[Baby gorilla Jengo hangs out in his enclosure at the zoo in Leipzig, Germany on Thursday. Jengo is one of two baby gorillas born at the zoo in the last four months. Photo by Jens Meyer via AP]

Last Friday night, a woman allegedly tried to cut off her husband's penis with a box-cutter, only to be thwarted by his denim pants.

Lisa Jones-Orock reportedly attacked her husband with the blade late Friday night. By the time New Castle, Pa. police arrived, the man, identified as Gerald Orock, had cuts on his arms and hands; his jeans were reportedly sliced near his crotch.

From CBS Pittsburgh:

"We deal with domestic situations all the time, but I don't recall anything getting this physical where genitalia was attacked," New Castle Police Lt. David Cumo said. "He said she had attacked him with the box cutter and was trying to cut off his penis. Officers observed cuts in his crotch area of his pants, some cuts on his legs. He did have a cut on his left forearm and his right hand which did indicate defensive wounds to them."

Jones-Orock was arrested and faces charges of aggravated assault, simple assault, possession of marijuana and harassment. Her husband was briefly detained after Jones-Orock accused him of initiating the attack, but he was released. He was later charged with violating a restraining order and possession of marijuana.

[via New York Daily News]

Kate Bush has announced a string of concerts that she will play in London in August and September. This may not sound like a huge deal, but not doing shows is Bush's thing — she hasn't played a concert in almost 35 years. After all these years, she's still able to conjure up new ways to be weird. May she never stop.

Khali the National Zoo's sloth bear gave birth to three cubs in December. It would have been a joyous occasion, had Khali not immediately eaten one cub and then, a week later, consumed another.

Zookeepers removed the third cub after they noticed he had been neglected by his mother and was in poor health.

"It's a serious decision if you're going to pull a cub," Mindy Babitz, a sloth bear expert at the zoo, told the Washington Post. "We want cubs to be raised by their mom. That's an ideal situation. We're doing everything we can to be a surrogate mom to her. But we're not bears."

Details of the cub's care, from the Washington City Paper:

Keepers, according to the zoo release, stay with the cub 24 hours a day, feeding her at regular intervals. They initially even carried the cub in a baby sling to simulate how cubs ride on their mothers' backs. Cubs typically stay with their mothers for three years.

Three months after he was taken from his mother, the cub is healthy—an "11-pound sphere of black fur and relentless curiosity," as the Post put it. He'll likely be on public exhibit sometime this summer.

As for the mama bear eating her young, Babitz said it was normal behavior in some cases, like if the cub is severely injured or dead.

"Life is tough in the wild," she said. "If a cub were to pass away and you were to just leave that carcass laying around, that would attract a predator. And that's not safe for mom."

[Michelle Obama plays table tennis at the Beijing Normal School on Friday.Image via Andy Wong/AP.]

Sicilian nun and part-time Alicia Keys Sister Cristina Scuccia blew away the judges on Italy's The Voice with a powerful rendition of Keys's hit "No One." And, because judges on the show vote without looking at the singer, we get to watch their faces as they turn around and see her dressed in a full habit.

Cristina got every vote, and picked rapper J-Ax as her coach. Typical nun.

She now plans to change the lives of a band of scrappy, underprivileged youth while waiting to testify about a mob hit she witnessed during her former life as a Las Vegas lounge singer.

[H/T: Hypervocal]

HBO, Lisa Kudrow, and Michael Patrick King are reportedly discussing a second season of the 2005 cult faux-vérité show The Comeback. I do need to see that.

Philanthropy today: Larry Page, the Google co-founder with $32 billion and little record of altruism, says he'd prefer another tech billionaire inherit his estate instead of leaving it to charity.

This wasn't overheard accidentally: Page proclaimed it before an audience, during a sit-down interview with Charlie Rose. Wired has the details:

Running through Page's plans for Google was [a] theme picked up on by Rose: a faith that business is the best way to build his version of a better future. Rose asked him about a sentiment that Page had apparently voiced before that rather than leave his fortune to a cause, that he might just give it to Elon Musk. Page agreed, calling Musk's aspiration to send humans to Mars "to back up humanity" a worthy goal. "That's a company, and that's philanthropical," he said.

Elon Musk, of PayPal and Tesla fame, is worth about $12 billion. It's fair to say he's doing alright on his own, and doesn't "need money."

Places that might actually "need money" include:

• Schools
• Shelters
• Soup kitchens
• Hospitals

And those are just four ideas I came up with off the top of my head—I'm not even a billionaire. You'll notice "private space travel to Mars" isn't on the list. That's because, as cool as flying to Mars would be, it's much lower on the list of human needs than, say, not dying of malaria, or starvation. It's also worth restating that Elon Musk is already a billionaire, and maybe we should let him pay for private space travel on his own. It sounds neat to say "back up humanity," but in 2014, it's a trifle, and it's not philanthropy. If you give an immense amount of money to a privately owned company that ends up benefiting from it, you're not a donor, you're an investor.

We shouldn't be too surprised: Larry Page loves trifles. But if not shocked, we should still be disappointed, because $32 billion is a lot of money to choose on rich man's hobbyism over helping humans.

The opening shot, the Fort Sumter of the newest campaign to take back Dixie, was a billboard. Months ago it appeared on the parkway in Tallahassee, just east of the Capitol, positioned so you could see it and the edifice of Florida government side-by-side, the sun popping off both of them together at daybreak. Most of the sign was taken up by six big black letters on a white background: SECEDE.

A League of the South activist in the group's signature black shirt.

It was the work of the League of the South—long labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—which had planned to build media buzz with the billboard, leading to a rally on the Capitol steps to protest illegal immigrants. The League hoped for its biggest coup yet, double the size of any of its previous demonstrations. The event's Facebook page announced: "100 is our magic number… 100 Southern nationalists in Tallahassee. Come on, we can do it!"

"We just think that there needs to be a representative voice for all those common hard-working Southern folks out there that don't have a voice," the group's founder, Dr. Michael Hill, told me. "We basically are dictated to by people from other parts of the country whose worldview is completely different from ours."

Now, with the crud-crusted Florida winter broken at last, it was time for the demonstration. Sunburn was possible again. The long-absent birds were shaking off their silence on the statehouse grounds. A breeze picked up as I surveyed the army's assembled assets: five blue blazers. Seven cavalry-style cowboy hats. Seven pairs of cargo pants. One makeshift SWAT-type uniform. One long beard, red. One leather jacket, accompanied by double-clutch boots and a clanking chain wallet. Two hundred copies of the Free Magnolia, the League's samizdat newsletter.

