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1,450 Cleveland Cops to Get Body Cams After Tamir Rice Shooting

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1,450 Cleveland Cops to Get Body Cams After Tamir Rice Shooting

On Wednesday, police in Cleveland began wearing some of the 1,500 body cameras the city bought for officers last month, the Associated Press reports. Cleveland Police plan to outfit every officer in the department with the devices by June.

From Cleveland.com:

According to the newly drafted policy, officers will be required to record during pedestrian or vehicle investigative stops, pursuits and emergency driving situations, crime or accident scenes, physical violence, civil disturbances, criminal suspicious activity or police use-of-force incidents.

The move comes less than three months after the killing of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy shot to death by police while holding a toy gun in Cleveland park. Police departments in other cities, including New York and Ferguson, MO, have similarly implemented body cameras after alleged police misconduct.

Not everyone, however, is convinced the cameras will effectively prevent police abuses.

"You will have to prove to me that this will mean you will discipline officers who cross the line, because in the past, not even video accomplished that," one Cleveland councilman told the city's police chief. "A tool can be misused by any supervisor. It means you will have to do your jobs with this new equipment."

[ Image via AP Images//h/t the L.A. Times]


Comic Book Fan Cuts Off Nose to Become the Red Nazi Skull of His Dreams

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Comic Book Fan Cuts Off Nose to Become the Red Nazi Skull of His Dreams

A certain degree of dedication isn't unusual among comics fans, but one Venezuelan man's devotion to the Marvel supervillain Red Skull apparently exceeded his devotion to having a sense of smell.

According to the Daily Mail, 37-year-old Henry Damon had his nose surgically removed so he could look more like his idol, the Nazi agent and Captain America foe who (quite sensibly) just wore a red skull mask in the original comics.

The body modification artist who removed Damon's nose assured the Mail that his client is not mentally ill.

"He's an excellent son, husband and father, who has an extreme taste for body modification," said Emilio Gonzalez, a former med student who dropped out to pursue body alteration.

Damon's future plans reportedly include tattooing his entire face red and putting silicone implants in his cheeks and chin.

"He has loved comic books since he was a kid and always dreamed of being Red Skull," said a friend of Damon's, "but never got round to doing it," which has to be the lamest excuse for not cutting off your nose I've ever heard.

[ Images via AP Images/Marvel Studios]

Customer Kicked Out of McDonald's for Crime of Being a Baby Kangaroo

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Customer Kicked Out of McDonald's for Crime of Being a Baby Kangaroo

A Wisconsin woman says she was recently asked to leave a McDonald's over her choice of company, even though her companion had done nothing wrong. Nothing, that is, besides being a baby kangaroo.

According to Diana Moyer, an officer made her and Jimmy, her eight-month-old kangaroo, exit the restaurant after another patron called the police. At the time, Jimmy was in a child's car seat, an apparently common occurrence. From the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen:

[Moyer] said she has been visiting the McDonald's at 840 Park Ave. for three months with Jimmy and no one has ever complained. In fact, she said she takes Jimmy everywhere, including her church — Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Beaver Dam — and to the east side of Madison. Recently she and Jimmy drove to Eastgate Cinema in Madison to watch Taken 3.

For their part, police have stood by the blatantly anti-marsupial act.

"While it's an unusual call, it was certainly handled in an appropriate manner going in and ultimately we got what we'd like to get," said Detective Ryan Klavekoske, "which is voluntary compliance with the ordinance."

[Images via WISN-TV//h/t New York Post]

UPDATE: In the wake of its republication of Mein Kampf, Coca-Cola has suspended the "Make It Happy"

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UPDATE: In the wake of its republication of Mein Kampf, Coca-Cola has suspended the "Make It Happy" tweet campaign. All Mein Kampf tweets have been removed and the @CocaCola handle is no longer responding to #MakeItHappy tweets with ASCII art, or at all, really. The company provided AdWeek with the following statement:

"The #MakeItHappy message is simple: The Internet is what we make it, and we hoped to inspire people to make it a more positive place. It's unfortunate that Gawker is trying to turn this campaign into something that it isn't. Building a bot that attempts to spread hate through #MakeItHappy is a perfect example of the pervasive online negativity Coca-Cola wanted to address with this campaign."

While Gawker strenuously disagrees with Coke's own clearly stated desire to "secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children," we are even more disappointed to learn that the corporation does not have the strength of its own white nationalist convictions. Happiness has been destroyed, for now.

Stay Off the Red Carpet, Then

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Stay Off the Red Carpet, Then

Female celebrities are reportedly growing tired of the shallow inanity and vapid questions that come with walking the red carpet at awards shows. So boycott it, then.

It is thoroughly unsurprising that adult women would chafe at the process of parading themselves down a red carpet in front of countless cameras while being harshly judged on their physical appearance and asked the most stupid possible questions by peppy anchors from America's most idiotic celebrity-news shows. No reasonable human would enjoy such a charade. Cara Buckley writes of the growing mini-revolts against the red carpet by individual celebrities, such as the refusal of a few women to shove their manicured hands into the E! network's "Mani Cam."

Such exasperation is understandable. But bypassing Mani Cams are not the stuff from which revolution is made. If female celebrities are tired of being patronized and judged as mere physical objects while parading down the red carpet—and they should be—they should not parade down the red carpet. I know that this may blow many minds throughout Hollywood, but it is possible for celebrities to choose not to walk down the red carpet. There is in fact no state law in California which compels movie stars to put on designer gowns, step out of a limousine, pose before cameras, and answer questions from Ryan Seacrest.

The red carpet is awful. Celebrities should boycott it. If enough celebrities boycotted it, it would change. That minor problem in the generally fabulous lives of celebrities would be solved.

So why don't celebrities stay off the red carpet? Because they want the red carpet. They want it to build their personal brands. They want it to help them become more famous and desirable. They want it to make them money. "If celebrities 'do a series of good looks' on the red carpet," the Times writes, "they are better poised to land lucrative contracts."

What we have here is an attempt by celebrities to breach their own contract. That implicit contract states that celebrities will be richly rewarded with wealth and fame in exchange for being, in essence, fanciful monkeys that dance for the public's amusement. Celebrities will dress themselves up and put on plastic smiles and answer idiotic questions and have their appearance grossly dissected in the most appalling possible ways, and they will do it willingly, because they want what comes with it: fame and fortune. Celebrities are free to opt out of the sickening process of the red carpet—and out of awards shows altogether—any time they choose to do so. But that would mean potentially sacrificing a bit of fame and fortune. So they do not do that. Instead they stage petty and ultimately meaningless acts of mild complaint, and the whole show continues on. Complaining about the vapidity of the red carpet while continuing to walk down red carpets is like complaining about traffic while choosing to walk down the middle of the highway.

The celebrity industrial complex is full of vomit-inducing insults to the human spirit. So stop participating. If you're not willing to do that, then take your money and dance, monkey, dance.

[Photo: AP]

How Much Do Drugs Cost In Your City? Take the Great American Drug Survey

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How Much Do Drugs Cost In Your City? Take the Great American Drug Survey

Narcotics have been a fabric of life on this continent for thousands of years. A huge number of academic studies, undertaken by the government and institutions of higher learning, have attempted to plumb the depths of that usage. Now, we join that noble pursuit, with the most important drug question of all: How much do drugs cost in your city? And can you even get good stuff?

