As long ago as it now seems, it was only this past July when Roger Goodell decided to suspend Ray Rice for two games after the Baltimore Ravens running back cold-cocked his future wife in an Atlantic City casino elevator. There was outrage, but not enough to change the NFL commissioner's mind. He needed to see the hit happen—and he did, along with the rest of America, when TMZ got the footage. And just like that, as the image of a woman crumpling to the ground played over and over in living rooms and on laptops, the NFL's man of Teflon briefly seemed vulnerable. His next moves were bold: getting Rice as far away from the game as possible while pledging to have the NFL "do more" on domestic violence.

"We will get our house in order first," he said, echoing a favored phrase of his favored political-messaging huckster. "Second, and most importantly, these incidents demonstrate that we can use the NFL to help create change. Not only in our league, but in society with respect to domestic violence and sexual assault."

He almost surely had no understanding of the scope of what he had set out to do. His every action before that pledge—a history of leniency on players arrested on domestic violence charges, overseeing a league in which ex-wives have said they feared speaking up about abuse, asking Janay Rice how she felt while the man who hit her was in the same room—betrayed a man who knew nothing about domestic abuse and might not have cared about it at all until, for the sake of public relations, he had to. Add to his ignorance the sheer scope and complexity of the problem—the CDC estimates that 20 people per minute are victims of intimate partner violence in the United States—and it was instantly clear that Goodell was in over his head.

But Goodell made that pledge, and going by public perception you could say he's had great success. The Super Bowl is upon us, and the league has seen glowing report after glowing report published about the anti-domestic violence advertisement that will air during the game. Any concerns about how the league handles players accused of abuse and what is being done to prevent it have been buried under self-important histrionics about the amount of air in footballs and Marshawn Lynch's dislike of talking to sports reporters. Goodell gave his annual pre-Super Bowl address, and the transcript said he muttered the phrase "domestic violence" exactly once.

Theatrics aside, what has the NFL really done about domestic violence? I looked into some of the league's most well-publicized initiatives, many announced back in September, to see how they hold up under scrutiny now that time has passed. What I found was a league that has, yes, done some good, but with underwhelming final results. The NFL has spent next to nothing by the standards of a league bringing in an estimated $10 billion every year, made some advertisements with a domestic-violence organization that seems mainly to serve as an image-making front for Madison Avenue brands, and turned critics into "consultants." The main emphasis has seemingly been on a power grab giving the league more control over players. The NFL has changed, but mainly in ways that promote its image, allow it to work with brands, and don't really do much to help anyone on the front lines of working with domestic-violence victims.

Donating Super Bowl air time for an advertisement

The NFL has gotten almost nothing but praise for its plan to air an anti-domestic violence advertisement during the Super Bowl. The ad itself is powerful and well-crafted, hinging on the story of a 911 dispatcher answering a call from a battered woman who must pretend she's ordering a pizza so she can make the call at all.

Let's talk about the word "donated," though, which is being used to describe how the ad came about. Much of the coverage is quick to point out that the airtime and the help of an expensive ad agency were donated by the NFL, but not everyone explains the details. There's more clarity in this report on the ad by the Wall Street Journal. Emphasis added is mine.

The league's ad agency created the spot at no charge and the NFL is donating some of its airtime in the Feb. 1 telecast on NBC, where ad time costs roughly $4.5 million for 30 seconds.

The donation comes from NFL's own advertising time—time it gets during the Super Bowl no matter what—which means this is essentially the league taking a brief reprieve from directly promoting itself. The agency that donated its time is the league's ad agency, Grey New York, which has plenty to gain from doing a favor for its wealthy patron. Leaving that aside, there's the greatness being attributed to the league's partner on the ad, a group dubbed No More. (The league only works with the biggest and the best, after all, and is surely doing so here, right?) If you hadn't heard of No More before it partnered with the NFL, though, you're hardly alone.

Partnering With No More

There are many organizations doing great and important work to prevent domestic violence and spread awareness of it. But the NFL, curiously, is using the power of its brand and of a Super Bowl audience of more than than 100 million to draw attention to No More, described by the New York Times as a "coalition among various groups combating domestic violence and sexual assault" with a staff of four part-time consultants and no full-time employees. Note that there's one word absent from the Times report and No More's website: nonprofit.

I'm not quite sure what No More is. It doesn't call itself a nonprofit, and nonprofit tracker GuideStar had no 990 forms for any groups with that specific name. There's not much information on No More's website itself. I searched for a mailing address, an office, or even a state it might be registered in but found nothing except "location: nationwide." The link to donate gives you a page listing other domestic violence groups. When I clicked on "who is behind no more," I hoped to finally find some people's names.

SO MANY BRANDS! The top nine "executive committee members" are almost all brands or, to be a bit more specific, the charitable arms created by brands in their attempts to appear socially conscious. The only exception is the Joyful Heart Foundation, started by Law and Order: SVU actress Mariska Hargitay. The brand-and-celebrity-free nonprofits don't start until No. 10. Also, aren't committees made up of people?

I scrolled down to the steering committee members and got a list of anti-domestic violence groups. The allies list also didn't produce any people either. Running through page after page after page didn't find me a single name of a person. Even the press releases lack the name of a No More spokesperson or No More contact info. Is this the domestic violence equivalent of The Human Fund? The Times story quotes one person from No More—director Virginia Witt. On her Linkedin page, she doesn't list No More as her job. It's under volunteer work.

