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Beck Loves and More or Less Agrees With Kanye

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Beck Loves and More or Less Agrees With Kanye

Beck, pretty much the most agreeable guy in the world and winner of this year's Grammy for Album of the Year, was "excited" when Kanye West joined him onstage last night, also thought that Beyoncé was going to win, and says he still loves Kanye regardless of his repeated slights.

At the Universal Music Group after party, Beck was all sunshine and roses to Us Weekly:

"I was just so excited he was coming up. He deserves to be on stage as much as anybody," Beck said when asked how he felt about West crashing the stage. "How many great records has he put out in the last five years right?"

Even though he said Beyonce should have won? "Absolutely," replied the humble musician. "I thought she was going to win. Come on, she's Beyoncé!"

And what about his diss that Beyoncé is true artistry, and you're not? "You can't please everybody, man," he replied. "I still love him and think he's genius. I aspire to do what he does."

He's a winner, baby.

[Image via Getty]


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Diplo "Ends" Taylor Swift Feud With Feud-Fueling Unflattering Swift Pic

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Diplo "Ends" Taylor Swift Feud With Feud-Fueling Unflattering Swift Pic

Thirty-six-year-old man/DJ Diplo, who started a feud with Taylor Swift in November by tweeting that she should purchase a new derrière, has "ended" said feud, according to Us Weekly. How does Us Weekly know the feud's over? Because Diplo posted a photo of Taylor hanging out with him at the Grammy's.

Oh? Oh, really? Let's look closely at this pic before we do anything insane like declare an Official Taylor Swift Feud "over."

Please hand me my glasses.

If you are Us Weekly or a blind man receiving a verbal description of this photo that fails to convey its rich nuance, your interpretation of this shot might be something along the lines of, "Diplo and Taylor Swift took a photo together at the Grammy's. They must be all made up."

I'm sorry to inform you, sir and Us Weekly, that that is a devastatingly facile analysis. For starters, this is a photo that Taylor Swift would never approve for publication on her friend's bulletin board, let alone the infinite Internet. Why?

  1. Taylor Swift is sucking down what appears to be alcohol in this photo.
  2. Manicure looks bad.
  3. Taylor Swift has raccoon red eyes in this photo.
  4. Taylor Swift's hair is flat (from violent, sweaty dancing?) in this photo.

If you were Taylor Swift, College Freshman, and someone tagged this photo of you on Facebook, you would untag it. It's an unflattering party photo. You barely know that upperclassman, a 36-year-old man who goes by "Diplo."

For evidence that Taylor Swift believes this is an unflattering photo, we turn to her Twitter account: She has not reposted, responded to, or otherwise acknowledged it in any way. For comparison's sake, she did repost Sam Smith's photo of her, in which she looks better than Sam Smith.

Diplo has likely only pushed himself further to the top of Taylor Swift's Sh!t List with this supposed peace offering of an Instagram. Suffice it to say: she would still prefer that her friends not talk to Diplo.

[Photo via Instagram]

Brands Are Not Your Friends

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Brands Are Not Your Friends

When was the last time Coca-Cola did anything nice for you?

People tend to talk to brands on the internet like they might have lost their virginity to them. They very well may have—an empty bag of @Doritos under the mattress or in the parking lot of a @McDonalds—but it's a one-way relationship. Your sister's face has never appeared on a highway billboard, but Nestlé and Burger King and motherfucking Denny's show up in the same streams as your loved ones.

This is the business model of the social web. Someone has to pay for the services we use to keep in touch with our friends, after all. On Facebook, the button to "like" a brand (like a brand!) is functionally identical to "liking" another person. The vast, awful landscape of Brand Twitter has become a playground for social media managers to act like virtual tweens. The prevailing online marketing strategy for brands 2015 is to blend in with the children, become just another bae to fave and retweet.

It shouldn't have to be said out loud to sentient human beings that this is bad. But it is. It is sinister and bad and says a lot about how we have collectively lost our minds as a species. I'm afraid and sad for everyone.


Last week, a disconcerting group of actual flesh-and-blood humans felt bad for a corporation, in public. Real people poured the kind of empathy and anguish that's historically been reserved for other real people upon a multinational conglomerate worth billions of dollars that sells liquid fructose poison and has a history of literally enslaving impoverished workers.

