Quantcast
Channel: Gawker
Viewing all 24829 articles
Browse latest View live

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Admires Writers Like Ian McEwan and Megyn Kelly

0
0

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Admires Writers Like Ian McEwan and Megyn Kelly

The New York Times Book Review interviewed author and professional provocative person Ayaan Hirsi Ali for its "By the Book" column this week. Here is part of the Q&A:

Whom do you consider the best writers — novelists, essayists, critics, journalists, poets — working today?

Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, William Langewiesche, Jeffrey Goldberg, Charlie Rose, Megyn Kelly, Asra Nomani and Anderson Cooper.

That is a set of people! Some of them write things—Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West; Dispatches From the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival. Those sorts of things.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali will not be pigeonholed.

Who do you consider the best writers working today?

[Photo via Getty]


M.I.A. Talks Butthurt Diplo, An Oprah Snub, and Why 2015 Is Regressive

0
0

M.I.A. Talks Butthurt Diplo, An Oprah Snub, and Why 2015 Is Regressive

In an interview published over at Rolling Stone, M.I.A.—the mercurial and polarizing rapper who flipped off the Super Bowl—is telling a lot of funny and uncomfortable half-truths about the ten years since her debut record, Arular, was released. On offer? Anecdotes about her fractured friendship with Diplo and Oprah snubbing her.

M.I.A.! People love her, then they hate her; they question her politics, but they like her chutzpah. Me? You didn't ask, but I love everything about her, down to the very last truffle fry. In Rolling Stone, she tells Paul Cantor that her early success was not supported by then boyfriend/producer Diplo:

When I got signed by Interscope, he literally smashed my hotel room and broke all the furniture because he was so angry I got picked up by a major label and it was the corniest thing in the world that could possibly happen. And then Missy Elliott called me for the first time in 2005 to work with me on her record, and I'm sure we had a massive fight about that — the fact that I was talking to anyone who was, like, popular. I wish I enjoyed it because I had this person on my shoulder the whole time saying, "It's shit, it's shit, it's shit. You shouldn't be on the charts. You shouldn't be in the magazines and you should not be going to interviews. You should not be doing collaborations with famous people. You should be an underground artist."

He also allegedly did not like when she was on the cover of magazines, which M.I.A. paraphrases her ex as saying, "What do you want to do, like be on the dentist waiting room table? Like, is that what a magazine is for? It's corny. Like, don't do magazines."

What does M.I.A. believe was making Diplo act this way? Envy. (Story checks out.)

Oh, 100 percent. It's only now when I look back at it in 2015, I can see that he was just jealous and he couldn't wait to be Taylor Swift's best friend and date Katy Perry.

The day after the interview, Diplo Instagrammed a photo of the two together with the caption, "Best friends forever," and M.I.A. retweeted it, so who knows.

The rapper goes on to talk about what was going on in 2005, a time when she claims things were much more progressive than they are now:

And at that time when Arular happened the world was so much more cultured. We had way better fucking music. People were having way better sex. People were eating way better food.

Cantor asks M.I.A. about an encounter she had with Oprah, which is beautiful if not only for how M.I.A. phrases its almost certain lack of truth:

What happened with Oprah? There was a picture of you two together, but then you kinda slammed her.

In 2009, Time nominated me for one of the most influential people of the 21st century or something and I met Oprah at that party. And I was like, "Hey, people are gonna fucking die in my country. Like, please pay attention." And she was like, "You're shit because you were rude to Lady Gaga and I'm not talking to you. And I'm gonna interview Tom Cruise jumping on my sofa, so fuck off."

Wow, do I love this perfect and complicated woman. More juicy stuff, as told by M.I.A., at Rolling Stone.

[Image via Getty]

Suge Knight Passed Out in Court After Judge Set $25 Million Bail

0
0

Suge Knight Passed Out in Court After Judge Set $25 Million Bail

Rough day in court today for accused murderer and Death Row Records founder Suge Knight, who collapsed and hit his head on a chair after a judge set his bail at $25 million. An unconscious Knight was treated by paramedics and taken to a nearby hospital.

"He's being treated worse than Charles Manson," Matthew Fletcher, Knight's attorney, told the Associated Press. Fletcher claims Knight, who is diabetic and reportedly has a blood clot, has not received any medication since yesterday.

Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Barnes sought the high bail figure after noting that Knight was already on bail for robbery charges at the time of the alleged murder; Fletcher had sought just $2 million in bail.

"It's like [Barnes] watches Empire and comes in and says, 'He was an unrepentant and shameless criminal. Prosecute him,'" Fletcher said during the hearing, according to TMZ.

Knight was charged with first degree murder and attempted murder for allegedly running Terry Carter and Cle "Bone" Sloan over with his truck last month; Carter later died from his injuries.


Image via AP. Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

The Capitalist's Plan to Prevent the Revolution 

0
0

The Capitalist's Plan to Prevent the Revolution 

Paul Tudor Jones—whose net worth is $4.6 billion—is one of the most famous hedge fund managers in American history. He is a heavy donor to Republicans. And he is warning of the possibility of class-based revolution in America. Also, he has some ideas.

We will say this about Paul Tudor Jones: he is not the most rotten billionaire hedge fund manager you'll find out there. He is, at least, civic-minded. He helped found the Robin Hood Foundation, which does good work on behalf of the poor in New York City (though the foundation is not entirely without self-interest). He has been active in issues of public schools—to the dismay of those who believe in public education, but still, he does appear to care about the issue. I do not question Paul Tudor Jones' commitment to helping those less fortunate than himself. But that commitment extends only as far as his own self-interest.

It is always interesting to hear a billionaire share his thoughts on inequality. Yesterday, Jones gave a TED Talk in which he did just that. And not in quite the vapid terms that most of his peers would use! He said this: "Now here's a macro forecast that's easy to make and that's that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest it will get closed. History always does it. It typically happens in one of three ways– either through revolution, higher taxes or wars. None of those are on my bucket list,"

On the one hand, this is just a common sense reading of history. On the other hand, it's always newsworthy when a cutthroat hedge fund billionaire calmly acknowledges the looming possibility of violent revolution of the poors. One immediate point to take away from Jones' statement is: "higher taxes" are the least bad option for rich people. If only they were on his bucket list.

If Jones is not calling for higher taxes—and he's most definitely not, since he poured money into Mitt Romney's campaign in an attempt to protect a tax loophole that enables hedge fund managers to pay outrageously low taxes—then what is his solution to our nation's inequality problem? What drastic measure is he calling for in order to stave off the very real possibility that some time in the foreseeable future, people like him will be hung from highway overpasses by mobs of underemployed fast food workers who can't get a mortgage? Paul Tudor Jones' solution to this existential crisis is: "JUST Capital," a nonprofit group he is starting that will "help companies learn how to operate in a more just fashion by using the public's input to define exactly what the criteria are for just corporate behavior." To clarify: billionaire Paul Tudor Jones fears that the possibility of a violent mob massacring him for his unconscionable wealth is real, and yet his plan to forestall this event is to publish an annual survey ranking companies on how "just" they are. And what does that mean? Paul Tudor Jones does not even say. He'll just do a poll to determine it.

Paul Tudor Jones, a very smart man who publicly acknowledges the horrific depth of our nation's economic inequality, is not even willing to pay higher taxes as a remedy for that inequality. He is only willing to advocate for more "corporate social responsibility." He is not calling for new regulations on unchecked corporate power. He is simply asking corporations to try to be a little more thoughtful. He believes that the American system of capitalism—which is what has gotten us to the level of economic inequality we enjoy today—is capable of regulating itself through sheer persuasion. Through suggestion. Through the input of helpful public polling.

Paul Tudor Jones, I know for a fact that you are not stupid enough to believe. Good for you for being a billionaire willing to admit that our nation's inequality is a serious problem. But you know what they say: Admitting you have a problem is a first step. A first step. If you think that you can avoid taking any of the hard steps after that—paying a slightly higher level of taxes on your vast and unspendable wealth, for instance—you may find your bucket list enlarged in an unpleasant way.

[Photo: AP]


Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

500 Days of Kristin, Day 54: What I Imagine Kristin Thinking All Day

0
0

500 Days of Kristin, Day 54: What I Imagine Kristin Thinking All Day

What goes through Kristin Cavallari's mind all day?

I like to imagine it's just that scene from Legally Blonde where Elle Woods screams, "ME!".

You know?

ME!


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

0
0

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

You don't have to look very far to find naked breasts in video games. Uncensored dicks, on the other hand? Those are rarer.

Maybe that's changing. Have you noticed that there are a surprising number of recent big games that show uncensored penises? I couldn't help but wonder if uncensored dicks are becoming more common in games. So, I've tried to find out.

Warning: this post contains uncensored NSFW pictures!

Over the last week, I've been up to my ears with digital dicks. How many games these days feature uncensored dicks? Are there more now than there used to be? What kinds of dicks do games depict—are they circumsized, for example? I'm here to share my findings with you, in all their floppy, pink glory.

