Three weeks after U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby struck down Utah's ban on gay marriage, the Supreme Court has temporarily reinstated the law. The Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will now review Shelby's decision and issue a ruling by February 25.

Today Random House revealed a dedicated website for journalist Gabriel Sherman’s new book about Fox News president Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room. In an unusual move, according to Capital New York, Random House will use the site to rebut attacks from Fox News and its milieu of defenders, like Breitbart.com and National Review, about the book’s veracity. Indeed, Roger Ailes is beginning to feel the heat already.

On December 27, Fox News aired a curious hour-long documentary called “Fox News: Our Story,” whose promotional materials promised “Fox News Channel stars [sharing their] secrets to the success of the channel as they reported the news as it happened, with dynamic clips and memorable behind-the-scenes stories.” Although “Our Story” aired on a Friday night, over a holiday weekend, Fox talent heavily promoted it on Twitter and Facebook.

Still, it wasn’t clear why the documentary was produced, or why it was aired now. The channel celebrated its 17th anniversary in October. But its angle and content gave its purpose away almost immediately: To slake fans of Fox in order to prepare them for Sherman’s book. At one point, anchor Megyn Kelly told host Bill Hemmer: “When certain people who shall go nameless have suggested there’s not journalists at Fox News I wanna look them and go really?”

The campaign against The Loudest Voice in the Room has breached higher-brow outlets as well. In yesterday’s New York Times Book Review, on page 7, you’ll find an ad for Zev Chafets’ gullible Ailes biography, Roger Ailes: Off Camera, which was published more than nine months ago.

The ad doesn’t say who paid for it. But the copy, like “Fox News: Our Story,” is similarly transparent:

• “Based on the only exclusive interview with Ailes”
• “Chafets’ book captures the real ROGER AILES and the true inside story of FOX News”
• “An eye-opening biography by Zev Chafets, the only reporter to have interviewed Ailes”

Of course, the reason Ailes supplied Chafets with an “exclusive” interview—the reason Ailes believes Chafets “captures the real Roger Ailes”—is because Ailes could count on Chafets, the go-to biographer for conservative figures, to author a sympathetic account. In fact it was Sherman’s book that pushed Ailes to deal with a biographer in the first place; Ailes wanted to crowd out any of Sherman’s revelations with Chafet’s glowing portrayal. His firing of former aide Brian Lewis in July, and the two men’s $8 million settlement in November, further demonstrate Ailes’s deep anxiety about being honestly reported on.

Fox News and Chafet’s publisher, Penguin-Sentinel, did not respond to requests for comment.

Update: Penguin-Sentinel’s marketing director, Will Weisser, emails Gawker:

The paperback edition of ROGER AILES: OFF CAMERA was just published by Sentinel on December 31. So it’s not really nine months after pub date, it’s just in time for the paperback.

The ad itself, however, does not indicate that a paperback edition had gone on sale the week prior. Furthermore, Weisser declined to say whether Penguin-Sentinel paid for the ad.

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

[Image credit: The Loudest Voice in the Room]

Stand-up comic and Family Guy staff writer Deepak Sethi was performing at the LA Comedy Club in Vegas last month when he asked what he thought would be a fairly innocuous question: "Anyone from the military here?"

"What!" shouted one very loud member of the armed forces, who quickly followed that up with, "we're coming for ya."

"Thank you," replied Sethi, who is of Indian descent, and who just had the next three minutes of his sets gifted to him.

"So this is going to be my last show," Sethi told the audience, "I'm gonna die after this."

Happily, he didn't. And, in fact, after the show, he met back stage with the heckler and learned that he was indeed a "real vet" and also a "really cool" guy.

"He was with his wife who was super embarrassed," Sethi wrote in a Reddit thread about the incident. "I got them free comps to future shows for being a good sport. Like someone else mentioned, this was the friendliest heckle ever! I really don't think he was trying to be racist."

[H/T: Reddit]

Atheists are fucking idiots.