Below, we've put together a survey meant to answer those questions about three of America's best and most popular recreational drugs, as well as whatever else Americans are currently inhaling, snorting, or injecting.

Don't worry if you strictly smoke weed and don't know the price of coke, or vice versa—fill out as much as you can, and submit. You can take the survey here, or below.

Let's create a comprehensive, consumer-focused assessment of the state of drugs in America today.

(We are not the feds. We're not interested in personal or identifying information and wouldn't share it even if we had it.)

Take the survey below, or click here to open it in a new window.

[ image by Jim Cooke]

Grown Man/DJ Diplo Is Majorly Fucking Up the Affairs of Selena Gomez 

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Grown Man/DJ Diplo Is Majorly Fucking Up the Affairs of Selena Gomez 

The young woman whom Drama follows, Selena Gomez, could come bear the wrath of her longtime BFF Taylor Swift soon, thanks to the 36-year-old DJ known as Diplo. Why? Because Diplo, an adult who enjoys and produces electronic music, apparently also likes meddling in the tender, romantic affairs of America's young people.

Lainey Gossip speculates that Selena might get axed from the Taylor Swift Best Friends Forever Sometimes Gang because she recently responded to a tweet from Diplo, a sworn enemy of Taylor Swift. How Selena got swept up in this drama is obvious—she is Selena Gomez, whom Drama follows—why Diplo has become the peach pit at the center of this drama peach is less clear.

How did this grown man become so involved in the social lives of babies who were recently on the Disney channel? Perhaps there is something psychological going on in relation to his allegedly tiny penis, which is where this saga began, three long months ago.

"Someone should make a kickstarter to get taylor swift a booty"

On November 12, 2014, Diplo, who was at the time dating Taylor Swift's sworn enemy Katy Perry, tweeted this—

—without provocation. It got considerably more retweets than the average snippets of wisdom and wonder Diplo sends out on a daily basis, like this recent tweet where he asks to be invited to a party.

So those extra retweets encouraged Diplo, probably. His first home run in the fame game called Twitter, and he was eager to get back up to bat.

Perhaps that's why, when current best friend of Taylor Swift Lorde tweeted back at him in an unequivocal pledge of allegiance to the Taylor Swift Best Friends Forever Sometimes Gang...

...Thirty-six-year-old Diplo took a couple days to craft his response, ultimately incorrectly identifying the 300-year-old Lorde as a high school student.

Because the code of strong women states that "You can come at me, but you cannot come at my friends, even in a confusing way," at that moment, Diplo became (and forever shall be) an enemy of Taylor Swift and the Taylor Swift Best Friends Forever Sometimes Gang.

So what does this have to do with Selena Gomez?

Well, Diplo knows a guy she knows.

"Oh hi derrling..."

Last month, Selena Gomez was seen canoodling on FaceTime and in real life with 25-year-old producer Zedd, much to the dismay of her on-again, off-again piss boyfriend Justin Bieber. Zedd Instagrammed a FaceTime screenshot of Selena in bed with the caption "Oh hi derrling...", leading many to believe that the two are more than friends (i.e. derrlings).

Since they are both DJs and producers, Zedd and Diplo are casual acquaintances, even though Diplo is 11 years older than Zedd. Which brings us to the present entanglement.

"@selenagomez watch out"

On Monday, Zedd tweeted this cute pic of Selena hanging out with him.

Before Taylor Swift had a chance to respond "Cute! Love you"—before Justin Bieber had 11 hours to cry—Diplo tweeted a photo of Zedd hanging out with him to Selena, along with a playful threat to claim her rumored derrling.

Ahhhhhh! What is Selena Gomez supposed to say to that? Diplo, do you even realize that Selena is not even officially dating Zedd yet, and that Justin Bieber can see all of this, and that Taylor Swift can also see all of this, and that you are not a person to whom Taylor Swift would like Selena to be talking? Do you get it??????????

I really hope you get it now.

[Photos via Getty]

Don't forget: Gawker is posting less often to the front page.


Hacked Sony Antihero Amy Pascal Basically Fired

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Hacked Sony Antihero Amy Pascal Basically Fired

After leaked emails showed Adam Sandler-enabler Amy Pascal making racist jokes about Barack Obama, taking point on the implosion of the Steve Jobs movie, and leaning real hard on that caps lock key, her tenure as Sony Pictures co-chair has gotten the boot.

Rich and powerful people don't get fired like the rest of us, The Hollywood Reporter reports—they "step down" to "transition" towards a "new venture." In layman's terms, shitcanned:

Amid the fallout of the Sony hacking crisis, Amy Pascal will step down from her post as co-chairman, Sony Pictures Entertainment.

[...]

As often is the case with ousted studio heads, Pascal will launch a major new production venture at the studio. Pascal, whose deal was up in March, will transition to the new venture in May.

This is executive speak for "We're firing you because you've become synonymous with perhaps the darkest chapter in the history of our company but you're well-liked so we're going to give you a made-up job on the way out." The ouster has been expected since late last year, but comes right after a Vanity Fair article about the hacker gutting made it seem like all was well in Pascaltown:

Today, Amy Pascal's e-mails are shorter and safer. For security reasons, she's using four separate handheld devices, with various names and passwords. But while her e-mails have diminished, her passion for the movies has not. She returned to work on Monday, January 5, the town clamoring to work with her, or for her. Some insiders are cynical about the support, so late in coming. "I guarantee you, somebody who is telling Amy Pascal that they're there for her and 'Please let me know if there's anything I can do' is, on the side, angling for her job," says a rival studio executive.

But Amy Pascal does not act as if she's going anyplace anytime soon. She is excited to be developing Ghostbusters 3, an all-female version of the 1984 hit comedy, which she feels will become the studio's first female franchise.

Ah, well. Dumbass Obama remarks aside, we will be the first to admit that Pascal's manic, embattled email haikus greatly endeared her to us.

Photo: Getty

No More, The NFL's Domestic Violence Partner, Is A Sham

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No More, The NFL's Domestic Violence Partner, Is A Sham

The brands have spoken, and they want you to know that domestic violence and sexual assault are bad. In fact, the brands not only think they're bad, but have a theory as to why they persist: the issues of domestic violence and sexual assault don't have a strong enough brand. So, to help get America talking about these issues, the brands created a brand, and partnered with other brands to promote this brand. And this is how No More—a more or less imaginary brand made by brands to help domestic violence and sexual assault with their brand problem—came to be.

It's no wonder Roger Goodell and NFL owners ran to No More with open arms when their $10 billion sports enterprise was faced with a serious public relations crisis, the culmination of years of paying little thought to players accused of domestic violence. No More was the perfect fit for a brand with a problem. So it came to pass that the NFL, as part of its anti-domestic violence initiative, partnered with a branding campaign co-founded by one of its crisis-management consultants and, this past weekend, ran an advertisement for it before the biggest audience in American television history.

