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500 Days of Kristin, Day 100: The First Hundred Days

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 100: The First Hundred Days

One hundred sunsets into her memoir-writing journey, Kristin Cavallari has begun to steer the country away from fugly flats and into heels. Though her legislative gains have been meager—some might say non-existent—Kristin has attacked her overarching goal of putting her life’s work on the record with enthusiasm.

Since day one of slipping into her “writing” wedges, Kristin has been clear about her ambitions. When she announced her inaugural book deal in January, she told the public via E! News:

[The book will be] basically an intimate look at my life. It’s going to be a lot of fashion and beauty. Because I’m such a big health nut, it’s also going to be health and fitness. And then a lot of recipes because I love to cook and a lot of mommy and wife stuff. So really just everything in my life...

It was then that Kristin elected to give an estimate of when she might finish committing really just everything in her life to scroll. While other leaders might have promised to finish the job quickly, Kristin shot it straight.

“It’s gonna be out spring 2016,” she said.

Pundits have since agreed that Kristin was right to give this 500-day timeline, as evidenced by her progress on the book so far.

Since Kristin commenced work on the book, she has provided scant details about the status of the project to her constituents. At first, she declared publicly that the memoir would be titled Balancing on Heels. Ninety-three days later, she renamed the project Balancing in Heels, providing no explanation for the change. In the interim, however, Kristin did hint at what Balancing Within and Without Heels might look like in the far, far, distant future.

On day 50, Kristin announced from her professional no funny business office that she was “working away” on the tome. The photo she provided of said work suggests the book will be published on paper, in a long vertical column.

On day 61, Kristin confirmed that an almond butter cookie recipe would appear in the book, and on day 83, she announced that a recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip cashew ice cream had also made the cut. Without more information to go on, the talking heads began to wonder if this nut was cracking under pressure.

But Kristin fought to change the narrative in the press, providing more evidence of her progress on Balancing Except Heels on Instagram. She posted a potential cover image to the social media platform on day 94, remarking that it was “such an exciting day” for her.

She even promised the public a more active role in the future. “Wish I could show u guys all the cover options!” she wrote in a later post. “Once we narrow them down I’ll let you guys decide which one for the cover!”

At press time, Kristin and her cabinet (Stacey the Bartender; baby Camden; hair guy; baby Jaxon; no drama) had not narrowed down the options.

Though evidence that Balancing Betwixt Heels will ever be completed is slim, some observers are impressed by Kristin’s growth in general. Voter @badgirllilli55 noted on Instagram, “cant believe she’s happily married and has two kids [surprise face emoji] she seemed like a mad girl on the hills and Laguna.”

Kristin’s legacy remains undefined.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]


Life on the Dole: Let's Talk About Bootstraps

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Life on the Dole: Let's Talk About Bootstraps

Access to food stamps and other government anti-poverty programs is often used as a political football. This amounts to playing with human lives. Each week, we are bringing you true stories from Americans who receive public assistance. Here are your fellow citizens speaking about their own lives.

Bootstraps aren’t enough

Here’s a snapshot of life low income with a severely disabled child. Yes,we receive benefits, Medicaid, WIC, SSI of $733, and SNAP of $351. My fiance makes just over $10 a hour at a full time job, I’m a late 30s stay at home mother of a teenager, 4 yr old, and a toddler. Yes, tubes are now tied before the gallery starts in on how I’m having kids so I’ll be rich.

My 4 yr old son has severe autism, nonverbal, fine/gross motor delays. His psychological profile shows his self help skills of a 2 month old so he needs constant supervision, spoonfeeding of purees, bottles since he refuses cups despite 3 yrs of occupational therapy, diapers, and he doesn’t sleep well. Doctors want me to use melatonin which doesn’t work since everything else is habit forming that could help regulate. Thankfully the meltdowns are few, he’s usually happy or content most days unless he’s hungry, bored, tired or whatever. So a 7 month old’s mind in a tall 4 yr old’s body with about 18 month gross motor skills for reference. Add on a toddler who is into everything, a moody teenage girl, doctor appointments, 1 car household, a widowed father who needs partial help to stay in his home, a future mother in law going blind in another state and possibly needing help, tell me how I can pull us up by the bootstraps by getting a job.

My son does have a excellent 3 days a week public school preschool program at a local school for disabled children. But special needs daycare on the other days,daycare for my youngest is not affordable. I’m on waiting lists for respite care and autism services, when I signed him up at 2 yrs old they told me he had over 9000 children ahead of him in MD for autism services. We may receive those when he’s about 10 as kids drop off due to age they tell me. We haven’t had a date since 2011 unless you count Chipotle in the car, kids asleep in their car seats while we stargazed in our driveway. No vacation since 2010 and that was a family wedding. I coupon and enter sweepstakes on my smartphone as a hobby (no benefits phone here, relative’s family plan) to help stretch our money and win things for us. Can’t get married , then benefits drop for my son and I have a honor student going to college in a few years so stepfather’s income will count towards financial aid. Under $300 a month in child support from her dad. We did receive a tax refund, bought kids beds, clothes, and banked so we can dip into for rent or expenses. I know we are lucky and things could be more dire. My fiance is hard of hearing/Deaf and wants to work, however he had a bad spot 7 years ago and quit a good federal job before we got together. We’ve struggled, we love each other and our kids and fought to get to this point from nothing. His motto is you have to go through bad to appreciate the good in our lives.

A family in need

I am not a user of public assistance, though I am very familiar of its in’s and outs since both my older brother and younger sister receive benefits. He is 54 and she is 46, and both are long time benefit receivers, for different reasons.

He is a receiver and here are his stats: 54, single, no children. Not a drug user, but an active alcoholic. He has a master’s degree in theology from Howard U. He has held very view private company jobs in his life, and those were when he was in college all those years ago. After flaming out trying to run a small church that he was appointed to, he has mostly subsisted on “welfare”. He lives in Fairfield, CA and receives about $300 dollars a month in actual money, plus another $300 in “food stamps” (these are debit cards - more on that in a moment).

He “works” to make ends meet - he is the guy who washes your window at the gas station, or serves as a human directional (those guys waving signs at passing motorists advertising pizza or cell phones (yes, that’s what they’re called). He actually makes more cleaning windshields than being a human directional. But as a human directional, he can work fewer hours and sometimes get a free meal. He is paid under the table for that job by the small business owner and/or their marketing agency. Nice, huh? In any case, he rooms with a friend and pays $300 in rent to sleep on a sofa.

He often has other needs that cannot be paid for with his food stamp debit card so he uses that card as currency. How? At the local liquor store one can exchange one’s card to about 50 cent on the dollar. And it’s not just his local liquor store - I have been in multiple stores with him in various local cities and each “proprietor” accepts the debit card in exchange for about half the amount in cash... which he then uses to buy... stuff. Shaving stuff, household cleaning stuff, cleaning solution for his windshield adventures and, of course, alcohol.

So even though the gov’t restricts what can be purchased with food stamps/debit cards, every user I have encountered laugh at those restrictions.. including small business owners, like his pizza shop friend and other fast food friends that are independent from the major chains.

He is at an age that he cannot get a “regular” job. He has lived off the grid for close to 30 years and I imagine he would maybe shake hands at Walmart, or something like that and have suggested such to him, to be met with.. he can hustle and make the same amount. I don’t really have a good response to that, at least good enough that it will spur him to action. He needs counseling but that ain’t happening, and his medical care is much better thanks to Mr. Obama (thanks, Obama). So, he is in a state that he will remain until he passes, I believe. As a tax payer.. I’m okay with it to a degree because I don’t believe he is harming anyone. I may be rationalizing it due to it being my brother, but that’s what I think/feel. I supplement his income as well by paying his mobile bill and giving him cash now and then.

My sister is a life-long drug addict, in her 3rd recovery right now “thanks” to a bacterial disease that got into her foot and almost killed her due to dirty/shared needles. She is recovering and, at the moment, scared straight. Almost 1 year scared straight. She has held jobs, mostly food server and, believe it or not, working in elder care homes! There’s no background check to see her felonies for drugs, or any type of skill requirement other than wanting to be with old people, something she loves (that’s the state of elder care, I guess).

In any case, she receives about $1k per month (she told my brother, she’s better at working the “system” that’s why she gets more than him). She is bipolar II, and that has something to do with her allotment, she says but I don’t/won’t verify.