The most concrete information available on No More comes from domain registry records, which show the nomore.org URL, which was purchased some time between Jan. 25 and April 11 of 2012, is owned by Fifth & Pacific, better known as Kate Spade. That's more than a little interesting for the way it directly ties together one of the brands for which the NFL's new partner in the fight against domestic-violence advertisement appears to be an image-laundering front and the marketing and crisis management specialist who was brought in when the league badly needed to clean up its tarnished image.

Bringing on consultants

When its domestic-violence problem first flared up, the NFL brought on three consultants to help: Lisa Friel, a former Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor; Rita Smith, who spent 21 years with the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence; and Jane Randel, previously the board chair of the Kate Spade & Company Foundation. Friel and Smith's qualifications are obvious; Randel's, as spelled out on her LinkedIn page, are equally so, but for different reasons.

Before heading up Kate Spade's foundation, Randel spent 22 years with the company, ending her tenure there as senior vice-president for corporate communications and brand services. Her LinkedIn page touts her skills in the areas of "reputation and crisis management," "corporate rebranding," and "cause marketing campaigns," as well as listing her as co-founder of No More. Two items in particular highlight the unique qualifications she brings to her present work:

Successfully managed multiple reputational issues, including reshaping the narrative for both the CEO and the corporate strategy after a tumultuous, multi-year turnaround.

[...]

Directed all communications around multiple critical issues ranging from alleged sweatshop labor to unionization campaigns to concerns from PETA, Greenpeace and other NGOs.

You can probably guess why of all the many worthy domestic-violence groups out there, the one now partnered with the NFL is the one that doesn't seem to actually exist and was co-founded by an NFL-employed corporate branding specialist who boasts about her experience fighting anti-sweatshop activists, labor unions, and NGOs and telling stories about all the good things the brands actually do.

Randel's LinkedIn, incidentally, lists her present position as a senior advisor, "Consulting with the NFL on domestic violence/sexual assault policy, protocol, programs." At least one of those programs seems to be working just fine.

Donating $25 million over five years to the National Domestic Violence Hotline

When not collaborating with the brands, the NFL has at various times touted initiatives meant to directly help people who directly work on domestic-violence issues. A $25 million donation to the National Domestic Violence Hotline was one of Goodell's splashier announcements, strategically followed by a visit to to the Austin-based hotline that reportedly left him in tears. The visit was followed a month later by a TMZ report that the hotline still hadn't received any money because of a holdup having to do with "modifying the language" in the agreement between the two groups, even though 20 more employees already had been hired.

This week, I asked the hotline if it had received some of the money, and spokeswoman Cameka Crawford told me that yes, they had—but she couldn't tell me how much, exactly. She could only confirm that the hotline had received "a portion of the funding." She added that the league also gave the hotline Microsoft Surface tablets. (Before you wonder why they didn't get iPads, remember that the Surface is the official tablet of the NFL.)

Financially supporting the National Sexual Violence Resource Center

There was no media-saturated visit to the NSVRC, but director Karen Baker said the organization received $1 million from the NFL in the fall to support hotline services. The NSVRC then distributed the money to a sexual violence coalition in each state to support their hotline efforts. The group, she told me, also is "collaborating with the NFL to develop the most effective sexual violence prevention measures and services for victims."

Yes, $1 million to help victims of domestic violence is a good thing. Spread $1 million across 50 states and figure that's about $20,000 to each state, assuming it's all split evenly. I'm sure everyone appreciated it. But that figure, and whatever undisclosed amount was given to the national hotline, should be taken in context given the $10 billion the the NFL is estimated to bring in every year. Heck, it's less than 3 percent of Goodell's 2012 compensation, a hefty $44 million.

I asked Baker if the NFL had pledged any money to NSVRC in the future. Baker told me, "We're excited to be working with them on a plan but do not have the full details at this time."

Then there's what's completely missing from the NFL's response: a commitment to directly helping shelters for victims of domestic abuse. If one common reason people stay in abusive relationships is feeling like they have nowhere to turn, supporting the shelters that take them in is key. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat, said as much in a letter he sent to Goodell:

Although I am glad the NFL has recognized the necessity of addressing this issue, this amount is barely a fraction of the financial support needed by organizations that every day provide shelter, counseling, and education across the country. Compared with the $10 million per year that is spent on its Super Bowl halftime show – not to mention the $5 billion the NFL earns each year in television rights – this amount seems terribly insufficient. If the NFL is serious about its commitment to combatting domestic violence, it could contribute many times more. ...

The NFL's failure to pledge resources directly to shelters and other local service providers may be seen rightly by many survivor advocates as a mockery of any real commitment. Indeed, the NFL has a special obligation to support shelters and services provided locally in the areas that have invested financially in NFL teams.

Promising harsher punishments for players

There are few lines of work in which the words "I screwed up ..." are immediately followed by "... therefore you should give me more responsibility." That's Roger Goodell's line, though, with a side of public relations shenanigans. When there was outrage over his light punishment of Rice, Goodell responded by saying he would increase the penalties for players accused of domestic violence. This wasn't really an increase, though—Goodell already had wide latitude over punishments under the terms of the NFL's personal conduct policy. All he really did was say, "I'll be harsher next time."

Earlier this month, an investigation revealed that the NFL's inquiry into what happened with Rice was little more than one ex-cop hitting refresh on the Internet. Yet the conclusion was not that this is a sign that the NFL should step away from the business of adjudication; instead, former FBI director Robert Mueller decided this meant the league was deferring too much to the criminal justice system. Soon afterward, Goodell found latitude under the personal conduct policy to add a committee, a special counsel for investigations and conduct, and a process so convoluted it requires a flow chart.