All together, forty or so souls. Four women, including the club photographer; maybe two or three under 30; one teen, in an aqua American Eagle polo.

The League's Tallahassee billboard, just up the road from the Capitol.

The group formed up up at 10 a.m., falling into ranks on the statehouse mall, pointing picket signs and Bonny Blue flags and Florida state flags toward the parkway traffic. "MARCO RUBIO wants to replace us," the signs said, referring to the popular Republican senator who betrayed his tea party supporters by backing immigration reform.

At its peak, the Florida secessionist crowd numbered about 40.

At 10:24, the group got its first validation, an approving honk from an elderly white Hawaiian-shirted man in a minivan with no license plate. A young white man in a Honda Civic followed suit, then a darkly tinted Chrysler with a familiar sign in the rear passenger window: "BABY ON BOARD."

I mingled clumsily with the crowd, recognizing only one face—that of Michael Cushman, "the Palmetto Patriot," founder of the Southern Nationalist Network, who has called the American flag "the symbol of a government which promotes multiculturalism, abortion, interracial and homosexual marriage, Third World immigration, affirmative action and wars to spread democracy." He looks like a young Hunter Thompson, eyes always sunglassed and lips always pursed, the kind of guy who couldn't take you in a bar fight but looks serious enough that you wouldn't start one with him.

Within a minute, I was enlisted in my first awkward conversation of the day, with a demonstrator I'll call Snuffy Smith. An ex-paratrooper, Vietnam and Panama vet, he could have been 70, or 55 if the years were hard. Beneath a salty cowboy hat, he wore a dirt-red shirt, a brass-and-steel buckle larger than my toddler son's head, and jeans that might judge you if you called them something other than "dungarees."

Streaming over his head was a wind-blown flag with a field of thirteen stripes, with only one large star, not 50 small ones, in the blue corner. "This here?" he said. "It's part of maybe, like, one of the Christian flags." I later learned that it was the Liberian flag. I could never confirm exactly why it was at a Southern secessionist rally, though I had my theories.

"We are not affiliated with skinheads, and we are not affiliated with the KKK," Smith told me. "All this basically boils down to is states' rights. It's more against the federal government. You know what's dumb now? What Obama's doin'? Now he's saying, 'Well, you can't take up too much sugar'… talkin' about even going against Coca-Cola and all these soft drinks because he says Americans are gettin' too obese."

I wrote. He continued.

"He brings all these Somalians in. OK? What about the 94 million Americans that doesn't have a job? Or the 90-plus million is on food stamps? All that's in the 90s. You watch that Fox News, its in the high 90s."

Very few women were present. ("Snuffy Smith," an Army vet, is visible in the background.)

Perhaps this scene reinforces the League's reputation as a comical fringe element, a gaggle of old racist Lost Cause types who dream of the Confederate battle flag again gracing their statehouses, who lament the Union's retardation of their familial livelihoods. And their manhoods. "There were more men in America in 1776 than there are today," Hill recently wrote on Facebook. "[I]t can be changed, you know. Just 'man up,' as they say!"

But intellectual elites and newsmen caricature this movement at their own peril. One of the most famous Southern revivalists of the last century wrote a conservative manifesto titled "Ideas Have Consequences," and in America, in 2014, the League of the South's ideas are not without consequence.

Beyond its race-tinged Dixie jingoism, much of the League's public rhetoric is in line with a wider American attitude. It emphasizes truly small government—the dictatorship of the individual, the republic of the family, the overthrow of the cultural and bureaucratic forces that the League believes threaten our insular networks and affinity groups.

This dovetails not simply with neo-Confederacy and conservatism but with a broader, bipartisan disillusionment with government and mass media—the contemporary ethos that elevates selves and loved ones above the din of 308 million meatsticks screaming, stamping, belching, reaching nothing but the most tenuous consensus on anything enduring. Get government out of the way. Abolish artificial ties with strangers. Focus on the immediate, the personal, the deeply felt—"faith, family, and folk," as the League puts it.

"I wouldn't mind seeing certain states broken up into multiple states or little independent duchies or republics or city states or whatever," Hill said. "I just think there needs to be that flowering of freedom that allows people on the local level to kinda do their own thing."

Whatever your thing may be, a tribal enclave within a bastion inside a redoubt: an Abilene for conservative biblical literalists, a Portland for anti-vax leftists. News pre-screened and shared by the people we like on Twitter or Facebook. It is simplification through Balkanization. Inner America, the great collective reflexive id of a great people, is expanding its jumbled confederacy. In this regard, the League of the South is on the frontier.

The group has attempted to co-opt tea party and mainstream anger over immigration.

The leader of this vanguard, part Lenin and part Robert E. Lee, is Hill—the League's only president since he created the group in 1994. Once a promising professor of history at a historically black college in Tuscaloosa, the Alabama native left his tenured position in 1999 to dedicate himself full-time to the South's restoration as an independent nation. (He also happened to leave academia just as his university planned to consider faculty members' behavior outside the classroom in their tenure reviews.)

The creation of the League was a logical outgrowth of Hill's scholarship: He'd studied at the University of Alabama under two famous Southern historians with the appropriately Southern names Grady McWhiney and Forrest McDonald. Building on McWhiney's magnum opus, Cracker Culture, Hill advanced what is known as the Celtic thesis: the notion that Southern culture is distinct based on its people's heritage as Celtic herdsmen who "realized that the true foundation of independence was that every man be armed."

That culture is agrarian, martial, Protestant, easily excitable, and steadfastly loyal to "kith and kin." It yields brave Christian warriors, but not necessarily prudent ones—an explanation for their honorable military bloodlettings from William Wallace in 1305 to the Wilderness in 1864.

The Celtic thesis doesn't account for the genteel English-style aristocracy of Virginia or the French-infused Catholicism of Louisiana. But let's don't quibble about the details. If monolithic Southern culture didn't exist, Hill would have to invent it. "There always have to be certain cultural traits that are preserved more or less intact for a people to survive as an identifiable people over the centuries," he told me. "We think that our faith, our allegiance to family and our allegiance to each other as a people is the fundamental element of that."

The way I met Hill was this: I started talking to Snuffy Smith with the Liberian flag, and three minutes later, Hill came urgently striding over like a recess teacher on the playground. "Media?" he asked. "Talk to me. Talk to me."