She also receives about $300 in food stamps/debit card, and in the past used the card to trade for drugs, goods, and what have you. For now, she is living alone (her “boyfriend” is finally in prison, and this is helping her recovery, no doubt) and paying about $400 in rent in Stockton, Ca, due to the nice person who owns her building and listened to her impassioned plea to allow her to rent without a background check. As with my brother, I supplement her income by paying some small bills, like mobile, and electricity. It is my way, for both of them, to have access to them so that in case of emergency I can reach them/they can reach me.

I have been married 15 years, have a 10 year old daughter and a 21 year old step-son about to graduate collage, so I pay that, as well. And that is why, I feel some obligation/guilt and help out my siblings even though they “should” be self-sufficient.

In any case, I hope this insight helps with your future column. The welfare state, I believe, is not just about those individuals who collect the assistance, but also about their extended support network who are also impacted by our leader’s decision to help/not help those in need (yes, I do believe both of my siblings are in need).

Public benefits saved my life

I just wanted to tell you my story. I am not currently receiving food stamps or any means-tested benefits, but I do get Social Security for disability. I lived for over 2 years on just welfare, food stamps, and student loans. For welfare, I got $460 a month, and my food stamps for me and my son were about $220 a month. It went up and down. The only reason I could survive was because my family rented me a tiny apartment for $300 and month, and I took out student loans and lived on those. Most of this was waiting for Social Security. I have a severe mental illness, which includes psychosis when I get really stressed. I had planned to be a math teacher, but I was really scared that it would be too stressful and that it would be horrible if I had a breakdown in front of kids.

When it was getting close to the time for my Social Security hearing, I was so scared. I knew if I was turned down, I would be thrown off of everything, most importantly Medicaid. I knew that I would have to find someone to take my son, and that I would probably become homeless. It was so stressful that it led to a breakdown and two hospitalizations in three months.

I’m the story of how the system works. Public benefits saved my life, in every way possible. I get now $819 a month for me, and $284 a month for my son. I got married a little while ago, and actually am able to do a little work as long as it doesn’t exceed $750 a month. So I’m doing that, and I went back to school. I’m hoping to be able to work from home because I do much better when I stay in the house.

So I hope that I will be able to get off Social Security someday. The thing that’s really great about it is they help you get off it slowly. For the first year that you work, you get to keep collecting benefits, and if you stop working within a couple years, you can get back on no questions asked. Also, most importantly, you still get Medicare for 7 years (I think).

Anyway, I think I would have cost the system much more if I didn’t get SSDI. Every time I get hospitalized, it costs between $5000 and $10000 for about a week of being there. Anyway, I’m lucky, and I’m so thankful, and I want to contribute to our society, and I think that I do now.

Still fighting to crawl out

I receive public assistance and have off and on since I lost my stable employment 2010. I currently live in North Florida and relocated here from Atlanta GA 2014.

2009-2010.was on of the hardest years for me. I went thru a crippling divorce which destroyed me financially emotionally and otherwise. I was actually in a very good financial position before that, having over 6 figures in my household. Due to divorce mid 2009—after buying my own house having to start over alone as a single mother with two kids after divorce and to find out I was pregnant that same year, I was still ok until I [was] laid off from making $60k, plus no longer having my ex husband’s salary of $70k... I got laid off 4/2010 and had to file bankruptcy the following month, 5/2010, just so I pregnant with two kids wasn’t put on the street. I had to apply for food stamps with no income, a 5 bedrm house over my head, [and] no help or family to assist. No one knew... looked as if everything was fine with the manicured lawn and neighborhood I was living in but was in a bankruptcy until 2013 when I let it dismiss for the 2nd time due to never recovering from the huge blow.

I have always worked off and on..temp jobs they cut your food stamps..any money comes in they cut them. It sometimes takes 2 to 3 months most time to get them back when they are cut and only last 6 months max at a time and you have to requalify. I got a job 2011 and moved to Miami and they cut them. Off and on the past 5 years and haven’t still recovered. Now with my last child being born with a disability and has to be monitored it’s extremely difficult to work hours past daycare hours which it’s hard finding a flexible 9 to 5 with all his Dr appointments. I actually started doing insurance full time as I could do my schedule around his appts as I was always licensed in it and did it part time for years before my divorce. I came off food stamps again 2012 when things were good and started my own agency. My business took a blow end of 2013 beginning 2014 and went from 33 agents to 3. With my hours and demanding needs of my son has become extremely difficult to find a job and then one to work with my hours in addition to my child’s needs. I was still holding on in a modification to my home until I had to short sell it to avoid foreclosure 2014 and been on food stamps again since 5/2014 and moved from the house I owned scraping to hold on into a cramped 2/1 apt.

I took a job in Fla another state trying to get work cause i was getting 510 for three kids on food stamps and went to 90dollars for working each time, and sometimes none—depends [on] the income when you’re working. Food stamps is not a fair program cause they penalize you for working and expect you to get help from other agencies even though you just need a lil help to feed your kids. The amount they give is not enough most times and it’s ridiculous to put restrictions on what you can buy cause it’s hard enough with the little they give you. It’s absolutely not true everyone on food stamps is not working. It’s an income based program and I used to complain about the purpose of it until I was put in the situation I am in and still fighting to crawl out.

The rat race

I’m a 41 year old white male born in Texas & residing here. I’ve got a few mental quirks & a couple of physical limitations that make regular employment unlikely. I’ve been working since my 16th birthday, but have never held a job longer than four years. Most of my life I’ve held two or more jobs, bc I usually earn the minimum wage allowed by law. I’ve been fired & rehired multiple times by a few employers. I’m a lovable guy, but my brain & body sometimes don’t comply with an employer’s demands. Since my employment history is so sketchy, I receive $200 per month in food stamps & I’m very grateful for them. They’ve kept me from dumpster diving for food.

I earn between $200-$450 a month doing odd jobs for elderly widows. One widow lets me sleep in her extra bedroom, bc I help her a lot & she can’t pay me anything. If not for her, I’d be homeless. I work pretty consistently. I take lots of breaks and work slower than most men & earn less logically. That’s life & I don’t stress about it. I have a budget that Ben Franklin would admire. I tried really hard to run the rat race. When I hurt my back at work & became homeless, I realized I can’t rat for shit. Now, I’m more like the scientist observing the rats. I’m fascinated by y’all, but I’m not one of you.

Optimistic, not delusional

I’m 28 years old and I live in central California. You know, that place that makes almost all of America’s food but is running out of water? That one. Specifically, I live with my mom and two autistic siblings. (One of them is on SSI disability, the other isn’t, if you want to know.) I’m disabled, too, having had fibromyalgia since I was just 9 and tachycardia since I was 21, but the government seems to think that I’m not quite disabled enough to get disability benefits. I can’t work a regular job, since there’s no telling how long I can stay alert each day or how much pain I’m going to be in, but I sometimes sell handmade jewelry online. I don’t make much.

When the ACA kicked in, it was a godsend. I applied right away, since I had to stop taking my more expensive medications when I aged out of my mom’s insurance plan. That was when I found out I was eligible for SNAP. See, through California’s website, when you apply for one kind of aid, like medical, it automatically applies for anything else it determines you’re eligible for. I mostly just wanted enough money to buy my own tofu and fresh vegetables once in a while, since I’m the only vegetarian in my household, and was surprised it also covered soda...

I’ve been on SNAP for about a year now, and I get about $190 a month, the maximum amount, since I make less than $150 a month. I’d have to make $1,940 in one month to earn myself out of the program, and while obviously I would love to make that kind of money and get off assistance, maybe even move out of my mom’s house, buy things that aren’t on clearance, live a normal life, you know, how people my age are supposed to live, it currently seems unlikely. I’m optimistic, not delusional.

On the line

This is going to my family’s past. Myself and my wife are not currently on social services, though it would be nice right now.

With that said, my family didn’t get much in the way of social services. My dad got unemployment for a time, after he was laid off, and my brother and I availed ourselves to the free and reduced lunch programs at school, until budgets at our school were cut.

We did try applying for [Temporary Aid for Needy Families] several times, but were flatly denied, because my parents, even when my dad was receiving unemployment, were making too much on paper. In reality, we had a mortgage, property taxes, plus my parents had to find the money to feed four people. We never really lacked in food because my dad is sort of a food hoarder, and even though he would store stuff for years on end, and the food wasn’t great all the time, we still got by in that area.