I'm mostly focusing on mainstream games—obscure eroge games might be saucy, but there are simply too many of them to keep track of. I'm also disqualifying any dicks that the result of user-created mods, as well as sex scenes where you can't see a penis. Sorry, Hot Coffee. With all that said...let's jump in. Here are the ways that video games have depicted dicks over the years.

Custer's Revenge, 1982

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: DavetheUsher]

One of the earliest known video game dicks is, unsurprisingly, also a controversial one. Custer's Revenge was an Atari 2600 game that starred none other than George Armstrong Custer himself. The goal of the game was to make it across the screen to a tied up Native American woman, all while avoiding arrows. If Custer makes it there safely, he rapes the woman.

Custer's Revenge isn't the first 'adult' video game—text adventures have Gone There for a while—but it remains one of the earliest games to graphically depict a penis, and an erect one at that.

Turns out, penises are surprisingly common in early video games. 1982 also saw the release of "Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em," a game where a man pumps something (semen? pee?) out of his junk, into the mouths of women below him:

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: SAslowdown]

The Atari 2600 was also blessed with the release of X-Man, a pornographic game that has nothing to do with mutants. In this game, a man tries to make his way out of a labyrinth. If players are successful, they are rewarded with a sex scene:

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: Zibri]

X-Man also proves that the issue of perfecting (and failing at) breast physics is a phenomenon as old as the industry itself.

The most ridiculous out of all these early Atari games has to be Bachelor Party, though. The premise is familiar: It's pretty much Breakout, but replace the bricks with women. Also, substitute the ball with a naked man with a raging erection. Um...yeah.

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: Weird Video Games]

Most of these games are kind of...gross. But it's still wild to think that they all came out in 1982. It's not something I would have expected, especially given how rare male nudity is in games.

Rampage: World Tour, 1997

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: I-Mockery.]

As those of you who have played Rampage before know, the monsters in Rampage are actually humans who survived experimentation. And if you happen to take enough damage as a monster while playing World Tour, the godzilla-like creatures will all revert back to their human forms—which happen to be naked. While the characters cover themselves up quickly, you can still catch a glimpse of some wang.

Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, 2004

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: GamesRadar]

Naturally, a series like Leisure Suit Larry—which is all about seducing women—has depicted some nudity from time to time. Surprisingly, this also includes the protagonist himself!

Manhunt 2, 2007

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: Warosu]

This dick belongs to Piggsy, a disturbing antagonist from Manhunt. Weirdly, you only see his penis when you first encounter him—after that, his model doesn't have it anymore.

You'll also note that at this point, the door for more detailed penises has opened.

Penumbra: Black Plague, 2008

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: Frictional Games]

But "details" can also lead to nightmare situations, as this abomination proves. Look at that infected, raw-looking dick in Penumbra. Okay, maybe don't look at it. Barf.

Grand Theft Auto 4: The Lost and the Damned, 2009

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: Lucsy3012]

The expansion DLC for GTA IV lets you play as a biker who gets pressured by a congressman into committing murder. You're looking at the congressman right now, in fact! We called this the "very first glimpse of digital dick on the Xbox 360" back in 2009. It may also be the hairiest dong in games.

Heavy Rain, 2010

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: GamesRadar]

Heavy Rain is a curious case: you can't actually see this nudity in the game proper. Not without glitches or modding, at least. But even though it wouldn't be visible to most people, Quantic Dream still went through the trouble of designing and modeling Ethan's genitals. Years later, they would go on to do something similar in Beyond: Two Souls. Also, it looks like Ethan manscapes—no detail is too small, I guess!

Amnesia: The Dark Descent, 2010

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: oyster0]

During a morgue portion in Amnesia, players can find the naked body of a deceased man on table. Spooky, right?

Dante's Inferno, 2010

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: Jawee]

If we must remember Dante's Inferno for something, let it be for depicting what may be gaming's biggest dick. Which, by the way, belongs to Satan. Because of course it does.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf, 2012

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

And now for an inclusion out of left field. Nintendo has indeed rendered a modern video game dong—it belongs to Animal Crossing's version of David, but still. That's a dick. In a Nintendo game. Woah.

Rust, 2013

Not only do the models in Rust have dicks, players have actually taken to trolling each other because of it. In this video, you can watch YouTuber NormalDifficulty go around with a band of naked men who force other players to take off their pants...or else.

Outlast: Whistleblower DLC, 2014

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: AndrewOscarDelta]

Few things say "terror" as much as "almost having your dick sawed off by a villain" does. Don't worry, though. The player gets saved just in the nick of time. No digital dongs were harmed in the making of this video game.

Far Cry 4, 2014

Even if you've played Far Cry 4, chances are good you missed its penis scene—it flashes by so quickly! Thankfully, eagle-eyed Nick Robinson caught it for us.

South Park: The Stick of Truth, 2014

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

These are actually just a couple of the genitals that the South Park game depicts—but, that's probably not surprising. It wouldn't be South Park otherwise, now would it?

GTA V, 2014

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: Kobetastrophy]

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: calloftreyarch]

In 2015, having a Rockstar game depict genitals isn't particularly noteworthy. But, interestingly, after players figured out how to mod GTA, some put on the flaccid penis model to troll and harass other GTA Online players. More specifically, players would pretend to rape other players while using this specific penis model. The "joys" of multiplayer gaming, I guess.

Apotheon, 2015

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

Apotheon looks like a Greek myth lifted straight off an old piece of pottery—so it makes sense that it has so many dicks. Erect dicks, too! You'll note that most modern games don't depict genitals this way.

The Order: 1866, 2015

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

Right after The Order: 1866 leaked online, people seemed obsessed with two things: the length of the game, and the fact that, as Kirk Hamilton noted in his review, The Order has an "unusual number of free-hanging dicks." What makes the one in the GIF above particularly funny is that that scene happens mere moments after you catch this guy having sex—he seems to immediately lose his boner after seeing you. Which, you know...fair enough.

And now for the honorable mentions!

Mount Your Friends

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

The competitive climbing game has contributed greatly to the representation of dicks in gaming—it was the first game to include "dick physics." We can only hope that other games will follow suit. For this, we will also commend 2014's Loadout:

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: xAfroDanYT]

The SMT Series

Shin Megami Tensei games sure love a demon with a good cock. The one that most people know about is the dick chariot, Mara:

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

This is a real character, which you can use to attack enemies in SMT games. Hilariously, there are actually enough penis monsters in SMT to make a top ten list. Wow.

Kane and Lynch 2

An Abridged History Of Video Game Dicks

[Source: Gamecola]

While the dicks are censored, you actually have to play through an entire level like this—all cut up and naked.

And, there you have it. Gaming's most notable dicks. After a dry spell in the 90s, dick production in video games seems to have come back into fashion in the 2000s, particularly in the last five years. It could be that developers are becoming bolder. For now, we can only wait until some brave developer finally depicts modern gaming's first erect penis. It could be a bit of a wait, but you never know.

Image by Jim Cooke.

Why Do Communities Keep Wasting Money on Useless Tornado Sirens?

0
0

Why Do Communities Keep Wasting Money on Useless Tornado Sirens?

The droning wail of a tornado siren is ubiquitous in the southern and central parts of the United States. These loud sirens are meant to warn people who are outdoors that a tornado is on its way. Now that we're indoors or in a car for most of our lives, tornado sirens are all but useless, yet we keep wasting money on them.

Tornado forecasting wasn't all that impressive just a few decades ago. It wasn't until the 1990s that Doppler weather radar came into widespread use across the United States, giving forecasters the ability to see winds inside of a thunderstorm. This capability allows us to see rotation (and tornadoes) well before the twisters smash into towns downstream. Before Doppler radar, it took a classic hook echo on radar or a radio report that a neighboring town was destroyed to know that a tornado was on its way.

In the days before the internet, smartphones, and auto-activating weather radios, communities across the country repurposed their wartime air raid sirens for tornado alerts. These systems allowed people who were outside to run for shelter before the storm arrived and caught them hoeing away in the fields. That's the key, though—they're designed for people who are outside. You are not meant to hear tornado sirens indoors, especially today, when homes and businesses are able to muffle sound better than they were half a century ago.

There are millions of people across this country putting their lives on the line by listening for a sound they can't hear.

The latest money burn came from Madison County, Alabama, home of the state's fourth-largest city, Huntsville. The county and its cities recently announced that they will spend $750,000 on a digital upgrade of their tornado siren system, which is designed to limit siren activation to areas only within the tornado warning.

That is a pretty significant development that solves a major issue around tornado sirens—until they're given digital upgrades, they have to be activated for the entire county, even if only a small portion of the county is under a tornado warning. For those who can actually hear the sirens, this creates a crying wolf effect even larger than the one created by tornado warnings themselves (which carry about a 70% false alarm rate).