Former Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor Lisa Friel, hired by the NFL as a domestic violence consultant, told ESPNw's Jane McManus that these independent investigations are a good thing and the players will be "better protected, just as the victims will be better protected." But none of that matters if that NFL keeps working with investigators like the one who oversaw the Rice investigation, who didn't even contact the casino to ask if it would give a copy of the elevator footage. Add to that the concerns social activist and former NFL quarterback Don McPherson expressed to ESPNw about the further criminalization of players by the league.

"I think the conversation that the NFL is having on the punitive side, all it does is further criminalize the players in the league," McPherson said. "It doesn't address the core issue of men's violence against women, which is the culture of masculinity and men that leads to misogyny and sexism and the overall notion that women are less than, which is very much a message that comes out of a lot of language in sport. And until we address those core issues, the problem will continue, and all the NFL is going to be creating [is] a criminal state in their league."

Training and workshops for league employees and players

Among its other initiatives, the NFL touts its investment in a one-hour program on domestic violence, which is being presented to each team. This isn't a bad thing, and yet I can't help but be nagged at by the usual take on office presentations: Who actually pays attention at them? A one-hour program is a start, but nothing more than that. Of course, that's not how how the league sees them, instead using the narrative of the meetings to further its own branding and public relations aims. The NFL's director of player engagement and education, Deana Garner, recounted a story to McManus about how one man, a team employee, told the room his mother had been killed by her husband, and how the room had filled with tears. Asked directly if the league's culture has changed, she said, "I believe it has."

Really? A league comprising thousands of men and women has already changed? Just like that? Because of some meetings? McManus follows with a different perspective.

One NFL player's wife, who asked not to be named, attended a family session and said she didn't think a presentation on one or two subjects would fix the problems in front of the league.

"Cleaning up NFL culture is about way more than the issue in front of us," she said.

Amen.

Go outside league circles, and the doubt about how much these sessions are helping is easy to find. Miko Grimes, in a long post-Pro Bowl Twitter rant, put things bluntly.

I have friends that were beaten, thrown down stairs WHILE PREGNANT, guys arrested, & @nfl suspended them 1 FUCKING GAME! Now yall care? FOH

— Miko Grimes (@iHeartMiko) January 26, 2015

They asked helped it stay quiet bcuz its none of their business until Ray Rice clocked his now wife on camera. Then all of a sudden NOMORE?

— Miko Grimes (@iHeartMiko) January 26, 2015

I tweet for the wives and girlfriends of the popular players that cant say how they feel bcuz their bae has endorsements to protect.

— Miko Grimes (@iHeartMiko) January 27, 2015

I tweet for the wives & girlfriends that were physically abused by NFL players who were only suspended 1 game while she went to the ER.

— Miko Grimes (@iHeartMiko) January 27, 2015

Speaking to McManus, McPherson sounded a similarly skeptical note:

"I hate to be the cynic, but I don't think it has," McPherson said. "And the reason why I don't think it has is because we're still talking about Roger Goodell and the NFL and not Ray Rice punching Janay Palmer in the head, and that was OK for him to be back on the field. When I started doing this work 20 years ago, we were following the white Bronco, and everyone thought the domestic violence world was going to change. And it really hasn't."

So now what?

Critiquing any action taken to prevent domestic violence is tricky. It's a national crisis, the effects of which can be seen daily in courtrooms, shelters, schools, and jails everywhere in the country, and any help to stop it is welcome. That doesn't mean, though, that we have to hold the NFL to a standard that says that because any help is good, it's therefore good enough. The NFL is attempting to buy its way out of an immense public relations disaster here. There's no reason it should be allowed to do so on the cheap.

Domestic violence involves power and control and the ways abusers use them to keep victims in line. As I watch the NFL throw around its money and use a problem of its own making as a way to grab even more power, I can't help but get a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Stay with us, Goodell implores, because he's changed, and the NFL has changed, and things will be better next time. I've heard those lines before. It almost never ends well.

Photo by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images

On Sunday, gritty gravy god Mike Huckabee appeared on CNN's State of the Union to offer a number of regrettable analogies about homosexuality, comparing it, variously, to drinking, classical music and bacon-wrapped shrimp.

Explaining how he could have (possibly imaginary) gay friends, Huckabee told host Dana Bash, "People can be my friends who have lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyle," before veering off into a kind of folksy anti-gay poetry (emphasis added):

I don't shut people out of my circle or out of my life because they have a different point of view. I don't drink alcohol, but gosh—a lot of my friends, maybe most of them, do. You know, I don't use profanity, but believe me, I've got a lot of friends who do. Some people really like classical music and ballet and opera—it's not my cup of tea.

Later, the former Arkansas governor offered similarly awful similes about his inability to accept same-sex marriage as a Christian, saying:

It's like asking someone who's Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli. We don't want to do that—I mean, we're not going to do that. Or like asking a Muslim to serve up something that is offensive to him, or to have dogs in his backyard.

Predictably, Huckabee's comments were poorly received, with most media outlets using some variation on CNN's "Huckabee Compares Being Gay to Drinking, Swearing."

Of course, Huckabee's dumb point about the gay "lifestyle" was slightly different from—while no less insulting than—what that headline suggests, but it was understandably tough to parse all the stuff about drunk opera fans and Muslim dogs.

[Image via Getty Images]

In the White House's budget for fiscal year 2016, to be officially announced Monday, Barack Obama will call for a one-off, 14 percent tax on earnings held by multinational companies overseas, The Guardian reports. There is an estimated $2 trillion in such untaxed earnings.

According to The Guardian, the proposed tax would raise $238 billion. This would be immediately put towards a proposed six-year, $478 billion national infrastructure project, upgrading roads, bridges, and public transport around the country.