Instead, if we got TANF, it was simply going to help us keep the lights on and the water running. The power company where we lived charged outrageously for it, even in Texas (it was a co-op in name, but the board members, IIRC, were eventually taken to court for some kind of fraud.) Summers in Texas will regularly run your bill up to $250 a month for a small house (like ours) or apartment, and we were pulling in, if I remember correctly, 300, sometimes 400. After much teeth pulling, and no help from the government, we finally worked out a deal with the power company, but it was still a struggle to keep the bills paid. Our water was shut off a time or two, I remember. Not for long, but it was the same situation. The water company was extremely expensive (it was a private water company.) The months where we had everything kept on were good months.

For the reduced lunch program, my brother and I benefited from that for a while. And it helped, a lot. But when we were going to school, Texas school districts and the state started the trend of cutting budgets. This meant that the reduced lunch program was restricted, and it was kept a fingernail’s breadth from our reach, starting when I was in high school and my brother was in middle school. We started packing our lunches when we could (which meant, when either him or I remembered to, since my parents simply didn’t have time. Eventually my dad got a night job and was barely in the house anymore, and my mom left early in the morning to commute into downtown Austin.) If we forgot, then it was peanut butter sandwiches and water for lunch. When I got my first job in high school, the two main places my income went was either cigarettes for myself, food or drugs (pot was the only way I could stay somewhat sane in this situation.)

For all this time, we were in a gray area where assistance would have helped tremendously, but we couldn’t get it because we were always just outside that line of qualifying for help. I imagine this was the experience of many families during the Clinton era, where welfare was slashed and people were forced into that awful welfare-for-work program, or just didn’t receive assistance at all anymore. I have a feeling here that the people who are able to receive assistance now, it isn’t enough to actually help (in fact, I know it isn’t.) And those who make just a bit more, but who it would really help, that small amount, don’t have access to it.

[Image by Jim Cooke]


Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

De Blasio Proposes Spending $54 Million More on Mental Health Services

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De Blasio Proposes Spending $54 Million More on Mental Health Services

Will we ever hear the end of the de Blasio administration’s shtick? First, the mayor wants to give a metric ton of cash to public schools that are struggling. Now he’s signed off an a proposal spearheaded by his wife, Chirlane McCray, to put an additional $54 million toward mental health services in NYC.

Who do these two think they are? Servants for the public good?

The AP reports that McCray’s outrageous plan would mean that over 80 schools throughout the city would get “mental health clinics, every police precinct would have a victims’ advocate and social workers would arrange psychological care for thousands of families in homeless shelters.”

The additional $54 million will be negotiated at City Council meetings before the budget is finalized at the end of June, and if it passes, this number could to $78 million over the following years. McCray, as well as daughter Chiara de Blasio, has spoken often about her advocacy for mental health services in the city. Announced on Tuesday, McCray’s budget aims to put her plans in motion, this time with city money:

The city Health Department already spends about $300 million a year, much of it state money, on mental health. But the administration and mental health advocates say the proposal marks a new and notable commitment to incorporating care in an array of settings, including senior citizens’ centers and runaway youth shelters. Planned services will include crime victims’ advocacy and art-therapy sessions for young people in the city’s Rikers Island jail complex.

Imagine what this city would look like if de Blasio could get to work on time. Utopia!


Image via AP. Contact the author at dayna.evans@gawker.com.

Beachfuckers Could Get 15 Years for Fucking on Beach

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Beachfuckers Could Get 15 Years for Fucking on Beach

The Florida couple who last year had sex on a beach, went to sleep, and then had sex again, all while a grandmother filmed them, have been convicted of lewd and lascivious behavior, and each face up to 15 years in prison, the Miami Herald reports.

The defense for 40-year-old Jose “Benny” Caballero and his 20-year-old lover Elissa Alvarez claimed that Alvarez was “dancing on” her man and trying to wake him up, but they never actually fucked.

“You folks cannot speculate,” the couples’ lawyer told the jury, according to the Herald, “And in order to say they had intercourse, you would have to speculate.”

The jury didn’t buy it, though, after seeing video of the incident and hearing testimony from a witness who said a three-year-old had seen the couple’s public display.

They returned a guilty verdict in just 15 minutes.

Caballero will likely get the maximum prison sentence, as the beachfucking incident took place less than three years after he’d served an eight-year sentence for coke trafficking. Prosecutors are just asking for jail time for Alvarez, who has no prior record.

Both will have to register as sex offenders.

[Photo: Fox13]

That Time Mike Huckabee's Loser Son Allegedly Tortured a Dog to Death

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That Time Mike Huckabee's Loser Son Allegedly Tortured a Dog to Death

Welcome to Loser Sons of Politics, a new column where the politically minded among the Jezebel staff recall with fondness the antics of the loser sons of politicians. Today (because it’s a very big and special day for the former Arkansas Governor), we’re recalling that time Mike Huckabee’s loser son David killed a dog at Boy Scout camp by hanging it to death.

The story, of which we were reminded by an alert reader, begins when Mike Huckabee’s youngest son David was 17 and working as a counselor at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Arkansas, in 1998. One day, David Huckabee and a 19-year-old fellow counselor named Clayton Frady came across a stray dog. The pair of young men captured the dog, and then killed the dog (some accounts say that they hung the dog to death; others differ). As a result, both David Huckabee and Clayton Frady were relieved of their duties as camp counselors.

Neither man has commented on the dog’s death in the intervening years, but the fathers of the boys have told different stories about what happened. Huckabee says the dog was killed because it was mangy and in bad health (a weird explanation, as most humans’ response to seeing a dog with mange wouldn’t be to kill it), and Frady’s father says that the dog was already being tortured by other boys at the camp, and David and Clayton simply put the dog out of its misery. An anonymous tip sent to a local animal rights activist described the dog’s death as one that occurred after hanging, and the director of the camp said that the dog had been put down by a vet because David and Clayton had failed to “be kind.” (What the fuck goes on at Boy Scout camps? Are they all like little reenactments of Lord of the Flies? Jesus Christ.)

Of course, you can’t control the actions of a separate human being, especially a 17-year-old male one. But Mike Huckabee can certainly control Mike Huckabee’s actions. According to a Newsweek piece about the incident, rather than forcing his sociopathic chip off the old block to face legal ramifications for killing a dog because the spirit moved him, a law enforcement official who worked on the case says then-Governor Huckabee intervened with attempts to investigate the dog’s death.

But John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas’s state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee’s chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor’s request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee’s Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer’s intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee’s office and fired. “I’ve lost confidence in your ability to do your job,” Bailey says Huckabee told him. One reason Huckabee cited was “I couldn’t get you to help me with my son when I had that problem,” according to Bailey. “Without question, [Huckabee] was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son,” says I. C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little Rock, who worked closely with Bailey and called him a “courageous” and “very solid” professional.

Huckabee denies this.

This old anecdote was dredged up in 2007, around when Huckabee was discussing running for President (and not long after the time David was arrested in Little Rock for trying to board an airplane with a gun. Classic Loser Son!). The story surfaced again early this year, after Huckabee made the very dumb strategic move to flap his gums about the Obamas’ lax parenting because they let their teen daughters listen to Beyoncé.

After the dog-killing incident, David went on to attend Arkansas State University, an institution he says he selected partially due to its proximity to good duck hunting. In an interview with the campus newspaper his freshman year, he said that after college, he hopes to “either be the President or to be the one who makes the President the President.” He also doesn’t want people to like or dislike him for who his father is, but for who he is as a person.

“Don’t judge me before you know me.

“I’d rather people just judged me on my personality and my character and my integrity,” he said.

Done.

Know any dirt about some dumb politician’s loser son? Email us.

Image: David Huckabee’s mug shot shortly after his arrest in 2007 at age 26. Yeah, only 26. I know, right?


Contact the author at erin@jezebel.com.

What's the Stupidest Thing You've Seen on Your Facebook Feed?

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What's the Stupidest Thing You've Seen on Your Facebook Feed?

The habitual scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed—alone on your computer late at night; on your phone while standing in line for coffee; right now, at your desk at work—is among the worst learned behaviors of the last 10 years.