However, you're better off burning the money than wasting it on tornado sirens. Sure, some people have credited their lives to hearing a tornado siren and getting to shelter before the storm struck, but you'll find that people credit television meteorologists, weather radios, and cell phone alerts much more than tornado sirens these days.

Saturating communities with these sirens arguably puts them in more danger than if you recycled them and used the scrap metal for lawn darts. Tornado sirens create a dangerous dependency on these fragile, unreliable devices. People who live in areas with tornado sirens become dependent on them because they don't think they're in danger unless they hear the siren go off. The problem is, you usually can't hear them if you're inside! If the power goes out? They don't go off! If the wind is blowing the wrong way? The range of the sound is limited! Even people who live very close to a tornado siren can't hear them if they're sleeping, playing music, watching television, or are otherwise preoccupied.

If communities really want to help people protect themselves from life-threatening severe weather, they should demolish their siren systems and invest in automated weather radios. Remove the dependency on an unreliable system and replace them with life-saving radios right in your living room. http://thevane.gawker.com/buying-a-weath...

The National Weather Service broadcasts forecasts and warnings from radio antennas that cover nearly every square inch of the United States, and specially-designed weather radios can decode these signals and sound a loud tone when a severe weather watch or warning is issued for your county. Weather radios are smoke detectors for the weather, and they should be just as common in homes, schools, and business. These devices save lives—much more than tornado sirens ever could—and they're especially useful for households that don't have smartphones with wireless emergency alert capabilities.

Tornado sirens were a great idea fifty years ago, but they're increasingly obsolete and growing more dangerous with every severe storm that blows through. It's time to cut the cord and bring severe weather safety into the 21st century.

[Image: Daniel Rodriguez via Flickr]


You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

CNN Releases "Too Many Cooks" Spoof With 100% Fewer Jokes Than Original

0
0

"Too Many Cooks," the sitcom-intro spoof that destroyed America's brains back in November, worked so well because of its spot-on parody of several TV genres, which went uncomfortably long and then glitched out into brilliant, unexpected madness. CNN just tried to do their own version, mocking(?) the 2016 election. Why?

"It is incredible," and "it is better than it has any right to be," raved some publications that, I guess, don't like jokes? Certainly, it took some effort to drag out the long list of all 2016's presidential hopefuls and presidential-hopeful-hopefuls, and CNN certainly nailed the first level of "Too Many Cooks"—the level where you look down at the progress bar of the video and can't believe how long it is.

"What's the deal with so many people running (or maybe running) for president?" CNN is joking here, "And other politicians?! It's funny how there are so many other politicians! And dictators! and the Supreme Court? 'Memba them?!"

Good one. Good point.

But "Too Many Cooks" had multiple satisfying payoffs that earned its 11 minutes—the moment where you realize they're going to switch genres to keep the joke going; the reveal of the character who was hiding in plain sight the whole time; and the final, horrible breakdown.

CNN's version lasts six minutes, basically ignores the moments where the Cooks theme music changes, and you watched it for ... this? Well, okay.

CNN Releases "Too Many Cooks" Spoof With 100% Fewer Jokes Than Original

Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared one year and 12 days ago. Where is it?!

[h/t everyone on your Facebook feed trying to make you watch this]


White Lady Who Found Enlightenment Via Afro Now Runs "Adult Preschool"

0
0

White Lady Who Found Enlightenment Via Afro Now Runs "Adult Preschool"

Everybody loves a good redemption story, so let us all gather around and admire the resilient comeback of Michelle Lapidos, who did a perfect white-person thing when she wore an afro around New York to learn more about herself and is now doing an even more perfect white-person thing: running an "adult preschool" in Brooklyn.

Lapidos, now known as Michelle Joni (nice try, lady), is the focus of an ABC news story titled "Grownups Pay Big Bucks to Attend NYC 'Adult Preschool,'" which would seem like an almost too on-the-nose parody of the upper middle class if it wasn't extremely real.

The Brooklyn-based Preschool Mastermind, as it's called, is a preschool-type experience for adults. No, really. And according to its founder, there's show-and-tell, arts-and-crafts such as finger paint, games (think musical chairs) and even naps.

...

Adult preschool — not unlike New York City's preschool's for children, doesn't come cheap. Payment for the class is on a sliding scale ranging from $333 to $999. Joni said that "preschool is all about choice. I want them [the students] to feel good about the choice they're making."

The accompanying photos show Joni sitting in a cross-legged in a circle with her adult "students" making macaroni necklaces. Sitting atop her head is not an afro, but a unicorn horn made out of construction paper. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

About wearing an afro around New York, Joni once said:

The afro changed my perspective; it made me think, walk, see and experience life differently. I wear it often. It's not about feeling black… what I actually feel like is ME, understood more clearly. It's not an alter ego. It's an amplified ego.

About her adult pre-school she now says:

"I realized all the implications of what we learn in preschool," said founder Michelle Joni, who said she went to school for childhood education and always wanted to be a preschool teacher. "People come here and get in touch with their inner child. It's magical."

I hope they build a bronze statue of this woman on the corner of 7th and Bedford.

[image of Michelle Joni via her website]

9 Arrested After Beating Death of Afghan Woman with Mental Illness

0
0

9 Arrested After Beating Death of Afghan Woman with Mental Illness

Nine men believed to have been participants in a mob that dragged, beat, and killed a woman after she was accused of burning pages from the Quran have been arrested, The New York Times reports. The woman's parents said she had suffered from mental illness for most of her life.

The woman, whose name was Farkhunda, was reportedly between 27 and 32 years old. "Farkhunda had a mental malady, and we have been seeing many mullahs and doctors to seek a cure for her mental illness," her mother told television reporters.

On Thursday, Farkhunda visited the Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque on the Kabul River, where there is also a shrine honoring a Muslim warrior who died in the seventh century fighting Hindu warriors. The Times reports that Farkhunda—who, according to her mother, had not slept in several days—began berating visitors for inappropriately praying at the shrine.

Afterwards, according to Mohammad, she was seen standing over a metal fire-pit, and several women accused her of burning pages from the Quran. Witnesses told The Los Angeles Times that the crowd grew to more than 1,000 people within 30 to 40 minutes.

Police unsuccessfully attempted to intervene. Farkhunda was beaten to death and dragged behind a car to the nearby river, where her body was burned. Cellphone footage of the incident has been widely distributed, the Times reports, and many of the participants' faces are clearly visible.

According to the Times, there is no evidence that Farkhunda was even burning a Quran. "The burned papers were pieces of a Persian book," Daiul Haq Abid, deputy minister of the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs, told TOLOnews, and independent television channel.


Image via AP. Contact the author at brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

7 Children Dead After Brooklyn House Fire

0
0

7 Children Dead After Brooklyn House Fire

Seven children, ranging from 5 to 15 years old, died last night in a house fire in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood, The New York Daily News reports. Officials said the children's mother and one of her daughters survived and are in critical condition.

According to the News, four boys—ages 5, 6, 7, and 11—and three girls—ages 8, 12, and 15—were killed. One of the children died on the scene; the others died as they were being taken to area hospitals.

"This is the largest tragedy by fire that this city has had in seven years," Daniel A. Nigro, the fire commissioner, said at a press conference. "It's a tragedy for this family, it's a tragedy for this community, it's a tragedy for the city."

The fire appears to have been caused by a malfunctioning hot plate, The New York Times reports. Fire investigators have not found evidence of working smoke detectors on the first or second floors of the three-story home.

"Firefighters forced their way in, extinguished fire on the first floor, which had started in the kitchen," Nigro said, "then pushed upstairs and found the children in their bedrooms."

"It's difficult to find one child in a room during a search," he said. "To find a houseful of seven children that can't be revived...."

According to Nigro, the children were sleeping in five bedrooms in the back of the house. The two survivors were closer to the front of the home.

"The mother was outside. She was burned. She jumped out the window. There's still blood on the floor," a neighbor, Nate Weber, told the News. "I was standing in front of the house when the smoke just hit me. I saw the smoke and I knew it was bad news."

"I saw the EMT carrying people on the stretcher. I just turned away. I didn't want to see that."

Update, 3:05 p.m. – The NYPD has released the names of the children who died.


Image via AP. Email the author: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

David Copperfield's Latest Trick: Flooding His NYC Apartment Building 

0
0

David Copperfield's Latest Trick: Flooding His NYC Apartment Building 

David Copperfield has a private pool in his 8,000-square-foot Manhattan apartment—something all of his neighbors are now well aware of because he managed to flood the entire building with it this week.

"The pump malfunctioned, and the entire pool drained through David's apartment and apartments below, right to the basement. Walls and floors were completely soaked," Copperfield's lawyer tells Page Six.

But enough about the soggy neighbors—what about his rare, vintage Coney Island machines?