The president is also expected to propose that U.S.-based companies pay a minimum 19 percent tax on future foreign earnings, Bloomberg reports. U.S. companies do not have to pay the 35 percent tax to which their foreign earnings are subject until they bring that money back to the United States. Companies are thus incentivized to move money around outside of the United States, like Microsoft, which, according to Bloomberg, holds $92.9 billion in profits outside the country, on which it would owe $29.6 billion in taxes.

Paul Ryan, the new Ways and Means chairman—Congress's primary tax-writing committee—told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, "What I think the president is trying to do here is to, again, exploit envy economics."

Katy Perry, a person, will perform at the Super Bowl XLIX half-time show, for people, this afternoon. Meanwhile, Katty Furry, a cat, performed at the Puppy Bowl XI half-time show, for puppies.

Katty Furry, a cat in a blue wig, looked uncomfortable.

As it turns out, the Puppy Bowl is not a live broadcast. "The 'Puppy Bowl' was prerecorded with multiple cameras over a two-day period, resulting in hundreds of hours of video," the Las Vegas Sun reported. "Viewers get to see the most pawsome two hours' worth."

That is some bullshit. Also, the cat should be named "Kitty Perry," not "Katty Furry."

Some fans favor the Seahawks to win this year's Super Bowl. Others, the Patriots. All of them, alas, are fools. That's because Super Bowl XLIX has already been won, hours before kickoff, by figure skating legend and fashion icon Johnny Weir.

Johnny Weir won the Superbowl. pic.twitter.com/Ci9HCgXNVb

— BlackBroDude (@CraigSJ) February 1, 2015

Is it the oxymoronic attitude of Weir's pigskin yarmulke that's given him the winning edge, or the pure brilliance of his sapphire padding? We may never know. But all of us, Hawks and Pats fans alike, are surely better humans having witnessed this outfit today.

This has been Weir Watch XI.

[Image via Twitter/@SNFonNBC]

Cops say a man known best for portraying the red Power Ranger murdered his roommate during a fight at their Los Angeles apartment Sunday.

Ricardo Medina, Jr., who played the red Ranger in several of the franchise films and television shows, was reportedly arguing with his roommate with his roommate at their apartment in Green Valley on Sunday afternoon when things turned physical.

According to the LAPD, which confirmed the strange story in a press release, Medina "retreated to his bedroom with his girlfriend," but the victim, Joshua Sutter, "followed them and forced the door open."

Then Medina allegedly stabbed Sutter once in the stomach "with a sword kept next to the bedroom door."

Sutter was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead.

Medina was reportedly booked on murder charges and has not posted his $1 million bail.

[image via AP]

A subdued Kanye West continued his tour of apparent misery with surprise stops at the Super Bowl and a Waffle House. Above, Seahawks fan Ben Pitasky joins an indifferent Kanye in an Instagram selfie captioned "Kanye loves the Hawks and being bothered."

He possibly almost smiled once, an apparent mistake that would not be repeated.

Nor, it seems, could hash browns turn his frown upside down.

Double date at the Waffle House pic.twitter.com/c29b27HrRt

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) February 1, 2015

Update 9:40 p.m.

A new selfie from the Super Bowl shows Rihanna also less-than-pleased at an unrequested selfie. Stars—they're [all miserable] just like us!

Hi @rihanna pic.twitter.com/DNOnOs05X0

— Jonas (@jonastheprince) February 2, 2015

[images via Instagram]

Katy Perry's Super Bowl halftime performance featured a six-song medley, a dancing shark who knew all the steps, and a dancing shark who stole the show.

Katy Perry put on a fantastic Super Bowl halftime show Sunday, but the highlight of her performance was Missy Elliott.

Perry's full set also featured Lenny Kravitz, the star from NBC's "The More You Know" PSA, and an adorably misguided plush dancing shark.

But Elliott—who hasn't released an album in about a decade—straight-up stole the show with a three-minute medley of Get Your Freak On, Work It, and Lose Control. Katy Perry was also on stage during this time.

Two teams also played football before and after, and an insurance company possibly killed off some kids, but whatever. Missy Elliott's back!

The most badass woman in Utah basically delivered her own baby when her water broke as she was driving herself to the hospital.

Devi Mariah Ostler told the AP she was dropping her son off at her mother's house when her contractions began. She tried to drive herself to the hospital, but never made it. Via the AP:

On a recording of the call, Ostler is initially calm, telling the dispatcher that she's on the freeway, but soon interrupts herself to say her water broke.

"I'm trying to get over into the other lane — I need to push!" she said. She told the dispatcher her name and described her car, then said: "The baby is coming!"

The 32-year-old expectant mother pulled over on the side of Interstate 15 as dispatcher Brittney Chugg talked her through the labor, telling her to lay her seat back, breathe and even hold the baby's head so he wasn't born too fast.

Two officers were able to reach Ostler "less than a minute" before she gave birth to a healthy, 10-pound boy on the side of the interstate. The officers reportedly wrapped the kid in a sweatshirt and wished him well on his inevitable country music career.

[image via AP]

What with big news such as the Super Bowl and its advertisements, you may have missed the smaller news that large numbers of American oil workers have walked off the job. They have.

Oil prices are currently in the toilet. That does not bode well for ground-level employees of oil companies, some of whom are bound to be laid off in the near future as the companies try to lower their production to meet demand. At the same time, the United Steelworkers union is negotiating new contracts for thousands of workers in oil refineries, pipelines, and factories. It isn't going well. The union has called its first major strike in 35 years. So far, the strike has spread to "plants accounting for 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity," Bloomberg reports—but "a full walkout of USW workers would threaten to disrupt as much as 64 percent of U.S. fuel output."