He looked like your high school linebackers coach and sounded like your college professor, the one who's an easy A if you can affect his voice on the term paper. The appearance and sound are not a put-on. He is fastidious about his health—"I still run sprints." When an underling offered him a cold Gatorade on the sun-dried steps of the Capitol, he accepted it with thanks but never opened it. "I only drink water. Water and moonshine. No sugar. Well, moonshine sugar."

Dr. Michael Hill: League of the South founder, historian, Skynyrd fan.

Hill is, predictably, a purist about many things. He hates Grammy-winning music ("It's not a natural thing. It's just staged. This is not real music. This is not music that grows up from the people"). But he loves the Allman Brothers and Charlie Daniels and "the Skynyrd guys."

He stands proud and talks humble. But he talks, a lot. It is a wind concerto played entirely on dog whistles—unintelligible to most listeners, but a mellifluous, taut tune to a very small audience of aficionados.

"It alarms me that America — and the South in particular, my home — is going to be a place that I wouldn't recognize if I were to come back in 100 or 200 years, and I fear for my progeny," he told me. The last word hung in the damp panhandle air, rusty and antique.

"I've actually heard several Hispanic leaders say, 'Hey, when we get in control, you're gonna pay.' Listen, I'm enough of a fighter that that's a challenge," he said. "I'll take it. I don't want my children and grandchildren to have to fight as a minority in what used to be their country, the country that their ancestors founded and built. And I think that's a legitimate position for anybody to take without being called ugly names about it."

As suspect as that talk may sound, Hill insists his group is not neo-Confederate: "We're not so blind as to think that we can turn back the clock and have things the way that it was 100, 150 years ago, and we don't want to do that. We're men and women who live in the age that we've been placed, and we're not romantic dreamers of some idyllic past or something like that."

Hill's Facebook page suggests otherwise. In late January, for example, he posted a note celebrating the birthdays of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. "[L]et us emulate them and continue the honorable cause that motivated these two noble Southern men—the survival, well being, and independence of the Southern people," he wrote.

The following day was MLK Day, so Hill added another thought. "Note: If you wish to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. please go elsewhere. He is not one of us," he wrote of the Atlanta-born Southern preacher.

Lest he be misunderstood, Hill posted this the next day:

Postings like this suggest League supporters also miss apartheid and segregation.

Lately, Hill and the League have been focused on events far from Dixie. The group recently endorsed Russia's annexation of Crimea as a victory for the Crimeans' self-determination. That's consistent with the League's secessionist bent; good Celts that they are, they've also supported Scottish independence.

"The 19th century was the century of consolidated nation states and empires. The 20th century started to see those things undermined by historical events," Hill said. "The 21st century, I'm convinced, is going to be the century of seeing all of these conglomerates, these monstrosities, these dinosaurs, whatever you wanna call them, just break apart into natural polities that have some kind of cultural and organic sense about them."

But the League's love of the Russian bear goes deeper still. "I have more in common with Vladimir Putin than I do with Barack Obama," Hill wrote last month. "One defends a nation—the Rus; the other lords over an anti-White multicultural empire. One upholds an ancient Christian tradition; the other deplores the Christian faith. One acts like a man; the other like a preening capon."

There's that manhood thing again. But: really? Can a thinking American man truly feel more kinship with a calculating ex-KGB spook than any American president? Yep, Hill said. "Sure, Putin puts on a lot of this stuff, takes his shirt off, rides a horse, but at the same time, you know, you can juxtapose it with Obama sittin' on a stupid-looking bicycle with a goofy-looking bike helmet on his head. And it doesn't look good for Obama. Putin looks like a man, you know. Russia likes this machoness—well, there's some of us Americans like it, too."

The League's coziness with unsavory elements doesn't end at the Black Sea. A quick search of its Facebook members turns up an alarming number of "likes" for white supremacist hobbyhorses like Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Christian Identity, and the "Fourteen Words" ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children"). It seems a glaring oversight for a polite-sounding group seeking mainstream legitimacy—a group that took pains not to display the Confederate battle flag at the Florida rally, opting instead for the less-notorious and prettier Bonny Blue.

When I asked Hill if Klanners and neo-Nazis have a place at the League's table, he took some time with his answers. He'd prefer they cut any ties with "dishonorable" organizations before applying for membership, he said. But nothing's written in stone: "If you want to believe this, if you want to believe that, that's fine. I'm not going to be an Inquisitor, there's not going to be an Inquisition here."

Hill "can tell a bad egg pretty quick," he said, and he takes pains to send them on their way. But, he said, "if it's just somebody who has ideas that I don't particularly agree with but they agree with me on the Southern nationalist part of this, I can work with them." The important thing, he said, is "to have an organization that is honorable for people to join."

This emphasis on honorableness has a dark primordial heritage of its own. In the groundbreaking 1980s study Honor and Violence in the Old South, historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown argued that Southerners' famous genteelness always carried a paradoxical tendency to "unjustified violence, unpredictability, and anarchy." Honor must be defended at all costs. And when honor is defined by blood, by sex, by race, by tribe, the honorable man finds endless provocations.

Publicly, the League renounces violence. On Facebook, its founder suggests otherwise.

Which raises the question: Just where does all this lead? The League doesn't seem to have a plan to translate its slogans and rallies into revolutionary action or all the bloody tumult a real secessionist movement would entail. "I've studied a lot of nationalist movements in the past," Hill said, "and sometimes it's one coalescing event, like the Easter uprising in Ireland in 1916."

By noon, it was clear this would not be such an event. The street traffic thickened, but the rally crowd wilted somewhat under the sparse cover of the statehouse mall. Snuffy Smith pulled out a can of dip. "I tried to quit a couple of times," he told a colleague. "About three days is all I can do." There was talk of decamping to an Olive Garden for lunch. A Capitol police officer told the group to take down two of its flags from the storied building, a "Don't Tread on Me" and an Alamo banner. The flags were removed quickly, without a fuss. "Well, you know, freedom is kind of a messy thing," Hill told me as we parted.

The League flies many flags, including this replica of the one flown over the Alamo.

I spent some more time at the front of the demonstration's picket line, where one participant—an enthusiastic local, decked out in Florida State University fan regalia—was trying to chat up one of the out-of-towners. "You ever want to be interviewed on Stormfront or anything?" the local man asked, referring to the white supremacist discussion board that's linked to neo-Nazis and the Klan. His listener declined.