— Chester M. Hanks (@CHETHAZE) January 3, 2014

Those who dismiss Chester "Chet Haze" Hanks as a lightweight merely because he is the hilariously un-self-aware rapping son of Hollywood legend Tom Hanks risk making fools of themselves. Chet Haze is a theological thinker of uncommon zeal.

Let me get this straight... God doesn't exist... And yet I exist...? So out of nothing, comes something? Nah #sitthefuckdown

— Chester M. Hanks (@CHETHAZE) January 3, 2014

Chet Haze echoes Aquinas' argument from first cause. One might reasonably refer to Chet Haze as our modern Parmenides, in that both reject the notion of creation without a prime mover.

Don't let the corruption of Religions distract you from the truth that is GOD. Human institutions are imperfect. The Holy Spirit is perfect.

— Chester M. Hanks (@CHETHAZE) January 3, 2014

The pneumatology of Chet Haze proceeds from the teachings of Arius.

You simple minded sheep that get caught up on taking everything in the bible literally are missing the whole fucking deeper meaning.

— Chester M. Hanks (@CHETHAZE) January 3, 2014

Biblical hermeneutics come more naturally to Chet Haze than to myopic skeptics. See the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer for further exploration of the principles set forth by Chet.

All you atheists are really saying is, "look at me! Look at how intellectual I am! I'm soooo much smarter than you people with faith"

— Chester M. Hanks (@CHETHAZE) January 3, 2014

We mourn the death of Christopher Hitchens for many reasons—the strongest of which is that he escaped being eviscerated by the rhetorical razor of Chet Haze, a fate he most richly deserved.

I AM WHO I AM

— Chester M. Hanks (@CHETHAZE) January 3, 2014

Chet Haze's notion of nominal identity hews closely to that of Pierre Bourdieu. You can't fuck with that.

Greetings from the Polar Vortex! No, that's not the name of your favorite new dubstep band. It's the terrifying swirl of arctic winter currently occupying the Midwest and poised to consume the rest of you poor bastards.

Cold as January usually is, this isn't normal: record-breaking low temperatures started yesterday and are still going strong. It's all due to that vortex, which is basically a frigid hurricane that's supposed to swirl over the North Pole. Although the phenomenon usually sticks to places where nobody would ever want to build a city, sometimes one splits apart and decides to go on an adventure. Once that cold air is free, it can get pretty far south and cause big problems.

Here in sunny Madison, Wisconsin, that means current temperatures of -17° F with wind chills of -37° F. (But later it should get up to a balmy -11° F!) It's the coldest it's been since the last Arctic blast in 1996, and last night wind chills were down to -50° F. There is a "wind chill warning" in effect here and in much of the Midwest due to the fact that those temperatures can freeze your face off in under 10 minutes. By Saturday, grocery stores were already planning on closing early today. Schools are closed across the state because it's too cold for Wisconsin. Even cheese curd vendors are closed.

Because I care about you, dear reader, I put on two layers of pants and dragged my boyfriend outside into the tundra. Within three minutes I couldn't feel my nose. Within seven, his phone had frozen into a useless brick. Eventually I could even feel the insides of my sinus cavity beginning to freeze. We couldn't make it fifteen minutes before ducking into the closest shop in the hopes of being able to feel something, anything, ever again. (Shoutout to Espresso Royale for being open and warm.)

All told, we walked about half a mile in the windy, subzero weather. It was half a mile too far. Heed my warning: polar vortices are best utilized as an excuse to bundle up in all your blankets, drinking warm things and watching bad movies. Whatever you do, don't go outside when the vortex strikes.

[Deceptively sunny images taken today in Madison, Wis.]

"Should Beyoncé choose to settle in the world of Adult Contemporary one day, she'll have most of the legwork already done." - Pitchfork's Carrie Battan on Beyonce's BEYONCÉ, which earned a rating of 8.8.