Disrupting two-thirds of U.S. fuel output would be just the thing to raise oil prices again. Strikes work!

[Photo: AP]

New Jersey governor Chris Christie hasn't yet announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. But why wait for an official candidacy to start pandering to the country's dumbest elements? Today, just months after trying to imprison an an ebola-exposed nurse, Christie came out against mandatory vaccinations.

The Washington Post reports Christie's statement came just after President Obama said parents should vaccinate their kids against measles, because otherwise the kids could get measles and die but also kill other kids:

"Mary Pat and I have had our children vaccinated and we think that it's an important part of being sure we protect their health and the public health," Christie told reporters here Monday. But the likely Republican presidential candidate added: "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that's the balance that the government has to decide."

The right of parents to let their kids die of diseases for which we've had vaccines for half a century—and to endanger other kids—shall not be infringed. This is a serious contrast from the Christie whose idea of governmental "balance" was an involuntary quarantine for Kaci Hickox, detained in a Newark hospital after treating ebola patients in West Africa. This was only back in October:

"My first and foremost obligation is to protect the public health and safety of the people of New Jersey," Christie said.

"And so I'm sorry if in anyway she was inconvenienced, but the inconvenience that could occur from having folks who are symptomatic and ill out and amongst the public is a much, much greater concern of mine," he said.

In another statement:

"I don't believe when you're dealing with something as serious as this that we can count on a voluntary system," he said. "This is government's job. If anything else, the government's job is to protect safety and health of our citizens."

In other words, public health trumps individual discomfort. Except in the case of the ebola nurse, it was unfounded and unscientific. If only Christie could take his I'm the boss, fuckin' deal with it stance against paranoid, negligent anti-vaxx parents, instead of a nurse with a fever.

Photo: Getty

Katy Perry's 13-minute Super Bowl halftime show seemed to have been crafted to work around her. Perry is not a particularly good dancer, so she spent about a third of the time being transported—by a giant silver lion puppet for "Roar," which kicked off her set, and then on a platform with a shooting star on top. (The star was reminiscent of the one featured at the end of NBC's The More You Know PSAs—Perry's PSA could be called The Less You Dance.)

Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott, two artists that little to do with Perry (Missy once guested on a remix with her), joined her onstage. The latter took over the arena, reducing Perry to a hypeman who punctuated Missy's raps with interjections: "Come on!" "Holla!" Moving with a sense of rhythm and coordination, Missy looked like Bob Fosse next to Perry. Missy stole the show. And when she wasn't stealing the show, a badly dancing shark was.

"Pay no attention to the person who's here to command your attention," Katy Perry's Super Bowl halftime show said to its audience.

Last night, Perry didn't so much put on a show as star in one. She changed her outfits nearly a half dozen times. She made big theatrical faces to go with the big theatrical feelings expressed in her lyrics. She walked quite a bit—at her most nimble, she weaved in and out of the paths of people dressed as chess pieces during an abbreviated rendition of "Dark Horse." She sang and/or mimed a handful of her hits—many of them containing hooks against which resistance is futile. She didn't hyperventilate or show sign of strain. She didn't get distracted by the fireworks that exploded over her head as she earnestly churned out her finale, "Firework."

Not that much could be expected of Perry. She is the most underwhelming person to occupy the space of Massively Popular, No-Brainer Hitmaking Pop Diva since Paula Abdul, and at least Paula Abdul could dance. There is no there there with Katy Perry. I don't know if a pop star has ever had less there, in fact. She is superlative at nothing. She doesn't even have enough taste to refuse to wear whatever her people are putting her in—she opened the show in a top whose 3D flames were reminiscent of a Guy Fieri bowling shirt. She flaunts tackiness (see the infantile staging of "Teenage Dream" and "California Gurls," which featured anthropomorphized beach balls and palm trees, as well as the aforementioned shark) like it's aesthetic volition, when I suspect that she actually has no other choice but to be tacky and embrace it in fake-it-till-you-make-it sleight of hand.

It's rare that the machine is so blatantly present in a performance like this. Even the Queen of Pop (who rules the fiefdom of artifice that comes with the kingdom's territory) Madonna provoked and dazzled with her lip synched show a few years ago that featured a subversive nod to gay culture during the most outwardly straight broadcast of the year and, you know, actual dancing. I've been watching her for years and I'm still not convinced that Katy Perry has anything to say, any unique perspective, any capacity to challenge or surprise, any persona beyond vaguely goofy and occasionally sentimental. If you believe the credits on her songs, she can write a catchy hook. She can carry a tune, sometimes with force.

And she can show up to places and do her job without falling on her face or making some sort of career-negating blunder. (At least Janet Jackon's tit took balls.) Katy Perry did an absolutely adequate job of being Katy Perry during her Super Bowl halftime show. But we deserve much more than she could ever possibly provide.

[Image via Getty]

McDonald's, the molded plastic king of America's molded plastic cuisine, has decided that money will no longer suffice to purchase its meager offerings; the company now demands that you degrade yourself in order to be fed.

Perhaps you saw McDonald's Super Bowl ad last night. (If you did not, bless you.) In it, the $90 billion corporation films unsuspecting customers being told that no, they may not purchase their McDonald's food for money—instead, they must commit on-camera acts of schmaltz in order to feed the marketing needs of the McDonald's corporation. The price of breakfast? "Dial up your mom, tell her that you love her." The price of a snack? "Telling me what you love about your son." The price of a Happy Meal? "One big family hug." The price of a strawberry sundae? "Dance right now."

