The Politico, America's worst media outlet, has a big story today about what's wrong with the White House's relationship with the political media, such as The Politico. According to Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, President Obama disdains, freezes out, and circumvents the representatives of the Fourth Estate, including reporters from The Politico, rather than opening himself up to their serious questions. "This is an arguably dangerous development," The Politico explains.

(Here we pause to invoke the old and useful rule, promulgated by the columnist Alex Beam, that "arguably" is a synonym for "not.)

Things are very bad (dangerously bad!) between the White House and the press corps, according to The Politico:

The president's staff often finds Washington reporters whiny, needy and too enamored with trivial matters or their own self-importance.

Their own self-importance? Explain more!

The president has not granted an interview to print reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and others in years. These are the reporters who are often most likely to ask tough, unpredictable questions.

The rubric under which Allen and VandeHei write this for The Politico is "Behind the Curtain." This is apparently a reference to the motion picture The Wizard of Oz, in which a thundering, all-knowing sorcerous talking head turns out to be projected by a pallid, agitated little man jabbering bullshit into a loudspeaker. This reference is the most astute thing about The Politico, though almost certainly not in the way that The Politico intends.

What makes today's exercise an archetypical story from The Politico is that the premise could be turned 180 degrees and it would be no less useful a line of attack or complaint. "He gives interviews not for our benefit, but to achieve his objective," Mark Knoller of CBS says. And if the president were failing to control his media message to achieve his objectives, letting the press push him around, The Politico would be on that story too—in precisely the same tone as this one. Bad president!

And so, correspondingly, any piece of evidence can serve the argument. As proof that the Obama White House is stonewalling the press, The Politico points to the fact that it has been releasing too much information: There has been "extensive government creation of content (photos of the president, videos of White House officials, blog posts written by Obama aides), which can then be instantly released to the masses through social media"; the administration has staged "nearly two dozen" Friday releases of documents.

"What you guys call a document dump, we call transparency," the White House's [deputy press secretary Josh] Earnest shot back.

The White House is clearly taunting The Politico. The uninitiated might wonder why The Politico could not have its reporters read the documents over the weekend, to publish a thoroughly informed story on Monday or Tuesday. But as Washington insiders know, each Friday afternoon, a crew from Albritton Communications, The Politico's owner, arrives at the office to wipe all the servers and administer lethal injections to the staff. The remains are carted off to a rendering plant, and on Monday, a new vat-grown Mike Allen, John F. Harris, and Jim VandeHei are activated and given an all-new staff, innocent of all precedent or history.

At least, that would explain the summing-up section of today's piece, in which Allen and VandeHei tell about an episode that epitomizes the White House's cruel and dysfunctional relationship with the press. It is the crisis that occurred 30 years ago, or a couple of weeks ago, in which the Obama administration forced Washington reporters to drop everything and write stories about the fact that the president sometimes shoots clay pigeons for recreation. The White House, in its relentless circumvention of normal healthy media channels, unilaterally released a "six-month old photo" of the president firing a shotgun.

[Senior adviser Dan] Pfeiffer and White House press secretary Jay Carney tweeted a link to the photo, with Pfeiffer writing that it was "[f]or all the skeeters" (doubters, or "skeet birthers"). Longtime adviser David Plouffe then taunted critics on Twitter: "Attn skeet birthers. Make our day - let the photoshop conspiracies begin!" Plouffe soon followed up with: "Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading."

The controversy started with an interview co-conducted by Chris Hughes, a former Obama supporter and now publisher of The New Republic. The government created the content (the photo), released it on its terms (Twitter) and then used Twitter again to stoke stories about conservatives who didn't believe Obama ever shot a gun in the first place.

Yup, that is exactly how the skeet-shooting controversy started, right? The president made a true, if self-promoting, statement in a friendly interview. Then something something something. Then the White House released a photo supporting the president's claim, as a way "to stoke stories about conservatives."

Why did the White House insist on putting out a photo about something as trivial as the president's use of the outdoor recreational facilities at Camp David? What compelled them to push this story on the public?

• The Politico, Jan. 27: Obama goes skeet shooting "all the time"

• The Politico, Jan. 29: [Republican Rep.] Marsha Blackburn: I'll shoot skeet with President Obama

• The Politico, Jan. 30: W.H. mum on skeet-shooting challenge

White House mum on skeet-shooting challenge. So pace Allen and VandeHei, The Politico was able to raise the questions it cared about with this administration. And the administration gave The Politico exactly what it was asking for.