"David was terrified, because he has these rare, vintage Coney Island machines, which are priceless, irreplaceable antiques, including a fortune teller, strength testers, an electric shock machine and shooting galleries. But for some unknown reason — or stroke of luck — these machines were spared by the water. There's a magic trick called 'The Bullet Catch,' where the illusionist catches the bullet in his teeth, and David thinks he really dodged a bullet here."

David thinks he really dodged a bullet here.

[image via AP]


Contact the author of this post at gabrielle@gawker.com

The Gawker Review Weekend Reading List [3.21.15]

0
0

The Gawker Review Weekend Reading List [3.21.15]

The rumors are true: Emoji God is dead. Why oh why do you hate us, Tim Cook? What did PrayerHandEmoji truthers ever do to you? To this, and other acts of technological religious eradication, we say: Long live Emoji God.


"Why Do Severed Goat Heads Keep Turning Up in Brooklyn?" by Adrian Chen

It was time to consult the oracle. I Googled "Goat heads + New York." Here I learned that the city's suburbs have been experiencing an oddly complementary goat-head related issue. Last fall in Westchester County, a bunch of headless goat carcasses began to turn up in public places. When a decapitated goat was found in a plastic bag along with some chicken carcasses in September, the authorities there leaped into action and called upon an occult expert named Marcos Quinones to investigate. Maybe he'd have some insight into the Goat Heads of Park Slope, I thought. But I mentioned Quinones to Alex Mar, a journalist who has researched the occult and fringe religions in America for her upcoming book Witches of America, and she wrote back: "Watch out for those 'occult experts.' Very 80s-paranoia."

http://nymag.com/daily/intellig...

"Purple Reign" by Chris Lehmannhttp://www.theperipherymag.com/essay-blacknes...

To me, though, the overlapping sagas of First Look and The New Republic were less a dramatic climax of the zeitgeist than a slow-motion train wreck that had already ejected me through the windows and into the woods. Even as the press notices greeting these enterprises had first unspooled, I couldn't help but hear the low moan of a gathering nemesis in the distance. Or—to switch up my entertainment metaphors—I felt increasingly like a seasoned horror movie fan, espying all the telltale signs of a disaster waiting to happen: the callow corporate rhetoric of disruptive genius, the witless embrace of a nonsensical array of platforms and formats in a sequence seemingly adapted from a Mad Libs game book, the airy dismissal of content-production as though it were simply a species of hireling grunt work.

All this had come rushing back because once upon a time, I had lived through it too, in my late, unlamented career as an online news executive in that labyrinth of high-octane managerial passive-aggression known as Yahoo News.

http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/purple-...

"Who Won the Scene? The Kid vs. Play Freestyle Rap Battle in 'House Party'" by Shea Serrano

Do you know what 1990's House Party was? Let me tell you what 1990'sHouse Party was. It was classical tragedy. It was a jarring battle between good vs. evil, and in a stricter sense than I'd ever realized and also a broader sense than I'd ever realized. I'm stupid. I'm stupid like Matthew was, or is.

The most famous scene from House Party is the one where Kid and Play dance-battle Sidney and Sharane. That's not what this post is about, though. This is a look at its second-most-famous scene: the freestyle rap battle between Kid and Play.

http://grantland.com/hollywood-pros...

"Higher Education and the Politics of Disruption" by Henry A. Giroux

As higher education's role as a center of critical thought and civic engagement is devalued, society is being transformed into a "spectacular space of consumption" and financial looting. One consequence is an ongoing flight from mutual obligations and social responsibilities and a loss of faith in politics itself. This loss of faith in the power of politics, public dialogue and dissent is not unrelated to the diminished belief in higher education as central to producing critically engaged, civically literate and socially responsible citizens. At stake here are not only the meaning and purpose of higher education, but also civil society, politics and the fate of democracy itself.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/2969...

"Flashes of Quincy" by Jeff Weiss

Is there a secret to any of this?

It's strange when you look back and all these things have happened to me. I don't deal with fear. The only fear that I had was getting an assignment that I wasn't capable of delivering on.

When you get to a Sinatra or a Ray Charles, you better be ready for the task—but I was ready for it. And I'm glad that I had this kind of foundation where nothing would shake me up, and it was a pleasure to do.

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/quincy-jo...

"Andrew Jackson Doesn't Belong on a Twenty-Dollar Bill, a Woman Does" by Adele Oliveira

Equal pay for equal work. This $20 that might have a woman's portrait on it is worth $20 when it's used for paying people's salaries: It's not worth 78 cents on the dollar for women, it's worth a dollar for a dollar. Yes, it's symbolic gesture, but symbols matter in this country, and the portraits on the money say something about what we value and what we stand for.

http://thebillfold.com/2015/03/andrew...

"A Prayer for Cookie" by Liz Galvao

O, Cookie—
Doer of Time,
Producer of Producers,
Manager of the Unmanageable,
And Mother of Lyons,

In your name,
we pray

http://thehairpin.com/2015/03/a-pray...

"Cuba Welcomes You, Yankee Imperialists!" by Hamilton Nolan

Your Michelin guidebook will tell you that Central Havana is "seedy." This is an impolite way of saying "dirty, and full of brown people who don't work at your hotel." In fact, I walked around there for days sporting a visible sunburn and speaking Spanish that consisted mostly of charades and was never seriously fucked with. Cuba has strict gun control, and little violent crime. There are more handguns in an average American's glove compartment than there are in all of Central Havana. The city as a whole exhibits one of the lowest levels of ambient menace of anywhere I've ever been, including Brooklyn.

http://gawker.com/cuba-welcomes-...

"Freaknik: The Rise and Fall of Atlanta's Most Infamous Street Party" by Errin Haines Whack and Rebecca Burns

But Freaknik's place in HBCU culture had grown even larger, thanks to media hype of the 1993 gridlock and rap videos such as Luther Campbell's 1993 "Work It Out," which included footage from Freaknik 1993 and a concert at Lakewood Fairgrounds (now EUE/Screen Gems Studio). With all that buzz, and acts like Snoop Dogg and Queen Latifah scheduled to perform, Freaknik 1994 drew a record 200,000 attendees—70,000 of whom turned out for a Saturday concert in Piedmont Park.

http://www.atlantamagazine.com/90s/freaknik-t...

"Death, Redesigned" by John Mooallem

So much about death is agonizingly unknowable: When. Where. Lymphoma or lightning strike. But Bennett recognized there are still dimensions of the experience under our control. He started zeroing in on all the unspoken decisions around that inevitability: the aesthetics of hospitals, the assumptions and values that inform doctors' and families' decisions, the ways we grieve, the tone of funerals, the sentimentality, the fear, the schlock. The entire scaffolding our culture has built around death, purportedly to make it more bearable, suddenly felt unimaginative and desperately out of date. "All those things matter tremendously," Bennett told me, "and they're design opportunities." With just a little attention, it seemed — a few metaphorical mirrors affixed to our gurneys at just the right angle — he might be able to refract some of the horror and hopelessness of death into more transcendent feelings of awe and wonder and beauty.

https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-04-05/dea...

[Image via Getty]

Oregon Sends 8,000 Alerts Erroneously Announcing Inmates' Release

0
0

Oregon Sends 8,000 Alerts Erroneously Announcing Inmates' Release

Thousands of victims and family members received phone calls from an Oregon Department of Corrections monitoring system on Friday alerting them in error to inmates' impending release, The Oregonian reports.

Corrections spokeswoman Elizabeth Craig said the Victim Information and Notification Everyday (VINE) system, which allows victims and family members to track when inmates are to be released, issued about 8,000 alerts. The contractor responsible for the system plans to call all notified victims and inform of the error, she said.

Among those who received the false alerts included family members of victims of the murderer Ward Weaver III, who was convicted in 2004 of killing two teenage girls and is serving a life sentence.

Brea Day, a cousin of one of the murdered girls, said she was "instantly horrified." Speaking to local broadcaster KGW-TV, she added, "It's very upsetting."


Image via Shutterstock. Email the author: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

The Road to Montgomery: Residents Recall the Historic Selma Marches

0
0

The Road to Montgomery: Residents Recall the Historic Selma Marches

The story of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches has been documented countless times. What hasn't been explored with the same scope is the effect these momentous events had on townspeople living in Selma during that period. Growing up, my mom shipped me to Selma every summer to stay with my grandmother, Bernice McMillian, choosing the familiar streets of where she grew up instead of letting me run wild in Chicago. It's as big a part of who I am as anything else. In the interest of posterity, I reached out to people who were around during the events of that month.

So today, as we mark 50th anniversary of the third, and final, march—over 7,000 people embarked on a five-day journey from Selma to Montgomery—let us not forget Dr. Martin Luther King's stirring words as he stood in front of Alabama's state capitol building:

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again. How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow. How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.