"Just want to let you know the offer is there," the local said.

Today is John Cook's last day as the editor-in-chief of Gawker.com.

John is leaving us for The Intercept, a Bob Avakian-funded radical pamphlet that he will be passing out at Union Square every day between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. We will miss him, but he leaves us with a wonderful, profane legacy.

What were the best John Cook posts?

Staff writer Rich Juzwiak points out, correctly, that "John Cook essentially gave the world the comedy genius of Rob Ford. That's the nicest present anybody ever gave anybody." Actual Canadian Michelle Dean agrees: "I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when this post was published because I'm Canadian and I once lived in Toronto and I would not trade the way this story broke for anything in the world."

DailyKos blogger and former colleague Alex Pareene tells us his favorite John Cook post is "Katie Couric's Forbidden Dance of Gin ." His other favorite John Cook moment was "when he quit" and also "when Jeffrey Goldberg accused him of being abusive to his wife but that wasn't Gawker-related."

From the West Coast, Defamer editor Lacey Donohue writes, "my favorite John Cook moment from my time here is this:

i see @kathrynlopez just followed me so ABORTION ANUS GAY MASTURBATE SEMEN hi kathryn

— John Cook (@johnjcook) January 24, 2014

"my favorite John Cook piece off the top of my head," she continues, "written before I ever imagined I'd be so lucky to know you guys and work here, is this ."

"Confessions of a Teenage Word Bully," senior writer Hamilton Nolan agrees, "is the bravest [post] that John has ever written—braver than his investigative journalism work or his rants based upon his many wrong opinions." He continues:

It is brave because it turns John Cook's harsh spotlight on John Cook himself. His ability to do this honestly and with grace is something that I will always respect. It also added to the ample online evidence that he is racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic, which I encourage his many future political enemies to explore on Google.com. John, you were actually very overqualified for Gawker. Sucks for you but good for us.

Staff writer J.K. Trotter singled out "The De-Watergating of American Journalism " and "Robert Bork Was a Terrible Human Being and No One Should Grieve His Passing " as his two favorite John Cook moments. Asked to elaborate on his choices, he writes: "I love John Cook."

Former managing editor Leah Beckmann suggests publishing the email John Cook sent to staff when she left last year. She describes it as "the most beautiful piece of literature anyone has ever written," which is perhaps overstating it. The email is nonetheless extremely touching, as John's goodbye emails all are.

When I originally emailed to ask about John Cook favorites, staff writer Taylor Berman called "dibs" on John's opus "That U.S. Olympic Rower's Cock Is Not Giant: A Photoanalysis ." He later told me he was "surprised" that "the fans" didn't complain when his choice was briefly and mistakenly excised from this post.

Valleywag editor Sam Biddle shares an anecdote:

Here's my John Cook story. The staff of Gawker.com went out one night to sing karaoke and get very drunk. John drank the most and sang the most, and by the end of the evening he was having a hard time standing straight. So I guess he thought pizza would help him stand straight, because he took out a wad of cash (mostly singles in bad shape) and stuffed them in my shirt pocket. He said something like "Go get me a slice" and pointed out into darkness. There wasn't any pizza so I just ate a gyro by myself somewhere and then gave him back the cash, which he took, and I don't think he even remembered asking me about the pizza. John is the best boss I've ever had.

In that same vein: Staff writer Caity Weaver emailed a list of her favorite John Cook burns on Sam Biddle.

John C. that guy's way better at playing ping pong with his dick than sam is at playing basketball with his arms and body

John C. sam you're in vampire weekend right?

John C. sam i think this [party] is just for the gawker staff

John C. i'd rather listen to drake than talk to sam at dinner

John C. sam read all of gawker in one day

John C. sam read war and peace with it this weekend and write it up

John C. sam what is more important than my party

John C. SAM

John C. fuck you sam

John C. fuck off sam

John C. FUCK OFF SAM

John C. sam you're awful proud of your not-fully-thought-out halfname

John C. tuck in your shirt you're representing the site sam

John C. Sam Judas

John C. thanks sam!

Sam B. any time

"I will miss John most of all," Caity concludes. With John's departure, Caity ascends to the status of Gawker's chief mean girl.

Valleywag editor Nitasha Tiku writes in:

After a season-length evisceration of the notion that Girls was a show for us, by us, John Cook turned down the Skrillex and offered up the most patient and gentle dialectic on why the show can be so grating. ("These people are meant to be loved, to be understood and explained. It's a celebration, not a satire.") This is the same kind of care and schooling that John offers his writers. Except when he decides to mock you for living in a tiny studio in the middle of an office party.

Features editor Tom Scocca saluted his fellow shitheart in an email:

For a long time, working as an editor at Deadspin, I was not really sure who "John Cook" was. Gawker Media operates in an open-plan office, which is in theory supposed to bring disparate colleagues together, but in practice encourages one to be as unaware of other people as one can, as in a subway car. Somewhere across the big dim room, there was an indeterminate number of medium-sized, sort of gingery white guys who wrote cranky things, sometimes about the media, and occasionally commandeered the office sound system to play somewhat-to-very-annoying music. John Cook, I vaguely understood, was to some extent part of this. Then he wrote an item making fun of Esquire's Chris Jones .

Making fun of Chris Jones was a hobby of mine. Jones was a particular kind of self-righteous and blindered dipshit—a smarmy one, to be exact, professor of an open-ended public seminar on How to Be a Righteous He-Man Writer. He was hilariously incapable of reflection.And so Jones had written a little throwaway bit of would-be-wise machismo for Esquire in which, assuming the voice of sexual experience, he advised women that, in a world that constantly judges male bedroom performance, it would behoove them to perform better themselves.

Cook, in a feat of insightful cruelty, decided to take Jones's off-gassings at face value: not as the words of an all-knowing Esquire Man, generically addressing Woman, but the words of a particular man, addressing his particular sex partner, presumably his wife. It couldn't possibly be the case, after all, that this award-winning journalist was just bullshitting about his sexual experiences, could it?

Jones flipped out. It was a personal attack on his family! The attack, of course, consisted of nothing more than Jones' own words. But Jones was horrified to see his message to women—"don't treat our semen like it's battery acid"—directed toward his own wife, someone he apparently considered (unlike those generic women) a human being. He never did get the joke.