It all began, appropriately, during the Super Bowl. The Coca-Cola Company spent a ridiculous sum of money during America's No. 1 National Pasttime on the evening's most cynical advertising blitz: the "MakeItHappy" campaign. The premise was simple and also dumb: the internet is a mean place, and Coca-Cola was going to try make the internet a nice place. It was attempting to be the "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" for our modern digital idiot age: The company created a Twitter bot to take "mean" tweets and reformat their words into a cartoon rabbit playing the drums, or a cat. With this, the toxic web would be steam-cleaned, or something. It was an act of philanthropy, no?

Well, of course not—like all forms of advertising in the history of the advertising business, Coke's happiness campaign was designed to strengthen the goodwill associated with its trademark and presumably trick you into buying more Coke. It's possible that a handful of people at the Coca-Cola Corporation decided to create this advertising campaign because they genuinely want to "reduce meanness" or "increase positivity" (the advertising industry rewards the stupid and earnest). But, ultimately, they have one job, and it's to sell Coke. They are not social workers. They are not high school counselors. They are salespeople. They might incidentally think meanness is a bad thing, in the same way we're all incidentally opposed to murder.

So, in the hopes of making a minor point about the automated vacuum at the heart of Coke's cynical anti-meanness push, we built a bot to tweet Mein Kampf through Coke's automated positivity generator. (Fun behind-the-scenes fact: We pulled the text from Rap Genius.) We assumed that the response to our little stunt would be largely apathetic—not only was our point obvious and slight, but in tweeting hateful sentiment at @CocaCola, we were doing exactly what the marketing campaign had asked us to do.

And then Coca-Cola, slow-witted and cowardly like all global megabrands, killed its bot, and suddenly countless people across the internet were aghast. We hadn't thrown a tiny wrench into the slickly oiled workings of a $3 billion marketing operation, we'd embarrassed someone's pal. Someone's pal who was just trying to do some good online! We'd brought negativity into the positive sphere of Coke-swilling. For something totally devoid of humanity, Coca-Cola—a brutish company that condones slave labor and anti-union kidnapping and murder and whose CEO netted $30 million in 2012—was able to muster levels of smarmy cybertears not seen since Kony's reign of terror with its Twitter stunt.

Human beings—including journalists—flocked to Coke's side. The Verge sobbed that we'd "ruined" Coke's "courage and optimism," AdWeek called our work a "debacle," and Coke itself feigned dismay: "It's unfortunate Gawker made it a mission to break the system, and the content they used to do it is appalling." "Have a Coke and a—frown," bleated some dunce at USA Today. Coca Cola's rough approximation of humanity had made an enormous impression, and its drinkers and friends took a stand. No more, they tweet-chanted in unison, no more unkind words for this maker of sweet liquid toxins.

What's been lost in the friendification of corporate brands is that by their very nature of brand-ness, brands are diametrically opposed to our interests as humans. They exist solely to distract, deceive, and manipulate us out of our money—and in the case of Coca Cola, freely dispense diabetes and obesity. There is nothing relatable in a brand. It's an entity designed for the single purpose of extracting money from you by any legal means, no matter if you don't need or even want what's being sold. Even if the thing being sold is very, very bad for you—the brand will persuade you it's silken and lovely. A brand will systematically and perpetually convince you that your best interests are incorrect—this is the behavior of an abusive partner, not a friend. Not even a stranger! Brands hate you.

And still, people love slobbering all over branded membranes. It's easy to do so, and there's always the rare chance you'll get something free. PepsiCo has over 34 million fans on Facebook—that's more than 34 million people who have voluntarily placed advertising messages from PepsiCo in their newsfeeds, alongside mom and bae and Brian from hockey practice. More than a million people have made a similar life decision with Mr. Clean, more than 300,000 people are Facebook friends with Jimmy Dean Sausages and Kleenex, and when world historical nadir Denny's Diner (185,000 Twitter followers) snowballs youth culture into its adherents' greasy mouths, it racks up hundreds or thousands of favorites and retweets. Brands aren't forcing themselves on us—we're standing around with our pants undone and our tongues wagging out. We make it easy for brands to succeed. This is corporate America today. We are their willing, unpaid flacks.