1. Walt Mink – El Producto (10.0)
2. Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children (10.0)
3. Mu – Afro Finger and Gel (9.0)
4. James Blake – James Blake (9.0)
5. Disclosure – Settle (9.1)
6. Deerhoof – The Runners Four (9.0)
7. Luomo – Vocalcity (9.7)
8. Max Tundra – Mastered by Guy at the Exchange (9.3)
9. Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair (9.1)
10. Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala (9.0)
11. Two Lone Swordsmen – Tiny Reminders (9.3)
12. Fennesz – Endless Summer (9.4)
13. Alan Braxe & Friends – The Upper Cuts (8.9)
14. Super Furry Animals – Phantom Power (8.9)
15. Múm - Yesterday Was Dramatic - Today Is OK (9.1)
16. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport (9.0)
17. The Field – Here We Go Sublime (9.0)
18. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (9.2)
19. Gas – Pop (9.0)
20. The Unicorns – Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? (8.9)
21. Circulatory System – Circulatory System (9.5)
22. Sun O))) – Black One (8.9)
23. Ween – GodWeenSatan: The Oneness (9.6)
24. Can - Tago Mago (10.0)
25. Kanye West – Yeezus (9.5)

If money is the root of all evil, inflated venture-backed paper valuation is probably the root of acting like a Silicon Valley dick: friends say Snapchat's David Kravitz, part of the startup's inner circle, needs to do a social media disappearing act.

Kravitz, of Stanford's 2012 class, was one of the very first people CEO Evan Spiegel hired to help build Snapchat after he'd pushed out Reggie Brown. And though his app is ephemeral, his reputation is not: "Complete douchebag," writes one of Kravitz's former classmates. It looks like venture capital fame hasn't done much to change that, according to a recent Facebook status update:

To all the freshman girls who went through rush, but didn't get a bid or the bid you wanted: I didn't get into any sororities, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I made so many great friends and became a part of some really wonderful communities. And I still got to spend plenty of time at sororities — all I had to do was sleep with a few girls in each one. I got to know some of them quite well, and I can assure you that they're really no different from any of the other girls I slept with.

Charming! His political view is listed as "Sex won't make him love you, and a baby won't make him stay," just so you're absolutely certain he is a cool L.A. dude associated with a massively overvalued startup—which friends say is part of the problem:

Now that he's richer than God (on paper), he's gone completely off the rails. His current facebook cover photo is a modified photograph of American soldiers storming the beaches on D-Day, with him laughing at them.

Fame, even of the most ephemeral and baseless kind, is not without its effects. Just imagine how these kids will turn out if they actually become billionaires—the most personable pals on Silicon Beach.

Mayor Bill de Blasio invited guests to Gracie Mansion, "your house," as the mayor likes to call it—yesterday afternoon for a special open house celebrating his new administration. Thousands of New Yorkers from all five boroughs lined up outside of his/our home for more than two hours for a chance to be corralled through four rooms of the mansion ('the tour') and to get a photo taken with the mayor.

Given the length of the line, the weather, and the fact that guests were not allowed to use the bathroom in their own home, it was surprising to hear that most people did not think they had completely wasted their Sunday afternoon.

so NAFTA such gateway drug much Colorado wow

An actor who was hired by the University of Virginia to play a patient so he could be "diagnosed" by medical students turned out to actually have the deadly condition he was pretending to have.

Jim Malloy was tasked with presenting the symptoms for an abdominal aortic aneurysm — "a condition in which a small section of the lower aorta begins to balloon," according to a UVA press release.

The condition often goes undetected and can quickly become fatal if the aneurysm bursts.

Medical student Ryan Jones was examining Malloy when noticed that the actor actually seemed to have an abdominal aortic aneurysm — for real.

"I said, 'I think I found an aneurism,'" Jones told WDBJ, "and he played along because that's his job and so I'm like 'Does he actually know he has this?'"

"He thought I might have been a ringer that was planted in there to test him, and I had no symptoms," Malloy told CBS News. "He thought I was a plant with the real situation."