Before going further, let's acknowledge a difficult part of this discussion: domestic violence and sexual assault are horrific and almost unbelievably widespread, and any help in the fight against them is welcome. What No More sets out to do is good. Still, this is the beginning of a story we've all seen before with Pinktober, LIVESTRONG, and even the incredibly important but eventually coopted AIDS ribbon. What begins as a push for change becomes an invisible force telling us that we must buy specific items and wear certain logos so we can feel better about ourselves, and if we go along, we do so not because we care but because we don't want to feel left out. What good this does for people in need of help isn't always clear, but it's great for the brands, because all they have to do is slap logos on a few products and/or advertisements and throw a few pennies to charity to make themselves seem socially conscious. These logos are an embodiment of magical thinking, promising that you can do good without having to actually do anything. They're shams, basically. Now, we've got another one.

How No More began

No More, the latest entry in the great American tapestry of brands saying they care, started in 2009—or at least talk about starting it began in 2009. Virginia Witt, director of No More (the small group doesn't have any full-time professional staff), said that's when domestic-violence and sexual assault groups decided to "radically change how these issues are seen and addressed, and in doing so brought together dozens of leaders from the prevention field, along with experts in marketing, communications and branding." The problem, they decided, was that these issues had a brand problem. The solution? Make a logo for them. From Witt (emphasis mine):

The idea was to give domestic violence and sexual assault something these issues had never had: a unifying brand. The idea to bring these two movements together came from the interconnectedness of the issues. Intimate partner violence, as defined by the CDC, includes both, and very often they are experienced together. And so after a year of planning, hours of donated volunteer time and consultation from leading creative experts, research and focus testing the NO MORE brand was developed in 2010 and 2011.

The logo was created pro bono by Sterling Brands, who've done brand work for Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Disney, Bayer, Google, Visa, Time Warner, and Pepsico. Sterling Brands' website says it does three things really well: brand strategy, brand design, and brand innovation. They certainly sound qualified to create a brand, and they did. It was unveiled in 2012, but because this was something created by and for brands, who by definition love public relations, there was also an official public launch in March 2013. So, from start to finish, it took about five years (and the doubtless valuable work of a number of marketing professionals) for the brands to give domestic-violence and sexual assault prevention efforts a brand so that we could support the fight against them better.

No More, The NFL's Domestic Violence Partner, Is A Sham

When I sent Witt a list of questions about what exactly No More is and what exactly it is they do, her response mentioned the AIDS ribbon and the fight to raise awareness of the virus three times. The AIDS ribbon, she told me, was their model. So it may be worth revisiting the first big moment for the AIDS ribbon, which was not given an official public launch after years of research and focusing testing, but crashed the Tonys after being created in a few weeks by a group of artists who gathered in a shared gallery space in New York City because they just had to do something. From The New York Times:

EVERYTHING was, at first, handmade. Painters, curators, museum administrators, they stood at work tables in a costume studio crafting their memorials. Some cut the narrow red grosgrain from spools; others folded the strips of fabric and stitched gold safety pins to the backs. They talked all the while, caught up with each other as at a quilting bee, tedious and comforting. And amazingly efficient. After four and a half hours of elegy and dish, that first bee last May produced 3,000 ribbons, enough for the satin lapels and glittering bodices at the Tonys a week later.

Consistency had not been a priority. Jeremy Irons's came out looking like basset-hound ears; Willa Kim's was the size of a pinkie. But they were enough alike to make a statement; the question was, what statement? Viewers of the telecast were never told that the pert red inverted V's were meant to symbolize awareness of AIDS; and so, in their debut, the ribbons actually came to symbolize ignorance of the awareness of AIDS. It was not the last of the ironies.

Who is behind all this?

No More describes itself as a "non-profit project" of Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation. (Asked to clarify what that means, Witt said, "NO MORE is non-profit project in the sense that it is a project of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a non-profit organization.") Everything that comprises No More, though—their logo's trademark, their webpage, their funding—comes back to corporations. When I asked who is paying for No More, Witt told me it's supported by the corporations listed on their homepage—Viacom, Prudential, Allstate, Verizon, and so on. Their trademark and web domains are owned by Kate Spade, a company known less for charity than for $358 purses that exude a certain WASPy charm. And it was co-founded by Jane Randel, a former senior vice-president with Kate Spade who specializes in "reputation and crisis management," "corporate rebranding," and "cause marketing campaigns."

Jane Randel is now an NFL consultant, brought on during the public relations crisis caused by the league's poor handling of several prominent players accused of domestic violence; she signed the post-Super Bowl email sent out to those who signed the group's online pledge to say, "No more." It's a telling set of of relationships. No More is a brand created as an extension of other brands, and has come to prominence at a time when its co-founder, a specialist in using marketing tactics to change the reputation of brands and make them seem socially conscious, found herself with a client in need of precisely these services. It's all the more telling given that No More doesn't seem to actually do anything, aside from existing as a brand.

What do they do?

The most confusing thing about No More, which describes itself as "an awareness symbol and movement," may not be that it doesn't seem to do anything, but that it doesn't even purport to do much in particular.

"Our role," the group says, "is to raise awareness ... and attract more resources and support for our partner groups."

How much awareness they've raised is unknown and unknowable, but attracting resources and support for domestic-violence organizations is a concrete goal that should lead to measurable results, good or bad. This, though, was the response I got when I asked Virgina Witt to estimate how much money No More helps direct to domestic-violence nonprofits:

We don't have an exact total of how much money and support has been generated for the field because of NO MORE. But as more celebrities, brands and advocates get behind it, and the profile of NO MORE continues to go up, we are confident that it will continue to be seen as asset to them. The symbol was created with the support of two dozen domestic violence and sexual assault prevention organizations who are using NO MORE in all kinds of ways. Some have developed their own NO MORE products – lapel pins, clothing, and jewelry – that they sell to make money that supports their work. Others have used NO MORE as the branding for consumer engagement events to raise awareness and support in their communities. Every person coming to NO MORE's website is directed to our partner organizations, as we don't accept individual donations. And dozens of nonprofit groups have co-branded the NO MORE PSAs produced by Joyful Heart Foundation.

Read generously, this is just marketing jargon ("brands ... an asset ... consumer engagement") wrapped around an admission that no one has any idea whether or not No More actually does anything tangible for groups fighting domestic violence and sexual assault. Taken at face value, as it probably should be, it suggests that the measure of success for No More isn't whether it actually directs new funding to, say, hotlines, shelters, and lawyers, but whether those who are already fighting domestic violence use No More branding in their own fundraising operations.

I took the No More pledge on their website. Since then, the only thing I've received from them is an email from Randel asking me to please share their advertisement on Facebook.

The logo

The core of No More's existence as a brand is its logo, that teal circle that represents years of work by the brands' best and brightest. Witt told me that this logo is "a gift to the domestic violence and sexual assault prevention field, that they could use alongside their own logos, to demonstrate their belonging to a national movement." What this movement actually consists of other than people and brands using the logo is unclear; what is clear is that this gift comes with some very detailed instructions. A 36-page set of "visual identity guidelines" opens with this explainer on how the logo works.

No More, The NFL's Domestic Violence Partner, Is A Sham

Here's the list of things not to do with the logo:

  1. Don't change the orientation
  2. Don't change the colors
  3. Don't place the signature on a busy background
  4. Don't crop the signature in any way
  5. Don't create your own tagline lockups
  6. Don't add effects to the signature
  7. Don't embellish the signature
  8. Don't stretch, squeeze or distort the signature
  9. Don't use the signature on similarly-colored backgrounds
  10. Don't embed the signature within a block of text
  11. Don't add an outline to the badge signature
  12. Don't bevel or emboss the signature

There are also very specific directions for the "Vanishing Point icon," which is what No More calls that teal circle. "Respect our signature as you would any brand, product or corporate logo," the instructions warn. "Recognition is built only with correct and consistent use."