Jones added Cook's name to his list of "shithearts," the evil people who for some unaccountable reason chose to torment him. As a shitheart in good standing, I marked it down too.

What is my favorite John Cook story? Let me start by saying that John has built a career here at Gawker of which any editor would be proud. He has broken meaningful, change-effecting news, written moving, lasting stories, and built and mentored a staff of unbelievably talented writers.

But all that is nothing—dust in the wind—compared to the single most influential and significant thing John has done in his five years with this company. Look: Relationships decay. Stories are forgotten. News gets old. But headline constructions? Headline constructions last forever. Especially this one , which John's predecessor A.J. Daulerio assembled, while John was in a meeting, from a brief chat-room observation made in January 2012. Two-plus years later, "I Can't Stop Looking At TK" is in widespread use by both major news websites and fly-by-night viral operations. Its popularity engenders disgust from non-visionaries and haters.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you John Cook's legacy. I can't stop looking at it.

I take over Gawker Monday. See you then.

Honolulu police want state lawmakers to keep an exemption that allows undercover cops to have sex with prostitutes as part of their investigations. In other news, Hawaii's state law contains an exemption that allows undercover cops to have sex with prostitutes as part of their investigations.

Officers in favor of the rule argue they need it to do their jobs, although they won't say how often—or even if—it's been used. Opponents say it could only contribute to victimization of sex workers.

A state bill tightening restrictions on prostitution originally contained language that removed the police exemption, but the rule was restored after police testified in its defense.

The revised bill has passed the House, and goes before a Senate committee today.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Legendary director Alejando Jodorowsky's Dune has built up a multi-decade reputation as a great production that never was. Now, thanks to Frank Pavich's documentary on the subject, we can see as complete a picture as possible of what could have been—a brilliantly insane undertaking.

Jodorowsky's Dune is structured as a series of wildly amusing anecdotes about eccentric famous people. The doc tells the story of legendary director (sorry, make that Kanye West-approved legendary director) Alejandro Jodorowsky's attempt to adapt Frank Herbert's towering feat of imagination, the sci-fi novel Dune, into not just a movie but a Jodorowsky movie.

Flying high off the acclaim of his 1973 masterpiece, The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky's envisioned Dune film took considerable creative license and assembled an all-star team to ensure this would be one of the most insane undertakings in cinema history. Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, and the incomparable Amanda Lear were attached to star. H.R. Giger and Mœbius worked on design. Dan O'Bannon (Alien) was to handle special effects. Pink Floyd were to contribute to the score.

Jodorowsky storyboarded the entire movie, had a slew of conceptual art made, and shopped his movie around Hollywood in vain—it didn't secure adequate funding and a Dune movie seemed flat-out impossible until legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis' snapping up of the rights led to David Lynch's much-derided (though still plenty charming) 1984 flop adaptation.

The film about the film is surprisingly triumphant and joyous, due in no small part to the enthusiastic recollections of its primary subject, Alejandro Jodorowsky. I discussed the making of Jodorowsky's Dune, in theaters today, with its director, Frank Pavich via Skype. Below is an edited version of our chat.

Gawker: How did you come to make this movie?

Frank Pavich: There's a couple of books out like The Top 50 Greatest Movies Never Made. That kind of stuff. But those books only have a page or two per all the would-have-beens and could-have-beens like the Tom Selleck version of Raiders of the Lost Ark or the Richard Dreyfuss version of Total Recall and all sorts of weird alternate-universe possibilities. [Jodorowsky's Dune] was always the coolest one. This one's always the most, you know, the craziest. And then I saw a documentary about Jodorowsky called Constellation, and it goes through his whole life and there's a good five-minute section on there where he's talking about Dune and he pulls out this bound book [of all the progress he made on Dune]. It's like, what the hell's that? Once you kind of learn a little about it, you just want to learn more and more.

Was Jodorowsky easy to get in contact with? Was he approachable?

He was not. It took a little while for me to find him, I have to say. I [eventually] went to Paris [where Jodorowsky lives], and it was a very short meeting the first time, and just kind of sat down with him, told him what I wanted to do. I guess I was obviously enthusiastic about it. He was into it. What's interesting about him is he never asked, "Who are you? And what have you done before?" Never. To this day. He has no idea if I've ever made anything else, what's going on, he just said, "OK." And I don't know. I wonder why, to this day. I think a certain part of him thought that we would never complete the film.

Do you have any theories, or do you know for sure, why it took 40 years to tell this story this completely?

It's shocking, because it's not a terribly original idea. Our first shoot with him was in February 2011. In January 2011, I found out about two other documentaries that were going to be based on the same subject that were trying to get made. So that was three of us at exactly the same time. I can't imagine that we were the first three. Maybe the other people got intimidated, or they couldn't reach him, or I don't know, any number of reasons. But it is shocking that it took this long to tell. In that kind of Jodorowskian thing, maybe that's how it was meant to be, you know? This is the perfect time for it. And the way everything kind of coincided, and him and [producer] Michel Seydoux being estranged for so long, and we kind of just happened to get them together and hey! We got a new Jodorowsky movie [The Dance of Reality, to be released later this year] out of it!

Is there anything specific about the concept of spectacular failure that interests you?

Of course. To really reach for the highest level and not making it, that's a fascinating story. One of the things that originally struck me was, here's this guy, he spent two years trying to adapt this book, and he doesn't get to do it. But then a bunch of years later, somebody else comes and gets to do it. I mean, what is that? What's that like? I cannot imagine what it was like when he first heard that David Lynch was going to adapt Dune.

The ultimate conclusion in your film is that Hollywood was too afraid of Jodorowsky's creativity to co-sign his vision for Dune. And I wonder if there are any alternate explanations. I mean, maybe people saw what he was offering and legitimately thought, "Oh, no, this isn't going to work." Or, "This is going to suck."

Oh, sure! I mean, first of all, you have to think of the time period. There's nothing to compare it to. When George Lucas and company were making Star Wars, Fox thought it was the biggest piece of shit ever. They thought it was stupid, you know. "Oh, merchandising? You can keep those merchandising rights. This movie's going to be worth nothing, no one's going to buy any toys," you know. There was nothing. Pre-Star Wars, there was nothing to compare it to. So here comes this crazy Chilean guy from France with this giant book of storyboards and a crazy cast and wants to make this insane 1,000-page book into a movie. "Oh, and you want to see my previous work? Yeah, it's called The Holy Mountain." And I'm sure that the studios had no idea what to make of it.