The physician in charge of the practice session recommended to Malloy that he see a cardiologist, and, sure enough, Jones' diagnosis proved correct.

Malloy underwent surgery and is now back to full health.

"Jim's life was saved by a UVA medical student, no doubt about it," Malloy's wife Louise is quoted as saying.

"I was surprised to learn what had happened," said Jones. "It feels great to know that I made a difference."

This is Jones last year of medical school. He is currently in the process of interviewing for a slot in a residency program with an eye toward ultimately becoming a radiation oncologist.

[screengrab via Seinfeld, photo via UVA]

Politifact would like you to know that no, Obamacare is not going to impose executions by beheadings in America. Yet. Wink wink!

Safety is paramount, people. You never point a gun unless you intend to kill whatever you're aiming at. Now, let New York's top public safety official show you how to kill the shit out of that Powerpoint presentation and freak out our friends from Europe.

Via the Albany Times Union:

Jerome M. Hauer, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's director of homeland security, took out his handgun and used the laser sighting device attached to the barrel as a pointer in a presentation to a foreign delegation, according to public officials. It happened Oct. 24 in Albany at the highly secure state emergency operations center below State Police headquarters.

Hauer, pictured below, "was disabled by a stroke a few years ago and can be unsteady," the report continues. "He carries the loaded 9-millimeter Glock in a holster into state buildings, an apparent violation of state law barring state employees from bringing weapons to the workplace, several witnesses say."

Hey, the Second Amendment doesn't stop when your positive motor control is seriously degraded. If it did, old people would be completely helpless. And old people love guns almost as much as they Werthers Originals. Respect the right to keep and bear arms, and also to terrorize Swedes with the arms you bear:

...three Swedish emergency managers in the delegation were rattled when the gun's laser tracked across one of their heads before Hauer found the map of New York, at which he wanted to point.

Freedom isn't free, you lutfisk-gobbling Vikings. The next time terror comes to your shores, count on Jerome "Rutger" Hauer to have your back. And head and thighs and chest.

[Photo credit: Netfalls-Remy Musser/Shutterstock; Screenshot courtesy of New York Senate]

Jenny McCarthy, vaccination-denier and Queen of Idiot Nation, is pissed you think her son doesn't have autism. In other idiot news, Charlie Sheen might have married a porn star, and Will Smith misses Uncle Phil. All this and more in your Defamer Monday breakdowns.

• Jenny McCarthy cannot believe stories have been circulating online questioning her son Evan's autism diagnosis. She took to Twitter on Saturday to strike down the rumors:

Stories circulating online, claiming that I said my son Evan may not have autism after all, are blatantly inaccurate and completely ridiculous. Evan was diagnosed with autism by the Autism Evaluation Clinic at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital and was confirmed by the State of California (through their Regional Center). The implication that I have changed my position, that my child was not initially diagnosed with autism (and instead may suffer from Landau-Kleffner Syndrome), is both irresponsible and inaccurate. These stories cite a "new" Time Magazine interview with me, which was actually published in 2010, that never contained any such statements by me. Continued misrepresentations, such as these, only serve to open wounds of the many families who are courageously dealing with this disorder. Please know that I am taking every legal measure necessary to set this straight.

Speaking of continued misrepresentations, McCarthy will not be stopping her harmful anti-vaccination nonsense. [E!]

• Charlie Sheen joked on Twitter about being married to his porn star ladyfriend Brett Rossi, but like most things Sheen, it was neither funny nor true. Sheen's rep told Us Weekly, "He's kidding around." It's always good when your reps have to clarify "jokes." [US Weekly]
• A week after the death of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air costar James Avery, Will Smith took to his Facebook page for a tribute:

Avery died Dec. 31 in Glendale. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Get your DVRs set for Jan. 25 as Jonah Hill will be making his third appearance as a host on Saturday Night Live, joined by U.K. band Bastille. Drake will both host and be the musical guest on 2014's Jan. 18 premiere. [TVLine]

[Image via AP]

On Monday, Bao Bao, the National Zoo's new panda cub, made her debut for the Washington DC media. As you can see, it didn't go well. But the five-month-old cub has some time to practice: She won't appear in public until later this month.

