Former Vice President and all-the-time warmonger Dick Cheney has been busy lately, writing insane Wall Street Journal op-eds and appearing on Fox News with his (failed senate candidate) daughter, Liz. According to Politico, this new spree of activity is just Dick and Liz being friendly.

From Politico:

... the frenzy of activity reflects only the public side of the father-daughter duo's PR blitz of late. In a series of private meetings and back-channel discussions, the Cheneys have quietly been working to repair their relationship with a Republican establishment of which they'd been card-carrying members for decades — but that was strained by Liz Cheney's ill-fated Senate bid in Wyoming last year.

So in addition to explaining how wrong President Obama is on Iraq to Megyn Kelly, the Cheneys have been attending private GOP parties they don't normally deign to attend. One of them was hosted by George Will.

Dick also organized his own "fence-mending" dinner, where he invited Republicans who backed Sen. Mike Enzi instead of Liz in the Wyoming Senate primary.

All this friendliness is to help Liz should she decide to run for office again, which at least one Republican not named Cheney thinks is a good idea. Steve Schmidt, a former senior aide to Dick and a friend of Liz, tells Politico, "I have no doubt that if Liz Cheney's ambition is to be a senator, governor or member of Congress, she's going to achieve that ambition."

Dick and Liz's social activities have not changed their priorities, however. Liz's relationship with her sister Mary is still monumentally awkward, and it's not clear that Liz has made any effort to fix it. (Mary, who is gay and married to Heather Poe, publicly criticized Liz during the campaign for opposing gay marriage.) Here's Politico's update on the situation:

When a POLITICO reporter told Mary Cheney he heard that she and her sister had "buried the hatchet," she initially responded, "Curious who told you that." Pressed to elaborate, she wrote that her response was "something I tend to ask whenever I get a vague [question] like 'someone told me' and it is regards to me or my family." She did not comment further.

Count that as a fence not mended.

[Image via AP]

Florida's conservative Republican attorney general already has millions in the bank for her re-election campaign. But if the Scientologists want to give her millions more, she won't complain.

The bizarre story of Andre Johnson (a.k.a. Christ Bearer), the rapper who cut off his own penis and then jumped from a second story balcony back in April, just got much bizarre-er: Johnson told TMZ he wants his reattached penis to appear in a porno "soon."

Doctors completed a successful reattachment in May "with full functionality," and Johnson is apparently eager to demonstrate.

"Does it work?! Can Chris Brown dance? Can Kanye West rant? Can Jay Z fight off a trick?" he yelled.

It gets better: The porn debut of Johnson's zombie cock could actually happen. Steve Hirsch of Vivid Entertainment told TMZ he's "definitely interested," pending an inspection of Johnson's johnson.

By the way, if you thought Bearer's story that he severed his own dick because he was smoking weed and reading about monks and he missed his kids sounded like bullshit—Congratulations! It was bullshit.

In this new video, Bearer is asked, "Were there any drugs involved?"

"What you [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] [bleep] involved?! There was [bleep] PCP involved when I jumped out the window! Kids, say no to drugs."

There you have it. If you had "PCP" in your Christ Bearer Dick-Chop Explanation office pool, your coworkers owe you lunch.

Update: An interracial porn site told us they're interested in a Bearer scene, provided Mr. Johnson can stay erect for 20 minutes in front of a film crew. (Can he?! Does Lil Wayne's Sprite have purple in it? Does Rick Ross enjoy delicious cream-filled pastries?Does Drake shed a single tear whenever he thinks about Courtney from Hooters on Peachtree?)

[H/T Uproxx, Photo: Facebook]

Jose Manuel Mireles, the leader of a network of vigilantes who fought against Mexican drug cartels in Michoacán, was arrested for gun possession this week, according to law enforcement officials. Before his arrest, Mireles had reportedly refused to formally ally his group with a new rural police force.

From the Associated Press:

The "self-defense" movement sprang up last year to confront a drug cartel, and Mireles is the only founding member of the movement who hasn't joined a new rural police force set up by the federal government to regain control of Michoacan.

"There was a warning that every person who after May 10 was caught carrying an unauthorized weapon would be arrested," Castillo said.

Mireles and 83 other members of his network were taken into custody on Friday after a sting led by the new police force.

As the BBC notes, Mireles recently survived an airplane crash and "disappeared from view" for a few weeks.

Mireles has frequently appeared in the international spotlight, and has been outspoken about his lack of trust for the central government or the cartels. The BBC reports that Mireles "chose instead to continue to operate outside the law."

[Image via AP]

When I first told friends I was going to a meeting of the New York Ordo Templi Orientis branch, called Tahuti Lodge, the general consensus was that I should try not to die, and I should avoid sexual contact.

They were a bit worried because O.T.O., supposedly founded in Germany in the late 19th century, has been described (by no less a source than the Daily Mail) as a "Satanic sex cult." The socialite Peaches Geldof had apparently joined sometime last year, when she was spotted with an O.T.O. tattoo; the Mail and other tabloids quickly followed up with screaming articles about the most famous leader of the "sinister 'religion,'" the sex-obsessed English occultist Aleister Crowley. When Geldof died earlier this year, a dozen or so highly trafficked conspiracy websites highlighted her connection to the group.

(O.T.O., its fascinating PDF FAQ makes clear, is "not a cult." It is, it clarifies, "a California tax-exempt, not-for-profit, religious corporation" that is "officially recognized by the United States government as a non-profit 501c(3) religious organization.")

As it turned out, neither of my friends' concerns proved necessary. The most trouble I had was figuring out which of the many groups clustered in Washington Square Park on a beautiful summer evening was the Tahuti Lodge. What is the protocol for this kind of thing? Should I ask strangers if they're magicians? Is there a password?

The meetup invitation said "We'll Be Meeting Up On The East Side Of The Fountain," so I was looking for a group of unhinged-looking people, possibly in the robes I had seen in their main ritual, the Gnostic Mass. There was a big stage set up on the east side of the square that seemed promising, but the security guy just stared at me blankly when I asked if he was from the OTO. A group of rail-thin women in their 40s looked like they might be into kabbalah and juicing, but probably not sitting naked on an altar.