Image by Jim Cooke, Photo via Getty

Yesterday, hackers presumably from the DFNCTSC hacking crew took over Burger King's Twitter feed and turned it into an advertisement for McDonald's. Today it appears those same hackers have now overtaken the Jeep Twitter feed and are running a similar game, claiming that Jeep has been sold to Cadillac and shouting out not-very-Jeepy entities like Worldstar Hip Hop and Chief Keef.

If it's any consolation for Jeep, getting hacked ended up earning Burger King about 30,000 new followers.

Facebook photos go viral everyday — but how many of them go viral because of Facebook's efforts to prevent them from being seen?

According to the official Facebook page of Ontario-based ink design collective Custom Tattoo Design, a photo on their feed of a breast cancer survivor with an all-over chest tattoo has been repeatedly removed by Facebook, ostensibly due to a violation of its infamously opaque terms of service concerning nudity.

To protest Facebook's actions, Custom Tattoo Design has been reposting the photo every time it's removed, and says it will continue to do so in honor of the woman's bravery and strength.

To help them in their cause, the company has asked its thousands of followers to like and share the photo " to show your support for this and many other women who have lost so much."

At the time of writing, the post has over 140,000 likes, some 115,000 shares, and around 17,000 comments, most of which express indignation at Facebook's heartless disrespect toward cancer victims.

It seems that the backlash has ultimately persuaded Facebook to let the photo be, as it appears to have been left up unmolested for the past several days.

[photo via Facebook]

On Sunday, the self-described "Queen of Mean," standup comedian Lisa Lampanelli, tweeted a photo of herself and Girls lightning rod Lena Dunham. The caption referred to Dunham as Lampanelli's "nigga":

So that was stupid.

Given Dunham's reputation for racial insensitivity, Lampanelli could be going for irony. The comedian herself is openly insensitive in such linguistic matters — "I get to say the 'n-word' on stage and get paid money," she has bragged. The majority of the "Comedy" section of her Wikipedia is devoted to her racial humor and use of slurs. This is what she is building her legacy on.

The same could be said for rapper Azealia Banks, who resumed offending last week after a January Twitter spat found her calling Perez Hilton a "messy faggot." Another argument with Hilton erupted over her pulled remix of "The Harlem Shake," she called him a "faggot" again, people got pissed and that led to some semantic chin-stroking on Banks' part:

Banks has since lashed out at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which criticized her use of the epithet, in a virtually incoherent rant that does nothing for her case:

I have sex with men and women, do I have to take a picture of my licking a fucking pussy? What the fuck! It doesn't make any sense. It's so stupid. It's so stupid and it's so evil. And it's just like this stupid fucking media shit, you know what I mean? It's the media shit. And this is why I go about myself the way the way I go about myself, and I do whatever the fuck I want. If the media is going to build me up to tear me down, you motherfuckers are not going to tear me down.

I just make these fucking raps, and I'm just gonna wear these outfits, and fucking live my life. I can't deal with you motherfuckers, I don't have time for this shit.

Whatever the intent, whatever the bigger picture, whatever you want to express and explore about terms that are not technically yours to reclaim, there are certain words that are too distracting for people to see past. For an increasingly sensitive public, especially one as reactive as the online public, these stick out like darts on a low-character platform like Twitter. To use them, often, is to speak to be unheard, to get in the way of your own ideas, if you have any ideas in the first place.

So just don't. Unless you are a troll. In which case, congratulations: you're a troll.

[Photo via WhoSay]

A group of adults will go to bed tonight knowing full well what they did, after Entertainment Tonight announced that 16-year-old Prince Michael Jackson would be joining the crew as its official child of a very famous dead person AKA "new correspondent."

Prince Michael's first assignment: procure "advice about pursuing his dreams" from James Franco and Zach Braff, whom he interviewed about pursuing his dreams and also their roles in upcoming Disney film Oz the Great and Powerful. You can watch them smile at him here.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Jackson got the job with the help (that is to say: interference) of ET weekend co-host Brooke Anderson, a 34-year-old woman who says that she and the high schooler have "a mutual connection." The connection is presumably their shared love of lobbing softball interview questions at celebrities who feel slightly awkward around them.