[GIF via Washington Post]

Jet Blue is ending service to all NYC-area airports and to Boston at 5 p.m. today and not resuming until 10 a.m. tomorrow, due to weather. That's more than 300 cancelled flights. Type your tales of woe in the discussion section, travelers.

It's a question that's been asked since time immemorial: Could a woman create an online dating profile "so loathsome that no man would message it"?

Cracked's crack investigative reporter Alli Reed decided to solve the "omnipervet paradox" once and for all by going on OKCupid and posting what she firmly believed was the "worst online dating profile ever."

Her thesis: There did indeed exist a woman "so awful, so toxic, so irredeemably unlikeable that no one would message her, or if they did, at least they would realize they never, ever wanted to meet her."

As it turns out, there wasn't.

In creating her profile for "AaronCarterFan," Reed used the real photo of her model friend Rae to entice gentlemen callers. But that was exactly where AaronCarterFan's attractiveness ended and her repugnant personality began.

Her self-summary was the infamous "if u cant handle me at my worst u dont deserve men at my best"; the thing she was really good at was "convincing people im pregnat lol"; and under "favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food," AaronCarterFan wrote "soooooo glad their making another Grown Ups."

"I figured any profile with photos of a beautiful woman would get a few messages from men whose boners were willing to overlook her personality," Reed wrote in her breakdown of the experiment. "She got 150 messages in 24 hours."

AaronCarterFan would get over 500 messages by the time the experiment concluded.

Reed considered the possibility that the men who replied to AaronCarterFan simply skipped over the profile and went straight for the photos, so she gave them the benefit of the doubt.

"My new goal was to get these men to stop messaging her back," she writes. "I was going to make AaronCarterFan come across as so abhorrent that not even the kinds of dudes who comment on YouPorn videos would respond to her."

That, too, failed miserably:

In her denouement, Alli says she could conclude that social conditioning has made it impossible for men to see women as more than just the sum of their appearance, but she won't.

Instead, she remains optimistic, but offers men of the world this "impassioned plea":

Naturally, after her article was published, Reed experienced some backlash from men who believed she was being motivated by pure misandry. To which she replied:

To everyone saying I must hate men bc of the OkCupid article I wrote: I THINK MY BOYFRIEND CAN TESTIFY that yes, I absolutely do hate men

— Alli Reed (@alliperson) January 4, 2014

[images via Cracked]

On last night's episode of the U.K.'s Celebrity Big Brother, heavyweight champ and Arthur remake actor Evander Holyfield said some barely intelligible nonsense about gay people, namely that homosexuality is a choice, like being "handicapped," and fixable.

The entire segment is above, but below is a selection of his quotes. They're all stupid:

"That ain't normal"

"The Bible lets you know that's wrong, that's right"

"If you're born and your leg was turned this way, what do you do? You go to the doctor and you get it fixed back right, right?"

"Only thing I'm trying to tell you, if…you know how handicapped people is born, now you can't say, 'cause they were born that way you can't move that, 'cause [inaudible]"

"Yes it is a choice. How can you not say, you ain't gay unless you sleeping with the opposite sex. That ain't the way nobody made."

The fellow houseguest he told this to, former UK Apprentice contestant Luisa Zissman, attempted to shut the conversation down multiple times to no avail. Holyfield was then seen being reprimanded by the powers that be (Big Brother, I guess) for making "inappropriate" comments. To this, TMZ responded:

This whole situation reminds us why we revolted against England ... so we could have the freedom to express our religious and other beliefs ... no matter how offensive.

As bad as Evander is .. the show is being RIDICULOUS. Didn't they they learn anything from the A&E/"Duck Dynasty" debacle??