As it turned out the meetup consisted of two people brown-bagging wine and eating pretzels on the edge of the fountain. I only managed to identify them because one—Frank, a middle-aged dude with a greying ponytail—was holding a pamphlet. He was all in black, with a couple of silver earrings and a red and black tribal-looking tattoo down his forearm, which he described using phrases like "the line of God, broken."

Frank's companion was a blonde woman in her thirties, wearing leather flip-flops and designer sunglasses. I failed to write her name down, because when I told her I was a journalist her face hardened and she jerked her hand from mine. "Those are not our favorite," she said, shortly. "There have been some incidents."

Incidents like the Mail's coverage of Geldof's tattoo, or a Guardian article in which the group is referred to as a "stupid cult" that believes in "sex magic."

Half of that is definitely true. O.T.O. follows the laws of Thelema, a mystical religion based on the teachings of Aleister Crowley. ("Our Order is composed of serious men and women dedicated to the Art and Science of Magick," according to the pamphlet Frank gave me.)

The serious men and women of O.T.O. are also dedicated to sex. Crowley called Thelema a "solar-phallic religion," which involves, I guess, worshiping the sun and penises. (They're also expressly Christian). As you rise up through the orders—there are nine, technically, with a bunch of confusing intermediates—you learn Tantric wisdom, and maybe eat what Crowley called the Elixir of Life, either semen or a mix of semen and vaginal secretions (the U.S. O.T.O. orders deny that they do this). The "final secret," when you reach the top, is a sex thing, but nobody could tell me what it is.

After a couple of awkward minutes around the fountain, a third member showed: George, an adjunct professor with a Ph.D. in esotericism and (like Frank) a greying ponytail. George had just come from a conference on the occult. This was his first time in New York, so he asked about good goth clubs.

George was extremely friendly and happy to share his extensive knowledge of O.T.O. with me. More than happy, really; there is a distinct possibility if I hadn't eventually put up one finger and turned to someone else, I would still be in Washington Square Park listening to him.

O.T.O. didn't technically start with Aleister Crowley—he dated it back to the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians, but it seems to have been founded by a German Freemason named Carl Kellner around 1895—but he became its spiritual leader shortly after joining in 1910. By 1925, Crowley had pushed out all rivals to power, including the O.T.O. members who had introduced him to the society, and he was elected Outer Head of the Order, a position he held until his death in 1947. (O.T.O., which has suffered a decline in membership since WWII, is currently led by William Breeze, a member of the English industrial band Coil, using the name Hymenaeus Beta.)

An ambitious wizard, Crowley brought with him the complicated hierarchy and many of the occult trappings, composing the Gnostic Mass and integrating Thelema into the teachings of O.T.O. He also brought OTO a great deal of notoriety. The British tabloids called Crowley the "Wickedest Man in the World," (indeed, they still are!) but he actually liked that. What he didn't appreciate was being called a practitioner of black magic. In 1934 he sued a British paper for libel, and won, on the grounds that while he was a magician, he was definitely not a black one.

The magicians I met did not seem particularly wicked. Kyler, the tarot-card reader who always hangs out in Washington Square in a wizard hat, is apparently an OTO member, too, and he periodically swung by our group chat to drop important details, like that he's self-publishing a book about a love triangle between a brother, a sister, and a red truck, or possibly a truck driver.

The woman told us the story of running into Kyler at a bar while on an OKCupid date with an investment banker. "[The banker] didn't know I was into the occult—I don't usually lead with that. So I was like, oh shit. But it turned out OK." Her sorority sisters are also not into the occult, she told us.

Later a bald guy with a giant beard stopped by to talk about his self-made mystic religion. After that we talked about our dogs for a while. No one produced Elixir of Life, and there didn't seem to be much else to do, so we made our excuses and drifted off into the evening.

Cult name: Ordo Templi Orientis

Year founded: 1904

Spiritual leader: Aleister Crowley

Most famous member: Peaches Geldof

Slogans: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"; "Love is the law, love under will."

Sample Ranks: Minerval; Magician; Perfect Magician, and Companion of the Holy Royal Arch of Enoch; Prince of Jerusalem; Sovereign Prince Rose-Croix, and Knight of the Pelican & Eagle; Theoreticus, and Very Illustrious Sovereign Grand Inspector General; Perfect Pontiff of the Illuminati; Rex Summus Sanctissimus.

Should you join this cult? If magic, Tantric sex, and cheap wine do it for you, I can't think of a reason why not.

Cult Rush Week is an ongoing series in which Cat Ferguson attends introductory and informational sessions for cults and other esoteric organizations in the New York area. If you know of a cult, email her.

Recently, a man took a leisurely ride on North Carolina's Interstate 77, not in his car, but outside someone else's.

Brenda Cruz, who was driving behind the white Oldsmobile Alero to which the man desperately, incredibly clutched, shot the above footage with her cell phone. Police identified the suspect but have not released his name publicly.

If only the story behind the stunt were as zany as the outcome. From WSOC:

Officers said the incident started as a domestic dispute when the woman's boyfriend, "assaulted her by grabbing her arm and pulling her onto the ground" during an argument, according to a CMPD report.

...

A witness, who did not want to talk on camera, said she was there Saturday and saw the woman abandon her car in the intersection, then run to the Payless Shoe Store, begging for help.The witness said she saw the man later walk away and the woman drove off.

Twenty minutes later, the woman's white Alero was going up to 55 mph on I-77 northbound near exit 7. 911 dispatchers could not believe what drivers were seeing.

Witnesses said the mystery man then shattered the car's rear windshield and climbed inside, where there were two child passengers, and the woman driving eventually pulled over. No one was hurt, and the driver told police she's not interested in pressing charges.

[Image via WSOC]

Our politics are so bitter and divisive. But Charles Murray, the conservative eugenicist who believes that "a lot of poor people are born lazy," has a solution he believes can enhance our culture's political amity: Ostracize evil "progressives" and separate them out from acceptable "liberals."

Murray makes his case in a forum where it is certain to be taken seriously by the serious left—the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. First, understand that what he means by acceptable liberals is that class of men with whom he can share stately cocktail conversation:

A few weeks ago, I was thrown into a situation where I shared drinks and dinner with two men who have held high positions in Democratic administrations. Both men are lifelong liberals. There's nothing "moderate" about their liberalism. But as the pleasant evening wore on (we knew that there was no point in trying to change anyone's opinion on anything), I was struck by how little their politics have to do with other elements of the left.