Bennie Ruth Crenshaw, 72, Selma City Councilwoman/ Activist: I haven't seen Selma. People ask, did you see the movie? I say, I don't need to, I lived it. Really, I haven't seen it because being involved in it was a lot to go through. Some things have changed, but most haven't. To understand that day and the marches before it, you have to understand what lead up to it. I was a senior in high school and had already been to jail a few times because of protests. People don't understand that it was the children that kicked off the movement—the younger people—because we got fed up with the poor treatment that we saw our parents and our teachers going through.

I had a little tight regiment of friends and we decided to integrate a lunch counter. We then went to jail. The thing was, they locked up the kids first. See, that got the parents involved and angry, because the police were putting kids in jail for marching. We went to jail, then the parents panicked and then said enough was enough. That led to the mass meetings at places like First Baptist Church and Brown Chapel. That's when the movement really started.

Joseph Smith, 62: Resident of Selma: People get it confused. There's an idea that there was only one march to Montgomery and that it was successful. In actuality, the third attempt was the only successful one. Bloody Sunday was the first one.

Rose Wilkins, 62, Educational Consultant: We lived in Alberta, AL [an unincorporated community that's part of Wilcox County, about 40 minutes from Selma] in March, then moved to Selma that May. We had a lot of family there, a lot of cousins. My stepfather told us about what happened after he married my mother. The movement started in the churches. People would meet at Brown Chapel or First Baptist or West Trinity to plan marches. The word got out and what started happening was that the white foremen for the factories around town would start driving by churches and making note of who's car was parked out front. If your car was at the church when a meeting was going on, you might show up the next day and not have a job anymore. My stepdad was active, taking part in marches and used to have cars park at his place in the back so people couldn't get in trouble with work. The marches were small at first but people started going to jail for protesting. It all came to a head with Bloody Sunday and the first march.

Smith: I was 12 years old. We lived on Franklin Street and since we were so close [note: Franklin street is about three blocks from the Edmund Pettus bridge] we saw all of the commotion going on. I asked my mom if I could go and march and she said no, I couldn't go by myself and I couldn't go to Montgomery. Sunday morning, I ventured over to the main street to watch and I ran into my cousin. He was older and marching so I went to ask my mom if I could march with him. She said yes, but only to cross the bridge and get home. We wanted to be part of history. My cousins agreed to get me home in a taxi. We were kind of in the middle of the procession, more like the back quarter of the group. We didn't even make it to the bridge before the entire wall of people stopped. We didn't know what was going on in front. You know how in a big group people start talking a lot and the noise builds? It was like that. We started seeing state troopers and then the crowd got louder and louder.http://gawker.com/1965-onward-bl...

Crenshaw: I was actually in jail the night before Bloody Sunday for protesting. We were in jail about two weeks, in a prison camp about 10 miles from Selma. The judge knew we were troublemakers and made sure to put us in the worst possible conditions. On the night before the march, they let a bunch of us go home because we were underage. They sent a bus, but I ended up missing it and they didn't call your parents or anything. So I started walking back to Selma alongside the highway in the middle of the night. I went home and got in the bed. My mother didn't want me to march on Bloody Sunday—remember I had been in jail for weeks and had been home not even a day yet—and she told me to stay in bed. My sisters and aunt all went to march but they told me I had to stay at home. I started watching television and all of a sudden, Selma was on the news and it was horrible. They were these big white clouds; turns out it was tear gas.

Smith: We started seeing people in front of us start running in different directions. We saw all this white smoke. It was tear gas. It then got so loud and there were screams. The line dispersed, and everyone started running and screaming. So we started running.

Wilkins: I was a kid watching this all unfold, watching this massacre—remember, they broadcasted Bloody Sunday on television, so you saw all of it—watching people get trampled and wondering if we even knew the whole story. You heard the screams, you saw the smoke from the tear gas. We had so many family members there and it wasn't like we could text them or something. Everyone was scared.

Crenshaw: With all that tear gas and everything going on, I got worried about my sisters. So I got up and ran to the bridge. I will never truly believe what I saw when I got there. The men on horses beating men, beating women, if they saw a child they were trampling children with the horses!

Smith: All of a sudden, you hear all these sirens. Then all these ambulances started showing up to take people to the hospital. Remember, I'm a kid! I'm watching people get beaten with billy clubs and getting trampled by horses. Men, women, children, everyone. I remember seeing all these white shirts—at the time, the fashion for men was to wear white dress shirts—and everyone was so bloody. All those white shirts stained with blood.

Crenshaw: There was a barricade set up and I ducked underneath it into the group of people marching towards the beginning of the bridge. Basically, if you were black and on that bridge in any point, they were truly running you over. I ducked off to the side but a state trooper on a horse absolutely beat down this man who was trying to get away from the crowd. I couldn't find my sisters. I ran back to Brown Chapel to ask about them.

Smith: We just kept running, and all I could think was, "I just want to go home." A lot of people ended up going to Brown Chapel because that's where a lot of people were congregating.

Crenshaw: I got there and someone told me my sister had an asthma attack so they were at Good Samaritan Hospital. I went back outside and, God help me, the police started riding down the street. This wasn't the bridge, people weren't marching. They were running people off of their porches. Just wiping people out. A state trooper rode into the church on a horse! At that point, I knew they really just wanted us dead, they wanted to kill us.

Smith: That night, it was quiet. People didn't know what to do. Some people didn't want to talk about it. There was the fear of the unknown—would the KKK show up to our homes?—then the next day was a Monday. It's funny. Can you imagine all of that happening and then having to go to work the next day?

Wilkins: Here's the thing: There were so many people that joined up for the third march. We have a general idea of who was at the successful march but we don't truly know what happened to everyone from the first two. With all of that beatings and all of that going on, was everyone accounted for? It's not like they did a head count beforehand. That bridge only has a small railing and no real barrier to the water. Do we even know if anyone fell into the river? That bothers me to this day.

After the worldwide coverage of the events of Bloody Sunday, all eyes were on Selma. Demonstrations in support of the protesters raged in dozens of cities across the country, including New York City. A second attempt to march, now led by Dr. King, was thwarted by state troopers, fortunately with no casualties this time.

Smith: There was a second attempt that didn't pan out as well. Dr. King went on the news and said there would be another march attempt. That one had a lot more people. It was exciting. You knew this was going to be a historical moment.

Crenshaw: The men in the church and in the neighborhood were angry and frustrated after Bloody Sunday. They wanted to get guns and retaliate. I distinctly remember a person from the SNCC calming people after the second failed march and he kept saying, "You can't kill an elephant with a toothpick! If you get your guns, they're going to kill you. It's not the way. Please make no mistake, they will kill you."

The third march was a success. On March 21st, 1965, the group, now backed with the support of the United States government and President Lyndon B. Johnson, set off on their 50 mile journey, camping at night alongside the highway. Thousands met them at the capital, leading to a worldwide outpouring of support. The Voter's Right Amendment was passed that August. The citizens of Selma who lived through that time have a sense of pride in their place in history.

Crenshaw: We had a purpose so I knew I couldn't fear anything. I've been cattle-prodded, I've been beaten, called all kinds of names, but our purpose kept us going. We couldn't stop! I still haven't. When I graduated from college, I wanted to go back to Selma. I wanted the kids to learn to love themselves the way we learned to love ourselves during the movement. We started a program where we taught young black children, especially little black girls to live purpose-driven lives. We taught them it's ok to be black. It's ok to love your blackness. If you don't, who's going to do it for you? At the same time, have respect for everyone. Don't hate anyone and respect everyone, but love yourself first.

I got on the city council in Selma and have been there for 30 years. That's the thing about what we did back then: It's about being right, not being popular. You have to trust yourself. You're not going to be popular, because you took a position that isn't the norm. Even now in city council, I still get called outspoken. It's all good with me though.

[Image via Getty]


Cops: Jerry Springer Producer Backed Out of Suicide Pact with Sister

0
0

Cops: Jerry Springer Producer Backed Out of Suicide Pact with Sister

Cops investigating the death of the sister of Hollywood producer Jill Blackstone say the siblings had planned to commit suicide together before Blackstone backed out.

The investigation began last Saturday when Wendy's body was discovered in a in a San Fernando garage with a charred grill at her feet and a suicide note nearby.

Cops initially believed the note and grill were staged and arrested Blackstone on murder charges, though she was later released pending the investigation.

Now, cops say, there's evidence to suggest the sisters had planned to commit suicide together before Blackstone backed out. Via TMZ:

Our law enforcement sources tell us, they believe Blackstone and her sister Wendy — who was deaf and partially blind — made the suicide decision and Jill executed the plan by putting a lit BBQ in their closed garage, which was supposed to fill the air with deadly carbon monoxide gas.

TMZ broke the story, Jill called a friend who called 911, and when paramedics arrived they found Wendy dead and Jill with severe carbon monoxide poisoning. They believe Jill was trying to kill herself along with Wendy but had a change of heart at the very last moment.