But social media will always be an incongruous and gross place for brands to mingle, because all brands are inherently psychopathic. A company does not have feelings. It will never love you. It does not love its workers. It likely screws them over. Think about that the next time you tweet at a brand, or defend one online. Treating brands like buddies isn't just embarrassing for all parties—sympathy for a brand is antipathy for all humans. The great friending of the brand undermines the vital skepticism of corporate America and capitalism altogether. It's horrid enough that our laws treat corporations as people—to treat them as personal friends is just rotten.

Image by Jim Cooke

Talking Weed and Creativity With the Creators of High Maintenance

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Talking Weed and Creativity With the Creators of High Maintenance

High Maintenance is a show about weed, but more than that, it's a show about solitude and anxiety, celebration and self-indulgence—all the human moods and occasions that go better when you're stoned. Each episode dips into the lives of a new set of characters just as they're deciding to pick up some pot; the only constant is the bike-riding zen master of a weed guy who delivers it.

Katja Blitchfield and Ben Sinclair, the husband-and-wife duo who created High Maintenance, began by producing it themselves on a tiny budget and distributing the short episodes to their cultish audience for free online. (Sinclair also stars as the weed dealer, known only as The Guy.) After a recent infusion of cash from Vimeo, the stakes are higher: High Maintenance's newest episodes, now $1.99 each, are markedly more complex; advertisements sporting Sinclair's bearded mug dot New York City billboards and buses; and for the first time, Blichfeld and Sinclair can afford to pay their cast and crew.

Last week at a Manhattan High Maintenance screening filled with the nebbishy postcollegiate types who make up The Guy's core customer base, I asked Sinclair and Blichfeld about their sidelong writing process, balancing ambition with intimate storytelling, and how to talk to your parents about being a stoner. An edited and condensed transcript of our conversation is below.

The show has gotten noticeably more ambitious in the last two cycles of episodes. Was it a conscious decision to go bigger and longer? What has that been like?

Sinclair: We're expanding and contracting. We're always going to follow the compass of our own gut instinct, and our gut instinct is usually to play around and see the elasticity. We figured out early on to say, 'fuck numbers, fuck views,' and to just pay attention to, 'What aren't we seeing on TV that feels true?' We started to feel like that was our barometer: Would I watch it, and is it a cliché?

Blichfeld: When we got this Vimeo money, we endeavored to keep the show the same as much as possible. We didn't want people to watch it and be like, 'Oh no, they sold out. Now it's a different show.' But now that we have money, we can actually pay people. No one was being paid before. That's the major difference.

Has the money allowed you to be more creatively ambitious?

Blichfeld: Ben wanted to be a teaching fellow at one point, and then he became disillusioned and quit, and we had always wanted to portray that story on the show. We'd ask about schools, and they'd be like, 'Sorry y'all, that costs some money.' And we were like, 'We don't have any, so I guess we won't tell that story.' Now, we're able to tell those stories.

Sinclair: We doubled our crew, and we expanded outside of just apartments. And to be honest, there are times when Katja and I will watch these last six episodes, and we'll be like, "Did we fuck it up?"

Blichfeld: Yeah, we say that every time.

Sinclair: In the next episodes, we're hoping to get back to letting the apartment speak more for the character than the actual events in the character's life. It's fun for the audience member. It's like the paint bucket in MS Paint: You just click one color, and then it just fills the whole thing out. That's the weirdest analogy I've made today so far.

We're good at tone. That's the thing we excel at, and that's the thing we feel comfortable continuing to do. And tone is most evocative in an apartment, because a person's style sets their tone.

How do you approach writing an episode?

Sinclair: Dude, it is not easy to pin down the sequence of events of how a story comes together. If you're a writing couple, and you just meet once a week to work on your writing, I don't know how you do that. Because we are just—

Blichfeld: We're up each other's assholes all day.

Sinclair: And it takes us a while to commit stuff to paper, but we make so many mental xeroxes of ideas that they become solidified in our heads, and when we finally get on set, we know exactly what we need. It's based on trust, and faith, and our own ability to remember what we were thinking—which is kind of dicey when you smoke so much pot.

Blichfeld: That's why it's great that we're a team. We're like, "Do you remember that idea? Because I don't remember it. What did I tell you last night?"

Do you get high and write? Does it impact the creative process?

Sinclair: We get high and do everything.

Blichfield: We're stoned a lot of the time.