To be clear: normal, presumably middle or lower class Americans seeking cheap food are made to grovel and put their most tender family dynamics on public display for use in a $4.5 million commercial that will benefit a $90 billion food corporation that operates solely for its own profit. The consumers in question are rewarded with McDonald's food costing well under $10. This on-camera transaction is meant to demonstrate the affinity for human love that a company that pays its employees poverty-level wages holds in its nonexistent heart.

On top of that, the McDonald's corporation and its vast and well-paid marketing brain trust presume that you, the consumer, will gladly follow in the footsteps of these poor Super Bowl ad victims. They promise to randomly offer McDonald's customers everywhere the chance to degradingly parade their most intimate feelings for their family members around in a McDonald's lobby in exchange for a few dollars worth of unhealthy fast food. If I had the temerity of the McDonald's corporation when it comes to advising Americans how to properly display their emotions, I would recommend that any customer asked to "Dial up your mom" instead call McDonald's corporate headquarters at 630-623-3000 and inform them of your deep disgust with their cynical marketing ploy, and of your intention to never again patronize their restaurants—which, as a former McDonald's employee, I assure you are staffed by underpaid workers all too ready to spit in your food at the slightest provocation.

Dial up your mom, motherfuckers.

MAC Cosmetics VIVA GLAM Rihanna™ model Rihanna and environmental activist and founding member of the Pussy Posse, Leonardo DiCaprio, have reportedly been hooking up. That doesn't mean Rihanna is just going to settle for Leonardo DiCaprio's chubby baby bod, however.

According to an OK! Magazine source, Rihanna has hinted that Leonardo DiCaprio should lose some weight because he is, says the source, "a lot more flabbier than her usual lovers." Hmm.

On the one hand, perhaps Rihanna should have picked a different, less flabby actor to hook up with if she wanted a non-flabby hook up partner so badly; on the other hand, Leonardo DiCaprio was in Titanic, so maybe a little extra effort on both of their parts is worth it.

Plus, Leo is allegedly fine with it:

"Leo thinks it's all highly amusing," the insider said. "He's never had a girl tell him what to do, so you can imagine how much he's loving it."

"She wants him to get a six-pack," the source added.

You can imagine! What could be more amusing than having Rihanna critique your body?

According to the same source, Leo has (allegedly) (though this source seems very trustworthy) asserted some control over Rihanna's body as well:

"Rihanna has always been the type of girl who does whatever she wants, when she wants. She wants a new tattoo on her body, but she's stuck because Leo asked her to promise him she won't let the needle touch her body until she falls in love again. She's a woman of her word and she's sticking to that."

Leo, forever the romantic who makes weird and somewhat impossible to comprehend tattoo promises with Rihanna.

50% model.

[images via Getty]

Game developer Brianna Wu has been stalked, tormented, and harassed by GamerGate—the amorphous reactionary movement centered around video game journalism—for months now. But it's never been as frightening as it was this weekend—when she watched a terrifying video made by a deranged fanatic who claims he crashed his car on the way to her home. "I'm worried my husband and I are going to die," she tells me.

The video is the work of a man who calls himself "Jace Connors," and claims to be both a retired Marine and Navy Seal. It's unclear whether he has any real military affiliation, present or former, but his fantasy love of violence is clear, and he frequently shares images of himself posing with guns and knives. He can be seen here assaulting some guy over a stolen Xbox.

Jace Connors might've just been another wingnut who lets Call of Duty bleed into reality, but he's become a popular figure inside GamerGate, which has egged him on through increasingly bizarre and disturbing acts. This culminated with a video on January 30th, showing Connors' wrecked car on the side of the highway:

In the video, the very obviously disturbed man says he was on his way to confront Wu at her home outside Boston—this, after she tells me he'd uploaded a video threatening to "kill her Assassin's Creed style" with a knife. A Skype transcript between Connors and a friend he'd asked to accompany him to Wu's house is almost as unsettling as the video:

[2:52:35 PM] Jace Connors: I SENT ELI UP TO DISABLE HER COMMS WE DONT HAVE MUCH TIME BEFORE SHE ASKS FOR REINFORCEMENTS THOUGH AND I NEED YOU FOR BACK UP!!

[2:52:52 PM] FlyAwayNow - Matthew.N: What? You want me to bring my rifle or what?

[2:53:05 PM] Jace Connors: YEA JUST LIKE IN PAYDAY 2 DUDE ITLL BE SICK

[2:53:36 PM] Jace Connors: IN CASE SHE SHOOTS AT MY CAR I CANT GET BULLET HOLES IN MY MOMS CAR SHE ILL KILL ME ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I STOLE IT

[2:54:10 PM] Jace Connors: WERE GONNA STREET RACE HER SHE WONT BE ABLE TO DRIVE IN THE STORM SO WE WILL BE ABLE TO WIN EASY AND TAKE YOUR RIFLE IN CASE SHE SHOOTS US TOO

[2:54:32 PM] FlyAwayNow - Matthew.N: You're not laying a hand on my gun.

[2:54:42 PM] Jace Connors: ILL DRIVE YOU SHOOT

Luckily, Connors never made it to Wu's home. And, to be clear, all we have to go on that he actually tried is his word, which obviously doesn't mean much.