The Facebook feed has re-calibrated the way we read, namely by making it so much easier for us to not read—as we scroll, we scan, our eyes primed for anchor points in the stream. We are all familiar with the blocky outlines that cause us to slow our rapid scrolling to a hover: photos, videos that start playing automatically, status updates from friends you actually like, status updates from your parents or extended family, whatever is “going viral” right now.

Yes, your “feed” is personalized to some extent, ever-changing algorithms notwithstanding; you add the friends and “like” the pages that are thrust into your own timeline. But humans are beholden to an innate sense of laziness and churlishness: Years later, you still have a handful of high school friends, college buddies, old co-workers, and randos you met once at a party traipsing through your feed every day. And oh my God, do they say and post the stupidest shit.

That stupid shit can take on any number of formulations and permutations, but perhaps most commonly manifest themselves as racist tirades, opaque political diatribes, strident bigotry, and just general outrage.

The shaming of your crazy, racist high school classmates, your crazy, racist aunt, or some other moron you keep visible on your Facebook for the pure thrill of their stupidity and your incumbent feeling of superiority is wasted in secret. Share the worst thing you’ve ever scrolled past on your Facebook in the comments below. Include screenshots and provide some context. The best-worst items will be honored and thoroughly shamed in an upcoming post. And remember: the Facebook friends you think are the worst could be thinking (and saying) the same thing about you.


Image via HBO. Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

Like Elizabeth Warren? Vote Bernie Sanders

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Like Elizabeth Warren? Vote Bernie Sanders

Though we wish it could be so, Elizabeth Warren is not running for president. The dominant narrative has already become: Warren’s supporters will now have to settle for trying to exert influence on Hillary Clinton. Not so fast, narrative!

If you are a person who cares about economic inequality, and the inordinate influence of money on our democracy, and Wall Street’s unaccountability and plunder of public resources—a well-informed person, in other words—you were probably disappointed to learn that Elizabeth Warren would not be running for president, because she is the strongest mainstream political voice in America who speaks out intelligently in favor of addressing those very issues. Some would have you believe that Warren’s decision not to enter the race means that those of you who believe in the causes that she champions should not slide over into the camp of The Inevitable Nominee Hillary Clinton, who will reward you with, perhaps, a gentle leftward nod and wink during the course of her staunchly centrist campaign.

“There are frequent references to a Warren wing of the Democratic party and to the need to appeal to it,” Bloomberg writes. “Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, is openly courting her.” In the New Yorker, Ryan Lizza says that “Clinton has taken notice” of Warren, already making overt efforts to enfold her in the comforting embrace of Planet Hillary.

I say to everyone who supports Elizabeth Warren’s eminently reasonable positions on issues of basic fairness: hope is not lost. You do not have to throw up your hands in despair and slide your support over to Hillary Clinton. The inevitability of Hillary Clinton’s triumph is a facade, manufactured by a team of political consultants for the purpose of making her victory easier by encouraging any and all opponents to give up and fade away. There is absolutely no reason that progressives should lay down and surrender to Hillary Clinton—who is a calculating and talented politician who is better than a Republican, but who cannot be called a progressive if that term is to mean anything. Even as Hillary Clinton mouths platitudes about fighting inequality, her own legion of Wall Street backers does not take any of it seriously. “She’s not saying that a hedge fund manager shouldn’t be making what they’re making,” one financier shrugged to Politico. “Just that someone in another job shouldn’t be making 300 times less.”

In fact, a hedge fund manager shouldn’t be making what they’re making. If you have enough of a sense of justice to understand that, there is no reason for you to feel that your vote is already a foregone conclusion, a year and a half before the actual election. Even without Elizabeth Warren, there is a candidate in the race who represents true progressive ideals. That candidate is Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders favors strong progressive taxation to fight the ongoing trend of massive accumulations of wealth among a tiny elite.

Bernie Sanders favors an expanded social safety net to protect the poor.

Bernie Sanders favors a single-payer public health care system for all.

Bernie Sanders favors breaking up the “Too Big to Fail” Wall Street banks that pulled the world into a global recession in 2008.

Bernie Sanders favors a $15 per hour minimum wage.

Bernie Sanders favors stronger support for organized labor.

Bernie Sanders also favors legalizing marijuana, by the way.

Compare the positions of Bernie Sanders with those of Elizabeth Warren. Anyone who feels strongly about the economic and social causes championed by Warren will have little choice but to recognize that Bernie Sanders fully embraces most of the same causes, and the same policy solutions. There is no need to make some emotional, over-the-top, campaign ad-style plea here. Look at what the candidates believe. Vote for the candidate who represents what you believe.

Three and a half decades of rising inequality must stop, or else. Bernie Sanders should have the support of everyone in this country smart enough to understand that. Everyone including Elizabeth Warren.

[Photo: AP]


Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.

Ban Men from Literary Readings

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Ban Men from Literary Readings

There we are, sitting in the middle of a crowd of people in the back of a bookshop. Could be BookCourt, McNally, powerHouse, Housing Works: you know, the good ones. Maybe we’re even at a university. The author has spoken. The moderator has asked his own special questions. Silence has fallen. Now, the gazes of the dudes onstage swing towards us assembled fans like the headlamps on two old Volvos going round a corner. Up go the hands! The moderator chooses a select few, seemingly at random.

“Now, I haven’t read your book, but I very much look forward to doing so. Your conversation prompted me to recall…”

“What you seem to say in your book—I haven’t read it yet, but based on this evening’s talk—egregiously overlooks the contribution of…”

“This isn’t so much a question as a comment. The way you describe your process reminds me of the book I myself wrote in the early 1980s…”

I look at the friend beside me, then the one on the other side of me. My arm is getting tired. Neither of them meet my aghast eye; they do not bother to be surprised. I keep the arm up. Don’t you see me? I want to yell. Don’t you know a woman my age would never ask a question without having read the fucking book? But no, the moderator doesn’t seem to know! My face goes all hot.

There’s a procession of question-askers: professors, grad students, writers, editors, self-appointed smart guys. Well-intentioned, each one. The vast majority are straight. Some are even married—their wives are sitting right there, listening. They’re not bad people, especially not taken one by one. It just so happens that choosing a literary line of work means engaging with them en masse with such regularity that their features as a group start to become clear.

To be more specific, I’m talking about the literary events my colleagues in the New York books’n’mags universe and I attend basically every week (to support our friends, out of interest, or both) and the people who get called upon by the moderators of these events to ask questions, post-reading.

My qualm is neither a nitpick nor a call for revolution. But it exists. And it needs to be addressed. Too many literary readings are being both whitewashed and dick-washed by absurdly biased conversations. And the fault lies with the people in charge of these events, the moderators and authors conducting what should be thoughtful (and promotional) gatherings for their projects.

The Q&A session after a reading isn’t a contest. The act of putting your hand up is undeservedly maligned, anyway, and I don’t wish to stigmatize it further. The kid who raises their hand all the time in class, or so the stereotype goes, is desperate: to be heard, to be admired, to curry the teacher’s favor. So as not to be thought the stereotypical handraiser—not to be thought the person thinking me! me! pick me!—too many students just keep them in their laps.

This self-censoring behavior, once learned at school, seems to stay with young women and other groups outside the white-dude enclave well into adulthood. So, you just don’t see the young woman put her hand up when she’s got something to say. What if people were to think her dumb, or that she liked the sound of her own voice? What if unspecified humiliation were to take place? What if, indeed.

As a result of this trained self-censorship, at least in my experience, people in charge of literary events are used only to hearing the voices of men, so they simply don’t bother to make sure there is parity in the discussion. I don’t mean to suggest that it is women’s fault that they don’t wave their arms hard enough. The fault is in an absence, an absence of attention: the moderators just don’t notice that we are there.

They just don’t notice that the only people they’ve asked to speak are white-haired, white-skinned turtlenecks who haven’t been to class in thirty years. It all leads me to wonder: what is the point of these events? To talk about books, sure. To inject a little lifeblood into the twitching corpse of real, live literary culture, perhaps. To get a productive conversation going? I should coco!

As far as I can tell, the only point of a big public launch for a high-brow book is shifting units. Which is totally OK! These can be simply commercial occasions. If it’s just a party, fine—but admit it. If publishers, writers, and editors want to hold themselves in higher regard than that, want to believe that they are creating and fostering culture rather than just wafting the breezes of public relations and their attendant dollars about the place, then they must recognize that book events are professional as well as commercial spaces.