Blackstone—who's produced shows for Jerry Springer, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Dr. Drew—was reportedly hospitalized over the weekend and released on Monday.

[image via KTLA]


Contact the author of this post at gabrielle@gawker.com

Police Shoot Man Armed With Machete and Wasp Spray at Airport

0
0

Police Shoot Man Armed With Machete and Wasp Spray at Airport

A man wielding a machete and wasp spray at the New Orleans international airport was shot by police on Friday, The Times-Picayune reports. The man attacked TSA agents at a security checkpoint before he was shot three times by the on-duty sheriff's deputy.

The man was identified as Richard White, 63, a taxi driver. From the Times:

White walked down a TSA Pre-Check security line into Concourse B shortly before 8 p.m. and was challenged by an officer who was checking for his boarding pass, Normand said. He then pulled out a can of wasp spray and sprayed the officer, he said.

White ran past two other officers and then pulled a large machete from his waistband, Normand said. A TSA agent blocked the weapon using a piece of luggage as White ran through the magnetometer, he said.

White advanced upon sheriff's office lieutenant Heather Slyve with his machete, whereupon she shot him three times, according to The Guardian. Two bystanders were injured by stray bullets, including one TSA agent.

"I know there have been a lot of questions as to whether or not we believe there's any national security threat or anything along those lines," Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said.

"At this point in time, we don't have any information that leads us to believe that's the case as it relates to this situation."

Radio station WWNO reports that White is alive and in surgery but "unresponsive."


Image via AP. Contact the author at brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Here's the Video of Suge Knight Collapsed in Court

0
0

If you heard about Suge Knight collapsing in court yesterday and thought, "Damn, I wish there was video of that," well today's your lucky day.

TMZ first snagged the recording of the producer reacting to his $25 million bail, which was $23 million more than Knight reportedly expected to pay. The collapse reportedly required medical treatment and Knight was briefly hospitalized for the fourth time since his January arrest.


Contact the author of this post at gabrielle@gawker.com

Two MTA Bus Drivers Duked It Out In Midtown Last Night

0
0

Two MTA Bus Drivers Duked It Out In Midtown Last Night

Two MTA bus drivers were arrested in Midtown on Friday evening after getting out of their vehicles and fighting in the street, The New York Post reports.

According to the Post, Giuseppe Marinaro, 53, slammed on his brakes and got out of his bus after Leonardo Pacheco, 31, cut him off. Pacheco got out of his bus and allegedly "booted" Marinaro in the head.

CBS New York reports that the incident occurred somewhere in the Midtown South Precinct, "bounded by 45th Street on the north, 29th Street on the south, Madison and Lexington avenues on the east, and Ninth Avenue on the west."

Pacheco was charged with assault, the Post reports, and Marinaro with obstructing governmental administration.


Image via AP. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

The Unauthorized Biography of a Black Cop

0
0

The Unauthorized Biography of a Black Cop

We're celebrating the Fourth of July at my cousin's McMansion in Lake Mary, Florida, a short stroll across a golf course to the Sanford line. I'm surrounded by kinfolk I haven't seen since the last funeral. We're sipping sweet wine, Baileys, and beer. We're telling the stories we always tell, and stories I've never heard.

Trayvon Martin is all I've been thinking about since we rode into this muggy, power-washed, brunch-and-Froyo under palm trees town. The ghost of the boy lounges on the squishy sectional, sneakers propped up on the coffee table, staring into a smartphone while Netflix streams on the 60-inch TV. At the grown folks table, we're silent about the child who was killed a few miles from here. We're silent about the police that protected his murderer. We're silent about the dangers—homicidal, panicky, delusional, trigger-happy and otherwise fearful and deranged—white people pose to the grown black bodies around this table, to the black children joyously cutting a fool throughout the deep caverns of this house.

My cousin, who owns this palace, can't stop talking about safety and crime, 24-hour monitored alarms, robberies, and home invasions. Born and raised in the ghettos of Harlem, the Bronx, and Co-op City—like many of the Yankee transplants around this table—she's scared of boogeymen stalking this gated community. She laughs at herself. She's cried wolf so many times that the police know her by name. For this black mother of black daughters, stepmother to white daughters and sons, police—white police—are servants and saviors.

Sometimes the boogeyman shares your name. We take an inventory of all the men and boys whose crazy this family couldn't contain, all the full-time hustlers, liars, thieves, pedophiles, rapists, brawlers and killers. The snakes who threatened to blow momma's or uncle's or sister's or nephew's brains out 20 years ago. All the uninvited niggas who inevitably show up swinging and carrying steel. All the niggas you don't mention at reunions. We name them, these crazy niggas. We tell lies and half-truths, hesitant, scared, skeptical, unknowing whether the truths we know and want to speak are known to all. We shame. And we dare not nourish that shame by leaking family business. There's something wrong with the men in our family, one of us concludes.

I'm caught. I turn to my partner thinking of all the fights, the tantrums, all the times I called her out of name. I think of all the times I couldn't get out of bed and greet the day, all the times I wanted to swallow a bullet. I think of my biological father, an undiagnosed schizophrenic who beat my mother and imprisoned my mother and set fire to everything my mother had and everything my mother loved until she stole herself and me. I think of the intro psych class I took in college and hereditary madness. A sick man, they tell me. Your father was a sick man. That's what I told others—friends, girlfriends—when they asked why I was raised by my father's brother.

Dad: my uncle by blood, my guardian, my hero and my archenemy, the man who took me in when everyone else wanted to flush me down the toilet. Dad is flowing across the table, feeling nice off pink Moscato. He's telling war stories from his 16 years as a police officer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He's been retired for 16 years plus a decade. That's as long as I've known him, and as long as I've known myself.

Folk still ask if he's military. He has that kind of clenched butt cheeks, sentinel swagger—the panoptic gait of a self-described HNIC who always has the barrel of a 9mm nestled in the crack of his ass and a shotgun in the trunk outside. In the glove box, he still carries a shield engraved "Retired."

Strangers get heroic tales: going undercover to catch a rapist in Central Park; the contract put out on his life by a mafioso assassin; being one step away from making detective when he was forced to retire because his vertebrate collapsed like a stack of jenga blocks. As a kid, I memorized these stories riding shotgun along hundreds of miles of Alabama highway, pasture after pasture of cows, emaciated horses tiptoeing around half-buried sheets of galvanized roofing, tall grass interrupted by a gas station, a propane company, discount fireworks, a deer morgue, a lone donkey or goat. You never see a goat in a field with a donkey, Dad said once, detouring from nostalgia. You just won't.

At the grown folks table, the stories are more grisly, sorrowful, and introspective. Tonight, he's sharing snapshots of violence, stories I've never heard, confessions that I can't believe he would say out loud.

Some stories aren't mine to tell.

The Unauthorized Biography of a Black Cop

My story, as I remember it, begins in a warm kitchen in Bayshore, Long Island. It's July 22nd 1989 and, sour neck to moldy toejam, I'm wearing a 100 percent polyester Ghostbusters onesie. My Aunt, my mother's one-time foster sister and forever supafriend, is crying into her coffee at an hour normally reserved for my little self and a cold bowl of Cheerios. I don't remember everything she said exactly, but what she said was that my mother was dead. The night before, my mother suffered a massive heart attack in the parking lot of the Jones Beach amphitheater. The Doobie Brothers were in town.

The worst thing about the summer of 1989 is how quickly I forgot my mother's smell. Time-traveling through photo albums—from black and white toddler portraits to the gross snapshots folk take at wakes—I mapped the curves and wrinkles of her face. That's all I had. From what I know from stories, photographs, and ancestry.com, my mother was a couple generations removed from Poland. She was an orphan, and spent her childhood in and out of foster homes. She was a survivor. She was an addict. And she eventually went from community college to medical school, no thanks to Bill, my biological father.

Bill is the only person I'll name. The other names are too precious to me. A sick man, they say. Your father was a sick man. According to granmomma and everybody else, Bill was the kind of crazy a black southern family in 1950's Harlem—deeply religious and deeply scarred—didn't know how to handle. Beating the devil out of Bill only made the devil in him fight back twice as hard. So my grandparents released their oldest son into the streets.

As an adult, Bill ran gypsy cabs and prowled Riverside Park at night, robbing lovers. He once snuck a pistol through booking at the Tombs. Bill had a habit of calling on his little brother, my futurefather, the black cop, to get him out of sticky situations. He would pick fights in a crowded bar knowing his little brother would rescue him.

My mother was a teenager when she ran into this platinum-tongued, bird-chested charlatan, rayon shirt unbuttoned down to his belly, gold-plated pendant punctuating a bony sternum. Bill haunted bus depots and train stations for vulnerable youth, runaways, addicts, and the developmentally disabled. Bill hated himself. He hated being black. He ironed his hair and tried to pass as Indian. And he thought that marrying a white woman would give him a ticket to whiteness. When my mother sued for divorce, he threatened to murder me. According to multiple sources, Bill danced at her funeral, singing a remix to the Wiz: Thank god, the bitch is dead.