Anderson reported that Jackson, a teenager hired for stars to gawp at, "really did not need that much coaching," because he "was very smooth and confident."

Indeed, in the promo video for Jackson's interview gig (set to air on ET all week), he provides a laid-back foil to Anderson's manic, arm-waving, shriek-a-bean.

She even got him to talk about his deceased father—THE MOST IMPORTANT THING—by steering their conversation right into 1978's The Wiz, which starred Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow.

"Yeah, my dad was in the Wiz," said Prince Michael Jackson, adding that his father also "raised [him] right."

Jackson recorded his interview with director Sam Raimi and the Oz crew over the holiday weekend (no school!) and is expected to return from time to time to cover kid-oriented showbiz events or whenever someone wants to talk about Michael Jackson.

[L.A. Times / Entertainment Tonight // Image via ET]

The Russian Google Maps alike Yandex Maps went above and beyond recently when it helped a woman from Perm find out her fiancé was cheating on her.

Marina Voinova told LifeNews.ru that she was looking up an address using the website's "street view" feature when she happened across a man who looked like Alexander, her boyfriend of five years, with his arms around a woman who did not look like her.

"When Sasha came home, I immediately called him to computer and asked him to find that address in the map," she told the news portal. "When the image loaded, Sasha's face changed in color. I looked in his eyes, waiting for explanations."

Alexander immediately confessed to everything, Marina recalled. He told her he had made a mistake and did not love the other woman, but Marina had already made up her mind to end their relationship.

"At first I regretted searching for that address on Internet, but eventually realized that it was silly to blame the Web for my boyfriend's unfaithfulness," Marina said.

Unlike Google, Yandex does not automatically blur the faces of people who are clearly identifiable in Street View shots.

Yandex PR manager Yekaterina Karnaukhova told LifeNews that if a person has a problem with their face appearing on the site, he or she can request to have the image removed if they have a legitimate reason for doing so.

Like, say, concealing an infidelity.

[video via RedHotRussia via Fark]

Gawker is hiring a gossip reporter. Or perhaps more precisely: a scandal reporter. We're looking for someone interested in penetrating the personal and professional lives of titans of industry, finance, and culture. Someone who can jump on and assiduously follow the tale of the recent dickpic-tweeting political figure, as well as reliably develop compelling enterprise stories about the lives and misdeeds of powerful people and report out our prodigious well of incoming tips.

This is not a beat devoted to celebrity, or nightlife, or reality television programs. It is devoted to power and its discontents, and it is to be approached not with the manufactured moralizing of certain tabloid gossip scolds, but with a sense of humor and fun. One of Gawker Media's foundational principles is the notion that fascinating information circulating among the corridors of the anointed—Did you know she is gay? Have you heard about what he did to his assistant?—ought to be available to the digital hoi polloi. And that's what this beat is about.

The ideal candidate will have several years of reporting—not just writing—experience, and have the capacity to develop and relay reliably true information about the world outside him- or herself. She will know her way around a courtroom. He will know how to obtain a police report. She will be motivated and available to attend the sort of social events where guards are let down and stories flow—not to write about who was at what party, but to gather string and keep her ear to the ground. He will be comfortable ambushing people.

We may also, depending on the candidates, be hiring entry- and mid-level general assignment reporters to cover and advance stories of national interest. Candidates should be familiar with what we do here at Gawker, brimming with good ideas, and ready to jump down rabbit holes in pursuit of good stories.

Why work here? For a detailed precis on Gawker's many virtues as an employer, go here. For mid-career journalists, specifically: Anyone who has been working in this business for any substantial period of time will be familiar with the soul-crushing feeling of having your hands around a good story and being prevented—for reasons of cowardice, propriety, institutional blindness, politics—from publishing it. We don't really have that problem here. You will have the freedom to pursue whatever good stories you can bring to light. You will have the opportunity to work alongside some of the sharpest, funniest, most cutthroat reporters and writers in pixels. And your work will be seen by the people you want to see it.

To apply, please send a résumé and clips to jobs@gawker.com. Do not attach your résumé to the email; rather, include the text within the email. We will review all applications and contact you if we'd like to meet you. Please don't follow up.

Europe, an expensive overseas cooking school populated by pussies, is still busy finding ever more outrageous ways to offend American sensibilities. First, it was the whole WWII thing, which we had to go straighten out ourselves. Then there was Monty Python. (Was he making fun of us? I think he was making fun of us.) And now, these Eurotrash types are too good to buy cars, all of a sudden.

