that could lead to his recovery.

But there have been no signs of Levinson since a "proof of life" video was distributed in April 2011. In the mean time, his wife Christine continue to travel to Washington to pester congressional and White House officials for more information on her husband's whereabouts.

Questions about Twitter's new blocking policy? No? Awesome, you don't care about Twitter. Yes? Here.

Today in Yemen, 13 people were killed in what was reportedly an erroneous drone strike by the American government. According to Yemeni officials, a caravan was traveling in central Yemen on its way to a wedding when it was hit by missiles fired from a drone, leaving bodies burned and vehicles ablaze in the middle of the road.

Intelligence sources speaking to the AP attributed the incident to a drone that mistook the party for a convoy of al-Qaeda fighters, while another said that al-Qaeda fighters were believed to be traveling with the group. American officials have a demonstrated history of underreporting the true number of civilians killed by drones across the Middle East.

This past Monday, three people were killed by a drone in east Yemen, while in 2008, 63 people died in a drone strike that hit a wedding in Afghanistan. In May, CODEPINK's Medea Benjamin challenged President Obama's record of drone strikes during a national security speech.

We can at least say this much for Amazon's drone delivery program: it won't mistakenly murder a dozen civilians.