They mean it when they say respect the signature. It's been trademarked.

(The AIDS ribbon was not copyrighted or trademarked and didn't have any real visual identity guidelines, except for this: "cut the red ribbon in 6 inch length, then fold at the top into an inverted 'V' shape. Use a safety pin to attach to clothing.")

Near the end of No More's visual identity guidelines is a section on co-branding. It gives several examples of what it's looking for:

No More, The NFL's Domestic Violence Partner, Is A Sham

Surprise! The NFL's big partnership involves ending domestic violence through the power of nail polish, headphones, and ugly shoes. And it makes sense—who doesn't want to fight domestic violence and sexual assault by painting their nails? Imagine your girlfriend saying, "I love that color," and you being able to respond with, "Yeah, it's my anti-domestic violence polish." It's what we've been missing all this time.

The AIDS ribbon got caught up in branding itself, though that wasn't the original goal. It led Daniel Harris to write the essay "The Kitschification of AIDS," which ran first in Harper's and later in his book The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture:

AIDS may be the first disease to have its own gift shop. Housed in the Workshop Building of the AIDS Memorial Quilt—the acres of fabric that commemorate the deaths of thousands of AIDS victims—Under One Roof is at the epicenter of the burgeoning industry of AIDS kitsch. Catering to an upscale clientele beaming with good intentions, the store, on Market Street in San Francisco's Castro District, peddles memento mori as shamelessly as tourist traps peddle souvenirs: "Cuddle Wit" teddy bears that sport tasteful red ribbons; Keith Haring tote bags; and T-shirts stenciled with the words "We're Cookin' Up Love for People With AIDS." The boutique also sells a unique line of AIDS-related sympathy cards, including one picturing a seductive man leaning inconsolably against a tombstone angel ...

Although Under One Roof donates its profits to a variety of AIDS-relief organizations, commercial businesses have not hesitated to wrap their products in the shroud of AIDS to promote their own merchandise. Benetton, in the early 1990s, placed in glossy magazines an ad that featured a skeletal male figure, obviously dying of AIDS. Stretched out in a hospital bed, beneath a print of Jesus Christ, he is attended by a sobbing father, who clutches him like a rag doll, and a grief-stricken another, who sits crumpled in despair. In the ad's left-hand corner several words sit quietly in mourning, like unbidden guests maintaining respectful silence in the company of the family's anguish;they read, "United Colors of Benetton ... For the nearest Benetton store location call 1-800-535-4491."

Should I brace myself for Tealtober?

Probably, unless they pick a different month.

The brands have chosen domestic violence and sexual assault as the vessel for their concerns, and they will make sure we all care, on their terms. And the most ingenious part is that whenever a brand has a domestic violence or sexual assault public relations disaster on its hands, all they will now have to do is cozy up to No More, throw them some money or help out with an advertisement, and their problem will be solved. Now, the brands don't even have to get into the messy business of figuring out which nonprofit to cut a check. They can support No More and say they're supporting everyone while really playing the long game of supporting their own needs first and foremost.

But before you run and hide from the latest on-trend cause célèbre, take a moment to think about the logic of what No More is doing. You know why they are doing this? Because it works. Because it makes money. Because we love pretending to care, especially when a brand makes it easier for us to do by removing all the pain, horror, darkness, and self-reflection and turning concern for others into products—preferably ones that can be worn. Do those teenage boys wearing "I Heart Boobies" really care about breast cancer? Probably not, but at least they're thinking about it, right? And even if they don't think about it, they generated money (a nickel on the dollar, maybe, but better than nothing) for a good cause!

This is how low our standards are. Gesture toward a good cause and you're practically unassailable. No More gave Goodell and the NFL a cheap and perfect way out of a public relations disaster and we shouldn't be surprised. We do the exact same thing every day when we throw on our Toms, our pink baseball hats, and our latest rubber bracelet of choice, shopping our way into another day with pure hearts and clean consciences.


Know something we should? Drop a line to diana.moskovitz@deadspin.com. Illustration by Jim Cooke

The Solitary Confinement Epidemic Continues

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The Solitary Confinement Epidemic Continues

Texas has one of the harshest and most punitive criminal justice systems in America. A new report shows just how inhuman the state of Texas is when it comes to doling out the punishment of solitary confinement.

If you have any doubt that solitary confinement is torture, all you need to is to listen to the stories of those who have been forced to endure it. Nevertheless, a new report from the ACLU of Texas finds that about one in ever 22 prisoners there is in solitary confinement— more people "than 12 states house in their entire prison systems."

Here is a description of the life of one prisoner who has been in solitary for ten years, from the report:

There is no window in Alex's cell. His field of vision is limited to peering through the Plexiglas slit in his cell door to the door of the cell opposite him. Alex has not seen the stars in a decade. "I miss that so much," he writes. "One time I was going to the hospital, down to Galveston and we were riding the ferry and the sun was coming up and it was the only one I'd seen in years. I'm a pretty tough guy, but it brought tears to my eyes."

Alex struggles to fall asleep at night. Usually, he can only sleep for four hours. The fluorescent light hanging from his ceiling remains on all night. The cell block constantly echoes with screams because some of the men confined in neighboring cells have gone insane, cutting themselves or eating their own feces. Alex is overwhelmed by the noise: "Constant banging, clanking, rage, anger," he writes. "Like a jammed packed area for a boxing match with everyone screaming murder. The night sounds are the worst. More personal and filled with sadness. It sounds like hell.

Solitary confinement is a form of torture and it should only be used in the most necessary circumstances, and not for very long periods. (This it not just an American problem—here is a new story on the use of solitary confinement in Nova Scotia, for example.)

[The full report is here. Photo via Getty]

Justice NYPD Has a Plan to Magically Turn Anyone It Wants Into a Felon | Newsfeed Have You Hooked Up

Have You Hooked Up With Your College Professor?

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Have You Hooked Up With Your College Professor?

You may have heard that Harvard University banned sex between professors and enrolled students. Which made us curious: How many of you have actually slept with your college professor(s)? And what exactly happened?

Tell us your stories below. The weirder, the better. We’ll collect the highlights in a later post.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Aaron Schock Adviser Quits After Comparing Black People to Zoo Animals

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Aaron Schock Adviser Quits After Comparing Black People to Zoo Animals

Another calamity barreling out of Illinois rep. Aaron Schock's office today: Benjamin Cole, Schock's senior adviser for policy and communications, resigned this afternoon after a series of racially-charged Facebook posts—including one in which he compares black people to zoo animals—were obtained and published by ThinkProgress. In another since-deleted post, Cole writes that he "thinks they should build a mosque on the White House grounds," in an apparent dig at Obama.http://newsfeed.gawker.com/aaron-schock-d...