But the fact that he claims he tried, combined with his clear derangement evidenced in the video itself, is terrifying enough—"absolutely" marking a high water mark for GamerGate's scare tactics, Wu says. "Anyone that's moderate has left the movement," she told me via phone. "[Now] you just have these extremists here. For them, it's straight up entertainment." Sure enough, "fans" of Jace Connors applauded the video, which now has over 50,000 views on YouTube. And he's still going:

I may be Head-Injured, Wounded in Combat Ops, but this isnt over. Eli is still in play. More Operation Wupocalypse videos coming later today

— Jace (@ParkourDude91) January 31, 2015

#GamerGate @Spacekatgal No, you want attention, which you are getting from LEECHING off of well-respected and famous individuals like myself

— Jace (@ParkourDude91) January 31, 2015

Connors' unhinged campaign against Wu resembles that of another GamerGate favorite, a game developer named Slade Villena who tweets under the handle @_RogueStar_. Like Jace Connors, RogueStar claims to be a military veteran, and demonstrates terrifyingly obsessive behaviors—most recently, in a relentless campaign to ruin the life of Peter Coffin, a D-list YouTube personality. As explained at length in this Storify, RogueStar has tried to get Coffin involuntarily committed:

Yo #GamerGate

If you know David S Gallant's city police, or close friends/family, please consider reporting a potential suicide threat.

— R O G U E ▵ ☆ (@_RogueStar_) December 21, 2014

And has also tried to convince GamerGate that Coffin's family doesn't exist—in what appeared to be a bid to bait Coffin into posting photographs and other identifying information about his family. Coffin refused, but his brother, unaware of Villena's all-consuming obsession, responded.

I really hope Peter Coffin isn't lying to his own family :(

That would suck, like bad.

Still, waiting to confirm.

— R O G U E ▵ ☆ (@_RogueStar_) January 27, 2015

If Villena and Connors aren't mentally ill, they're putting on an extremely good performance of mental illness. But scarier even than Gamergate's last psychopaths is the small army of anonymous commenters who—seemingly out of a bored, sadistic impulse to mess with sick and dangerous people—whip them into a frenzy, pushing Connors and Villena to even greater heights of obsession and rage. There's an entire corner of 8chan, the web's current top toxic slime pit, dedicated to manipulating mentally ill people into real-life action for amusement.

There's no point to it, of course. There's no real agenda here, nor anything you could call ideology—"ethics in game journalism" feels like a thousand years ago. But if you're Brianna Wu, you can't shrug this off as mere trolling, even particularly vicious trolling. There's a man out there, by all accounts mentally ill, galvanized by a hashtag, and threatening to hurt her. Wu tells me that when she's been aware of Jace Connors' threats since December, but when she most recently spoke to her local police force, they merely took down her report and said "we suggest you turn off your electronic devices."

Twitter has been equally unhelpful; the social network is able to lock down Taylor Swift's hacked account within minutes, but serial harassers go unchecked. But Wu somehow remains undaunted, or at least not locked in a closet rocking back and forth, which is where I'd be: "I've been in touch with members of congress who are frustrated, and what they're frustrated about is there's no delineation of whose job it is to respond to these threats." But talking is only so reassuring: "I really just need people to do stuff. People are going to die if we don't act here."

To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com

On Friday afternoon, Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington sent a memo to her employees. The gist of the cloyingly adroit missive: Facebook’s proprietary news algorithm currently privileges “stories of people and communities doing amazing things,” so HuffPost needs to publish more of those stories. The global initiative will be called “What’s Working.”

A few other highlights and pronouncements:

• “the era of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ is over”
• “We want ... to start a positive contagion”
  
• “You’ve heard of copycat crimes. We want ... to inspire copycat solutions”
• “In Davos last week”

Full memo below:

From: Huffington, Arianna
To: ALLHP
Date: January 30, 2015, 2:38 PM

HuffPosters,

In Davos last week, we announced “What’s Working,” a global HuffPost editorial initiative to double down on our coverage of the positive stories and solutions to major challenges the media too often overlook. While we will continue to cover the stories of what's not working—political dysfunction, corruption, wrongdoing, etc.—as robustly as we always have, we want to show that the era of “if it bleeds, it leads” is over, and start a positive contagion by relentlessly telling the stories of people and communities doing amazing things, overcoming great odds, and facing real challenges with perseverance, creativity, and grace. As the #1 social publisher on Facebook, we’ve learned these are the stories our readers are most interested in reading and sharing. Greg Beyer, Lance Gould, and John Montorio will be leading this effort in the U.S., while Sebastian Matthes, HuffPost Germany’s editor-in-chief, will be bringing it to all our international editions from Athens to Seoul as our new global executive editor of “What’s Working.” You’ve heard of copycat crimes. We want “What's Working” to inspire copycat solutions, and we’d love you all to be part of it.

Arianna

Previously:http://gawker.com/arianna-huffin...

http://gawker.com/arianna-huffin...

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · Top image: Huffington Post

A few years ago, a college friend described to me his experience on Tinder. The service was already popular by then, but it hadn't yet become synonymous with sleazy come-ons and predatory male speech patterns. This friend—a plucky yuppie with a positive outlook and the face of an old baby—was finishing a graduate degree, and told me Tinder was "a blast." And more than that, a way to meet people! But what am I—what are any of us—supposed to say to these strangers, I asked him, without seeming needy or corny or the other ten thousand ways a straight guy can come across to the rest of his species? He told me he opened, every time, with the exact same line:

"There she is."

There she is? Where she is? Who is she? Me? We? What a dumb, weird thing to say to someone, to a stranger. It makes me feel as weird saying it as it feels for someone to read it. Weirder, maybe. Is it even friendly? The line isn't exactly menacing, it's not overt in any way, and it's completely devoid of innuendo. But it's almost incoherent, the sort of thing a distant species might say while trying to approximate human flirtation. I laughed off his ridiculous advice, assuming this was just Scott being Scott, the sort of thing a guy named Scott would do on Tinder. I pushed There She Is out of mind; I didn't think I'd ever be the kind of person to use a "line" on Tinder or anywhere in life. We make fun of people who do this, right?