New car sales in Europe in January fell to their lowest levels in almost a quarter century, since recordkeeping of such things began (before that, Europeans primarily rode upon the backs of elves). Don't be so naive as to think that this is a mistake. These people know damn well that America invented cars. These people are purposely trying to get our goat, by pissing on a symbol of American power, just like when they tried to change the name of Freedom Fries. What the hell is Europeanses problem?

Consumers have been slammed by recession, unemployment and government austerity measures. In many countries with good public transportation, driving is a pleasure rather than a necessity, and high joblessness among young people has the industry fretting that an entire generation will not adopt the car lifestyle.

Welllllllll, lah dee frickin dah, driving is just a pleasure over in the magical land of Europe, home of Heidi, who sells cheese from out of her sheepcart whilst taking her sweet time navigating the winding mountain road, and she sells cheese because she can't find a real job due to persistent economic depression. Isn't that so very special, for Europe? Please Europeans, by all means, take your sweet time learning to love cars—or don't ever love cars at all, just ride your excellent system of public transportation, your choice. Never buy a new car ever your whole life, as far as we're concerned. But while you're saving money, living sustainably, and serving as a model of transportation efficiency, I hope you just think, for a moment, about who you're hurting.

EMINEM.

Assholes.

[NYT. Photo: ach10/ Flickr]

Medievalist Emir O. Filipovic was flipping through fifteenth century manuscripts at the State Archives in Dubrovnik, Croatia — your average light reading — when he came across something rather remarkable on one of the pages: Feline paw prints.

Filipovic's discovery lay dormant until it was picked up by book historian Erik Kwakkel, who was in turn brought to the attention of the public by "America's Veterinarian" Dr. Marty Becker.

"Has your cat ever walked across your keyboard?" asks Dr. Becker on his Facebook page, where the image has been shared thousands of times. "Well, it's not a new problem. Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel recently Tweeted this photo of a 15th century book with... you guessed it... cat paw prints in ink on the pages! We're part of a long and glorious historical movement, friends."

As if you needed any additional proof that cats have always been assholes.

[H/T: Ouest France, 22words, photo via Facebook]

Nestlé, the largest food company on the planet, announced today that it's recalling some of the beef pasta meals it sells in Spain and Italy. The reason? The "beef" contains horse DNA. And Nestlé's not the only company. Nearly all of the U.K.'s biggest supermarkets and many of their suppliers have been forced to remove horse meat fraudulently labeled as beef from the shelves as more and more companies are implicated in the widening scandal. Where's the horse meat coming from? How is it getting into the beef? Has the United States' supply been compromised? We've got the answers.

What is the horse meat scandal?

A number of frozen meals and food products at supermarkets across Europe have been found to contain high levels of horse DNA—in some cases, as much as 100 percent of the meat was horse—indicating that the meat being marketed as "beef"... isn't.

Gross. So people who thought they were eating beef were eating horse?

Yes. Nearly all of the U.K.'s biggest supermarket chains have had to remove products from the shelves, and the head of the Food Standards Agency there says we'll never know how many ate horse without being aware of it.

Are the people who ate horse going to be okay?

They're going to turn... into... horses! No, they'll be fine. People across Europe eat horse, on purpose, and love it; celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay serves it at his restaurants in the U.K. Provided the horse is properly raised and slaughtered, there aren't any health risks to eating its meat. In this case, there is a minor health risk from the equine anti-inflammatory phenylbutazone, or "bute," which in extremely high doses can cause certain blood diseases—but this is an issue caused and exacerbated by the much larger and more disturbing scandal of fraudulently and misleadingly labeled meat with unclear provenance.

Unclear provenance? How did the horse meat get into the food?

No one seems to know entirely. Yet. In Ireland and the U.K., the fraudulently-labeled beef sold by supermarket chain Tesco appears to have entered the supply chain through beef processing multinational ABP, two subsidiaries of which produced the contaminated meat. ABP claims to have traced the horse meat through the Netherlands to Poland; Polish authorities strenuously deny that their slaughterhouses are responsible, and have undertaken tests and found no horse DNA in samples.