Their liberalism has nothing in common with the political mind-set that wants right-of-center speakers kept off college campuses, rationalizes the forced resignation of a CEO who opposes gay marriage, or thinks George F. Will should be fired for writing a column disagreeable to that mind-set. It has nothing to do with executive orders unilaterally disregarding large chunks of legislation signed into law or with using the IRS as a political weapon. My companions are on a different political plane from those on the left with that outlook—the progressive mind-set.

This is a true statement: When you're the type of liberal whose Washington-based cocktail lifestyle goes unmolested by political, cultural and social vicissitudes, it's less hard to ignore those vicissitudes.

Be more like Don Draper, liberals! And not like those timid progressive souls whose mindset "produces the shutdown of debate and growing intolerance that we are witnessing in today's America," Murray writes. "If you want substantiation for what I'm saying, read Jonah Goldberg's 2008 book 'Liberal Fascism.'"

Yes, progressives are all about shutdowns and intolerance.

Where are you heading with all this, Chuck?

...since libertarians aren't ever going to be able to retrieve its original meaning, we should start using "liberal" to designate the good guys on the left, reserving "progressive" for those who are enthusiastic about an unrestrained regulatory state...

Ah, I see. A sort of good guys vs. bad guys scheme. With us or against us, aywot?

Making a clear distinction between liberals and progressives will help break down a Manichaean view of politics that afflicts the nation. Too many of us see those on the other side as not just misguided but evil. The solution is not a generalized "Can't we all just get along" non-judgmentalism. Some political differences are too great for that.

Set aside for a moment the sheer elegance of the doublethink involved in a passage that advocates the categorization of other people as "good" or "evil" leftists in order to "break down" Manichaeanism. Forget the stunning vapidity of a scholar attempting to rub out "a Manichaean view of politics" with a solvent whose main ingredient is the conviction that "some political differences are too great" for "non-judgmentalism."

Murray is right in one sense: Progressivism is antithetical to the sort of libertarianism he champions. After decades of shitty wars, shitty political debates, shitty economics, and a government broken by partisan politicking, libertarianism's cachet is hotter than ever before, and progressivism is on the outs. People are burned out on government solutions. They're burned out on solutions, period, and they just want to be left the hell alone.

It doesn't help that modern progressives, captured as they are by partisan political machinations, don't articulate their philosophical vision very well. At least, not as simply as libertarians do—and let's face it, a political philosophy has to be fairly simple for mouthbreathers like Rand Paul to advocate it.

But though Murray gets the oppositional forces right, he chooses wrong. Libertarianism is an unsophisticated, pretentious, ponderous, privileged dead end of governance. We need progressivism more than ever.

What Murray, in fact, takes issue with as "progressivism" is a notion of politics and philosophy that privileges the good over the right—that takes rights not as absolutes, but as values that are good insofar as they're good for something. This is actually the way most of us reason: We believe in free speech, but not to shout "fire" in a crowded theater or distribute pornographic pictures of underage children. Those forms of speech aren't good for anything, we generally agree—in fact, we've agreed as a culture that they represent a harm.

And so on with other rights. We generally believe in a right to self-defense, but can actually argue over whether that includes the right to carry guns openly or concealed—and if so, what training or types of weapons are acceptable. We generally believe in a woman's right to choose her womb's destiny—but can agree that keeping abortion rare is a public good, and worth debating as a policy aim. We generally believe that wealth inequity is a problem to be addressed, and that everyone should have a baseline ability to not starve or go homeless or illiterate, but we can negotiate just how far our society goes, and what it sacrifices, to improve the lot of the worst-off.

Progressivism, in other words, in concerned with moral consequences and outcomes of the things people do, and has an interest in legislating to that end. It admits of shades of gray. It negotiates. But it's sanguine and unwavering about the problems it addresses.

Libertarianism shuts that down. It views rights as absolute, a priori, and can tolerate no dilution or exception to those rights. Hence, it can deny that there's even a problem with outcomes.

In this worldview, free speech is absolute... and as a result, a family of five or six can impose its religious opinions on the thousands of workers that make the family business profitable—even if the family's religious convictions are completely and willfully ignorant of scientific facts, much less workers' needs. Property rights are absolute... and as a result, even a Republican-devised compromise measure to keep the air relatively clean, like cap-and-trade, is a socialist constraint of trade and capital. Gun rights are absolute... and so you see, we can't do mental-health checks, or close private-sales loopholes, or mandate licenses, because those measures would erode individual liberty, which is a far greater harm than any number of deaths, so now shut up about it, or else you'll get shot in the face by an armed freedom-loving paranoiac who felt threatened by your incursion on freedom.

The absolutist rhetoric of rights is not a cornerstone of discourse. It's a wrecking ball. It admits of no shades, no difficult cases that can't be solved by recourse to the "me"—and a particular "me" at that, one that old white male Harvardians like Murray can wrap their heads around. He has plenty of empathy—for people who make sense to him. You know, people just like him.

The absolutist rhetoric of rights that Murray advocates represents a capricious rightward shift from Adam Smith liberalism, which was grounded in the good—a rising tide floats everyone's boats! The invisible hand helps everyone! Capitalism helps fix poverty!—to something darker: Ayn Rand libertarianism, which is grounded in rights—it's mine! I don't care if it's better or worse for you, it's right that I should keep it! Fuck you!—and sees questions of the good as dangerous to the "me."

So, yes: Make your choice. Be a "good liberal" for Charlie, be the me-est me you can be, and maybe—if you're enough like him—he'll tip a Georgetown drink your way. Or be a nasty progressive who attempts to think oneself into other people's plights. There will be no cocktails in it, and you'll be called a fascist by strange sportcoated creatures. But at least you won't ever consider "a lot of poor people are born lazy" to be a valid solution to any problem.

[Photo credit: Christine Langer-Pueschel/Shutterstock]

"Is Michiko Kakutani incompetent or just crazy?" Shall we start with that question? Don't blame me. It's what Google autocomplete gave me when I typed "Michiko Kakutani is." I'm just reporting what the Internet says about her!