But then in December, after being plunged back into the muck of single adulthood, I rejoined Tinder and very quickly realized that, at 28 years old, I still don't know how to talk to other people. So I tried The Line.

And it worked.

Well "worked," within the narrow confines of "got someone to respond."

I spammed dozens of Tinder matches. There's no shame in this, I don't think. Tinder is a factory and you shouldn't pretend it's even vaguely romantic. Turn the wheels; copy and paste. In a thoroughly scientific study of "there she is" (you could swap in any pronoun, I believe) efficacy, I found superior results compared to stock messages of "hey," "oh I see from your pictures that you've also been to Texas," and "do you like baseball because I like baseball."

And trust me—I know what a strike looks like:

I don't blame Devon for never replying to me. Tinder chatting is terrible. The disconnect between "this person looks fine? At least, clean?" and, "I want to speak with this person" is vast, and filled with a huge gulf of blank stares and aborted dialogues. As much as I might complain, it's much worse for women, for whom the conversation problem is so terrible that some founding ex-employees have created an alternative that provides rules for post-match interaction: Women have to speak first, or the match vanishes.

On Tinder, where I am still able to approach women brave enough to face an army of unfiltered straight men, my options are limited: "Hey" is awful, "hi" is pathetic, "heyyy" is juvenile, "yo" is lazy. Even good old "hello" has a distinctly psychopathic character in black-on-grey. You run out of word options after a couple days, but the procession of vaguely attractive faces is built to last for months. Matches stack up like dishes, and what's supposed to be my flirty, lighthearted new beginning becomes a chore I made for myself. You have to undo its seriousness.

"There she is" does that perfectly. It's just cheesy enough to break the ice without scaring the object of your affection away. It gives her a wide range choices in response. And best of all, The Line is a goofy wink at the absurdity of swiping through Tinder's vast library of human beings. It's perfect enough—short, to the point, not too boring, not too gross, does not feature the word "pussy"—that I bet it would work not just for straight men but for people of all genders as sexualities. As long as you're okay with feeling just a little bit gross.

But remember: you're already using an app that automates human interaction based on swiping your finger, so we're dealing with degrees of interpersonal alienation here. If I've resigned myself to using software as a means of possibly having sex, I'm pretty far gone—so why not say something strange, unsexy, and unique?

"There She Is" is odd without being creepy, charming and altogether sexless. You can't put your finger on it, but it will shock you both into the remote possibility of an organic conversation simply because no one else is dumb enough to say something like that. People like singular dumbness, I think. I hope. Maybe I'll still die in the dark and by myself, but I can leave this rock knowing I resolved to stop saying "hey," and feel briefly more alive through a shared sense of smartphone discomfort. Here we are.

Just—don't try using it yourself. I'm pretty sure I ruined it for everyone:

Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Shutterstock

Croatia is doing one of the most utopian economic experiments you can imagine: it is clearing its poorest citizens of all their debts. Is this a good idea? Yes. Is it the only idea? Not at all.

Croatia's plan offers a small-scale experiment in debt forgiveness in the real world, and will be closely watched by those who hate the idea and those who love it alike. The details, via the Washington Post, are this: the nation is forgiving the debts of its 60,000 poorest citizens, as long as those debts are less than $5,100, the person's income is less than $138 (around 3% of the total debt), and the person doesn't own property or have any savings. In other words, they are wiping out modest debts of the truly destitute.

A benefit of debt relief is that a government can do it without spending any cash directly. The Croation government convinced various public and private creditors to swallow the losses themselves, for the good of the overall economy—"municipal authorities, utility and telecoms providers, tax authorities and banks" are among those writing off debts, according to the FT. Critics warn that the plan could cause more people to run up debts of their own. That's a concern, but Croatia found it to be less of a concern than the huge percentage of their population that was debt-riddled and unable to contribute to the national economic spending.

For context, the debt forgiven amounts to somewhere between 1% and 7% of the nation's total debt. It is a fairly small sliver. If you were to project the same program out to America, it would cover about 4 million American citizens, and even if it covered only 1% of total household debt, it would be a $120 billion program. Cheaper than reparations, but not an insubstantial sum.

Debt forgiveness is a good way to give hope to the hopelessly indebted. But Croatia's program is too small to make a real dent—even though it is still far too generous to ever pass Congress here in the USA, where food stamps are still considered an egregious government handout in some quarters. Fortunately, even if debt forgiveness is politically unpalatable here (for now), there are still other ways to accomplish basically the same goal, at least somewhat:

• Allow student debt to be written off in bankruptcy.
• Bring back the WPA—a massive government jobs program.
• Tax very high incomes a lot and push the revenue towards education and social programs that benefit the poor and middle class.
• Abolish regressive taxes like the payroll tax and get rid of tax loopholes like the capital gains tax that benefit the rich and not the poor.

Socialism can be accomplished in many ways. Debt forgiveness is just one. The goal is fairness and opportunity for all. We won't be seeing any of these soon. (Barack Obama's new budget proposes some very minor versions of these goals and all of them were immediately declared "political nonstarters," except maybe the infrastructure jobs program.) America, after all, is no Croatia.

[Photo: Flickr]

Reminder: Gawker is posting less often to the front page. Read about the change here. Happening across the blogs: Justice NYPD Union Wants to Shut Down Bronx Public Defender Over a Music Video | Defamer Bobbi Kristina Brown Is "Fighting For Her Life," Says Family | Newsfeed Groundhog Predicts Six More Seconds of Biting The Mayor's Ear Off