Your colleagues are there, other writers are there. This is, if you take yourself seriously, a semi-professional environment. Bias in discussion at literary events is thus a professional problem, but one (very like sexual harassment, in fact) constantly written off as the cost of working with brilliant but badly socialized men.

The best model I have for fostering a productive group conversation is my experience as a teaching assistant at NYU. The difference between a literary reading and a classroom is that, in a classroom, the teacher (even a minimally trained teaching assistant like me) knows who’s bullshitting. Anybody who has taught will back me up on this: the faces and cadences of the kid who has done his homework and the one who hasn’t are unmistakably different. What makes a literary reading and a classroom the same, I think, is the fact that any contribution from a person who has done the required reading will improve the tenor of the conversation, no matter how unconfident the speaker.

Why, then, do people (men) behave at readings in a way that would cause them to get kicked out of my class? Why are grown adults (men) so keen to speak, when they have not in fact done their homework? Why do these greying men put up their hands, and why do they always get called on, when nine times out of ten they can be relied upon not to have read the book or even admit that there’s anything they don’t already know about? Finally—and most outrageously— why are neither they nor the moderators who default to them the slightest bit embarrassed that this is happening?

This, then, must be the real demand of those who moderate readings: fire the moderators. Stop asking famous men to host your book launch on the vague assumption that they’ll draw a crowd. They’re just going to distract from your work, talk about themselves, and then mess up your Q&A. Resist the institutional inertia that heaves you in this direction! Instead, ask somebody who has managed a group of people directly within recent memory. Hire a teaching assistant, a kindergarten teacher, an aerobics instructor, a bus driver. Anyone but a semi-famous male author.

If I knew what to suggest I would do something cleverer than heap pity and scorn on the culprits in bars with my friends. Who am I not noticing not being noticed? Who do I fail to hear as I put my grad-schooled, lily-white hand in the air?

One day, perhaps, we all shall be on that slightly raised stage in front of some fixed mics, and frail old men will clamor for our attention and for hardbacked copies of our works. “Hear me now, fuckers?” we’ll shriek at them, feedback ringing through the bookstore aisles. “Do you hear me now?”

Josephine Livingstone is an academic and writer in New York.

[Photo via Flickr]


There Was Some Really Bad Writing in The New York Times Last Weekend

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There Was Some Really Bad Writing in The New York Times Last Weekend

Beneath the fatuous trend piece about yippity yipsters moving to L.A. that the New York Times Styles section gleefully shat out Sunday, there was some really bad writing in the Times last weekend. Let’s see what was the worst.

First, we had my third-least favorite Times columnist, Michael Powell, ringside at the Floyd Pacquaio-Manny Mayweather (whatever) melee, along with three other reporters (cutbacks? what cutbacks?). Michael Powell is a bad writerer. He writes very hard about sports. He writes about sports like he is spitting on the subway tracks, or eating raw steak, or running in combat boots. His writing grunts. More troubling, Powell writes extremely poorly about women, and how terrible sportsmen interact with (read: beat) them.

Here is what he wrote about documented woman-beater Floyd Mayweather last week.

LAS VEGAS — Boxing is admirable in its primal beauty. The best fighters are ferocious athletes, tacticians with the endurance of marathon runners.

They work amid broken noses, bruised organs, and head shots that send the brain rattling from one side of its casing to the other. You hope for your man to knock the other man senseless, and the sooner the better. A right cross below the heart, a left hook, and bye-bye.

Floyd Mayweather Jr., who on Saturday will meet Manny Pacquiao in a money swamp of a championship welterweight bout, is a master of this predator’s ecosystem. He swings an executioner’s ax and drops opponents with startling ease.

“Fighters aren’t scared of each other,” Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s trainer, noted. “That isn’t part of the sport.”

It is a reasonable bet, however, that the girlfriends, wives and children of Mayweather, a professional fighter with a body like coiled iron, view fear in a different light.

A reasonable bet, indeed! Boxing is so beautiful, and Mayweather, “body coiled like iron,” probably looks just as beautiful beating his wife as he does Pacquaio—a true athlete and man.

The column continues:

Mayweather has served a wee bit of time, although his sentence suggests a bill to society paid at pennies on the dollar. He pleaded guilty after beating Harris and threatening his own sons. The judge was kindly. He sentenced the champion who beats women to 90 days. Then he postponed the sentence so that Mayweather could fight for a championship that earned him millions of dollars.

Las Vegas is endlessly forgiving.

And what of Powell? Powell is endlessly forgiving too, in the mold of the most dastardly and useless writers. He is in love with his craft, his spit, his blood on the page. His job is not about doing any serious reckoning, whether it be for Josie Harris or Janay Rice. It is about being serious and masculine about sports.

Powell, after all, was in Vegas to write about the fight. He might have thrown in a few grafs about whatever wife to show that he remembered he needed to seem solemn and serious amid the spectacle; but all the while he used his pen as a way to partake vicariously in the absolute masculinity onstage. Those are the stories that Powell wants to tell.

Moving on. An essay in the Travel section of the Sunday Times, “How Doing Nothing Became the Ultimate Family Vacation,” seemed innocuous, and maybe even interesting, at first. Novelist Reif Larsen writes about how he got over his aversion to all-inclusive resorts after having a child named Holt. A beautiful tale of overcoming hardship. But then the essay devolves into a weird rant against American public transportation and the types of people one might meet while traveling on it:

But it was not just the infrastructural deficiencies; carting Holt around the United States, we constantly encountered what I call the “Really? Why you gotta be bringing that into here?” scowl from Transportation Security Administration officers, baggage attendants and our fellow passengers. It was as if people secretly wished we could stow our child in cargo so that we would not disrupt their game of Candy Crush.

This past Christmas we took an overly crowded Amtrak train to Washington. We looked but could not find a baby-changing table anywhere. We asked the conductor and he nodded vaguely to the wheelchair-accessible bathroom.

“I think there’s something in there,” he said. There was not. My wife ended up changing Holt on the gross bathroom floor, puddles of indeterminate substances pooling dangerously close to his head as the train rocked back and forth.

Wow... cool story... ? According to the author, absolutely nothing like the events he describes above has ever happened in Scotland, which is a perfect place that presumably has the “right” kind of people in it.

In conclusion, both of these essays are bad, but the Powell wins for the worst. There is nothing as horrific as overwrought sportswriting.


Contact the author at leah@gawker.com.

Great news for Yankee imperialists too lazy to travel to Florida: Starting in July, JetBlue will off

Manny Pacquiao Sued by Disgruntled Fans for Hiding Shoulder Injury

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Manny Pacquiao Sued by Disgruntled Fans for Hiding Shoulder Injury

A couple of boxing fans have sued Manny Pacquiao for allegedly failing to disclose a torn rotator cuff before last weekend’s “fight of the century” against Floyd Mayweather. Pacquiao’s team says he reported the injury to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, but a form he filled out prior to the fight indicates no shoulder, elbow, or hand damage.

Staphane Vanel and Kami Rahbaran filed suit on behalf of everyone who bet on the fight or purchased the $100 pay-per-view broadcast without being aware that Pac-Man was hurt, TMZ reports. They’re seeking $5 million for consumer fraud and fraudulent concealment.

Pacquiao’s injury apparently kept his punch count much lower than normal in the Mayweather fight, which Pacquiao lost on points in a unanimous decision. It’ll take surgery and a healing time of 9 months to a year before he can fight again.

His team says he disclosed that he was hurt to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency so he could get approval for an anti-inflammatory shot before the event, but the NSAC denied the treatment, saying the injury was never reported to them.

Mayweather dismissed his opponent’s busted right arm as an excuse for the outcome of the fight, saying he was fighting hurt as well. He told ESPN:

“If [Pacquiao] would have come out victorious, the only thing I could have got up here and said was, ‘I have to show respect and say he was the better man. Both my arms were injured. Both my hands were injured, but as I’ve said before, I always find a way to win.”

[Photo: AP Images]

Targeted Killing Is Just Good Business

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Targeted Killing Is Just Good Business

Red Gate Group. The name is somewhat ominous. But don’t get too excited. It isn’t Blackwater and it’s only a $10 million a year operation. There’s no scandal; no hidden political contribution; no device that doesn’t work; there’s nothing unique at all. In fact it’s merely one of literally hundreds of companies just like it. And if and when it’s gone — when it’s likely sold to some bigger company for a handsome profit — a Blue Gate or Black Gate or Green Gate Group will take its place.