A sick man, they say. You father was a sick man.

My blood uncle—my futurefather—now my father, my only father, and for most of my life, my father and mother and sometime-friend was a stranger to me in July 1989. When he came to visit me in Bayshore, he drove a new, red Nissan Maxima with the keypad on the door. He stepped out the car in a fitted sharkskin suit smelling like Drakkar Noir. His trunk was full of action figures. By then, doctors had relocated bones from his hip into his neck. After a lifetime of violence, including two decades as a CO and a police officer, my futurefather's neck shattered while rescuing a motorist on the George Washington Bridge. I didn't notice it when we met, but he couldn't turn his head side to side. He could, however, wiggle his ears on command. That was hilarious. Stiff, hip-boned neck and all, he was strong and handsome and glamorous as Billy Dee. He told me to call him Dad.

The Unauthorized Biography of a Black Cop

For most of my childhood I lived with a single father, a man who accepted responsibility for a six-year-old grieving child when nobody else would. I was sad, confused, angry. That was a lot for a first-time parent whose only model of loving and parenting was violence. Dad was an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence, a man whose life occupation was violence. I was fully grown and in graduate school when he told me that he had no idea what he was doing.

I'm old school, Dad liked to say. Old school meant a touch less monstrous than his parents had been to him and his five sisters and brothers. That was abuse, he'd holler after I dared to talk back, after I shared with a trusted friend that I wanted to kill myself, after a social worker came knocking on our door to make him account for rays of red welts radiating across my back. Real abuse.

Count your blessings, Dad warned me. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. You don't see me running the streets. My father was a whore, Dad says, a gin-soaked shadow who visited their Harlem tenement long enough to eat a hot and heavy plate, leave some scraps for the children, and pick a fight with granmomma so he had an excuse to run the streets again. Grandad was the super for the building, but Dad and his brothers did the work that made the apartment rent free—slinging mops in the cold inky hours before school, collecting trash in the courtyard. The task of home training those children, of seeing to their moral instruction, of ensuring that they didn't turn out to be rogues like their daddy was granmomma's work alone.

Dad was a loyal, obedient son. He was a loyal brother, a loyal uncle, a loyal cop. Despite the traumas my grandparents and others put him through, Dad followed them to Alabama after my grandad retired from his long, dead-end job in New York. Acre by acre, during those 16 years at the Port Authority, Dad had mortgaged a small kingdom along Highway 80 in Lowndes County, Alabama, what elders call the Old Selma Highway. We moved from the Bronx to an apartment in Montgomery to a ramshackle horse farm on that highway, within sight of my grandparents' house and five acres.

During those early years, Dad thought I was crazy, the kind of crazy Bill had been. So he tried to beat the crazy out me. Real abuse or not, my father's tough love alarmed teachers and administrators at a rural country school where corporal punishment was an official policy, a school where it was common for fed-up bus drivers to storm off the bus, harvest a good switch, and start swinging. In fourth grade, my school called child protective services. Handsome,glamorous, good-smelling and looking like a black Hollywood actor peddling Colt 45, Dad charmed that social worker. She's now a family friend.

I don't remember being troublesome. I remember being invisible and unheard. When I threatened to run away, he offered to loan me luggage and give me a ride. When I asked his girlfriend if it was normal for folk to think about killing themselves all the time, he reacted as if it was him I had threatened to murder. Everybody wants to blow their brains out, he hollered after my whooping. What black person doesn't? When I boohooed about being light-skinned he emptied his shoeshine kit on my dresser and offered to paint me whatever color I wanted to be. Then he cussed me out for disrespecting my white mother. She came from nothing and became a doctor, he said. She had less than nothing, he said. She had Bill. A sick man, they say. Your father was a sick man.

The first night I saw Dad cry, he called me into his bedroom and confessed that Bill, his older brother by seven years, molested him when he was a little boy. Years later, Dad chuckled softly about the torture my biological father put him through. Real abuse. You should write that in one of your stories, he told me. Raising the son of a man who raped me. Raising the son of a brother that threatened to kill me more times than I can remember. Ironic, is that the word? I think that's the word. Ironic.

I research and write and teach about black liberation movements. I've often felt frightened or embarrassed to tell revolutionaries that my father was a mercenary for states that had infiltrated, assassinated, and incarcerated our last best chance to get free. Thinking back to Dad's childhood in Harlem, I once made the mistake of telling a Black Panther that Dad wasn't political as a youth. Being poor is always political, the black revolutionary told me. If Dad had been born a few years earlier, she said, he would have been a Panther.

When I was a child, Dad told me that he chose to become a cop because a cop was the most respected man on the block. When I took a seat at the grown folks table, he told me that he wanted control.

The Unauthorized Biography of a Black Cop

With my child fingertips, I tried to read the scars on his body: the crater where his mother's iron landed on his head, the crescent keloid above his hip where surgeons removed bones to reconstruct his neck. Dad recounted horrors that broke his body and horrors that anchor his memories, his nightmares, and his sense of self, to battlegrounds of a lifetime ago: that tenement apartment, the bus terminal, La Guardia, the GWB. Some horror stories he seems to relish in the reliving. Others are fleeting revelations off sweet wine, confided once or twice, then discarded, left to rot.

Before entering the police academy, Dad was a guard on death row at Green Haven and survived a riot at Sing Sing because he wore a dashiki and studied the Quran with inmates. Before he was on the job, incarcerated people, felons, and suspects were not the monsters the job needed them to be.

When he was 24 and still a rookie cop, Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 crashed at Kennedy Airport. Dad was among the first responders that rescued and comforted survivors. That long night of carnage haunts him decades later. Port Authority cops collected more than 100 bodies from flames, twisted metal, and grass.

Other scenes from his police career sound like oral histories of hate crimes. A mourning for control over bodies and their movements. For power. For sending perverts and jackasses and junkies to the emergency room. Stationed at the Port Authority in Times Square, Dad had a sixth sense for male travelers, he says, who journeyed into the city to fuck in bathroom stalls. The bathroom monitor with badge and a gun—you've seen him—peeking under stalls. That was Dad. He would lean over the stall and start swinging at heads. If not men cruising bathroom stalls, it was citizens who did not follow his commands unquestioningly, everyday people who disrespected the badge, bad-mannered civilians who refused to show papers, empty pockets, or open trunks based on his inventions of probable cause. Again with the billy club swings, or the nine to the temple. Death threats. I'll blow your fucking brains out. That kind of thing. This is the part of the job that nourished his nostalgia—picking fights, wishing a nigga would question him, talk back, disobey his orders, overtake him on the Major Deegan or the BQE. Regular, spontaneous violence decayed his vertebrae over the course of 16 years and thousands of fights.

For Dad, "junkie" became the kind of subhuman, unhuman, anti-human term that allowed him to cope with the violence of the job, the drug war and his personal stake in it. Busting a junkie's skull, bludgeoning a junkie, booking and processing a junkie, locking up a junkie upstate for a mandatory minimum was overtime for him. It was profitable. Easy money. And it was insurance for the day that his neck collapsed.

All those junkies and all that overtime steady increased Dad's pay grade to a livable pension. All those junkies and all that overtime enabled him to forward my mother's death benefits to a private white flight school in Montgomery, Alabama. It was a hateful place. It was a hate-filled place. The suffering and shackling of all those junkies gave me a passport and membership card to some of the most prestigious open-air drug markets in the United States: Montgomery Academy, Vassar, Indiana University, Yale. Granite gothic classrooms packed with trust-fund junkies, taught by junkies with PhDs.

Dad didn't need to read Ruthie Gilmore and Angela Davis and Sarah Haley and Michele Alexander to know that the prisons he worked at in 1970 were few and far between, had plenty of vacancies, and what they were full of was white men. He saw Green Haven, Sing Sing, Mattewan, and Rikers in 1970. He was there, baby-faced, 5'9, 150 pounds, strolling corridors of death, chuckling with inmates, rapping about Elijah Muhammad. He was in the police academy when Nixon declared the war on drugs. He was in uniform when Rockefeller declared life sentences for junkies and dealers. He helped fill those prisons, and new ones, with black and brown addicts. He was on the job when Reagan became an international cocaine kingpin. This history is his life history. His theory is his experience.

He's known that our prison industry, our policing industry, that our government profits from the internment of the poor, from the arrest of political possibility, from the bondage, theft, and underpaid labor of communities of color, of kin. "Junkie" as a subhuman, unhuman, anti-human caricature could never suppress the fact that it was actual humans and health and family at stake.