What was it like to spend the time you did with Jodorowsky to make this movie? How is he as a human being?

We did interviews with him in 2011, 2012, 2013 – and it was fine. It was a little bit removed. We weren't exactly friends. Because I think, again, he was like, "I don't know who this is going to be. Who are you, coming into my house all the time? You're annoying me. You're making this movie. Come on, make the movie, finish it up."

On our first trip to Paris in 2011 for the interviews, we sat with him three times, plus we shot with him when we reunited him with Michel. I've been to his house several more times to go over things and stuff like that. So there was all this communication, seeing him, interviews, emails back and forth. At the end of the last interview with him on that first trip, we had a very small crew and we each had something we'd like him to sign. I had this big hardcover copy of the complete Incal [a comic book series Jodorowsky wrote]. I was like, "Oh, would you mind signing this?" And he's like, "Sure." And he sits down, he opens it up, and he takes out his pen, and he looks at me and he goes, "What was your name again?" Any amount of ego that I may have had in that moment was completely destroyed.

Did you try reaching out to David Lynch?

You know, we thought about it, but it would kind of be weird. If bothered him and got him to agree to do an interview and then, in the film that he'd so graciously given his time for, we have the main subject of the film talking about how horrible his film is, that just felt disingenuous. I don't want to be that guy.

Have you received any backlash from Dune purists?

Very little. Out of all the festivals, we screened in so many festivals so far, and out of all the festivals, only one time did someone have anything negative to say. And it was at Cannes, at our premiere screening. I was like, "Oh, God, is this how it's always going to go?" One guy stood up, and his question was, "How do you feel about being part of the continual rape of Frank Herbert? And I was like, "I don't think that that's exactly the case." I kind of made my case, and then the whole time he was just shaking his head, shaking his head. And then when I was done answering he turned around and stormed off.

The way Jodorowsky puts it is that he raped Frank Herbert "…but with love."

I think that Jodo has a good point: everything is different. Every work of art is different. A book is not a movie, is not a painting, is not a poem. You can't make an exact version. But also, you know, a Dune movie that would be true to your experience with the book is totally different than would be my experience or that person's experience or your English teacher's experience. A book is so completely subjective. An experience of reading a book, what is a true representation of that? And there was a part in the interview that we did not use with Jodo, a little clip where he says, you look at plays and there's different adaptations of ballets, of Swan Lake or Hamlet or whatever. And it's always different adaptations but it's always the same masterwork. But everybody does it differently. He says that's exactly what Dune was. "I made my version of Dune." Coming from Herbert's version, but it was his own vision, his own creation. And that's what I think Frank Herbert would have wanted.

As March marches on and warmer weather attempts to filter into the United States, plants are reproducing like crazy and making millions of people miserable in the process.

Pollen, you may remember from elementary school, can be transferred from one plant to another through wind, on an insect, or on the fur of an animal. It's when pollen spreads away from its source through wind that it begins to cause problems for allergy sufferers the world over.

As temperatures begin to warm up and the seasons change, plants will start the reproductive process and the yellow allergens of doom explode seemingly overnight. The culprits vary by location and time of year. According to pollen.com, today's sources of misery in Mobile, Alabama (where yours truly is sneezing it up) are oak, fir, and grasses. In Dallas, the major producers today are oak, hackberry, and maple.

If you've never seen what a grain of pollen looks like under a microscope, it's essentially a wrecking ball covered in spikes. The barbs allow the grains to stick to things easier, and in the case of allergy sufferers, that includes the inside of your face.

When the pollen enters through your nose or mouth, its presence triggers your immune system to release histamine in an attempt to fight it off. Histamine causes "increased vascular permeability," meaning that your nose will start running, you'll start sneezing and coughing, and your eyes will start watering up. Drugs aptly called antihistamines serve to prevent histamine from screwing with you so much and help to relieve some of the symptoms of seasonal allergies.

Scientists are able to come up with a "pollen count" to help the public get an idea of how much pollen is in the air on any particular day. According to Wunderground, the pollen count "is expressed in grains of pollen per square meter of air collected over 24 hours." They then condense the number into an index ranging from 0 (very little pollen) to 12 (clouds of pollen).

As shown by the popular allergy website pollen.com, pollen levels across most of the United States will be pretty high for the next couple of days as warm air (briefly) takes hold.

Numerous sites have tips for allergy sufferers, but they're more obvious than helpful. Limit your time outside on high pollen days, cover your face as much as possible, make someone else mow the lawn, don't stick your face in a flower. Pretty sound advice.

From one allergy sufferer to another, we'll get through this. Godspeed.

[Images via AP / Dartmouth / pollen.com]

Is it just me, or did the internet seem extra hoaxy this week? It's not just me: Wayne Knight is not dead, this woman was not rescued from a desert island by Google Maps, and the world's most exclusive restaurant isn't really. Let's get right to it.

No, this woman wasn't just found after seven years on a desert island

Facebook went craaazy for this bullshit. The story: A woman named Gemma Sheridan gets trapped on a deserted island for seven years and is finally discovered—by Google Earth. She etched "SOS" into the sand! Some kid in Minnesota saw it! Technology!

Except... no.

Actually, the story is plagiarized from 2013 Daily Mail article about explorer Ed Stafford, who spent 60 days on a desert island as part of a Discovery Channel TV special.

That same SOS photo dates back to at least 2010, when it appeared on an Amnesty International blog post about violence in Kyrgyzstan, where more than 100 such "SOS" signs appeared at the time. (Credit to wafflesatnoon.com for tracking down the photo.)

I wasn't able to get in touch with the person or people behind News-hound.org, the website that originally shared the story. Naturally, for contact info it lists the phone numbers of some super shady LLC. (And, of course, that LLC appears to be not in good standing, according to public documents.) Besides, several other stories on the site are clearly fake.

No, there isn't really a 10-year waiting list for this restaurant

There may be a ridiculous wait to eat at Damon Baehrel, but it's probably not going to take you 10 years to get a table. Not if you're willing to be flexible, anyway.

The New York Daily News published a feature on the exclusive Hudson Valley eatery this week, and touted its "10-year wait list" in the headline.

