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What the Hell Is Happening at Gibson Guitar? 

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What the Hell Is Happening at Gibson Guitar? 

Today is the 100th birthday of guitar god Les Paul, whose innovations helped to make Gibson one of the world’s most famous guitar makers. Speaking of that—how is Gibson doing, these days?

How is Gibson, that iconic brand, celebrating the centennial of Les Paul, its iconic godfather? A special guitar? A grand concert? A national ad campaign? No. Gibson is celebrating this day by “giving everyone who purchases a 2015 Gibson USA guitar TODAY the chance to have the purchase price of their guitar reimbursed back to them. 1 out of every 10 will win!”

Truly an iconic remembrance.

We last wrote about Gibson last year, when we reprinted an ENRAGED email from the company’s famously unlikeable CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz (pictured). Though it is difficult to get any official accounts of trouble at Gibson under Juszkiewicz’s leadership, unofficial accounts—meaning tips from disgruntled current and former Gibson employees—are not hard to come by at all. In fact, we’ve received quite a few ourselves.

It’s not just people leaking to us. The internet is littered with employees decrying the “toxic environment” inside Gibson thanks to its “narcissistic” CEO, and the company’s own Facebook page is littered with comments from fans and customers decrying the latest models as too expensive and of too low quality. Of course, when it’s impossible to get official confirmation of all the rumors you hear, you never can say definitively that they’re true. What you can do is to say to you, the all-knowing public: What have you heard about Gibson lately?

Because I’ve heard that guitar sales are down sharply this year; that Gibson managers are on notice that there will be hell to pay unless sales go up in a matter of months; that the company screwed up a payroll recently; that the egomaniacal CEO Juskiewicz is functioning as an all-powerful (and easily pissed off) HR chief; and even that he has demanded to personally approve who gets access to the company’s Tennessee Titans tickets. But who can say where the truth lies?

What have you heard about Gibson? Leave a comment, or email me.

[Photo: Getty]


Remember When Jeb Bush Proposed Public Shamings for Unmarried Moms?

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Remember When Jeb Bush Proposed Public Shamings for Unmarried Moms?

People forget today that George W. Bush first ran for president as a “compassionate conservative” because it was novel to do so: Most conservatives openly acknowledged that they were pricks by 2000. Like George’s brother Jeb, who wrote in 1995 of wanting society to attach a “sense of ridicule” to single parenting.

The Huffington Post on Tuesday went through the unpleasant task of locating and reading a copy of Jeb Bush’s Profiles in Character. Co-authored in 1995 by the soon-to-be Florida governor and his deputy chief of staff, Profiles in Character is your typical kitschy politician’s bookstore fare, a nod to JFK’s Pulitzer-winning Profiles in Courage and compulsive gambler-turned-conservative moral pontificator William Bennett’s Book of Virtues. And its existence may be a bit embarrassing to a politician trying to position himself as the staid, smart grownup in the Republican rumpus room.

That’s because it exposes Bush as either the lone conservative who’s experienced a dramatic, against-the-current swelling of civility and respect in the past two decades, or a grumpy hypocritical asshole.

Last month, discussing social problems in America, Bush told an interviewer he wasn’t trying to pass judgment on poor people today—he just wanted to have a frank, honest, respectful discussion about the causes of our social ills [emphasis added]:

The minute you suggest there’s a better path for large numbers who are struggling, you’re accused of ‘passing judgment.’ That just freezes the conversation. But it’s not ‘judgmental’ to suggest that a baby being brought up in poverty without a dad will have a bigger challenge growing up and the mom will have a bigger challenge economically than if they had an intact family.”

Yes, let’s just have a conversation! We don’t want to pass judgment on people who have had tough lives. Relatedly, here’s Bush on the same issue in Profiles in Character, in a chapter titled “The Restoration of Shame”:

One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful.

Irresponsible unmarried fornicators don’t get humiliated enough in public or cast out by their families anymore, that’s the problem. (No judgment!) Doesn’t anyone remember the good old days of the 1840s, as related in that uncomplicated celebration of public shaming, The Scarlet Letter?

Bush points to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, in which the main character is forced to wear a large red “A” for “adulterer” on her clothes to punish her for having an extramarital affair that produced a child, as an early model for his worldview. “Infamous shotgun weddings and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter are reminders that public condemnation of irresponsible sexual behavior has strong historical roots,” Bush wrote.