Sinclair: It's a complicated relationship. Almost every day, I'm like, 'We smoke too much. This is an issue.' However, ever since we started admitting to the world at large that we smoke a lot of pot, we have been really well-rewarded for it. [Gestures toward screening audience] This is crazy.

Blichfield: Even in small ways, with the interactions we have with people in our lives. It sets up this environment where people feel free to communicate honestly with us. A stranger on the street will come up to you like, "Hey man, I love the show," and then just talk about themselves in this crazy way. Or if it's our family: There was a time when we may not have been as forthcoming about everything with them as we are now, and it's really opened up the doors for honest communication in our lives. It's cool. It's a weird side effect that we were not counting on.

Was there ever any pushback from families about you doing a show about weed?

Blichfield: At the beginning, when we started getting press, my mom was like, "I don't know if you should be going around outing yourself as a stoner. I don't know that that's really going to be good for your career." And I was like, "Well, too late." Now, she's obviously singing a different song.

Sinclair: Breaking the pot seal with my parents opened the door to all kinds of real conversations that we hadn't been having before. I was a little bit of a troublemaker. I would sneak around, work against my parents for a little while, because I needed something to buck against. It was the suburbs. It was so boring. But now we're at a place where I ask them their regrets, or if they were scared when they had me—all of these cool questions—because I was able to be honest with them. And they saw that they didn't have to worry about me. "Oh, OK. He's smokes pot, and he's OK, and he's accepted, and we're proud of him."

We went to this retirement party for my mom. She's a cantor at a synagogue in Scottsdale, and it was all of the members of this congregation—which, by the way, is like, fucking red-state Jewish congregation—who were all over it. They'd be like, "That show has helped me through some weird times." It's fucking cool.

Do you think people's openness with you has anything to do with the fact that The Guy, Ben's character, is such a sage?

Blichfield: Absolutely.

Sinclair: He is and he isn't, man. That guy sticks his fucking foot in his mouth all the time.

Yeah, but he's charismatic, and—

Sinclair: He is charismatic. He's an idealized version of what we would like to be. A person who's non-judgmental and lets shit roll off his back, but will still stand up for himself if he's in a position that's not good for him. We strive to be strong but yielding. And he really embodies that.

While we're producing the show, it'll be like, "What scene is it? Oh, it's my scene? Alright," and then I can just do [The Guy]. But in the moments in life when I really need that, it's so much more difficult. It's interesting that he's right there, but he's only right there if you're relaxed enough to accept it. When we're making the show, and even when it's a stressful day, somehow I can relax enough to get it.

Blichfield: Yeah, he's exactly who we want to be.

Was Charles Manson's "Fiancée" Playing Him to Get Custody of His Corpse?

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Was Charles Manson's "Fiancée" Playing Him to Get Custody of His Corpse?

Murderous cult figurehead Charles Manson, now 80 and in prison for life, received a marriage license back in November so that he could tie the knot with Afton "Star" Elaine Burton, 26, who comes off in interviews like another crazed admirer. She might be more than that, though: their license has lapsed without a wedding, and one journalist claims it's because Manson got wise to Star's alleged plan to acquire his corpse and put it on public display for money. Holy shit, really? Here's what we know.

Daniel Simone, who's working on a book about Manson, told Page Six that Star Burton and her associate, Craig "Gray Wolf" Hammond, have been scheming for two years to open a Lenin's Tomb-style attraction in California, with the madman's body on view in a glass case.

When the two asked Manson to sign his body over to them, Simone says, he wouldn't give a definitive answer. He just led them on so they'd keep bringing him "toiletries and other items" in prison. The marriage plot was the next step, according to Simone, an attempt to ensure Star would get Manson's remains after his death.

"There's certain things next of kin can do," she told the AP last November, saying she wanted to work on Manson's case and the marriage would give her access to confidential information. She didn't mention the body.

And now Manson has let their 90-day marriage certificate lapse.

"He's finally realized that he's been played for a fool," Simone claims, adding that Manson thinks Burton's plan for his body is stupid because "he feels he will never die." Now Manson allegedly doesn't want to get married at all.

That's not what Burton and Hammond's website claims, though: They say Manson plans to renew the license, and the wedding was only postponed "due to an unexpected interruption in logistics."