Most of the posts gathered by ThinkProgress come from 2013. Here's the post where he compares black people to zoo animals (written during the government shutdown):

Aaron Schock Adviser Quits After Comparing Black People to Zoo Animals

That post, ThinkProgress writes, "included a video of a woman, shouting and seemingly engaged in an argument with someone not visible as she walked."

Two more posts from 2013:

Aaron Schock Adviser Quits After Comparing Black People to Zoo Animals

Aaron Schock Adviser Quits After Comparing Black People to Zoo Animals

BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski got a hold of another, older post by Cole from 2010 in which he claims Obama is Muslim:

Aaron Schock Adviser Quits After Comparing Black People to Zoo Animals

As Daily Intel points out, Cole appears to have joined Schock's office in March 2014, with these Facebook posts pre-dating his tenure. But then there's this post from last month:

Aaron Schock Adviser Quits After Comparing Black People to Zoo Animals


Cole has since put his Facebook page on lockdown since ThinkProgress' report, but Gawker was able to take a screenshot of his album of cover photos, which appear to exclusively include images of Michelle Obama (save for one photo of his chest):

Aaron Schock Adviser Quits After Comparing Black People to Zoo Animals

"I am extremely disappointed by the inexcusable and offensive online comments made by a member of my staff," Schock said in a statement. "I would expect better from any member of my team. Upon learning about them I met with Mr. Cole and he offered his resignation which I have accepted."

[Images via AP, Benjamin Cole's Facebook]

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

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Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Last month, a Vermont lawmaker introduced a bill to give his state a Latin motto ("Stella quarta decima fulgeat") in addition to its official one, the suggestion of a middle school student studying the ancient language. Pretty cute, right?

It was, at least, until a local news station asked its viewers what they thought about the proposal, asking on Facebook, "Should Vermont have an official Latin motto?" You can probably guess what happened next:

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

The bill's sponsor, Republican State Senator Joe Benning, admitted he was surprised by the impressively dumb and loud reaction.

"I anticipated suffering the backroom internal joking from my colleagues in the legislature," Benning told the Vermont Political Observer. "What I did not anticipate was the vitriolic verbal assault from those who don't know the difference between the Classics and illegal immigrants from South America."

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

Later commenters, it should be noted, entered the thread to parody the responses, but all of these messages appeared to be sincere. That includes this masterpiece of unintentional irony:

Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit

[Image via Shutterstock//h/t If You Only News]


RadioShack is Dead, Long Live RadioShack

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RadioShack is Dead, Long Live RadioShack

RadioShack—the long-troubled hobbyist-turned-battery store you probably didn't know was still in business—officially went the way of the Blockbuster on Thursday, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was 94.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the 'Shack plans to sell between 1,500 and 2,400 of its 4,000 U.S. retail stores to Standard General and shutter the rest.

It's not all bad news, however: Using a "store within a store" model, RadioShack will continue to operate as a hollow shell of it's former self in up to 1,750 of the locations, which will primarily be branded as Sprint stores.

At this time of sorrow and loss, let's celebrate the company's better days with this vintage ad for a (let's be honest) pretty dumb gadget that never should have caught on.

[Image via Getty Images]

Expert: If You Lick a Bunch of Subway Poles You'll "Probably be Fine"

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Expert: If You Lick a Bunch of Subway Poles You'll "Probably be Fine"

Sure, by now you've seen The Wall Street Journal's interactive map of germs on the New York subway, but what does the study it was based on mean for regular perverts like you and me? According to one researcher, it means you're probably cool to keep licking subway poles.

Dr. Chris Mason of Weill Cornell Medical College assured an audience on Thursday that his team had found "nothing traumatic" during their bacteria-mapping research, telling Gothamist, "the subway is not something to be scared of."

"You wouldn't want to lick all the poles," said Mason, "even though you'd probably be fine."

Really, Dr. Mason had just two pieces of advice for staph-fearing straphangers: "Wash your hands and don't walk around with a gaping wound."

[Image via Shutterstock//h/t NY Mag]

Source: Tom Brokaw Wants Brian Williams Fired

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Source: Tom Brokaw Wants Brian Williams Fired

According to the New York Post's Page Six, an NBC source says that Tom Brokaw wants Brian Williams' "head on a platter" after the anchor recanted his story about taking incoming fire in Iraq on Wednesday.

"He is making a lot of noise at NBC that a lesser journalist or producer would have been immediately fired or suspended for a false report," said the source.

The Post reports that Williams' fabrication was long-known at NBC, but at least one employee thinks the Nightly News anchor is unlikely to be punished.

"He is not going to be suspended or reprimanded in any way," a network source told the paper. "He has the full support of NBC News."

[Image via AP Images]

How to Make an Accused Rapist Look Good

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How to Make an Accused Rapist Look Good

In the days after Rolling Stone's University of Virginia rape story blew up in its face, both liberal and conservative finger-waggers agreed that Sabrina Rubin Erdely's journalistic transgression would almost certainly make things more difficult for the "real" victims. They were right.

After months of widespread coverage of sexual assault allegations at Columbia, this week the Daily Beast published a piece by the reliably rape-skeptical Cathy Young that purported to find the gray area in the accusations. Young focused on Paul Nungesser, the Columbia student reportedly accused of sexual assault by three different women. "Columbia Student: I Didn't Rape Her" was the headline.

"If Nungesser is not a sexual predator," Young concluded, "he could be seen as a true victim: a man who has been treated as guilty even after he has proved his innocence."

To develop this contrary point of view, Young interviewed Nungesser, his family, and the student assigned to be his supporter in the disciplinary process, and she cited messages exchanged between him and his accusers. She was unable to interview any of Nungesser's alleged victims, who worried that the piece would be what it ultimately ended up being: an example of reporting that reads with a veneer of neutrality but nonetheless advances the notion of hysterical, scheming women unfairly turning ambiguous circumstances into an attack on a hapless target.

Jezebel has spoken with three students who accuse Nungesser of sexual assault—one of whom, a male classmate, is currently in the process of pursuing disciplinary action through Columbia and has never previously spoken publicly about his allegations. There is not, by these students' accounts, much ambiguity in their experiences with Nungesser.


In August of 2012, on the first day of her sophomore year at Columbia, Emma Sulkowicz alleges that her friend, a fellow student named Paul Nungesser, held her down on his bed and violently raped her. After her assault, she's said, she decided not to pursue disciplinary action against him for the same reasons many acquaintance rape survivors don't pursue justice against their attackers: it's just too much trouble.

But after Sulkowicz learned about two other women Nungesser had allegedly sexually assaulted, she decided to press forward, bringing charges against him before her college's disciplinary board. Nungesser was found "not responsible." He'd earlier been found "responsible" for another sexual assault, but had appealed and won after the woman grew tired of fighting the proceedings. So he was allowed to remain on campus.

Sulkowicz began carrying her mattress between classes in an act of protest that doubled as her senior thesis in visual art; soon after, one of the most prominent and visible anti-campus-sexual-assault advocates of our time was minted. In the months after going public with her identity, Sulkowicz has appeared on the cover of New York magazine and several major news channels. Her continued anti-rape advocacy has even caught the eye of New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who invited Sulkowicz to be her guest at last month's State of the Union.

Sulkowicz's alleged rapist isn't a fan of her newfound prominence. After he returned from a semester abroad, Nungesser spoke with the New York Times and commented on Sulkowicz's political visibility. In interviews, he carefully points out that he's a feminist with a feminist mom and says that he didn't do any of the things that three different women have accused him of doing—that he is the real victim.