It seems like a useful way to look at the New York Times book critic in the light of this morning's review of Emily Gould's new novel, Friendship. Or rather, this morning's review of Emily Gould. Before Kakutani gets around to mentioning the book, she offers three paragraphs of negative backstory about its author—up to and including online comments attached to Gould's "very irritating" (in Kakutani's assessment) 2008 New York Times Magazine cover story. Did you know that a commenter back then called her a "trollop"? Now you do.

Quite a literary world, where your angriest critics precede and introduce you, isn't it? In the print edition, Kakutani was so busy sharing years-old third-party invective, she barely managed to fit the title of the novel she was reviewing before the jump. Of course, we must remember that some people have considered Kakutani "the stupidest person in New York City" or "stupid and shallow" or "glaringly missing...humor and wit."

We are all caught up in the battles of yesteryear. Emily Gould's original source of fame or notoriety or publicity was that she wrote for Gawker. She then abruptly quit Gawker and repudiated her work here, in a well-crafted and definitive Gawker post. Some institutional and interpersonal unpleasantness ensued, and then the institutions and persons moved on, separate but still irrevocably linked.

As for me, I like Gould, personally. We have mutual friends, with whom we are much closer than we are with one another. We sometimes go to the same social gatherings and converse there. Once in a while we swap emails.

With that established: Kakutani's review is a particularly nasty bit of assholeism. The novel itself doesn't particularly bother her—"awkward but sharply observed" would be the capsule—but she compulsively looks for ways to swat at the author, even if it means stretching her backhand into the hypothetical:

The novel form (or perhaps the editing process) also accentuates Ms. Gould's strengths as a writer, while playing down the liabilities apparent in her logorrheic blogs.

Yes, perhaps the virtues of Gould's writing aren't really hers, but were added by a third party. Perhaps Kakutani and her own editor were too drunk on Chardonnay at deadline to think about whether such speculation was fair or justified. Perhaps!

Even so, it's not the worst, or most unbecoming, response to Gould's novel. That (so far) has belonged to a literary blogger, who wrote an 11,000-word denunciation of Gould and everything he believed she represented—in unhinged personal and anatomical terms—and then threatened, falsely, to kill himself when people pointed out he was being a misogynist loon. Another day at the office.

In response to that blogger's breakdown, the critic Glenn Kenny* wrote to apologize for his own foaming hostility toward Gould in the past:

When you're a drunk, and have some facility for words, and things aren't going so great for you, you can read something and infer that the writer's situation is better than your own, and it can throw you into a frothing bloody rage. You think, "Why is the world paying attention to this NOBODY?" or "why is this NOBODY making more money than I am?" and "why isn't this NOBODY beset with paralyzing depression and fear like he or she deserves to be instead of me?" and so on, and then because you fancy yourself a critic or a perspicacious observer of the cultural scene, you mold these resentments into a theory that there is something VERY WRONG with the culture and that the person you hate is the one responsible for that thing being very wrong.

Some things are genuinely worth getting angry and being nasty about. But this particular cycle of publicity and outrage and abuse surrounding Gould and her novel seems especially misplaced, if also inevitable. Yes, she has been profiled in Elle, and in the Styles section of the Times. And even as those profiles appeared, it was obvious that there would be a terrible response (though the depths of that terribleness were still a surprise).

It comes down to the fallacy that Kenny was pointing to: this sense that Emily Gould is somehow stealing attention that would better serve someone else. She isn't, and it wouldn't. She has written a novel, and like all the rest of us who have written books, she faces the usual long odds. A profile in Elle is not going make her a best seller. A profile in the Times is not going to make her a best seller either. (Ask Jon-Jon Goulian.)

An author does publicity because an author is expected to do publicity, to get whatever opportunities she or he can. Someone has given you some money—an advance on sales—and this is where you hustle for it, without the luxury of shame or shyness. Ten times out of ten, it is likely to make very little difference.

So there is no need to take (or give) offense, or to throw up flaming barricades to keep Gould from using her name recognition to overtake Janet Evanovich. If the book is lucky enough to find a larger audience, it will almost certainly not be an audience that cares about infighting in literature or on blogs. Among Kakutani's digs at Gould is that the book has "chick-lit architecture"—which means, at bottom, that Michiko Kakutani too feels powerless to do anything about it.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Yesterday, we brought you true stories of people who work behind the scenes in reality (or "nonfiction") television. Since then, we've been flooded with more emails from industry insiders, detailing poor working conditions. We bring you some of them below.

Unlike many of their brethren in other areas of television and film production, reality TV workers are not unionized, and tend to be paid less, get fewer benefits, and have far fewer workplace protections as a result. Here is a sampling of what we've heard just in the past 24 hours.

From a veteran reality TV showrunner

As with many others who commented, I have never been paid overtime, vacation days or weekends. I work on a flat rate, and that typically means working upwards of 12 or 15 hours a day for 7 days a week. I work alongside cameramen and audio guys who receive pay for their overtime (they are only allowed to work 12 hour days), meal penalties (they get paid a fee if they are not fed every six hours) and turnaround (a minimum amount of time to rest between shifts). Oftentimes I will work one shift with a camera team, say goodbye to them, and then work the next shift with a fresh crew. I am expected to write scripts, story outlines or download notes at night after wrap. I am expected to drive a van full of sleeping people two hours to a hotel after only sleeping four hours.

I have never received health insurance, despite working continuously for one production company for 4 years.

I have worked on many shows where the production company submits fake callsheets to the insurance company in order to get around labor violations, and at other companies where the production company asks the crew to lie on their timecards. I've worked on shows where I later found out there was no insurance, and others where I had been told safety plans were in place only to find once on location that those were cut from the budget.

The biggest problem in our industry, besides the complete and total disregard for the health, safety and well-being of the production crew, is the lack of oversight. There is no overall entity (like a Labor & Practices Department) looking out for shady practices. Instead, there are hundreds of production companies running around, each deciding for themselves what they deem safe and acceptable. There is no-one to speak up to, and no recourse when something goes wrong.