But who's playing whom, here? Back in 2013, when Burton first announced her engagement to Manson in Rolling Stone, Manson dismissed her:

He snorts. "Oh, that," he says. "That's a bunch of garbage. You know that, man. That's trash. We're just playing that for public consumption."

Manson also called "Star" his "baby on the floor," implying that he was manipulating her like he did the other women in his murderous Family. Like them, she shaved her head and carved an x into her forehead at his request.

"We started all over with this one. The other ones know it all now. I don't need to say anything."

He doesn't come off like the one being "played for a fool" in that scenario. And Burton's claim that Manson thinks he can never die doesn't square with what Manson himself told Rolling Stone contributor Eric Hedegaard back in 2013: "What do you think? Do you think this story will help me get out of here, only for a little while, before I go?"

Burton wouldn't necessarily need Manson's corpse to make money, either: His son said last year that Manson's made a six-figure fortune selling art and memorabilia, which Star would stand to inherit. He also claimed she and Grey Wolf planned to sell the wedding photos for as much as $150,000.

So, is the "glass case" story bullshit? Hard to say, because it's not supported by direct quotes from Burton, who wouldn't comment to Page Six, or Manson, who lost his phone privileges years ago, and whose current whereabouts and medical condition the prison system won't reveal.

And even if they were talking, one is an unreliable, allegedly manipulative crazy person, and the other is Charles Manson.

[Photo: KTLA]

500 Days of Kristin, Day 15: A Terrifying Book, Born of Flame

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 15: A Terrifying Book, Born of Flame

Four hundred and eighty-five days until Kristin Cavallari's debut book Balancing on Heels drops, and now the master picks up her pen for the first time. Or, at least, she picks up something. No evidence yet of a pen on the scene, as Kristin revealed in an Instagram post today that her creative process is perhaps more elemental than previously thought.

The caption of her above photo reads:

Coffee ✔️ Fire ✔️ Candles ✔ My LOVE necklace ✔️ All the perfect ingredients to work on my book today. Balancing On Heels will be out spring 2016.

Yes, this is indeed confirmation that Kristin is cooking up a book, and she's got her ingredients right here: coffee, fire, wax, and precious metal. Everything you need to write a book.

Balancing on Heels will be written in fire on the blackened husk of a scorched Earth.

Balancing on Heels will be illustrated with burnt coffee grounds and melted candle wax.

Balancing on Heels will combine the wisdom of a necklace with the frantic frenzy of a caffeine high.

Balancing on Heels will be out spring 2016, says Kristin, who has no doubt been working very hard all day.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

Reporter: Cops Reviewing Injuries to Bobbi Kristina's Face, BF's Hands

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Reporter: Cops Reviewing Injuries to Bobbi Kristina's Face, BF's Hands

Citing sources close to the case, a reporter with Atlanta's WSB-TV says police are now investigating injuries to Bobbi Kristina Brown's face and boyfriend Nick Gordon's hands.

Brown, the only child of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, has been in a medically-induced coma since last Saturday, when she was discovered unconscious in a bathtub in her Georgia home. Initially characterized as a medical incident, reports surfaced this weekend that police had opened a criminal investigation into the matter with Gordon as its target.

On Monday, WSB-TV anchor Dave Huddleston tweeted that sources told him police were looking into injuries found on Brown's mouth and Gordon's hands. This claim follows earlier reports from CNN and TMZ that suggested foul play was suspected due to "unexplained injuries" found on Brown.

Reporter: Cops Reviewing Injuries to Bobbi Kristina's Face, BF's Hands

Huddleston tells Gawker that two sources confirmed the information about the police investigation into Gordon's hands.

On Friday, TMZ published this suspicious account of Brown's discovery reportedly given by witness Max Lomas:

We're told Max Lomas—the friend who discovered Bobbi Kristina in the tub—arrived at around 9 AM last Saturday. He says he hung out with Nick but did not see Bobbi Kristina. He was told she was in the bedroom. Nick wandered away and Max says he didn't pay attention to his whereabouts.

The cable guy showed sometime after 10 AM and Max says he let him in—Nick was nowhere to be seen. The cable guy said he needed access to the bedroom so Max let him in and discovered Bobbi Kristina in the tub. He screamed for Nick, who ran in and administered CPR.

We're told Max claims Nick allegedly cleaned up the home and removed blood stains.