An entirely different horse meat supply chain emerged in France, through another food processing company, Comigel, which was tasked with supplying a beef lasagna dish to the frozen food company Findus; Comigel—through a Luxembourgish subsidiary—ordered beef from a Spanish company, which ordered it from a Cypriot trader, who outsourced the job to a Dutch trader—a guy who'd already been convicted of selling horse meat—who (deep breath) finally placed the order to a Romanian slaughterhouse, where the horse meat originated. Sent back to Luxembourg through Spain, the horse meat was processed into the frozen lasagna dishes, ending up on shelves in the U.K., France and Sweden. No one knows how far up the chain the coverup went; the Dutch trader, Jan Fasen, has accused Comigel and its Spanish suppliers of being fully aware that they were passing off horse meat as beef.

Two different supply chains? How widespread is this?

It's hard to tell. Tens of millions of pounds of horse meat is processed and sold around Europe every year; beef is getting more and more expensive, and supply lines less and less direct; and with rolled-back and under-funded food safety operations in the U.K. and elsewhere, it's harder to detect when meat is adulterated.

So how did anyone find out about it?

Last November, Irish food safety authorities tested a range of supermarket beef products and found most of them to have some percentage of pork and horse DNA. The Irish regulators made their U.K. equivalents aware (Ireland says in November; the U.K. says in January), and the U.K. Food Standards Agency did its own testing—confirming the Irish discovery of the Tesco/ABP network and uncovering the Findus/Comigel supply chain.

Wait—there was pork in the "beef," too?

Yes.

So why isn't it a pork-and-horse-meat scandal?

Good question! One, because the general cultural squeamishness about eating horse on the part of the U.K. and Ireland (at least compared to continental Europe) means that unknowingly eating horse is regarded as totally grosser and worse than unknowingly eating pork; and two, because pork is unlikely to contain bute. (May I suggest, though, that if you are deeply bothered by eating mislabeled horse meat but not mislabeled pig meat, you should reconsider your attitude toward food.)

Have I eaten mislabeled horse meat?

If you live in Europe, well: maybe? Especially if you're getting a lot of your food from the pre-prepared frozen meal section of the supermarket. If you live in the U.S., though, probably not.

"Probably"?

Reassuringly, none of the companies involved in the European scandal—so far—export beef to the U.S. And since Americans don't love horse meat at the same level that—say—Italians do, and since there are currently no legal horse abattoirs in the U.S., there's just less horse meat available to contaminate the supply of beef.

There aren't any legal horse slaughterhouses in the U.S.?

No—in fact, slaughtering horses for meat was rendered de facto illegal between 2007 and 2011, when tax dollars were forbidden from going toward the mandatory inspections. (Some states, like California and New Jersey, have their own statewide horse-slaughter bans.) Since that ban was lifted no abattoirs have opened, putting horse meat in a sort of legal grey area, subject to conflicting and changing regulations. As of the latest information we've been able to uncover, any horse meat to be sold or served to the public must have been inspected by the USDA at the point of slaughter; this effectively outlaws it, as imported meat hasn't been inspected, and there are no domestic abattoirs subject to USDA regulation.

That being said, horses are still exported to Canada, Mexico and Europe for slaughter. In fact, there's been speculation that some of the horses that were ultimately slaughtered in Romania and Poland and ended up in freezers across England may have come from the U.S. According to one survey, something like 138,000 horses were exported from this country in 2011 to be slaughtered for their meat—many of them still containing bute in their bloodstreams.

Wouldn't I be able to taste the difference? What does horse taste like, anyway?

It's leaner than beef, softer, and a bit sweet and gamey. Think something between venison and beef. If you were told it was beef, especially some kind of cheap beef drenched in tomato sauce, you probably wouldn't notice.

How's it usually cooked?

In Europe, it's most often cured and put on sandwiches or made into sausages and salami, though you can also find it cooked up like a steak or made into a stew. In Japan, it's frequently served raw.

Let's say I want to try horse meat. Where can I find it?

The last restaurant we know of that tried to sell horse meat here in the states was the Queens restaurant M. Wells, which planned on serving a horse meat tartare with Canadian meat before it found itself subject to wide public outcry, and a last-minute change to U.S.D.A. regulations. For now, if you want to eat horse, your best bet is to hop over the border to Quebec, where it's still relatively widely consumed.

After being on the run for over a year, a man wanted for murder in Sweden sought to turn himself over to authorities in Malmö, but was told by officers he would need to go elsewhere because the station was closed.

Saleh Hadri, who is suspected of killing the head of a local gang, has been on Sweden's most wanted list for nearly 15 months.