Cathy Young has a history of—to put it mildly—rape victim skepticism. To put it harshly, she's a writer who has been writing virtually the same rape-is-a-hysterical-feminist-fantasy op-ed over and over again for years. Here Young trots out the MRA standby "men get raped just as much as women!" for a Time piece that dismisses the sexual assault of women too drunk to consent as "alcohol-addled sex" instead of real rape. (You know, the kind when "a rape victim... is either physically overpowered or attacked when genuinely incapacitated.") Here's Cathy Young using Rolling Stone's now-discredited article as a jumping off point to claim, basically, that most rape isn't real. Here's a similar word salad—"Feminist Agitprop and Rape-Hoax Denialism"—published weeks earlier. And that's just the first page of Google results.

In this most recent Daily Beast piece, Young aims for a more measured tone. Instead of mere assertion, she brings out evidence: communications—supplied by Nungesser—between the accused and his accusers. In Young's reading, these paint doubt onto the credibility of the three women who accused Nungesser of sexual assault.

First, she points to transcripts from Facebook chats between Sulkowicz and Nungesser, both before and after the alleged assault occurred. They appear friendly.

On Aug. 29, two days after the alleged rape, Nungesser messaged Sulkowicz on Facebook to say, "Small shindig in our room tonight—bring cool freshmen." Her response:

lol yusss

Also I feel like we need to have some real time where we can talk about life and thingz

because we still haven't really had a paul-emma chill sesh since summmmerrrr

Next, Young brings up an email containing a joke about sex toys that another accuser, who has never been publicly identified but is known in the Daily Beast piece as "Josie," sent to a listserv Nungesser was on.

As evidence that Josie was not uncomfortable around him, he offers a screenshot of a Jan. 29, 2013, email that he says she sent in response to his request on the ADP listserv to open the door if a package for him arrived in his absence. In the email, Josie not only offers a "friendly PSA" that the package can be left in the vestibule if he signs for by leaving a note on the front door, but makes a ribald joke: "People are usually pretty good about bringing in packages if they're sitting there, so unless you're waiting for a golden dildo or something equally expensive (?) it's usually worth it."

Then, Young speaks to a man who accompanied Nungesser to his hearing when he faced the charges leveled by Emma Sulkowicz. Sulkowicz has claimed the hearing was invasive:

Last September, she told New York magazine that panel members kept badgering her with questions about the exact position she was in during the rape: "At one point, I was like, 'Should I just draw you a picture?' So I drew a stick drawing."

Young points out that Nungesser's supporter disagrees:

But Roberson, the supporter who sat at Nungesser's side during the hearing and watched Sulkowicz's testimony on closed-circuit television, strongly disputes the notion that there was anything inappropriate about her questioning.

Young reminds her readers that the third accuser had struggled with depression before the two had a relationship. She interviews Nungesser's parents (German, but his father "speaks near-perfect English") who believe in their son's innocence. She interviews Paul Nungesser himself. "This story, partly backed by materials made public here for the first time and corroborated by a former Columbia graduate student who played a secondary role in the disciplinary process," Young writes, "is dramatically at odds with the prevailing media narrative."

But all of the "exclusive" material that Young obtained doesn't prove much beyond what we already knew. Sulkowicz has indicated that she and Nungesser were friends, and Young herself admits (parenthetically) that victims of rape or other trauma don't always respond to what happened to them with revulsion. The woman identified as "Josie" wrote a joke on a listserv that contains dozens of students, but making a dildo joke proves nothing about one's propensity to lie about rape. Nor does being depressed. The impression of a man who watched disciplinary proceedings in which he wasn't directly involved doesn't dictate how a woman being cross-examined about her sexuality can and cannot feel. And of course the parents of a child who grows up to be accused of rape is going to still think their child is nice and good. "Little Johnny always struck me as a future rapist" is something no parent would tell a major media outlet. In Young's (and Nungesser's) version of events, Paul is an innocent man being attacked by a veritable coven of conspiring women, and aided and abetted by a process that, above all, victimizes men like him.

While Young's piece might read like a dud of an aspirant bombshell to anybody who isn't the American Enterprise Institute's Christina Hoff Sommers (another " rape isn't real" cheerleader), the process by which she obtained the "exclusive" information for the piece showcases a new normal for women who publicly accuse men of rape: an open-ended ideology-driven crusade to discredit them, a reality bent to suit a narrative. Young's story also omits the narrative of a fourth alleged Nungesser victim, a queer man of color who contacted Jezebel with his story this week.


Both Emma Sulkowicz and the woman identified as Josie have provided Jezebel with all of messages they exchanged with Young, in addition to providing context to the communication Young featured in her Nungesser piece. Nungesser's alleged male victim, whom we'll call Adam, was never in communication with Young, and has now spoken to Jezebel exclusively. To borrow some phrasing from Cathy Young: The stories that follow are partly backed by materials (and context) made public here for the first time, and they are dramatically at odds with Cathy Young's narrative.

Last week, Young emailed Sulkowicz and informed her that she was working on a piece for The Daily Beast on Sulkowicz's assault. Young wrote that she'd spoken to Paul, had transcripts of Facebook chats, and that she needed Sulkowicz to verify their veracity. From the email, provided to us by Sulkowicz:

Paul Nungesser has what he says are records of his Facebook conversations with you, both over the summer break preceding the incident of August 26 or 27 and in the days and weeks after that. I am attaching a transcript of some of these conversations and I was hoping that you could comment on their authenticity.

In addition, Mr. Nungesser says that there was extensive text messaging between you in the fall of 2012 and that you texted him as late as March 2013 suggesting that you get together, though the get-together did not take place. Again, I was hoping that you could comment on this issue.

Here are the transcripts that Young asked Sulkowicz to verify.

Sulkowicz tells Jezebel there are more than a few things wrong with these transcripts. First, included are conversations that happened between them months before the alleged assault. Second, time stamps are removed, and the conversations featured omissions that Sulkowicz felt painted a misleading picture. She informed Young of her concerns. Young responded, in part,

I should mention that Mr. Nungesser showed me about 16 pages of Facebook conversations (printouts) from which I copied a certain amount of text. I copied the entirety of what he showed me after the date of August 27, except for the snipped conversation about the fundraiser (as indicated by the brackets in my transcription).

The screenshots would be great; it is definitely my intent to get as much context as I can for everything I publish. My only hesitation in committing to publish the entirety of the material you show me is space concerns (while TDB is an Internet publication, space limitations still exist). I can definitely promise to publish the entirety of the post-8/27 conversations (unless of course they contain material that violates the privacy of a third party, which would have to be redacted). Your annotations would be very welcome as well, with the proviso that their total length cannot be much in excess of 300 words. I'll check with my editors to see if they have more exact specifications, and get back to you as soon as I've heard from them.

Because of deadline requirements, it would be essential for me to have the screenshots no later than tomorrow.

Sulkowicz responded that she wanted to add annotations and context to what Paul had provided, provided they were "a reasonable length."