[Image via Getty Images]


Insane Police Chase Ends After LAPD Shoots Armed Man 

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On Monday evening, an armed man led LAPD on an insane chase involving four accidents, two escape vehicles and a carjacking before police finally shot and subdued the suspect while he tried to steal a third car.

According to the L.A. Times, the pursuit began at around 5 p.m. local time, when the suspect began fleeing police, often driving into oncoming traffic.

After crashing his car multiple times, the suspect abandoned the first vehicle at around 5:30 p.m. and carjacked a second one, apparently pulling a gun on the female driver.

Finally, at around 5:45 p.m., the suspect left the second car and tried to steal a third before falling to the ground and being detained by police.

According to reporter Richard Winton, police say they hit the man with gunfire before he was subdued. The L.A. Times reports that the suspect was taken to a hospital but his current condition is unknown.

UPDATE - 11:45 p.m.: As of 8 p.m. local time, the L.A. Times reports the man is still alive but in unknown condition.

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

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New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

Earlier today, Time magazine reported that Jeb Bush was bringing on Hipster.com co-founder Ethan Czahor as his new Chief Technology Officer, hailing the hire as a savvy move by a party that often struggles with social media. And they weren't wrong—by Monday afternoon Czahor had already made his mark on the web, thanks to his awful, awful tweets about sluts and gay people.

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

As Buzzfeed noticed, the offending tweets began to disappear from Czahor's timeline soon afterward, making it especially easy to identify the tech whiz's ugliest attempts at dumb bro humor.

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

Hours later, Bush's new CTO finally demonstrated his value by offering an expert non-apology, ruefully hashtagged #learning and #maturing.

New Jeb Bush Hire Deletes Comments About Sluts, Gays from Twitter

Ah yes, it looks like our little high-ranking campaign staffer for a leading GOP candidate is finally #growingup.

[Images via Twitter/Buzzfeed]

Papa John's Punishes Pizza Guy Iggy Azalea Told On

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Papa John's Punishes Pizza Guy Iggy Azalea Told On

Papa John's tried to squash the softest beef in the history of hip-hop on Monday, announcing they had disciplined the pizza dude Iggy Azalea publicly tattled on for giving out her phone number.

"Privacy of our customers and employees is extremely important to us," a spokesperson for the company told The Hollywood Reporter. "Papa John's has taken appropriate disciplinary action with regard to the employee involved. We are reaching out directly to Ms. Azalea and hope to resolve this incident and make it right."

The pizza patriarch was first alerted to the employee's saucy betrayal last night with a series of unintentionally hilarious tweets sent by Azalea before last night's Grammys.

Of course, it's ultimately up to Azalea to decide whether she and Papa John's still have beef or are beefless, but it seems as though the MC is no longer taking the pizza maker's calls.

[ Images via Getty Images]

The Most Hilarious Talking Point: Republicans Against Inequality

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The Most Hilarious Talking Point: Republicans Against Inequality

Presidential campaigns have no shortage of factually empty platitudes and gross hypocrisy deployed for political gain. It's early still, but I'll wager that the 2016 campaign will see no more scoff-worthy talking point that the Republicans' sudden concern about economic inequality.

Inequality of income and wealth in America—the rise of the .01%—has been increasing in earnest for more than three decades now, its beginning coinciding perfectly with the Reagan era. An honest politically neutral reading of the issue would be: Reagan's policies helped to set our current era of inequality in motion, and the Democratic presidents we've had since then failed to do anything meaningful to reverse its course.

The fact that inequality has been rising since the 1980s tells you that it rose under Barack Obama, as it did under his predecessors. Obama stands out in this context for two reasons: one, he inherited the worst economic meltdown of any of the past five presidents, and two, he proposed more meaningful anti-inequality measures than any of them as well. Obama's most recent budget proposal, while hardly enough to satisfy the socialists among us, did propose measures aimed directly at remedying inequality, including higher taxes on the very rich and greater subsidies for the poor and middle class.

These measures were declared "dead on arrival" by our Republican Congress. Barack Obama, quite simply, is not able to implement even modest anti-inequality measures due to Republican opposition. Everyone, Republican and Democrat alike, understands this.