Exclusive restaurant in New York state has a 10-year wait list http://t.co/cgqdQ6ktiU

— The_News_DIVA (@The_News_DIVA) March 15, 2014

It's true that the restaurant warns diners their wait could be super long. The website carries this warning: "Reservations are not available for the same day, week or month nor can we accommodate walk-ins. It is not unusual for guests to wait several years to secure a reservation." And when I emailed for a reservation — you have to email, not call — I was told that the "very large backlog" means that a Baehrel has a "5+ year waiting list times 2!"

And yet shorter waits definitely happen.

Baehrel himself told the website Eater earlier this year that "even though the list is huge, most people don't wait the five, six years. Usually we start offering folks tables and options after a couple of years."

Some reviewers on sites like Yelp and Trip Advisor also say they were seated early. (You may have to be willing to eat dinner at 4 p.m., but the meal lasts five hours.)

This place may be the ultimate reminder that scarcity sells and special treatment is always available if you know the right people. As one disgruntled Yelp reviewer put it after giving up on trying to get a table: "When someone who had been there mentioned 'The Emperor's New Clothes,' it all clicked in. Proceed with caution."

Then again, if eating cattail shoots and drinking sycamore sap is your thing, maybe it's worth the wait. (Obviously I'm dying to go. The emperor looks amaaazing. Who's in?)

No, Newman is not dead

Did anyone actually get fooled by the hoax that Seinfeld actor Wayne Knight died? I saw more headlines debunking it than evidence that anyone got fooled. But either way! He's alive!

Ebuzzd.com, one of the sites that featured a fake report of Knight's death is a self-described hoax site that weirdly updated its story with real information.

From the ebuzzd "about" page: "Truth is, if you find stories on eBuzzd shocking or real at all, then you should log off the Internet and go for a run."

Maybe your face should log off and go for a run, ebuzzd.

No, Seattle police aren't re-opening an investigation into Kurt Cobain's death

The internet started making assumptions this week after Seattle CBS affiliate KIRO reported that police developed some old photos officers took at the scene of rocker Kurt Cobain's death in 1994.

But police have not re-opened an investigation into Cobain's death, despite a flurry of reports to the contrary.

KIRO makes it clear in its story that the case is still closed: "Police said in 1994 that the case was clearly a suicide. Ciesynski said that is still the case after reviewing evidence." Then again, the station promoted the story saying the case was going to be reopened.

The confusion appears to be a case of internet ouroboros at its most echo-chambery. The Seattle Police Department explains officers knew the media would ask about the Cobain case as the 20th anniversary of his death approached, so it reviewed the file, which sparked the story the police anticipated and led to a bunch of media questions.

Despite an erroneous news report, we have not "reopened" the investigation into the suicide of Kurt Cobain.

— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) March 20, 2014

Our detective reviewed the case file anticipating questions surrounding the closed Cobain case as the 20 yr anniversary approaches.

— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) March 20, 2014

20 years later, detective reviews Cobain case, which remains closed: http://t.co/iZ6Fgnvj9L

— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) March 21, 2014

The newly developed photos show a box of drug paraphernalia, some cash, a pack of cigarettes and a wallet with what looks like Cobain's ID inside, according to the AP. (Also, Kurt Cobain's skis aren't for sale on Craigslist .)

No, that email saying you have cancer isn't real

Thousands of people may have received an email that they have cancer, according to a warning from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

The British health care agency known as NICE says it has been inundated with phone calls from worried recipients. The message came from addresses like no_reply@nice.org.uk or results@nice.org.uk, both fake but seemingly legit.

"NICE does not process blood results, and does not collect or keep personal health data," the agency said in a statement on its site.

Really, the bullshit is nonstop this week. Obama's not visiting a welfare organization in Amsterdam. @OfficiaICNN is an asshole. And it's not like you had any faith in Thought Catalog anyway .

Oh, and here are a bunch of quotes wrongly attributed to Einstein, courtesy of Matt Novak over at Paleofuture.

I'm still skeptical about reports that some fancy dog in China sold for $2 million, which, let's face it, is bullshit even if it's real.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West appear on the cover of April's Vogue, along with the word "selfie" and the #WorldsMostImpracticalHashtag. Looks like the "world's most talked-about couple"—sorry, Jay and Bey—got Annie Leibovitz to take the world's most #trill wedding photo.

Good luck with that XXL hashtag, though. Vogue probably should have just gone with #TrueDetectiveSeason2.

[Turkish graffiti spreads the IP addresses of Google's DNS servers, useful for getting around the government's ban on Twitter. The tag reads "let the bird sing." Image via @FindikKahve/Twitter.]

The NSA, America's all seeing eye, doesn't want to know everything about everybody, Barton Gellman said today, his face hovering on a screen at the front of the New York Times' airy auditorium. "It wants to be able to know anything about anybody."

And that's a key difference, isn't it? The second is worse, because it derives is power from the paranoia of the spied-upon—all of us. It is also reality. Gellman, the esteemed national security journalist who was among the first to write stories based on Edward Snowden's leaks, was being interviewed by Times columnist Roger Cohen—via Skype—along with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. The Three Horsejournalists of the NSA Revelations, so to speak. The interview, which was just one part of the Times' "Sources and Secrets" conference today, was about what you expect, right down to when Cohen plaintively asked them, of their supposed animosity towards "establishment" journalists, "What do you have against us?"

The conference—a series of panel discussions about the relationship between journalists, sources, and the government in the era of the NSA— was worthwhile, all jokes aside. A few bullet point takeaways, for ease of Friday afternoon reading:

- All of the investigative journalists who cover national security (and the very best of the best were on the panels today) agreed that the Obama administration's unprecedented aggressive pursuit of leakers, combined with the revelations of the pervasiveness of the government's electronic eavesdropping capabilities, were having a very serious chilling effect on the willingness of sources in the national security world to come forward and speak to the press. The one thing that both the reporters trying to unearth secrets and the government lawyers on the panels trying to protect the secrets could agree on: the U.S. government is in dire need of a real, working system for internal whistleblowers— a system that would A) get results for their complaints, and B) protect them from retaliation. All agreed this system does not exist today. Until it does, people will leak to the press (more often).

- Sen. Charles Schumer talked optimistically of the prospects of passing a federal shield law for journalists. The version in question would protect professional journalists only, not the unpaid. And its protections would amount to the right to go in front of a judge. Better than the existing system, but far from a utopia. There is a much larger debate to be had on the insidious negative effects of enshrining any special legal protections for "journalists" as a class, thereby making "journalism" an activity not open to all.