As HuffPo points out, governor Jeb put his (nonjudgmental!) theories into practice, refusing to veto “a very controversial bill that required single mothers who did not know the identity of the father to publish their sexual histories in a newspaper before they could legally put their babies up for adoption.” He also advocated humiliating juvenile offenders, siding with a columnist who proposed “dressing these juveniles in frilly pink jumpsuits and making them sweep the streets of their own neighborhoods! Would these kids be so cavalier then?”

On one view, Bush’s decades-old ruminations are refreshing: Conservatives who want to dismantle government once conceded honestly that their ideal “free” society had just as many constraints in individual freedom as a communist state’s; it’s just that the limits came from good ol’-fashioned moral busybodies and their powers of ostracism instead of any formal legal code.

Who helped Bush write this dreck, anyway? That would be his longtime consigliere, Brian Yablonski, who now directs external affairs for a power company and works “to use market principles to solve environmental problems”— while serving as a powerful deregulator at Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. It’s unclear how much success he’s had merely shaming polluters and poachers into doing the right thing. No judgment!

[Photo credit: AP Images]


Contact the author at adam@gawker.com.
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Bratton: Hiring Black Cops Is Hard Because We Jail So Many Black People

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Bratton: Hiring Black Cops Is Hard Because We Jail So Many Black People

In an interview with the Guardian about diversity and the NYPD, department commissioner Bill Bratton said something that at first seems baffling in its racism and stupidity: “We have a significant population gap among African American males [in the NYPD] because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can’t hire them.”

In other words, Bratton is arguing that because having been to jail is all but an insurmountable barrier to becoming an officer, and because so many black New Yorkers have been locked up, the NYPD is having an awfully hard time finding black people who are eligible to become cops. And presumably, that is why the police academy’s 2015 graduating class has the lowest percentage of black graduates since the 1960s. (6.8 percent of the upcoming class is black, compared to 7.3 percent in 1970, the Guardian points out.)

But if a disproportionate number of black New Yorkers have been arrested, who do we blame but the demonstrably biased police department that arrested them? Bratton is remarkably self-aware on this point:

Bratton blamed the “unfortunate consequences” of an explosion in “stop, question and frisk” incidents that caught many young men of color in the net. As a result, Bratton said, the “population pool [of eligible non-white officers] is much smaller than it might ordinarily have been”.

Let’s briefly and unscientifically run the numbers on his claim. Black people make up roughly a quarter of New York City’s 8.4 million-person population, and across all ethnicities, roughly 78 percent of New Yorkers are over 18. Even if half of all black adults had been sufficiently ensnared by the law to prevent them from becoming cops, that leaves more than 800,000 black people living in the five boroughs who are eligible to fill spots on a roster of about 34,000 NYPD officers, or will be eligible in a few years (The minimum age to become a cop is 22). And with no policy requiring NYPD officers to live in the city they serve, those figures entirely leave out cops who live on Long Island or in Westchester. In attempting to gently repudiate stop-and-frisk—a policy that a federal judge called unconstitutional and discriminatory in 2013—Bratton has essentially overstated rates of black criminality by two or three orders of magnitude.

But he’s not wrong about this: The NYPD’s own history—and present—is the biggest obstacle between it and a more diverse police force.

Implicit in Bratton’s minor mea culpa is the idea that a brave new NYPD has since turned its back on the ugly dragnet that left so many black residents with criminal records. Leaving aside the fact that Bratton himself is widely credited with architecting stop-and-frisk in New York during his first stint as commissioner under Rudy Giuliani, that is wishful thinking. Yes, stop-and-frisk is decidedly down under Bratton, but “broken windows” policing—the aggressive pursuit of low-level lawbreakers like turnstile jumpers, sidewalk bicyclists, and public drinkers—is decidedly up. And just like with stop-and-frisk, the NYPD has been shown to drastically favor targeting poor people and people of color for these minor offenses.

“I just think that for a lot of officers, black men are viewed as something other than human beings,” Trevana Garel, a black woman and former NYPD internal investigator, told the Guardian. What is to be done? Policies like one highlighted in the Guardian article—the department is evaluating structural impediments toward black officership, like flawed written exams and a $3,000 fee for appealing a “negative psychological assessment”—are a good start. But until the fundamental racism that Garel points out is changed, it’s hard to imagine the department changing around it.


Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

America's Largest Sci-Fi Publisher Gives in to Reactionary "Sad Puppies"

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America's Largest Sci-Fi Publisher Gives in to Reactionary "Sad Puppies"

Earlier this year, two campaigns variously made up of traditionalist sci-fi fans, neoreactionaries, Gamergaters and other flavors of angry white dude hijacked the nominations for one of sci-fi’s most prestigious awards, the Hugo. Now one of the biggest publishers in sci-fi and fantasy seems to have come out in support (or at least appeasement) of those same groups, known as Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies.