I have started speaking up about safety on set. I mean, I almost died while making a fucking cable TV show. There is a staggering amount of negligence on shoots. The boat I was traveling in had no safety lights, navigation lights, life jackets or safety equipment. The boat driver only had one eye and (we found out later) had been involved in multiple accidents caused by traveling too fast. We got in two accidents in one night. In the first accident I was thrown from the boat, knocked unconscious underwater, and pulled to safety by my cameraman. I tore my shoulder in five places. In the second accident (which happened 45 minutes later), I ruptured a disc. When I returned to New York and told the production company that I needed surgery, I was fired. I went on to have shoulder and spine surgery and have spent the last year recovering. I do not receive workers' comp and have been hemorrhaging my savings account.

I am so grateful that the media is starting to report on the labor violations in reality TV. I really hope it will change in my lifetime.

Dangerous working conditions

I got out of "the game" of reality TV a few years ago, thank God. But in addition to the horrible an unethical labor abuses, sexual harassment, and emotional abuse others have mentioned, I think it's also relevant to mention the physically dangerous working conditions under which reality tv people are commonly forced to work.

Basically, in the context of those 20-hour day, 6-day weeks, PAs and Production Coordinators are also asked to drive large vans and trucks, and pressured to get from point A to point B more quickly than is humanly possible.

I used to work on a show that shot all over the country in lots of rural areas, and it was not uncommon at all for me to drive a passenger van full of crew members on treacherous back roads back to the hotel at the end of a 18-hour shooting day at 11pm, while basically dozing off. And because the camera operator and the sound guy got overtime pay until we pulled up at the hotel, I was under lots of pressure to get there as fast as I could. Thankfully I never got into any accidents or killed anybody, but it seemed like every other episode or so, some PA would drive too fast in icy conditions and go off the road, or total a parked car, or have some other type of near miss.

Pay rates for a reality producer

I'm a reality tv producer in LA in my 30's. Between that, and my former career as a freelance writer, I've never had health insurance. Yet I'm expected to work 12 hour days at least five days a week, or six (and sometimes seven) days a week if necessary. And if I get sick, well, that's on me. There's a tremendous amount of pressure to never call in, no matter how sick you are, and god forbid you're sick two days in a row. You better feel better within 24 hours if you expect to have a job to return to.

Last week, I interviewed for a producer job at a production company that was just acquired by one of the major studios. The show is for a broadcast network. The job SHOULD pay at least $2200 per week, but this net is notorious for lowballing it's producers. This morning, I received an email inviting me to accept the position and come work for them at a rate of $1200 per week. GEE WHIZ, THANKS GUYS. That's less than I was making when I was an associate producer.

If I wasn't relatively new to producing at this level, I'd have insisted on at least $2000 in my reply, but I told them I'd do it for $1800 firm. I don't expect to get the job.

I know that those seem like ridiculous numbers and I should be grateful and #firstworldproblems and all that, but I am so fucking sick of non-scripted and the absurd expectations they have of their employees. We should unionize, but the sad fact is that there are probably several thousand people within a few miles of where I'm sitting in LA right now who would murder to do that job for $1200 per week or even less.

Health care for a reality show producer

I have never received personal time off, sick days, vacation time, paid vacations— even on holidays where the company is forced to close, we do not get paid— but we also can't come into the office and work if we'd like to get paid for the holiday. I have probably clocked in over 1000+ hours in overtime throughout my career and have not received an extra dime because thats the "industry norm". I was eligible for health insurance at [company] and got it for 3 months— at a whopping $150+ a paycheck for a midlevel plan. I am eligible at [other company] for insurance starting August but my project wraps the beginning of September so it might not even be worth it since I am not guaranteed job security at this company. I currently pay out of pocket right now $481/mo in health insurance thanks to Obamacare. Prior, I was paying $597/mo. Plus rent (I live by myself). Plus utilities. Plus regular bills...

Many of us live and breathe this business and are extremely proud of our work because it IS our child. We nurse an idea from concept to executing to completion, leaving relationships, friends, families, and social obligations behind to amerce ourselves and reach towards a coveted 8-10pm timeslot for a 22 or 45 min weekly program. We do it because we love it. We do it because we want to prove our skills and talent. We do it in hopes of being the next big things and proving that this realm of programing is still creative and innovative, and to reach the masses with a message.

I encourage as many people to speak up as possible. Change isn't easy but if we push, it will come. It's important not to be bullied by these large production companies and prove that we're worth a damn because without the strong industry professionals, they're nothing.

Family leave, or not

[For ten years] I mostly worked on feature length films but when the amount of feature films being shot in Los Angeles began to decline, I took a job on a popular reality show for one of the big three networks. I worked as a department head for three seasons until the end of my third season when I had a baby and was promptly replaced by my own assistant for a third of what I was being paid. I never received a call or email regarding my own termination. One day I was at a social gathering with some film friends when it came out that the show had ended it's hiatus and had been shooting for several weeks. I was left without a job and no legal ground to stand on for being replaced while on family leave.

This particular show was a constant revolving door of production personnel, and to be honest I spent all three seasons wondering if I would have a job from one week to the next. I was monetarily compensated for my experience, but I know that a lot of the crew members were working upwards of 20 hours per day with no turnaround for $150 a day (and their per diem was somehow included in this rate). In the non-union world, solidarity doesn't exist. There will always be someone willing and able to work for less than you.

I have been working in the film/tv industry my entire adult life, and I can say without hesitation that reality is looked as the worst of the worst by crew workers.

If you are an employee in the reality TV industry who wants to share your story, you can email Hamilton@Gawker.com.

[Photo: Getty]

According to a civilian patrol group, 56 people were killed in a car bomb attack in Maiduguri, Nigeria on Tuesday. The group, the Civilian Joint Task Force, recovered the bodies at the site. Witnesses and officials have blamed Boko Haram for the attack.

According to Al Jazeera, the bomb went off at 8 a.m. in a crowded market. When firefighters reached the scene, "unruly crowds tried to attack [them], accusing them of arriving too slowly and hindering their efforts to put out the raging blaze."

The Associated Press reports that Nigerian officials have tried to play down the death toll. The government has still not been able to rescue the hundreds of women, girls, and boys kidnapped by Boko Haram in recent months.