- Though Bob Woodward, who moderated one panel, tried to get a discussion going on whether the Obama administration was "anti-press," the reporters onstage rightly replied, politely, that such a term is so broad as to be meaningless. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer had the best answer: "Every administration is anti-press."

- In response to questions about Edward Snowden's actions in Russia, Barton Gellman made the point that it is ridiculous for the media, whose job it is to bring important information to the public, to focus on the actions of Snowden himself, rather than on the ENORMOUSLY IMPORTANT TROVE OF SECRET INFORMATION that he released. It is sad that this point still needs to be made. The fucking media, man. Grow up.

- Likewise, both he and Greenwald noted that it is a canard to argue over whether or not the NSA is really listening to everyone's phone sex calls. The problem is that they want to reserve for themselves both the right and the ability to do so. "It is the capability to surveil that becomes so menacing," Greenwald said.

- Ken Wainstein, a former government lawyer, complained that to the extent that the right of investigative journalists to report on government secrets is protected, "You're going to have more leaks, and in the long run undermine [the security state's] effectiveness." Good. The most useful way to understand this entire debate between government national security and surveillance powers and the freedom of the press is as a struggle for institutional power. The current situation is one in which the government security state, via the NSA, wields almost unimaginable power to destroy privacy. The media as it stands today is a minor counterweight to that. It makes good sense to give the media protection and room to run until this gross imbalance of power has been brought somewhat under control. If the day ever comes when journalists accrue too much power unto themselves, then we can think about tweaking the laws in the other direction. Let's focus on the consequences of things.

Make no mistake: right now, the NSA has already won. This is a discussion about how to bring things back into some semblance of balance. "Challenges [from the security state] to the first and the fourth amendments of the U.S. Constitution," said journalist Peter Maass, is "the story of our lives."

[Pic via]

Early Friday morning, a fire broke out at a motel on the Jersey Shore, killing four people and injuring eight. Ten people remain unaccounted for, though officials said they may have escaped before the blaze.

"Right now, we're in search-and-recovery mode," Joseph Coronato, the Ocean County Prosecutor, said, according to the Star-Ledger.

The fire started at the Mariner's Cove Inn in Point Pleasant at about 5:00 am and quickly spread, destroying much of the motel and forcing trapped residents to jump from windows.

"I had to (jump), there was no other way out," motel resident Peter Kuch told the Associated Press. "My window was only open an inch and flames were already starting to come through it. There just was no other choice."

One woman was rescued after firefighters found her fully clothed in the shower, running water over herself to keep away the flames.

"There were a lot of flashovers," A. J. Fox, Point Pleasant fire chief, said, according to the Star-Ledger. "There was no way we could even get to the windows. The only rescue we could make was that one woman. ...She saved her own life being in the shower, water running, and everything just came together right for her."

Forty people were staying at the motel at the time of the fire, including several people displaced by Hurricane Sandy.

UPDATE 3:38 pm: A fourth victim has been found.

RT @brian4ny 4th victim found Pt Pleasant Beach motel fire #nbc4ny

— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 21, 2014

[Image via AP]

Wanna understand the finer points of this whole journalism thing? There is no need to go to a "J-school" or a fancy conference. Just internalize the wisdom contained in this here interview with VICE boss Shane Smith.

You've said that objective news is impossible because no one is really objective.

Smith: I grew up in Canada, and I live in New York. When I go to cover something in Afghanistan or in Iraq, I don't know all the facts. I don't know both sides of the story. It's impossible to.

Cool.

[Photo: FB]

Catholic League figurehead Bill Donohue has made a career out of saying mean things about gay people. So furious was he at the outrage over the St. Patrick's Day Parade's continual banning of gay groups that he thought he'd reverse things a little bit and show the gays how it felt when someone who wasn't implicitly invited wanted to march in one of their parades. He applied to march in New York's LGBT Pride parade, vowing to carry a banner proclaiming, "Straight is Great." He also said he'd bring a wedding cake. "That'll really stick it to them," he probably thought.

Well, little did he know that the gays would enjoy the sticking. Pride officials welcomed Donohue:

"Mr. Donohue and his group are free to participate in the 2014 March. His group's presence affirms the need for this year's Pride theme, 'We Have Won When We're One.' Straight is great – as long as there's no hate," said David Studinski, March Director of NYC Pride.

GLAAD said, "If you don't have something nice to say, we're going to pretend that you do and come march next to us" (in so many words):

GLAAD's President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis welcomed the drastic change for Donohue. "As a fellow Irish New Yorker, I'm hoping Bill will march with me at NYC Pride," Ellis said. "I look forward to the day when I can march openly with Bill in the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade, and not be turned away because of who I am."

Now that Donohue has been shown that gay groups are way more tolerant than anti-gay groups (imagine!), he must invent a reason to refrain from marching in the parade so that he can continue to be as flat-out rude of a human being as possible. Here is his statement on why he now will not be marching in the Pride parade, come June:

For the past few days I have been engaged in an e-mail conversation with officials from the Heritage of Pride parade, New York's annual gay event; the dialogue has been cordial. I asked to join the parade under a banner that would read, "Straight is Great." The purpose of my request was to see just how far they would go without forcing me to abide by their rules. It didn't take long before they did.

Today, I informed Heritage of Pride officials that I objected to their rule requiring me to attend gay training sessions, or what they call "information" sessions. "I don't agree with your rule," I said. They responded by saying that attendance was "mandatory."

The St. Patrick's Day parade has mandatory rules, too. It bars groups representing their own cause from marching, which is why pro-life Catholics—not just gays—are barred from participating under their own banner. But only gays complain: they refuse to abide by the rules. Indeed, they went into federal court seeking to force a rule change. They lost. In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that private parades have a First Amendment right to determine their own rules.

It is hypocritical for gay activists to complain about having to abide by the mandatory rules of the St. Patrick's Day parade, and then inform me that I cannot march in their parade unless I respect their mandatory rules, rules that I reject.

Good luck to the Heritage of Pride participants. I may be watching it from afar, but I sure won't be downing a Guinness afterwards.

Right, because it was always about "rules" and not basic human shittiness. And as for those "gay training sessions," nobody wants Bill Donohue's ass and he should stop flattering himself. Take a number, buddy, it'll be in the millions.

It turns out that saying yes to Donohue was the perfect way of keeping him from prancing his barely veiled hate at an event that exists to counter such sentiment. The gays played this one flawlessly. They woke up like this because they were born like this.

[Image via Lee Snider Photo Images/Shutterstock]