Which is why he expected to be welcomed with firearms when he rang the police station doorbell yesterday, accompanied by a reporter.

But, much to his chagrin, Hadri was told over an intercom that the station was closed, and he would have to go to a different police station to turn himself in.

"Closed?" the incredulous Hadri recalled exclaiming. "I said I'm suspected of murder and a wanted man – you guys really want to get ahold of me."

Hadri says he came back because he wanted to defend himself against allegations that he killed Bröderskapet Wolfpack gang leader Alex Ghara Mohammadi.

His involvement in the so-called "taxi murder" is highly suspected as he was the former owner of the taxi depot where Mohammadi was shot.

Hadri insists he is innocent, telling the tabloid Kvällsposten, "I'd be an idiot to come back otherwise."

He ultimately did as instructed and turned himself in at a different police station.

A Malmö police commander who was asked to comment on the bizarre incident blamed renovations at the station, telling Sydsvenskan, "things are a bit messy right now."

[mug shot via Interpol]

The Navy SEAL made famous for shooting Osama bin Laden in the face and then complaining about US-government negligence in an Esquire article published earlier this month is now under Pentagon investigation, according to The Hill's defense blog DEFCON Hill.

Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Warren told reporters today that the DoD is "taking a look" into whether the Esquire article included any classified or sensitive information about Operation Neptune Spear, the code name for the 2011 strike on bin Laden's Pakistani compound.

Besides the Esquire investigation, the DoD is continuing its investigation into former SEAL Mark Bissonnette's book, No Easy Day, an unauthorized retelling of the bin Laden killing that may also contain classified or sensitive information.

[Image via AP]

Music mogul Clive Davis came out in his memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life, but it is one of his protégés who's expressing "It Gets Better" sentiment — to herself. First season American Idol winner and occasional shit-talker Kelly Clarkson has hit back at some claims in Davis' book on her blog. Her missive, of course, begins "Hey y'all." Clarkson continues:

So I just heard Clive Davis is releasing a memoir and spreading false information about me and my music. I refuse to be bullied and I just have to clear up his memory lapses and misinformation for myself and for my fans. It feels like a violation. Growing up is awesome because you learn you don't have to cower to anyone - even Clive Davis.

Growing up is awesome, growing up is cool beans.

Clarkson denies that she ever broke down in Davis' office over the inclusion of eventual global hits "Since U Been Gone" and "Behind These Hazel Eyes" on her Breakaway album. Davis writes that she hated those songs and wanted them to remain unreleased; Clarkson says she merely wanted more guitars on the former.

The best part of her post details a supposed time when she did cry in Davis' office:

I cried after I played him a song I had written about my life called "Because Of You." I cried because he hated it and told me verbatim that I was a "shitty writer who should be grateful for the gifts that he bestows upon me." He continued on about how the song didn't rhyme and how I should just shut up and sing. This was devastating coming from a man who I, as a young girl, considered a musical hero and was so honored to work with. But I continued to fight for the song and the label relented. And it became a worldwide hit. He didn't include that in the book.

She goes on to take issue with Davis' take on the release of her 2007 "artist" album My December, over which they feuded publicly, with Clarkson at one point hilariously telling USA Weekend, "I'm going to be real honest with you: I am not a fan [of Davis]...I do respect him, but I don't want to barbecue with him. We don't braid each other's hair." She later posted an apology on her website.

In the chapter devoted to Clarkson in Soundtrack, Davis says that Clarkson doesn't "like taking direction," describes her as a "winner of a talent contest" whom he can't say for sure that he would have signed "if she had not been connected to the show" and claims that she didn't think From Justin to Kelly was "as bad" as Davis/the rest of the universe. He also calls her "hardworking," "totally professional" and says that her performances on "Gone" and "Eyes" are "extraordinary."

Here is how he ends the section:

It's clear that Kelly Clarkson has a decidedly independent streak, to say the least, and often speaks in public before she realizes the implications of what she's saying. She even made an enthusiastic statement in support of Ron Paul in a tweet during the 2011 Republican primary campaign without comprehending how that would infuriate many of her fans. Those fans, however, are also drawn to her shoot-from-the-hip style. She's definitely outspoken and has built a very loyal following that loves her for it. Indeed, on the strength of her entire body of work, Kelly is now fully established as a bona fide star. With the right future material she can once again enjoy the major level of success she attained with Breakaway.