The fact that Republicans are responsible for blocking any attempt to remedy economic inequality does not stop prospective Republican presidential candidates from using the rise in inequality under Obama as an argument against Barack Obama's administration. (Ramesh Ponnuru's NYT op-ed yesterday gives a rundown of the some of the prime offenders.) This tactic is like throwing acid in someone's face and then accusing them of being ugly. The political party most directly responsible for the rise of economic inequality and its continued growth is using the rise of economic inequality and its continued growth as proof that the other political party is not to be trusted. This is ridiculous even by presidential campaign standards. It should be understood by every voter that the Republican party believes you are very stupid. So does the Democratic Party, probably, but not on this particular issue.

The Republican party believes that voters are so stupid that even Mitt Fucking Romney felt safe uttering the phrase "Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer." The idea of explaining what is wrong with that scene makes me physically tired.

Today, a thoroughly mainstream and widely respected CEO and investor told Bloomberg that if America does not do something to remedy its economic inequality, we can expect that "the peasants with the pitchforks come out and start rioting." That is an honest, mainstream reading of our current situation. I don't know what you would call the Republican party's message of our current situation. I'd call it insulting.

[Photo: Getty]

What's Your Worst Celebrity Experience? 

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What's Your Worst Celebrity Experience? 

Iggy Azalea, an Australian with terrible taste in pizza, got into a Twitter spat with Papa John's over the weekend after her delivery driver apparently gave out her phone number. It was quite an ordeal for everyone involved.

Which leads us to ask: What's the worst run-in you've ever had with a celebrity? Tell us who's a rude customer, an all-around asshole, or a weirdo—and who's a freak, a geek, or troll. Share your stories in the comments below; the best of the best will be featured in a post tomorrow.

Jay Z's Got 99 Problems; One of Them Is Brunch With Taylor Swift 

Jon Stewart on the Hypocrisy of This Week's Brian Williams Coverage

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Jon Stewart on the Hypocrisy of This Week's Brian Williams Coverage

Jon Stewart is disappointed in Brian Williams for mixing his roles as a celebrity and a newsman, telling different versions of the same Iraq War story. But he's more disappointed in the media outlets taking out the knives and promising to thoroughly investigate Williams' lies when they didn't exactly get every little detail about the Iraq War right, either.

It's not that Stewart takes it easy on Williams for lying—he actually spends half the segment mocking Williams' for his changing story and apparent celebrity aspirations—it's just that he finds Williams' colleagues and competitors' hand-wringing about "credibility" and "impact on the industry" excessive and hypocritical.

"Now, this may seem like overkill," he says of the reporting on Williams, "But for me, no, it's not overkill, because I am happy. Finally! Someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War!"

If only the media had "applied this level of scrutiny," Stewart muses, "to the actual fucking war."

Williams remains on self-suspension from NBC while the network reviews his past reporting.

[h/t Daily Show]


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Rookie NYPD Officer Indicted for Killing Unarmed Brooklyn Man: Report

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Rookie NYPD Officer Indicted for Killing Unarmed Brooklyn Man: Report

Peter Liang, the rookie NYPD officer who fatally shot an unarmed man in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project last year, has been indicted for the killing, according to sources who spoke with the New York Daily News and Pix11.

On the night of November 20, Liang killed Akai Gurley, 28, at the the Pink Houses, a housing project in East New York. Gurley and his girlfriend were walking in one of the building's stairwells when they encountered Liang and his partner. Liang, who reportedly drew his gun immediately after entering the darkened stairwell, fired one shot, striking Gurley. The 28-year-old, later described by police commissioner Bill Bratton as a "total innocent," made it down two flights of stairs before losing consciousness; he was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital early the next morning.

Liang is expected to turn himself in sometime on Wednesday, according to the Daily News. The exact charges have not been released yet.

[Image via AP]

Iggy Azalea, Please Log Off Twitter Forever

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Iggy Azalea, Please Log Off Twitter Forever

There's been a meme circulating recently among self-loathing—or, at least, ironically self-loathing—individuals, primarily in the media world, about the presumed toxicity of Twitter. "Never tweet," they say, because Twitter will rot your brain. Personally, I disagree. I enjoy Twitter and there are many worse ways to pass the day. I think mostly everyone should tweet— except Iggy Azalea, who should put Twitter down forever and run away.