Why do people pretend that free speech is a one-way street and that only bigotry has the green light? If someone says something based on total ignorance of an already disenfranchised segment of the population because it's their freedom to do so, then it's the freedom of everyone else who is smarter to say, "Shut the fuck up." And that is how is generally goes. Fewer and fewer people get a free pass for saying shit like this in public these days. What's stupider than believing the nonsense that Holyfield spews is believing that you can say this on TV and coast by without consequences. You'd think that people on TV would watch TV every once in a while to understand how things work.

But, of course, these people—Holyfield, the human pubic mounds on Duck Dynasty, the fools on last season of U.S. Big Brother—are hired because they are that dumb and because dumb people do dumb shit and dumb shit routinely equals good TV. Business as usual.

And good TV this was, not just because it commanded attention and whipped up outrage (TV exists to make people care about what's on it), but because it's always reassuring to see someone express their hatred so inarticulately, with such profound stupidity at its core. Holyfield has no basis for his claims other than his own sense of superiority and what he thinks the Bible says. People like this are like one-men Westboro Baptist Churches. They put a terrible face on their rotten cause. They're a big reason why that side of the culture is rapidly becoming antiquated. They are tangible, working examples of wrongness.

TMZ ran an update in which Holyfield's son Ewin Holyfield claims, "My dad is the most loving and caring person you will ever meet. He treats everyone like a human being ... even if they are homosexual." Even if they're homosexual? I didn't realize he was Gandhi. Ewin adds that he has a gay uncle (Evander's brother-in-law) and that Evander treated him like a brother. (That means Holyfield kicked the shit out of him, right? Isn't that what brothers do?) Also:

My dad feels that being gay is a choice ... and naturally that's how things work. You cannot procreate and make a baby with two women, or two men. But at the same time, my dad is not going to judge someone for their sexual orientation.

Yeah, great source, who learned from a greater source. Listen to this guy, for sure.

Fox Business reports that AOL tried to buy Business Insider late last year for "between $100 million and $150 million," but failed because BI wanted "a more lucrative offer." Wellll, how about if they threw in a Wikipedia page? Ehh?

Bradley Beal always wore the number 23, from AAU ball to preps to his single year of college. He had to switch to No. 3 when he was drafted by the Wizards, since that number's unofficially retired for one Michael Jeffrey Jordan. You'd think Beal would be honored. But no, it turns out, he wore 23 because he idolized LeBron James growing up.

"I never watched Michael Jordan growing up," said Beal, in what has to be a sick practical joke on those of us, who, you know, watched Michael Jordan. I'm having trouble processing this. 23 is Jordan's number, right? The greatest basketball player who ever lived?

"I grew up, '23' was LeBron," Beal continued. OK, let's math this. LeBron's 29, my age(!), and has been in the NBA since 2003. Beal is 20, so LeBron broke in when he was 10, the summer after Jordan retired for good. Damn it, it works. Those were Beal's formative years, and he likely has only the faintest memories of Jordan in a Bulls uniform. Beal is so young. We are all so very old.

LeBron, of course, originally wore 23 as a tribute to Jordan. This is like, as Drew puts it, "some guy post-Jesus saying 'I wear this cross because Ed wore it.'" Where does it end? Maybe Beal becomes a star somewhere, and some kid grows up and gets drafted and picks No. 23 because he always loved Bradley Beal. Time is inexorable and cruel.

Deep breaths. At least Beal has heard of Michael Jordan.

"I always knew about Michael Jordan, but I can't necessarily model myself after him. I always admired LeBron and the way he played all the time when he was in Cleveland."

There are kids out there right now, some of whom will be in the NBA within the decade, who have no idea LeBron ever played for anyone but Miami. Christ.

Bradley Beal wore '23′ for LeBron James [DC Sports Bog]

If you read only one gripping, short first-person essay trying to make sense of how America's last significant gains in a dumb war were reversed last week, make it "Tell Me Again, Why Did My Friends Die in Iraq?" by Paul Szoldra.