Thank you, once again, for your response. I heard back from my editors at The Daily Beast and they are very interested in the screenshots and your annotations. The only request is that the material is kept to a reasonable length. TDB also wants to reserve the right to shorten your annotations for space, as long as we run the shortened version by you. Would that be okay? If so, please get the screenshots and comments to me ASAP (preferably by tonight). Many thanks!

At this point, Sulkowicz tells Jezebel that she did a little googling and found some of Cathy Young's previous writing on campus rape. She says she began to worry that she was staring down the barrel of a hit piece.

Sulkowicz wrote back (emphasis ours):

If I gave you the post 8/27 screenshots plus annotations, would you still publish snippets of the earlier conversations in your article? If you publish even a snippet of the earlier conversations without context, it will be out of context, and thus misleading.

I just want to understand one thing. You wrote, "unless of course they contain material that violates the privacy of a third party, which would have to be redacted." Do you just mean that you would have to redact their names? You are unwilling to violate the privacy of a third party, yet you are willing to violate mine? If you are only publishing conversations that you have both parties' consent to publish, I do not give you my consent to publish any of what he has sent you.

Lastly, about your deadline. If I don't get this to you by tonight, you are just going to go ahead and publish what you have? I may need more than a day to complete this. This is not easy work for me. How dare you put a deadline on the moment at which you violate my privacy and carve out my private life in order to gain publicity for your website. I think that is despicable.

Young then backpedaled:

I said "preferably" by tonight; it was certainly not an absolute cutoff time, and I apologize if I gave you that impression. Tomorrow is fine, or at the absolute latest even Friday morning. Again, my sincere apologies if my mention of the deadline came across as pressuring you.

My interest is primarily in the conversations that took place after 8/27. I can promise you to use no direct quotations from the messages preceding that date if that allays your concerns as far as sharing the screenshots with me.

As for privacy issues, I was referring to anything that concerns individuals who are not a party to the conversation. I would also certainly refrain from publishing anything in your exchanges with Paul that does not directly relate to the events that transpired between you and him.

Sulkowicz didn't respond, but received this email from Young last week.

Since I have not heard back from you since yesterday, I'm not sure you are still planning to cooperate for this story. I sincerely regret if my mention of the deadline came across as insensitive. It was certainly not my intent.

Regarding the screenshots of the Facebook conversations between you and Mr. Nungesser, I am attaching a PDF I received from Mr. Nungesser of the Facebook conversations, so that you can see the full context of the material I am working with. If these are altered or redacted in any way, I would certainly like to know that.

I am still very interested in your comments or annotations on these messages, or anything you may wish to say about their context. I was also wondering if you had any comment on Mr. Nungesser's claim that you texted him in March and suggested getting together (but did not follow up to confirm a meeting).

Once again, sorry to ask you to deal with these unpleasant matters, and my apologies if I said anything that offended you yesterday.

The full PDF Young sent included time stamps that had been omitted in her early fact check, but still lacked the context Sulkowicz says is essential to fully understand the story. Ultimately, Sulkowicz chose not to submit the annotations to Young out of concern that they'd be edited or redacted or otherwise altered to fit Young's prescribed narrative. Sulkowicz has provided her annotations alongside the screengrabbed conversation to Jezebel.

To anyone who has been been close to a person who has been the victim of acquaintance rape, Emma's messages to Paul don't seem out of the ordinary, or indicative of anything except a young woman who wants her life to return to normalcy. Sulkowicz says she didn't take going public with her assault lightly, and that she'd never do it just to mess with somebody's life. In response to Nungesser's implication that she and his other accusers had conspired to ruin him, she told Jezebel, "Why would I lie about this kind of thing when just telling the truth means that I have to deal with crazy reporters like Cathy Young who team up with my rapist to dig through my personal Facebook messages in order to frame me as a hysterical bitch?"


Meanwhile, Young was in hot pursuit of two sources who had no desire to go public. She messaged the woman previously referred to as "Josie," via LinkedIn. Josie has spoken with Jezebel on the condition that we preserve her anonymity.

Unlike Sulkowicz, Josie says she's not likely to carry a mattress to and from class to make a point. "I respect Emma," she says, "but I'm not interested in being an advocate." A quick Google search revealed to Josie that it was probably not in her best interest to grant Cathy Young an interview. "I don't trust her; I'm not giving her an interview," she told Jezebel, adding, "I might have... Updogged her."

How to Make an Accused Rapist Look Good

(I reached out to Cathy Young to confirm the authenticity of these emails, and she referred to Josie's deflection of her query as a "juvenile joke." Tomato, tomahto, Cathy.)

Updogging aside, Josie says she was dismayed by what Young wanted her to verify: a sex joke she'd sent years ago to a listserv that contained between 40 and 50 people, an email Young would go on to include in her piece as evidence of Josie's deceitfulness or sex obsession.

How to Make an Accused Rapist Look Good

"What the fuck? I made a joke about a dildo in college. How is that proof of anything?" Josie says now. "It's so desperate that [Paul] would try to search through all of our communications together and that's what he came up with."

Josie alleges that at a party her junior year, Paul followed her upstairs, grabbed her, and tried to turn off the light. A physically formidable athlete, she fought him off and fled, significantly creeped out and upset. She told her boyfriend at the time, and two friends. After that, she says she started avoiding Paul at parties. A year later, one of those friends approached her and told her an upsetting story she'd heard about Paul from another woman. The friend said "I'm not telling you who, but there's somebody else who he, like, raped." A short time later, Josie reported her incident to Columbia's Title IX coordinator.

Nungesser implies to Cathy Young that the women who reported him were somehow conspiring against him, a claim Josie laughs off. She says she was cordial with Emma Sulkowicz, but that they weren't friends. Though they filed their claims against Paul Nungesser within a short time of one other, they'd never even socialized one-on-one, and were told by Columbia to refrain from discussing their cases against him with each other—a guideline, Josie says, they adhered to.

In her Daily Beast piece, Young writes,

The charge brought by Josie was the only one on which Nungesser was initially found "responsible," with a sentence of disciplinary probation. But that finding was later overturned; Nungesser's appeal cited various errors and improprieties, including the admission of hearsay, and claimed that the burden of proof—"preponderance of the evidence"—had not been met. When the complaint was referred for a new hearing, Josie decided to withdraw from the process. ( The New York Times article suggested that this was because she had already graduated and was unable to participate, but in fact, Josie had already graduated at the time of the first hearing.) The second hearing cleared Nungesser on that charge as well.

Josie says that by the time the second disciplinary hearing rolled around, she was just starting a new job and didn't feel she had the leverage to take a day off work to attend a disciplinary hearing at her old college. "What was I going to tell my employer?" she says, "'Hi, you guys just hired me a week ago and I have to go deal with this sexual assault case at Columbia... ' I just wanted to put it behind me." Nungesser was cleared because there was nobody there to argue Josie's case.

To add an additional irritant to an already cumbersome process, shortly thereafter Nungesser was found not responsible, and Josie received an errant email informing her that she'd been cleared of sexual assault charges by Columbia University.

Young has also publicly tweeted at the woman who encouraged Josie and Emma to report their assaults, a woman who has never had a desire to be publicly affiliated with the case. There's journalistic due diligence, and there's needlessly alienating interview subjects by exposing them to publicity that sours them on cooperation.