Red Gate Group is in the business of killing – there’s no other less blunt way to put it. No one at the company pulls a trigger or pushes a button, they are merely part of a vast ecosystem that runs the war against terrorism. They produce nothing. They employ former military and intelligence people and other technology experts attracted to war. They depend upon military leaders who themselves can’t wait to retire and make millions working for just such companies. They compete for contracts, where they then play a role shaping their own relevance, implementing unwavering policies.

Red Gate – up-and-coming according to Washington Technology — grows annually in its services provided to the military’s Special Operations Command and the intelligence community. The Chantilly-based company was founded in 2006 by two retired Army officers — Ernest Benner and Wade Jost. They are both West Point grads and they come out of that world: that world of special operations and contracting. According to the company’s LinkedIn page, they offer

“specialized knowledge operating in three main functional areas: Intelligence and Operations; Science, Technology, and Acquisitions; and Information Technology. Across these functional areas Red Gate Group provides world class consulting expertise in efficient program management, contemporary multi-tiered training techniques, and cutting-edge technical services”

Red Gate’s specialty, when you wipe away all of the business speak, is targeting. It’s virtually impossible to say who the United States government wants to target anymore: Zawahiri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Koni, ISIS/ISIL, al Qaeda, al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Haqqani, Houthis or a hell of a lot other H’s. The list is vast.

But it’s clear who Red Gate wants: They’ve got a number of openings right now for people who can set up the kill. An All-Source/Targeting Analyst who works at Red Gates, the job description says, would be responsible for tracking “networks or individuals within networks ... [or] vulnerabilities” within networks. Minimum of ten years experience. Top Secret clearances with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information demanded. PowerPoint capable. They are looking for people willing to both work in Washington and in “uncertain, or hostile environments while living in austere conditions for extended periods.” The country is virtually immaterial, even the subject matter is irrelevant: counter-terror, counter-drug, counter-counter-counter.

Targeted Killing Is Just Good Business

I say so much about Red Gate is immaterial because it’s as interchangeable as the country or the mission. More than two dozen companies moreover are competing right now to hire experience, qualified and cleared targeters, competing with each other for the same contracts, offering bonuses and benefits to make their numbers. Just look at Monster.com – no pun intended: there are 65 job advertisements looking for targeters of various kinds; at Glassdoor there are 91 announcements.

The list of companies in this space is vast, the need as endless as the target list. New companies are still springing up to offer their services, competing with each other to hire former military and CIA people to “man” (person) the government computers. But it’s also public companies that are a part of any institution’s investment portfolio: Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, Leidos.

Red Gate Group just also happens to have three retired generals on their payroll. One is Lieutenant General Frank Kearney, who was Deputy Director for Strategic Operational Planning at the National Counter-Terrorism Center before he retired. Brigadier General Marty Schweitzer, was the former Joint Staff Deputy Director for Regional Operations – or the day-to-day officer in charge of running targeting operations – before he retired.

Targeted Killing Is Just Good Business

Another is Major General Lee Price, who was Deputy Acquisition Executive for Special Operations Command and the Army’s first female Program Executive Officer before she retired. They lend their names and “expertise” to Red Gate, helping to get contracts and attract junior officers to do the work. They all run their own consulting companies and sit on a gaggle of boards, providing, ahem, more expertise.

Again, I can’t repeat enough that Red Gate Group is hardly unique. With fewer than 50 employees, I see on its website that it’s also busy staffing up the office of the Under Secretary of the Defense for Intelligence in the Pentagon, where the policies get made. So just to be clear: The same no-name company sits at the right arm of those at the top making the policies and then sits at the keyboards to implement the same policies.

Wanted: Targeting Analyst — Expert. Bush to Obama, Democratic to Republican Congress, nothing much changes. The loci of the global drone war is hardly the CIA anymore. Oh, the agency might take the lead for strikes in Pakistan, but even there, saying that the Agency is running the spying and killing apparatus is ignorant and evasive. If anything, the National Counterterrorism Center is a better hub to point to (Kearney’s old outfit), except that the military’s Special Operations Command (Price) also runs its own operation under the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Schweitzer) and literally tens of thousands of pilots, sensor operators, analysts, weaponeers, lawyers and more toil away daily at this constant task. The drone strikes are relentless, and in that, the U.S. government argues, plots are disrupted and terrorists are kept at bay.

Am I being unfair? Why pick on Red Gate? It’s just another company; I said so myself. They are just one of thousands of contractors we’ve been talking about for years. They are providing security services, the blowhards in Washington and academia will say, because “the people” don’t want to make the sacrifices. They aren’t doing the important work of making decisions. And in there I guess I kind of agree: it isn’t the most important work, it’s just business.

You can contact me at william.arkin@gawker.com, and follow us at @gawkerphasezero. If you are into the theater of being underground, you can anonymously deliver tips through theGawker Media SecureDrop. I’m open to your input and your questions, tough questions.

[Screenshot courtesy of redgategrp.com. Photo of Major General Lee Price courtesy of LinkedIn.]

Chris Kattan at the Phoenix Airport: A Poignant Picture of Celeb Sadness

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Chris Kattan at the Phoenix Airport: A Poignant Picture of Celeb Sadness

*Presses play on Haddaway* Hey, do you guys remember Chris Kattan? He was in a movie with Will Ferrell about dancing that was released when dinosaurs roamed the earth. In any event, Chris Kattan is still around, and it turns out he had a Sunday that was an acutely exquisite portrait of the sad life of a C-list celebrity.

On Sunday, according to TMZ, Chris Kattan was at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Why was Chris Kattan in Phoenix? TMZ says he had recently missed a connecting flight, but days earlier he had performed stand up at a club in the city that requires a two drink minimum. Regardless, Chris Kattan was leaving Phoenix, or he was trying to anyway, but he got into a little bit of trouble. A little bit of trouble at the Southwest Airlines terminal of the Phoenix Airport, where he had recently been deposited by employees of Southwest Airlines:

Phoenix PD says officers were dispatched to the Southwest terminal on Sunday evening to remove a passenger who’d been barred from boarding his flight. Sources say Kattan was mumbling and nervously walking around the gate until 5 responding officers arrived to escort him out of Sky Harbor Airport.

Before he was banned from a Southwest flight in Phoenix for stumbling around incoherently, Chris Kattan told police that he took an Ambien, which is a very natural and normal thing any average American would do to pass the nearly infinite time on the 90 minute flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles.

According to Chris Kattan, as told by TMZ, he was merely looking for “a spot to crash”— at the Southwest Airlines terminal of the Phoenix airport.

K.

[image of Chris Kattan at the Sex Tape premiere via Getty]

Things That Could Kill You According to Weather.com, Ranked

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Things That Could Kill You According to Weather.com, Ranked

Weather dot com has built itself into a traffic juggernaut over the past couple of years by positioning itself as the leading source for telling you what THIS is. With great power comes great responsibility, and you won’t believe how close you are to death until you’ve checked your local forecast.http://thevane.gawker.com/weather-com-ki...

1) L of Doom

Things That Could Kill You According to Weather.com, Ranked

A large Tetris block will crash into the waters off the southeast coast as part of a promotional deal for Disney’s 2012 animated movie Wreck-It Ralph. Tsunami waves will ripple from the copyrighted, L-shaped game piece, inundating millions of square miles of coastland.

Odds you’ll die: 62%

2) The Answer Will SHOCK You

Things That Could Kill You According to Weather.com, Ranked

A rift in the ocean will swallow a bridge, which an elderly man leaning off a dock will pull out of the water with his bare hands. Meanwhile, a volcano will erupt while aliens shoot lasers at us tonight. Everyone shaded in purple and orange is at risk for days to come. From what? Stay tuned to find out.

Odds you’ll die: 31%

3) Prepare Now...

Things That Could Kill You According to Weather.com, Ranked

Don’t bother, you’re already dead. We reached the event horizon and the known universe has long since collapsed into a singularity. Thankfully, The Weather Channel was there to name it.