That's to say he probably predicted a fiery response. It's part of Clarkson's brand at this point.

[Image via Getty]

When Michelle Obama debuted her bangs last month, America was like, "Ohmygod. Your hair..." and Michelle was like, "I just got it cut! Do you like it?" and America was like, "It's so...bangs," and Michelle was like, "Haha, thanks!"

Out of respect for Michelle, many people pretended the sight of her new bangs did not make them physically ill. Luckily, we can hate them openly now because Michelle has finally revealed that banging out was nothing more than a physical manifestation of her midlife crisis.

The first lady dropped this bombshell during a Skype interview with Rachel Ray (and, apparently, a carton of eggs?) set to air Wednesday:

"This is my midlife crisis, the bangs. I couldn't get a sports car. They won't let me bungee-jump. So instead, I cut my bangs."

Hopefully this means she's planning to let the bangs grow out, and we'll speak no more of them until one day, ten years from now Sasha Obama's roommate Corinne will say something like, "When I was in sixth grade, my mom lived in our guest house for a summer. And then one day she just came home," and Sasha will cover her eyes and yell "Oh my GOD! My mom had bangs for, like, a month! It was so weird! I completely forgot about it."

Unfortunately for Michelle, abruptly cutting off (or growing out) your midlife crisis before it has completed its cycle is like waking up a sleepwalker: extremely dangerous (or possibly fine). Here are some more discreet ways for her to come to grips with her inevitable mortality once she gives up the fringe:

• Get a small tattoo of a butterfly on her lower back; chicken out halfway through; settle for undetailed moth
• Send a Facebook message to her high school boyfriend
• Take a bartending course
• Date one of her students
• Answer the door in a bra
• Whisper a secret to Scarlett Johansson
• Take a trip to the Virgin Islands (U.S.) with Dr. Jill Biden and her frenemy Felicia
• Cut the sleeves off Malia's christening gown and wear it as a crop top
• Start furnishing a secret nursery in the White House's private apartments; fill it with baby shoes she buys because they make her sad
• Come home one day with a full-grown dog and refuse to tell anyone where she got it

Have you had or are you currently having a midlife crisis? How is it expressing itself in your life?

[Rachel Ray via Today // Image via Getty]

The controversial "Nude Men" (NSFW) exhibit at Vienna's Leopold Museum is making headlines once again.

The collection, which covers (or, rather, uncovers) nude depictions of men in art "from 1800 to today," first attracted attention last year when X-rated street posters promoting the show were censored due to public outcry.

Two months later, the museum was once again in the news after a patron extemporaneously stripped down to his birthday suit and proceeded to experience the exhibit in the raw.

It was that incident which inspired a group of German nudists to request that the museum offer an after-hours showing for guests who wish to appreciate the nudes while nude.

The museum ultimately consented, and the event took place last night, with 60 "art lovers" — 59 men and a solitary woman — in attendance.

"Nude Men" has been a runaway hit with clothed visitors as well, attaching 100,000 people — the most ever for a single show at the Leopold.

Due to overwhelming demand, the exhibit's run has been extended through March 4th.

The museum is open daily from 10 AM to 6 PM. No shoes, no shirt, no pants, no problem.

[photos via AP, video via ITN]

Anyone with eyes and a memory that goes back at least to the early '00s advent of Bad Boy Records knows that the meme or whatever it is of people convulsing arhythmically that is currently masquerading as the "Harlem Shake" is not the Harlem Shake. A filmmaker named Chris McGuire took to Harlem for man-on-the-street reactions and what starts as a jokey sort of montage gains intensity for the impassioned anti-appropriation sentiment the nu-Shake provokes. "It's not no dance, it's really a lifestyle," says one guy. "It's actually an art form, a dance art form that doesn't have the respect it deserves," says another. "Injustice," says yet another.

Fuck the dude who says, "He's humpin' his man — that's no good," though.

That Guy Fieri's American Kitchen and Bar is a big joke is no big secret.

But now it's also an actual joke.

It seems Fieri forgot to purchase his own restaurant's full domain name (the official American Kitchen & Bar website can be found at the abbreviated guysamerican.com), so someone else did — and they wasted no time in turning it into the best parking spot on the Internet.