The Unauthorized Biography of a Black Cop

Now that I have a seat at the grown folks table, sipping that sweet wine alongside Dad, his pride has faded. The swole-headed and swole-chested laughter of a gregarious showboater is more restrained. That piece of metal engraved "Retired" is no longer a badge of honor for busting the heads of winos, junkies, disrespectful civilians, and men who have sex with men. As the years go by, more stories are retired, suppressed, or if conjured up again from the dirt of remembrance, remixed not so much for glory and amusement but as explanations, apologies, confessions, immolation—the atonement a poor black youth conscripted, a retired mercenary vampire that drained democracy of its hemoglobin, who walloped and handcuffed on behalf of the white supremacist capitalist oligarchs who profited from his neck-breaking labor.

After criminal defense attorney Bob McCullough engineered the grand jury decision, I'm on the phone with Dad. I'm walking my dog through my white neighborhood. It's November 25, 2014, and a few days from now we will break bread for Thanksgiving, a day he once renamed Black Family Togetherness Day on account of colonialism, genocide, and white supremacy. He's spitting all this irrelevant anti-blackness: Mike Brown was no angel; they found reefer in his system; yada yada. I'm crying on the phone with him. Hollering. He's calm for once. Why all the curse words, he says, like every other word out of his mouth isn't motherfucker. Dad is the type of black elder who watches Fox News in order to cuss out the TV. Shit has rotted his brain. The worst part of it is his loyalty, the uncritical defense of white cops—blue through and through.

If my mother-in-law, a nurse, sees another nurse killing patients, is she silent about it? I ask him. Does she blame the patient for getting killed by the nurse? Every semester a student comes into my office crying about the white supremacists and sexual predators my job protects and promotes. If somebody on my job abuses a student, I don't stay quiet. I raise hell. Don't tell me about raising hell, Dad shouts. Don't tell me about loyalty to white cops. I know black cops that have been killed. Killed, you hear me? On the job. By white cops.

We eat Thanksgiving lunch at a buffet on Maxwell Air Force Base. We're surrounded by elders and veterans. Inevitably, Ferguson comes up. "So you guys think that Darren Wilson should have been convicted?" a cousin asks. McCullough confused the whole process—for her, for a lot of us. No, my partner says. He should have been indicted. That's the point, she says, there should be a trial.

Dad is silent for the most part, listening. Somebody starts that "no angel" stuff again. I ask him about the black cops. He's buried black cops that were killed from the unfriendly fire of fellow officers, he says without saying much. He's been to the funerals. He leaves it at that.

Two days before Christmas, Reuters publishes a report about black cops in the NYPD. They fear that their co-workers might kill them. Knowing better, I post the story to Dad's Facebook.

His reply:

I never had a problem in NY and was very careful in NY because I knew the dangers of black cops being shot by cops. I had been stopped a number of times in Alabama, even had a gun pulled out on me in two occasions by Police Officers. I've spoken to many black men here in Alabama, and I happen to agree with them, that I'd rather be pulled over by a white Police Officer than a black. It seems as if the black Police Officer has something to prove to a black man that he is head nigger in charge. I as a black man feel more intimidated by a black Police Officer than a White one.

One of those times was recent. A group of serial burglars broke into his house. ADT called the sheriff's office. Dad also called the cops to notify them that he was on the way. He gave a description of himself, and that he would be in a white truck. When he arrived home, the black sheriff's deputy pulled his weapon on him.

I write back:

"the dangers of black cops being shot by [white] cops" seems like a huge problem. That you had to dress, speak, walk, and otherwise behave in certain disciplined ways in order to avoid being shot to death by your colleagues is exactly what blacklivesmatter is protesting against, and as you write, black cops are both victims and perpetrators of police brutality. No person—cop or not—should have to walk in fear of the police—white or not—just for existing.

What I don't write is a question. During my childhood, Dad was both Furious Styles and the black cop that stabbed his pistol barrel into Tre's throat. I wonder whether the trigger-happy black cops my father fears so much are just the sort of black cop he had been.

Christmas Day and I'm back in Montgomery, Alabama digesting another lunch buffet. In the kitchen, elders pass around spiked eggnog in a plastic jug. Dad and another elder are arguing about Mike Brown. This time around, Dad is talking all kinds of shit about McCullough, his defense of Wilson. I've testified before grand juries countless times, Dad says. I know the process. The prosecutor's job is to present evidence to get an indictment. No more. No less.

No, the Elder hollers. The system is good. The system works. He ain't listening and Dad is tired of talking. He blames Mike Brown's murder on marijuana, sagging pants, and black culture.

I grab the mic like a dummy. That is pure racism, I say to the Elder. That's the definition of racism. I'm talking decriminalization and prison abolition, conjuring my best Ruthie Gilmore and Angela Davis and Sarah Haley and Michele Alexander and Dad. This isn't about crime, I say. It's about public health. I know we've all loved addicts, had addicts in the family. Would you rather see them in prison or in a hospital?

The Elder's son steps in saying that he is teaching his own son how to survive: he has the right name, keeps his hair cut low, speaks proper, pulls his khakis up to his bellybutton, and will never toke ganja.

I interrupt him. You and I both know that a suit and tie will not protect your son, I say. Your survival strategies are not kevlar, and survival ain't enough.

You're right, Dad says on the way home. When it's white folks it's a damn tragedy. These white actors, when they overdose, fuck up a hotel room—that's a sickness they need help for. Rehab. A black person is just a junkie that died. Back then we were taught a junkie was a piece of shit. Wasn't human.

The Unauthorized Biography of a Black Cop

In the early 1970s, Dad flew to Los Angeles to take the police exam. The LAPD offered him a job to go undercover in Watts. The plan was ridiculous because Dad had never been to Watts and he could never trade the Harlem in him for that Calibama accent. Twenty years in Alabama and he still talks like a carpetbagger.

He would have taken that job if the Port Authority hadn't called first. He would have had 20 years when four LAPD officers broke Rodney King's skull. Had my father spent his career in the LAPD, he might have known Rolando Solano, the then-rookie cop, now Captain, who claimed under oath that the 50 blows to King's head were an accident.

"I saw some of the most vile things humans can inflict on others as a police officer in Los Angeles," wrote Christopher Dorner, the former cop, retired Navy officer, and murder suspect who declared war against LAPD officers and their families in February 2013. "Unfortunately, it wasn't in the streets of LA. It was in the confounds of the LAPD police stations and shops (cruisers). The enemy combatants in LA are not the citizens and suspects, it's the police officers."

In the memoir and memo "To: America," posted on Facebook two years ago, subject: "Last Resort," Dorner echoed many scenes from Dad's personal history. Dorner was an eyewitness to systemic corruption, the violent racism of coworkers and commanders, and the gleeful torture of vulnerable citizens, rookies, and black and brown cops. His brief memoir is a horror story of death-dealing cops who profit in overtime, emptying clips like depositing checks. "I've heard many officers who state they see dead victims as ATV's, Waverunners, RV's and new clothes for their kids," Dorner wrote.

Two years before Timothy Loehmann stepped out of his police cruiser, took two breaths, and fired two bullets at Tamir Rice, Dorner described the psyche and monstrous motives of police like Loehmann and Frank Garmback, his partner and accessory in murder, sworn public servants and first responders who refused medical assistance to a child slowly dying in snow and mud. "They will let you bleed out just so they can brag to other officers that they had a 187 caper the other day and can't wait to accrue the overtime in future court subpoenas," Dorner explained. "As they always say, 'that's the paramedics job…not mine.'"

The Navy and the LAPD trained Dorner to combat evil with violence. Instead of adapting and assimilating into a white supremacist paramilitary industry that profits off crime, that profits off poverty, that profits off the destruction of poor and black and brown bodies, that profits off the slow death of its own employees, Dorner combated the injustices of white supremacy by using the tools of white supremacy, by turning to his training, by killing. To "reclaim" his name as an "honest officer," Dorner targeted innocents. He promised to murder both the officers that had "destroyed" his "life and name," and their children, like Monica Quan and her fiance Keith Lawrence, a black cop.

The job destroys humanity, saps the plasma and morality from its foot soldiers and the people they are commissioned to suppress, bludgeon, and control. The job turned Dorner into a murderer, a monster. The job turned my futurefather from a traumatized youth and intensely loyal punching bag into a belligerent pawn, a paid bully who found pleasure in violence and feared for his life, terrified of his coworkers and anonymous perps slowly reaching for their pockets or waistbands.

"To those children of the officers who are eradicated," Dorner writes, "your parent was not the individual you thought they were. As you get older, you will see the evidence that your parent was a tyrant who loss their ethos and instead followed the path of moral corruptness."

As the grown child of a former police officer, a black cop, I don't see the tyrant that Dad once most certainly was, or impersonated, the immoral automaton that the force recruited and trained him to be. I see a 64-year-old man who is recovering from a lifetime of cruelty, haunted by two decades of neck-wrecking work on behalf of a government and industry of suffering that ate and depleted, but could not devour, his soul.

W. Chris Johnson teaches black history at the University of Memphis.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

Viewing all 24829 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images