Odds you’ll slip from this corporeal realm only to have to watch Fat Guys in the Woods on a loop for eternity: 93%

4) Desert Shield

Things That Could Kill You According to Weather.com, Ranked

The Weather Channel has teamed up with the oil and gas producers of America to deploy a large shield over the desert southwest in order to thwart that terrible “solar energy” debacle. Wind shear caused by the disc’s deployment caused dangerous severe thunderstorms in central Texas.

Odds you’ll die: 17%

5) It’s Headed Toward Earth

Things That Could Kill You According to Weather.com, Ranked

It’s headed toward Earth and no one can stop it, because you won’t stop doing unholy things to watermelons and sea creatures.

Odds you’ll die: 1%
Odds you’ll disappoint your mother: 100%

[Screenshots via The Weather Channel]


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

Fox News' Resident MD: Men Should Be Able to Veto Women's Abortions

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You may have heard about the New York Times’ most recent awful decision to make room for an awful op-ed, this time in the form of Sofia Vergara’s ex-fiance clamoring to get out of a contract because he essentially he decided he no longer wanted to be in one. This particular contract, of course, was about embryos. Enter Fox News.

In the New York Times piece, Nick Loeb spends a lot of time hitting conservative, pro-life talking points in an attempt to explain why he should be able to break a contract that would allow Vergara to forbid making babies out of her embryos—so that he can then make babies out of her embryos. A matter that’s completely beside the point because he willingly entered into a legally binding contract. But, if nothing else, it opened the door for Fox News “Medical A-Team” doctor Keith Ablow to say some really stupid shit.

Among the gems:

The bottom line is why would a woman’s right to do what she wants with a frozen embryo trumps a man’s right? If he wants to bring these embryos to term, good for him.

Good for him indeed! Birthing a child is an impressive feat for any man.

It’s not a coin toss it’s about whoever wants that potential being to survive — that’s who win.

He’s correct that it’s not a coin toss, but there’s nothing to win here. When he willingly signed his contract, Loeb had already made his decision.

We don’t decide a priori that two parents can decide to do anything with potential life. I’ve been outspoken on this — I believe that men should be able to veto women’s abortions if they’re willing to care for the child.

Of course two parents shouldn’t be able to decide. Just the one will be enough.

You can watch the whole, mind-numbing segment for yourself here.

[h/t Salon]


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.


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Black Widow: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

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Black Widow: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

The arguments over Black Widow have gotten ugly. Last night, Joss Whedon quit Twitter, with an image that pointed the blame at Twitter haters. But there’s a real issue with Black Widow, and her role in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and it’s worth talking about. It’s worth talking about it like adults.

After Whedon abandoned Twitter, people were quick to point the finger of blame at rabid feminists and their Black Widow pile-on. Comedian/actor Patton Oswalt tweeted, “There is a “Tea Party” equivalent of progressivism/liberalism. And they just chased Joss Whedon off Twitter.”

Whatever the reasons for Whedon quitting Twitter (yet again), it’s clear the discourse around Avengers: Age of Ultron has reached a vile tipping point. That’s not OK.

But assholes on Twitter shouldn’t distract us from having a real conversation about this, so we’re going to talk about Black Widow... like adults.

A lot has gone wrong with the way Black Widow has been treated in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — before, during, and after Age of Ultron. There were signs before the movie premiered that the studio and even Scarlett Johansson’s co-stars weren’t willing — or able — to take the character seriously.

Once the movie came out, there were a metric ton of problems with how the character’s story arc was presented. And after everyone digested all that, the backlash started. A backlash that seemed centered on Joss Whedon as a person, and not on having a real discussion about the movie.

1. The Marketing

Some folks are asking, “How did it come to this?” But we’re left wondering, “How did no one see this train wreck coming miles ahead?” The writing has been on the wall for weeks.

The character was jokingly slut-shamed not once by her fellow Avengers, but twice. After already getting into it and being forced to apologize, Jeremy Renner was back on TV last night making the exact same mistake. He apologized on Conan, but he also reiterated his point that Natasha is still a slut:

Mind you, we are talking about a fictional character and fictional behavior, Conan, but if you slept with four of the six Avengers, no matter how much fun you had, you’d be a slut. Just saying. I’d be a slut. Just saying.”

How is it okay to say this about Black Widow — someone who, to be very clear, has not hooked up on screen in any of the movies — but no one’s going “Tony Stark? Yeah, he’s a total slut.” We actually have seen that on screen. As a thing that actually happened. He may have reformed and found his one and only — but Tony’s badass boast in the first Avengers movie is “Billionaire playboy philanthropist.” He gets “playboy” as an accolade, but the Black Widow is somehow a slut.

Next up in the long line of Black Widow mishaps was the total lack of Black Widow merchandise and toys. The character isn’t even included with most Avengers toy sets, and has little to no presence on the shelves. The Mary Sue has a pretty eye-opening piece on the real reason that Disney’s toy arm had no interest in selling to girls: basically, they’re full up. “They already have the girls’ market on lockdown,” the piece explains. Great. Just great.

40% of the audience for the first Avengers movie was female. But, sure, Frozen’s got the girl market on lock — so why bother?

The lack of Black Widow toys was so apparent it even got cast member Mark Ruffalo to tweet asking to fix this problem.

All of that could just be a few out-of-touch marketing people, and actors making bad decisions. The movie could have a different message, couldn’t it?

2. The Movie Itself

As bad as all that was, it’s the Black Widow’s actual arc in the movie where things go well and truly off the rails.

If the Avengers represent peak Marvel (in notoriety and public recognition) then Black Widow by association is the main female character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And quite honestly, that’s not saying much.

To quote Jen Yamato in Daily Beast, “In 11 Marvel Cinematic Universe films thus far, strong female co-leads have only appeared in larger ensemble team-ups, primarily as lethal and emotionally impenetrable femme fatales who double as love interests (shoutout to Guardians of the Galaxy’s Gamora).” By the time Marvel makes a standalone female superhero film (Captain Marvel), Captain America, Tony Stark and Thor will all have had three standalone separate films. That’s 19 films before a singular film that stars a woman superhero.

Yes, there are other female-driven Marvel Studios properties (Agent Carter, Agents of SHIELD), but Black Widow is the only female Avenger, and she’s the only recurring female character in the MCU who’s seen real character growth. Avengers: Age of Ultron was supposed to feature her big character reveal. Whedon was teasing her character arc back in 2014 via MTV:

Joss Whedon: “Natasha is a huge part of the sequel because you do want to concentrate on the people who don’t have their own franchises. Although she in ‘Cap 2,’ [and] she’s great. She was the most fun for me because she’s not a hero, you know, and it’s something that I read—and I feel bad that I can’t remember who wrote the book—but it’s in one of the books explaining, ‘These guys are heroes, you are a spy. It’s a different thing—it’s a different skill set—and you don’t have their moral high ground or any of that good stuff.’ And that just makes her so interesting to me. So yeah, the stuff I’ve got going on with her in the second one is killer.”

Remember the whole (fairly baffling) accounting turn of phrase “red in my ledger” that was referenced way back in the first Avengers movie by both Black Widow and Hawkeye? This was (presumably) what Whedon was talking about. This “red” was Black Widow’s way of admitting that she’s not like the others, and that her role in the Avengers is an attempt to right the bloody wrongs from her past. Pair Whedon’s previous quote with the showdown between Black Widow and first Avengers villain Loki, and you’ve got one hell of a backstory:

Natasha Romanoff: It’s really not that complicated. I’ve got red in my ledger, I’d like to wipe it out.

Loki: Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Dreykov’s daughter, Sao Paulo, the hospital fire? Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it’s GUSHING red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer... PATHETIC! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code. Something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away!

Too bad none of that set up was actually followed up in Avengers 2.

She does get some great moments in Age of Ultron. Black Widow’s the one who gets the Vision body away from Ultron. She saves Cap’s bacon by getting his shield back to him. All of that could have been part of her being an assassin working off her past — she even talks about how being an Avenger is a dream, and the reality is that she’s a monster.

When Banner tries to tell her it’s not their fight and they’ve got to run, she kind of betrays him by bringing the Hulk out to join the battle. That would have been a more interesting story — the assassin so caught up in wiping out her bad deeds, she’s willing to sacrifice personal happiness for the greater good. That all would have tied into what we’d seen before. Would it have been perfect? Probably not. But it would have been better.

But instead, all of that was aggressively pushed aside for a new phenomenon: Mommy Widow.