[Image via AP]

There's a humanitarian crisis erupting on our nation's southern border. Or there is a ruthless plot — orchestrated by the Obama administration — to irrevocably shift the demography of Texas, and thus the whole country, into the Democratic Party's favor. Forever. Rational adults can differ on this. Let's examine.

Since 2011, there has been an escalating influx across the U.S.-Mexican border of what U.S. Customs and Border Protection calls "Unaccompanied Alien Children" or UACs, but what could also be more specifically described as human children, predominantly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, with big wet eyes and rich inner lives capable of experiencing pleasure and pain as acutely as human children born in the United States.

During the last fiscal year, the U.S. Border Patrol documented 38,833 unaccompanied minors attempting to cross the border into the United States: a 59 percent increase over the previous year. Today, officials and advocacy groups estimate that the agency may apprehend as many as 74,000 of these young unattended migrants by year's end.

U.S. Congressmen Steve Stockman (R-Texas) and Steve King (R-Iowa) recently put forward an interesting theory as to why this crisis is happening now and how we can humanely resolve it. Rational adults can debate these things. As the two lawmakers told World Net Daily, a web-based news portal, they believe that President Barack Obama has consciously tailored his administration's immigration policies to engineer just such a humanitarian crisis, endangering tens of thousands of children for partisan gain.

"Obama follows all the far-left, Leninist, socialist-type stuff," Congressman Stockman explained to the news portal, adding that it's "an open secret Obama is trying to flood Texas with illegals to make it into a blue state."

"If we lose Texas, and it becomes like California, then the Republicans lose the chance of ever getting a Republican elected president."

Representative Steve King agreed, in his own exclusive interview with the venerable web portal, implying that Obama's reaction to the child migrant issue has only deepened his suspicions.

"You or I could shut that thing down in less than a week," King told World Net reporter Jerome Corsi, author of the books The Obama Nation and Where's the Birth Certificate?

"It's the Battle of the Bulge down there, and you send in George Patton and the Third Army to relieve the surrounded 101st Airborne."

Both Steves (Huh! Interesting.) expressed their feeling that the crisis was an implementation of the strategies advanced in the 1960s, by a husband-and-wife team of activist professors at Columbia University's School of Social Work, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. In a 1966 issue of the Nation, Cloward and Piven advocated for a mass movement educating the poor on the benefits to which they were entitled under existing public assistance programs. The couple hoped and believed that the ensuing fiscal crisis would reveal to the American electorate that these programs were criminally underfunded and inadequate to the scope of the problem.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and it is the opinion of a preponderance of conservative commentators that "the Cloward-Piven strategy" is in fact a recipe for anarchy; a putsch to be staged in advance of a Stalinist dictatorship in the United States. As journalist Steve Deace (Huh: another Steve.) explains it in an opinion piece republished on Alex Jones' Infowars:

That's exactly what you're seeing the Obama Regime doing on the issue of illegal immigration. They're not surprised or deflated by this. They're elated, and they're the ones conducting the cattle call – shamelessly using children born into poverty as a means of collapsing the system.

The "cattle call" Steve Deace is referring to is allegedly Obama's advocacy of the DREAM Act, which would provide conditional permanent residency to minors who have been living in America for over five years and who have completed certain service and education requirements. (The DREAM Act has never been passed, but variations of the law have been passed on the state level.) Other notes in the cattle call then would include Obama's memorandum to the DHS known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which gives agencies some prosecutorial discretion in the deportation of minors. By showing mercy toward these youngest and most vulnerable, Deace believes, Obama has been practically inviting them to enter the country illegally.

But, what if, instead, some other factor proved to be more significant?

What if, say, prolonged campaigns of ultra-violence and a history of endemic poverty in the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador were actually what had provoked this mass exodus of children northward?

It would certainly account for the fact that the nations surrounding Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — including impoverished Nicaragua — have also seen greater numbers of unaccompanied minors from these three countries seeking asylum.

It would also account for the fact that Barack Obama would not actually need to do this to shift the demographics of Texas. Research from Pew shows that the percentage of Latino and Hispanic members of the U.S. population has been rising more rapidly than any other group since at least the Reagan era.

This alternate theory also has the ring of truth, because Honduras has been the undisputed murder capital of the world for years, following a brutal wave of repression after its 2009 military coup. Guatemala too has a long history of military dictatorship and civil war (sometimes CIA orchestrated), as well as an increasingly heated war between rival drug gangs like the Zetas. If you are unfamiliar with the life and death of Catholic Bishop Óscar Romero, perhaps you will find that looking up his name and El Salvador might further burnish the argument that these children are simply fleeing a miserable war zone.

It's really hard to know for sure. Could it possibly be that the United States of America has maybe spent over a century now turning Central America, South America and the Caribbean into its own God Damn Throne of Blood, its own private Agribusiness slave plantation, a covert ops training ground, illegal pharmacy, tax shelter and tourist destination?

Or maybe it is more likely that President Obama has undertaken a devious long-con, stacking the deck in Texas with hordes of Democrat-voting Latinos.

[Photo via Pete Souza]

When season 2 of Orange is the New Black first became available for binge-watching, astute observers noticed that nearly the entire recurring cast had previously appeared on the show that practically invented binge-watching: Law and Order.

33 OINTB actors have made cameos on Dick Wolf's venerable, formulaic, crime drama (or its spinoffs, including Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent). Nerve.com 's Dianna McDougall and Wesley Bonner have tracked down 31 of them for this comprehensive supercut.

If you didn't think Pornstache could be any creepier, wait until you see him as Benson's stalker in SVU.

Somewhat related, but not in this supercut: Yoga Jones was the voice of Patty Mayonnaise in Doug. Once you know, you can never unhear it.

[H/T HyperVocal]

RiFF RAFF's mere appearance goads you to dismiss him. He's a white rapper with cornrows, a grill, intricately designed facial hair and brand tattoos all over his torso and neck. He wants you to believe that he's a clown, and his music reinforces this. His lyrics take rap templates and push them to their logical extremes, so much so that some of them—"Might pull up in Milan in the drop candy swan"—barely register as reality. RiFF RAFF experiments recklessly and gleefully like a teenager with a lighter, and like a teenager he wants to be underestimated.