Visitors to Guysamericankitchenandbar.com will find what can only be described as the actual menu from Guy's American Kitchen & Bar (see below, click to enlarge), complete with signature dishes such as Guy's Big Balls (extra wet naps are 3.50 a piece) and something called "Football: The Meal."

The lines between Fieri and fiction are further blurred by 'trées with names like "The Blitzmas Beast" (compare with a real menu item called "Guy's Big Bite Caesar Salad") and "Reno!!!"

A slew of merrymakers are taking credit for this Honky-Tonky Double Barrel Meat Loaded Prank, but the man behind the insta-mythical shenanigans appears to be the aptly named NYC programmer Bryan Mytko, who took credit for the gag earlier tonight.

"Guy Fieri didn't register his restaurant's domain name, so I picked it up," Mytko tweeted. "I think this new menu look great."

[H/T: BostInno, image via Guy's American Kitchen and Bar]

The voicemail inbox of America's Randomest Guy is blowing up like crazy today, after word has broken that Britney Spears is dating him. That guy? Yes, your friend Dave. That boring old Dave who we all know and never thought about much until he started dating Britney Spears.

According to TMZ, Dave, who has no last name but also doesn't need one because we all know him (it's Dave!) "does not seem to have significant California roots." He works for a law firm doing "field research," a term he copied off LinkedIn to hide the fact he is not a lawyer (he's just Dave). He is "definitely not a wealthy guy," notes the website. He is "kind of a jack-of-all trades."

Dave burst onto America's social radar on Valentine's Day when grainy paparazzi pictures surfaced of him taking Britney Spears, the mentally unstable world famous millionaire popstar he is dating, out for a sushi date. TMZ reports that their bill was $60 and Dave tipped $13 — a little over 20%. Nothing extravagant. Classic Dave.

His favorite movies are actions and comedies. His favorite ice cream is vanilla chocolate swirl. His favorite store is Express. His lucky number is 7. His favorite dog is a Labrador Retriever. His favorite sports are football, basketball, baseball, and golf. He usually has cereal for breakfast but, on Sunday, maybe bacon.

He's just Dave.

Britney Spears is dating him.

[TMZ // Image via Getty]

Warren Lee Hill (pictured) was already serving a life sentence for one murder when he was convicted of murdering another inmate in 1990 and sentenced to death. Since that second conviction, three forensic psychiatrists who initially said Hill was mentally fit for execution have recanted their original testimonies, saying that they were inadequately prepared before and are now certain Hill is mentally retarded.

If Hill, who has an IQ around 70, is in fact retarded, he is ineligible for the death penalty, according to a 2002 Supreme Court ruling. Nevertheless, Georgia was planning on executing Hill tonight at 7:00 PM EST anyway, until a last-minute stay from an 11th circuit federal appeals court came in. How last-minute? Hill had already taken a the sedative to relax himself for the gurney.

The court agreed to consider the issue of his intellectual disabilities in the light of a 2002 US supreme court ruling that prohibits executions of "mentally retarded" prisoners as a breach of the constitutional safeguard against cruel and unusual punishment.

Hill's stay is only temporary, of course, but his supporters, who include former President Jimmy Carter, hope the court will commute Hill's sentence to life in prison.

For reasons that still aren't clear, Judy Viger thought it'd be a good idea to hire strippers for her son's 16th birthday party. Maybe she thought it'd make her a cooler mom. Maybe she lost a bet with her son. Or maybe she just has terrible judgement. Probably all three. Regardless of her reasoning, she hired the strippers and now she's facing the consequences. Four months after the party, Viger was arrested and charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

The party, which took place in a private room at the Spare Time Bowling Center in South Glens Falls, New York, featured two strippers who reportedly performed lap dances on the birthday boy and other underage guests, the youngest of whom was 13. "Several kids at the party got lap dances," South Glens Falls Police Chief Kevin Judd told the Glens Falls Post-Star.

Because it's 2013, pictures of the party made their way online and the mother of a 15-year-old who attended the party saw them on her son's Facebook page. She contacted police, who interviewed many of the 80 people who attended the party.

"The charges stem from an allegation that she endangered not only the welfare of her own child, but the welfare of the 14- and 15-year-old children that were at the birthday party as well," Saratoga County District Attorney James Murphy told the Glens Falls Post-Star.

Tops in Bottoms, the company that provided the strippers, cooperated with the investigation and won't face charges. If convicted, Viger faces up to a year in jail.

[Image via the Daily News]