Adam, a current Columbia senior, tells Jezebel that he was close friends with Paul during his freshman year in 2011. One fall night, in the midst of an emotional conversation in Paul's dorm room, Adam says Paul pushed him onto his bed and sexually assaulted him.

Adam, who identifies as "queer and black," didn't tell anybody about the incident until months later. His silence, he says, was due to issues that face many male survivors of sexual assault—denial, fear that nobody would believe him, fear that even defining himself as a survivor would somehow damage others.

Adam filed a complaint against Paul with a student organization to which both men belonged. But it wasn't until after Sulkowicz's story went public that Adam seriously considered reporting the alleged assault to Columbia. Last fall, after years of agonizing over whether or not to come forward, he filed a Title IX complaint. That case is currently pending.

Cathy Young did not reach out to Adam. It's not clear she even knows that Adam exists, or that Paul—who Adam says is aware that another sexual assault charge dangles over his technically clean record—told Young. When we reached out to Young about the omission, Young replied, "As I'm sure you are aware, all pending sexual assault investigations at CU (and other schools, I'm sure) are supposed to be kept strictly confidential."

Of the Daily Beast piece, Adam scoffs that apart from the disservice it does to Paul's alleged victims, it "invalidates and completely erases my entire experience."


In an email sent to Jezebel, Sulkowicz expressed sadness that it's come to this. She writes,

The other survivors of Paul Nungesser and I reported him to Columbia University because we wanted to go to school in peace. We wanted to protect other students that he might harm. I went public with my story because I wanted to show the world how flawed the college process for handling cases of sexual assault is. I have already been violated by both Paul and Columbia University once. It is extremely upsetting that Paul would violate me again—this time, with the help of a reporter, Cathy Young. I just wanted to fix the problem of sexual assault on campus—I never wanted this to be an excuse for people to dig through my private Facebook messages and frame them in a way as to cast doubt on my character. It's unfair and disgusting that Paul and Cathy would treat personal life as a mine that they can dig through and harvest for publicity and Paul's public image.

This is why I have chosen to release the full conversation, plus the context in which things were said. I want people to have all the information so that they can make informed decisions for themselves, rather than seeing a redacted version of the conversation with bits and pieces picked out to make me look a certain way.

If I had a choice, no one would see my private Facebook messages at all. However, Paul and Cathy have put me in a position where I either do nothing, and they publish the conversation, or I take the lead and publish it on my own. It's the only thing I can do to maintain a modicum of control over my private life, which becomes more public by the second, thanks to reporters who don't treat me with respect.

Rape denialists have found an expanded audience and credibility in the wake of Rolling Stone's UVA piece, and they'll always find details to corroborate their stance: that friendly text messages, a history of depression, an email about a dildo, can render forced sex highly improbable. Breitbart went all the way to Oberlin to investigate an anecdote in Lena Dunham's memoirs. Troll-savant Chuck Johnson posted what he claimed was a picture of Rolling Stone's "Jackie" to his website, claiming she was a habitual liar about rape (the picture was of a different person.)

Rape victims now face the sort of scrutiny that is usually reserved for liberal female political candidates. But in the vast majority of cases, these women aren't public figures; they're regular people, victims further victimized by media hounding. As the rape debunk piece becomes its own sad genre, the narrative of the crazy, lying woman gathers strength, and pushes out the survivors that don't fit the mold used to fashion this hysterical strawman.

Whatever national conversation we're currently having about sexual assault and sexual consent is bound to wade into ugly, murky territory. The system in place serves nobody—not victims, not the accused, and certainly not people caught in between the narratives of both victim and accused. Sulkowicz says her senior thesis aims to help "fix the problem of sexual assault on campus"; as college administrations and journalists scramble to join her, it's only getting more complicated.

Image via Getty

Lance Bass Is Masc, Bro

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Last night, E! aired a highly entertaining 90-minute special chronicling the lead-up to and wedding of former NSYNC member Lance Bass to artist Michael Turchin. I was riveted by Lance Loves Michael: The Lance Bass Wedding. These guys are such characters, with idiosyncrasies perfect for reality TV. I also got the sense that they really love each other, and if they don't, they're great actors. Either way, it makes for good television.

Throughout the show, there was a lot of musing about being gay, coming out, what it all means, what it could have meant for NSYNC, etc. All that talk is the kind of thing latent homophobes complain about ("Stop shoving it in my face—is being gay the only thing that defines you?") but which I thought was pretty cool. This was dive into one public gay man's psyche that was uncommonly deep for the junky-TV-on-E! medium.

Over the course of all this explanation, though, it emerged that Lance Bass has a frankly bizarre conception of what's masculine. Let's just deal with pure facts. Here are some things that Lance Bass deemed "masculine" (for more context, watch the highlight reel above):

Lance Bass Is Masc, Bro

This giant room.

Lance Bass Is Masc, Bro

This little top hat for his dog to wear in his wedding.

Lance Bass Is Masc, Bro

This candelabra.

The relic of masculinity directly above was introduced hilariously. In an interview, Bass explained, "We're two dudes picking out a registry! We're not gay enough for this. At all." Then the scene cut to Bass, Turchin, and Lisa Vanderpump shopping in Williams-Sonoma. Bass sees the antler candelabra and explains, "See, this is very us..."

Oh, so it turns out that you are gay enough for this. Totally.

This sort of thing is not uncommon. I hear gay guys all the time talking about how masculine they are, effectively setting themselves up for failure. The fact of the matter is that it's not especially masculine to be preoccupied with masculinity because a key part of masculinity is not being particularly preoccupied with anything. Masculinity just is. By virtue of the fact that you are a man who lives with another man, you are ensconced in masculinity. ("Ensconced" is masc word choice, right?) You don't have to prove anything. At some point, probably something that reads as very gay will probably come out of your mouth (or scalp—like a wave of bleached blonde hair), and that's OK. We're all complex people with lots of layers, and a lot of us have traits that would be considered both masculine and feminine. Self-acceptance is a process.

I get it, though. Growing up gay can be traumatizing. You have to make it right in your head when you feel like the world is telling you that it's wrong. A common but ultimately shitty way to do that is to differentiate yourself in your head from the other gays, which is what Lance Bass did when he came out in 2006:

I want people to take away from this that being gay is a norm. That the stereotypes are out the window … I've met so many people like me that it's really encouraged me. I call them the SAGs — the straight-acting gays. We're just normal, typical guys. I love to watch football and drink beer.

OK, buddy. You do that in your wee top hat.

Bass's fixation on masculinity reminded me of the way children fixate on gender roles after they've been embedded in their brains. It was idiosyncratic enough to make him extremely watchable (it's amazing how engaging a person's lack of self-awareness can be). I think he's still on his journey of self-acceptance (in the video above, he talks about how uncomfortable kissing Turchin in front of his family made him), and I think his husband who seems to have more ease with his gayness will probably provide a lot of help on Bass's way.

Their wedding ceremony looked lovely, and even if it smacked of self-importance, it's hard to argue with Bass's assessment of why putting something like this on TV was good for the world:

I'm glad that the world gets to see a wedding like this because as a little kid from Mississippi, if I would have seen a gay wedding on TV, one I would have been like, oh wait there's nothing wrong with me? Oh, I don't have to pray to God every night to change me back to straight the next day? We're just so honored to be part of something so visible.

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