Eventually—unless you dismiss him out of hand, which isn't unreasonable—one must reckon with the talent of the man who calls himself "the White Gucci Mane with a spray tan." RiFF RAFF—who appeared on the MTV reality show From G's to Gents but who made a name for himself as a rapper starting about two years ago—can be irritating and his music is often bad, but a lesser rapper and personality would have drowned in the waves of internet ephemera long ago. But this one is magnetic and unique and divisive. He is a sideshow, but he's the type of sideshow that draws you in even against your will.

But not everything is perfectly orchestrated. NEON iCON, his new album, was supposed to be released this past January by Diplo's label Mad Decent. But bringing RiFF RAFF to market—making him a viable musician—has proven to be a bit more difficult than merely trolling for attention. He put out a single with rap producer du juor DJ Mustard, but it failed to reach a mainstream rap audience. Instead, it seems like Mad Decent has decided to throw everything at the wall to see what exactly sticks.

The resulting album puts his talent and personality on display, but it's also a disorienting listen, with Texas rap flows jutting up against pop-punk instrumentals and electro trifles. It's hard to tell if RiFF RAFF has figured his music out, or if he hasn't.

Now he is here to answer your questions for the next hour or so. But—fair warning—like everything he does, his answers may only be in service of throwing you off.

UPDATE: This chat is over. Thanks to Riff for stopping by, even if on rapper time. You can read his responses by scrolling below.

A bear cub who had his sights set on some delicious cookies got into quite a struggle on Friday when his stupid bear head got stuck in an animal cracker jar. The bear was in New Jersey, where the cookies are good and the bears are hungry.

NBC reports that the 6-month-old cub found the jar in Ringwood on Friday night:

As the 28-pound animal tried to eat what remained in the jar, he apparently pulled the jar over his head and it got stuck.

The cub became spooked when approached and went up a nearby tree, but got wedged about 40 feet up.

To add insult to injury, the bear-in-jar was now bear-in-jar-in-tree.

Authorities from the Environmental Protection Department came to the rescue, tranquilizing it, after which the jar was "gingerly" cut from its head.

[Image via NBC]

The first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season formed off the Florida coast last night, and the system is going to skim the east coast of the United States before heading out to sea next weekend. Even though the worst weather will affect mostly the Outer Banks, it could still have a dangerous impact on the beaches this holiday weekend.

Current Situation

The latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center has Arthur sitting off the Florida coast as a strengthening tropical storm. The system has 50 MPH winds as it just barely drifts towards the northwest. The storm will start to accelerate over the next day or two as a trough in the jet stream draws closer.

As of now, the forecast shows Arthur becoming a category 1 hurricane when it hits and runs parallel to the North Carolina coast on Thursday night and Friday morning. Then-Hurricane Arthur could have winds between 80 and 90 MPH as it hits the Outer Banks on July 4, which is a major problem for both officials and tourists, as the area is packed to the gills with beachgoers in the area for the long weekend.

Where will Arthur go?

As shown by the forecast track map above, they predict that the center of Tropical Storm Arthur will travel roughly parallel with the southeastern coast before quickly heading out into the northwestern Atlantic, eventually hitting Newfoundland as a subtropical storm.

The effects of tropical cyclones extend well beyond their centers of circulation, so do not focus on the center of the track. The white bubble that extends out from either side of the predicted path is called the cone of uncertainty.

The cone of uncertainty is the margin of error in the National Hurricane Center's predicted track forecast. Meteorologists take the error of their previous forecasts and use the average track errors to create the cone of uncertainty. Weather forecasting is an inexact science, and this is especially true for forecasting hurricanes. Arthur's center of circulation could wind up anywhere within the cone as it moves along the coast, and there's even an outside chance that it could wind up outside of the cone of uncertainty.

If Arthur's path tracks further to the west than predicted, it could pose serious problems for coastal areas from the south up through New England. If it tracks further east, it'll be less of a problem.

What are Arthur's impacts?

The storm will have relatively significant impact on the Carolina coast, but especially so for the Outer Banks where Arthur's center is expected to pass over or very near to. Here's a rundown of the effects residents and visitors can expect from Arthur later this week, provided the outcome stays true to the current forecast:

• High winds are a threat, especially if coastal areas see winds reaching hurricane force. Expect airborne debris and wind damage to trees, structures, and power lines in the areas that see the highest winds. The NHC regularly updates graphics showing the probability of seeing tropical storm and hurricane force winds.
• Heavy rains will occur over coastal areas and even slightly inland. Locations closer to the path of the storm could see between 2 and 4 inches of rain, with more possible in the heavier rainbands. This could lead to some flooding in low-lying areas.
• Rip currents are going to be a major hazard on beaches on the east coast this week as Arthur gathers strength and starts moving on up. More than 100 people die due to rip currents every year. A rip current is a strong current just beneath the surface of the water near land that pulls you out away from the shore. If you're ever caught in a rip current, swim parallel to the shore until you're out of the current.
• As with any storm, a storm surge is likely with Arthur, although it should be on the small side. Even a small storm surge can cause coastal flooding, especially when combined with high waves and the low-lying elevation of the Outer Banks.

Residents should start making preparations now for a hurricane on July 3 and July 4. If you're a visitor, listen to local authorities and if they tell you to leave, leave.

The National Hurricane Center will release its next update on Arthur at 8 PM, followed by a full forecast by 11 PM.

[Satellite image by GOES, track map by the author with data from the NHC]

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None of us will ever be living in a universe where Community doesn't exist and it will continue to go on and on forever producing half-hours of TV that are, equally, awesome and awful and all of us on the Internet will continue to dance along the impossible x/y-axis of Dan Harmon is a genius and Dan Harmon is a dick. But let's imagine a different timeline. Let's imagine that, instead of bringing back Community for its sixth season, Yahoo(!(?)) saved one of these five shows, all recently ingloriously canceled, instead.

Bunheads

God, I miss Bunheads. I still sometimes forget that it's been canceled and then other times I forget that its particular, Sherman-Palladino sugary/saltiness ever aired—for 18 episodes! on ABC Family!—at all. Sutton Foster is a noun, adjective, and verb onto herself.