Last Sunday, the Australian rapper (legitimate occupation!) used up a portion of her afternoon tweeting at the official account of the food-like substance chain Papa John's, because a Papa John's deliveryman in L.A. gave Iggy's cell phone number to his younger sister. Last Sunday was also the Grammys, and Iggy was nominated for four awards. It should have been one of the best nights of her professional career, but instead she spent it lamenting the loss of Papa John's in her life, and apparently haranguing a franchise manager for photos of their employees.

Broadly speaking, Iggy's position is understandable, in that celebrities are rightfully protective of their privacy. It was, in theory, a minor nuisance for some strange pizza professional to have her phone number. But it really was just a minor nuisance.

We can acknowledge Iggy Azalea's position while also noting a few things about her predicament. The first is that she willingly gave her personal phone number to a Papa John's franchise and presumably allowed herself to be identified in connection with that phone number. Now, it's a different sort of nuisance to only be able to divulge your direct contact information with a vastly smaller group of people than the average citizen, but such is the nature of celebrity. On the one hand, you amass fame and fortune; on the other, you can't give out your cell phone number to strangers. Most celebrities accept this trade because money is more valuable than the sanctity of one's cell phone number, except for Mike Jones, who had his cake and ate it, too. (Mike Jones was both a better rapper than Iggy Azalea and a savvier celebrity.)

The other thing to note about this controversy—look at our world—is that it's entirely one of Iggy's own design. Iggy is a very famous person with grand individual and structural power at her disposal. If she was so aggrieved by this deliveryman passing her cell phone number around, there were likely more efficient—and less personally painful—ways for her to deal with it than to publicly tweet at whoever runs Papa John's Twitter account for over 24 hours, in the process letting every grubby teen wondering if he or she has Iggy Azalea's phone number know that yes, indeed, you do have Iggy Azalea's phone number.

Iggy is a relatively new celebrity. People react to swift and sudden changes in their lives in different ways, and using your newfound powerful platform to lash out at a pizza company is definitely one of those ways. But this—throwing an extended tantrum on Twitter—has become Iggy's thing, and of all things for a celebrity to become, this is a really lame one.

You may remember just a few weeks ago, when Iggy opened Twitter and vomited up some words about a mysterious Tumblr page that appeared to showcase her upcoming collaboration with the shoe company Steve Madden. The site—screenshots of which you can see here—was not flattering, but nobody quite knew what the deal was, and an unconfirmed Tumblr that may or may not show photos of Iggy Azalea's new shoe line isn't exactly a bombshell story even in the celebrity fashion circle. Kind of embarrassing, sure, but the world turns. Nonetheless, Iggy fired off a string of tweets that read frighteningly like @dril's quietly seething and unhinged avant-garde scribblings. ("Ivd been bamoozeled with a tumblr page where everyone wears socks and takes unintentional crotch shots on pool toys.")

Iggy Azalea, Please Log Off Twitter Forever

This is all just in the first 39 days of the year! In December, she engaged Azealia Banks on Twitter about a topic—the recent elevation of white artists in rap music at the expense of black artists—that she was much better off leaving untouched, reigniting a feud that she has already won by virtue of her success. That rant at Banks spurred Q-Tip into giving her a history lesson of sorts over Twitter, which she probably didn't need but nonetheless asked for by deciding to engage Banks but dismiss her structural and societal critiques.

Iggy has always been bad at Twitter. Before she was famous, she was racist. Does Iggy Azalea still enjoy using Twitter? It doesn't seem like it. What is the point of being a celebrity if you're just going to spend your time allowing Twitter to add undue consternation to your life? That's for the rest of us. Why be blessed, and yet, still stressed?

This is not an uncontroversial opinion. T.I., the rapper who helped nurture Iggy to stardom, agrees with me. Last week, TMZ asked him if he thought Iggy needs to be tweeting all the time. His response, in so many words? "No." It was a very sensible reaction.

There are so many things for Iggy Azalea to do. Go make more music. Go hang out with your famous friends. Go buy a boat. Go live on that boat. Go take that boat around the world. Go throw your phone into the ocean.

Or stay on land. Go lay in your backyard. Go swim in your pool. Go watch your boyfriend play basketball. Go out for an expensive dinner. Go home and watch Netflix. Go take a bath in a jacuzzi tub. Go to sleep thinking about what an amazing life you have.

But either way, definitely throw your phone into the ocean. Lock yourself out of Twitter forever. For society's sake, certainly, but your own as well.

[image via Getty]

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