For months we scanned trailers picking out promises of a Black Widow’s soon to be revealed backstory. So imagine our disappointment, when Black Widow’s secret backstory, about training as a cold blooded spy, was boiled down to a forced sterilization. A horrifying reveal, but not really the “red ledger” reveal we’d been promised. Julie Delpy appears in a forced Black Widow flashback, showing her young spy training culminating in one horrifying gesture. Would Black Widow have to kill her parents? Her friends? Her puppy, Kingsman-style? No her “graduation ceremony” would be that she would be sterilized. Foisting a frustrated desire for motherhood and self loathing onto this character. It makes her feel permanently alone. We know this because that’s what she tells Hulk during a quieter character reveal moment for Black Widow.

Instead of an assassin constantly struggling with finding moral lines she didn’t know existed, we got a woman who feels incomplete because she cannot have babies:

“You know what my final test was in the Red Room? They sterilized me, said it was one less thing to worry about. You think you’re the only monster on the team?”

That’s what the Red Room did to her. It’s not the loss of innocence through killing or being forced to live a life of betraying people. The greatest loss is motherhood. That’s why she’s a monster like the Hulk. Poor Black Widow. She leaned in, and where did it get her? She’s a lonely, incomplete, monster.

But it’s OK because The Avengers: Age of Ultron is going to give Black Widow a baby. A gigantic baby named The Hulk, and a brand new superhero power of “the lullaby.” Not a whisper or a song or a knock-out juice — a lullabye to coax her baby to sleep. This new power is trotted out over and over again, as if to say: Black Widow don’t be sad — you have a baby Hulk.

And her role as the mother of the team, as a whole, is also implied when Black Widow ruins a perfectly great empowerment moment after picking up Captain America’s shield and stating, “I’m always picking up after you boys.”

This blows. Instead of wading into the “red ledger” of a complicated person who did seriously heinous acts and is trying desperately to buy redemption with good deeds, we get the character who feels ruined by her barren womb. And even worse, the movie tries to fix it by infantilizing another character into her big baby. This stings even worse when you compare the great scenes that Black Widow did have in Avengers 2. For instance when all the boys are squabbling over who was worthy to hold Thor’s hammer Black Widow just kicks back and remarks, “That’s not a question I need answered.”

Black Widow: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Also great: her new escrima-sticks weapons, her light up suit, and the whole action scene where she takes on Ultron after jumping out of a jet on a motorcycle. (There were some complaints online about Black Widow being a “damsel in distress,” because Ultron kidnaps her and brings her back to his lair. But after her general ass kicking, seeing her get temporarily captured didn’t bother us. Plus, once kidnapped, Black Widow cobbles together a signal to tell the team where Ultron was, so she kind of saved herself and also saved the day.)

So Black Widow gets plenty of heroic moments in this film — but they’re overshadowed by her big “no kids” reveal, and the fact that the Hulk becomes her substitute child. How did this happen? We can only assume that the plot morphed over time (as many movies do) in various script drafts. But it’s sad, because it really casts away all the slow work the previous movies did teasing out that Black Widow’s past was built on bloodshed.

She can’t just be the coolest aunt, or have made the valid choice that, as an assassin and spy, maybe kids are not in the cards for her. Or even the more radical choice that she just doesn’t want them. No, she can’t ever have babies, so her life is ruined. She is an incomplete woman. Of course, only Hawkeye has kids — although he has to have them on a secret farm.

Black Widow is barren and therefore dead inside. Poor, empty-nested Mommy Widow, who even loses her love interest and pseudo-baby in one fell swoop at the end of the movie. The Hulk vanishes, to have more solo adventures later. Meanwhile, Black Widow is what? Captain America’s number two in The Avengers: The New Class. Sigh.

3. The Backlash

But instead of sitting down at the table of the Internet and discussing these issues like calm, collected folk, the Internet responded as only the Internet knows how: with pile-ons and death threats.

The people who criticized Whedon publicly — which may or may not have spurred Whedon leaving the Internet — are, themselves, getting death threats. It’s a snake eating its own tail.

People have been writing about the many ways that the treatment of Black Widow has sucked, but that’s all going to get lost now. Instead, everyone’s going to talk about the abuse. And about Whedon, personally, instead of the work. But that’s just playing into the Internet’s many ongoing culture wars, and it’s going to ruin everything.

So, it’s time to sit down like big boys and girls at the adult table — and talk about this, without flipping the goddamn thing over.

Woman in Wheelchair with No Legs Wins Treadmill on the Price is Right

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Life is short and cruel and then you get on the Price is Right.

Case in point: Danielle Perez, a woman in a wheelchair who made it on the show Tuesday only to scoop up a brand-new treadmill.

According to CNN, Perez—who lost her legs in a 2004 accident—says the show edited out the audience’s “awkward” reaction.

She said the strangest thing about her win was the reaction of the staff members on the show.

“I kept thinking that it was a really big joke,” she said with a laugh, “But there was no irony in their cheers or applause.”

Despite a collective and awkward pause from the audience that she said was edited out of the show, “Everyone at CBS seemed genuinely excited for me that I won.”

According to a spokesperson for the show, “Every member of The Price Is Right studio audience has a chance to be selected to play... Prizes are determined in advance of the show and are not decided based on the contestants.”

Perez tells CNN she’ll probably just use the $2,400 treadmill as a “piece of furniture.”


Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Yet Another Walking Dead Actor Arrested for Drunk Driving in Georgia

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Yet Another Walking Dead Actor Arrested for Drunk Driving in Georgia

This weekend Peachtree City police nabbed a Walking Dead star for driving drunk near the Georgia town where the AMC show films. And if you’re thinking you’ve read this story before, you have: it’s the second time an actor from the show has been arrested for a DUI in that county.

According to the AP, officers pulled 46-year-old actor Seth Gilliam over on Sunday around 2 am after they observed him driving erratically.

“The driver applied the brakes prior to passing my vehicle and was still traveling at 107 mph,” a Peachtree City police officer, who was in his patrol car and running radar, wrote in a report.

The speed limit on that stretch of highway is 55 mph. It is not far from the set where much of the TV show is filmed in the nearby town of Senoia. Gilliam plays Father Gabriel on a drama that portrays survivors of a zombie apocalypse battling infected “walkers” and each other.

Gilliam told the officer he had three beers and a shot of alcohol, according to a police report. The actor’s eyes were “extremely bloodshot,” the report said.

Police say they noticed a strong odor of marijuana emanating from the Chevrolet Cruze, and found a marijuana joint inside a cigarette pack in the car.

Gilliam is reportedly facing an array of charges, including drunk driving, reckless driving, and drug possession.

He’s the second actor from the show to get arrested in such a fashion—cops caught actor Scott Wilson driving around the same area with a 0.143 BAC. According to the police report, Wilson attempted to evade arrest by demonstrating yoga poses and decrying the road as “slanted.” He was unsuccessful.

It’s unclear if Wilson actually served time for the offense or whether prosecutors plan to offer Gilliam any sort of plea.

[image via AP]


Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

D.A. Who Failed to Indict Eric Garner's Killer Elected to Congress

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D.A. Who Failed to Indict Eric Garner's Killer Elected to Congress

Staten Island district attorney Daniel Donovan has won a special election for the house seat left open by disgraced congressman Michael Grimm, who pled guilty to felony tax evasion in December, The New York Times reports. Donovan is the same D.A. whose office failed last year to secure an indictment for Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner.

According to the New York Daily News, Republican nominee Donovan handily defeated his Democratic opponent, winning 58 percent of the vote to city councilman Vincent Gentile’s 41 percent, with more than 70 percent of precincts reporting.

One unexplained aspect of Donovan’s treatment of the Garner case is why the D.A. chose to leave a lesser reckless endangerment charge against the officer off the table, a crime more likely to result in an indictment than the negligent homicide and manslaughter charges. However, Garner’s death was never considered a significant issue in the race. From Politico:

A poll commissioned shortly after Grimm’s resignation by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee showed that 58 percent of likely voters in the district approved of Donovan’s handling of the case, and Gentile didn’t press the issue in a district home to a substantial share of New York City’s police officers.

Last year, one Democrat had an even starker assessment: “He could have killed the guy himself and still would get re-elected [as district attorney],” the Long Island resident told The Daily Beast. “Everybody just loves Danny. To them, the guy can do no wrong.”

[Image via AP Images]

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