Enlisted

Why can't Parker Young find happiness? He keeps moving up and up from sitcoms that are sweet and kind and fiercely loved, and that are dopey and flawed in ways that exacerbate your fondness more than your irritation; and then you see him on TV and think, surely, he'll become a star. But it's 2014 and Parker Young is in something called Cuz-Bros.

Southland

If you watched the Southland finale when it aired live, you are probably not even reading this because you have died of heartbreak. Telling people to catch up on the series is an exercise in sadism—knowing the ledge, that fifth season finale oh my, that they're walking toward. Loving Southland is even worse, which is kind of fucked because with all of its beautiful white men and its absolutely majestic Regina King and its dedication to stuffing huge emotions into normal-sized people, loving Southland is very, very easy.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson

Craig Ferguson is the greatest living conversationalist in America. Craig Ferguson is, single-handedly, the best white man our White Man Cultural Industrial Complex has ever produced. Craig Ferguson is a national treasure. And America wooed him; somehow, we convinced him to stay. Watching him so late at night gave off sparks of joy that felt hallucinatory. At least, I think that's true! (CBS does not.)

Futurama

TV used to be produced like muffins and then it started also being made like beignets (by hand, one at a time, through a glass window so we could watch) and at some point in the last five or eight years, TV became a decision one made impulsively, like when you're trying to break a nicotine habit. That explains how Futurama could die and live and thrive and die again on two different networks and remain, simultaneously, the progenitor to the American animation renaissance, the movement's step-uncle, and its Buñuel.

[Video via Youtube]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA and read more about it here.

Police in Gettysburg, Penn. arrested Samantha Elizabeth Unger, 23, after she confessed to having put bottles of Visine in her three-year-old son's drinks. Her son had to be airlifted to a hospital earlier this year after his heartbeat dropped to 40 beats per minute. Unger's one-year-old son also became sick after drinking from the three-year-old's poisoned cups.

According to the Hanover Evening Sun, doctors began to suspect that the children were being poisoned after both had been brought to the hospital multiple times in the same month:

Both children fell ill multiple times in March and the eldest had to be flown to the hospital March 21, according to court documents. Doctors at Hershey Medical Center told police that they believed the children were being poisoned after conducting several tests, the documents stated.

Investigators conducted interviews with the family and confiscated water bottles and sippy cups that they believed were making the children ill. Lab results showed that Tetrahydrozoline, better known as Visine, was present in the 3-year-old's urine sample that was taken at the hospital, according to the affidavit.

The Patriot-News reports that doctors informed police that Unger's three-year-old had enough Tetrahydrozoline in his system that it "created a substantial risk of death." Unger apparently told police that she would put more than one bottle of Visine in her son's drinks, but never kept track of exactly how much.

The mother is currently being held on charges of aggravated assault of children and endangering the welfare of children.

[Image via Patriot-News/Adams County Prison]

And that's how it ends, after a high-scoring, vein-popping extra time that provided the variety of heartbreak we never would have expected over the first 90: the sense that they could have done it. But that's the World Cup—could've-should'ves may provide moral victories, but they don't keep you warm for four years.

The shortest explanation is the one everyone offered as a tournament preview—the U.S. were outclassed, kept in it only by the magic of Tim Howard. The Americans seemed incapable of bringing down or controlling a ball in the midfield, and struggled to create much, save a point-blank miss that will haunt Chris Wondolowski for the rest of his life. Howard tallied 16 saves, a World Cup record that goes back at least as far as when they started counting saves.

Things went sideways in extra time. The insanely talented Romelu Lukaku, benched for his attitude and certainly not for his skill, came on. That's unfair. A fresh Lukaku entering in the 90th minute should be illegal. The defense, which had bent all match, finally broke. Lukaku set up one and scored the second, and it sent everyone scrambling to settle their bar tabs.

The second half of extra time belonged to the Americans. Maybe it would have been easier to take if they'd gone out meekly, beaten soundly by a better team. It didn't shake out that way. A minute in, Bradley set up the 19-year-old Julian Green to get the U.S. onto the scoreboard, and for the first time, gave them something resembling hope. The remaining 15 minutes (just one minute of stoppage time?!) saw the Belgians turtling, the U.S. coming in waves, and a number of legitimately great chances. Any one—especially Clint Dempsey slipping behind the wall on a beautiful set piece—could have gone in, would have been the biggest goal in U.S. soccer history.

None went in. Belgium move on. The U.S. go home. Nothing to be ashamed of, but plenty to stew over. International soccer leaves you with great memories, but just as many regrets. It's like that for 31 countries. We're not the only ones hurting.

Now's the time to be miserable and feel sorry for ourselves. Go ahead and sulk and savor; you know it's a million times worse for the players.

We'll have a lot more on this later on. But: Julian Green is going to run the world in 2018. Believe.

John Bieniewicz, 44, of Westland, Mich. died today from injuries he sustained after being punched in the head by a player in the soccer match he was refereeing this past weekend. Bassel Abdul-Amir Saad apparently punched Bieniewicz after he ruled to eject Saad from the game. When police arrived at the scene, Bieniewicz was unconscious and not breathing.

A witness told the Detroit Free Press that Saad punched Bieniewicz when he wasn't looking:

Scott Herkes, 39, was playing in the adult soccer match Sunday and said he was about 30 yards away when he saw the referee punched by a player on the opposing team.

"It was terrifying," he said.

He said it happened as Bieniewicz, who had stopped the game to eject Saad, was looking down, and he didn't see the punch coming.

According to the Associated Press, Saad was not at the park where the soccer game was held (and where he punched Bieniewicz) by the time police were at the scene. Saad turned himself in Monday. His lawyer, Brian Berry told the Detroit Free Press by email that Saad maintains his innocence.

"Based on certain witness statements that have not yet been published, it is believed that the facts of this case have been mischaracterized," Berry wrote. "Mr. Saad is presumed innocent unless and until a fact finder determines differently. As tragic as this event is, we must keep open minds and listen and wait for all the facts of this case to unfold."

Bieniewicz was a dialysis technician at Mott Children's Hospital with a wife and two sons. He had refereed soccer games for two decades.

[Image via Detroit Free Press]