Tor Books, America’s largest SF/F publishing house, reprimanded one of its employees for coming out against the Puppies on her personal Facebook page, and apologized to the groups—who stand for removing social justice issues from science fiction—on her behalf.

Back in May, associate publisher/creative director Irene Gallo linked to an announcement that Tor plans to publish The Geek Feminist Revolution, by Hugo-nominated author Kameron Hurley, and said she was proud to help make the Sad Puppies even sadder.

She also explained who the Puppies are in strong—but not entirely inaccurate—terms:

America's Largest Sci-Fi Publisher Gives in to Reactionary "Sad Puppies"

When the Puppies and their supporters learned of the message over the weekend, they were pissed. They started tweeting about Gallo and spamming her with angry Facebook comments.

Tor took notice.

On Monday, 79-year-old Tor founder and president Tom Doherty gave Gallo a public dressing-down on the publisher’s blog and apologized to the Puppies for “any confusion Ms. Gallo’s comments may have caused.”

Doherty asserted that “media coverage of the two groups initially suggested that they were organized simply to promote white men, which was not correct,” and listed a handful of women and people of color on both the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies’ slates.

But the problem with the Puppies was never that they only nominated white men. It was that head puppy Brad Torgersen and his supporters bashed previous Hugo winners as beneficiaries of “tokenism and affirmative action, for the sake of the sexuality, gender, and ethnicity of the authors themselves.”

“In those cases, the content of the story is practically irrelevant. It’s the box-checking that counts,” Torgersen asserted in the midst of the drama.

You can see why there might be some confusion about their supposed commitment to diversity.

The Puppies, who claim they’ve been victimized and been transformed into “bogeymen” by media coverage, are actually fighting their own bogeyman: the notorious White Liberal. And it’s the White Liberal, they fear, who controls the Hugos’ parent conference, WorldCon.

“[M]aybe just be wholly transparent and call it White American Liberals Con — An inclusive, diverse place where everyone talks about the same things, has the same tastes, votes the same way, and looks at the world through the same pair of eyes. Whitelibbycon. With the trophy: whitelibbyrocket,” Torgersen wrote.

The Sad Puppies are also closely associated with neoreactionary, Gamergater, and notorious white supremacist Vox Day (he says he’s not a white supremacist, but he also says “Racism is neither a sin nor is it a societal evil. Race-based self-segregation is not only the observably preferred human norm for all races throughout the entirety of recorded human history, it is inevitable,” so go ahead and draw your own conclusions) who both played a part in picking the Sad Puppies nominees and started his own Rabid Puppies slate. Coincidentally, a number of the Rabid Puppies nominees have been published by Day’s obscure, Finland-based publishing house, Castalia House.

“I don’t mind being linked to Vox, because I don’t hate and fear Vox like a little schoolgirl who’s been stung by a wasp,” Torgersen has written.

And that’s who the most powerful publisher in sci-fi apparently decided to appease at the expense of one of its own employees.

But why?

Puppy supporters have been talking shit about Tor from the beginning of their campaign, largely because Tor editors Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden have been openly critical, and were among the first to note that Gamergate and the Puppies were making common cause. In April, Larry Correia, who started and named the original Sad Puppies campaign two years ago, had to tell Puppies supporters to chill out with their attacks on the publisher, because—as Tom Doherty also pointed out—Tor has published Puppy favorites like John C. Wright. Wright rode the Puppies slates to a record-breaking six Hugo nominations this year.

The frenzy started again last week, though, when Vox Day reignited it with a screencap of Irene Gallo’s Facebook comments, calling them “libel.” (He calls a lot of things libel.)

“I’ve held onto this since I had the screencap, which as you correctly note was made several weeks ago ... I have long been in the habit of never using all of my ammunition at once, or pointing-and-shrieking for its own sake,” Day told File770, a sci-fi fansite that’s been keeping meticulous records of this year’s Hugo drama.

Apparently, the reaction was loud enough to move Tom Doherty to publicly chastise Gallo and put forth a soft defense of the Puppies and their motives. I contacted him to ask how he made that decision and what his personal feelings about the Puppies are—because he’s made clear they don’t align with Gallo’s. I haven’t yet heard back.

[h/t Chuck Wendig, Image via Shutterstock]

If You Meet This Insane Escaped Killer, Don't Believe His Marine Tattoo

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If You Meet This Insane Escaped Killer, Don't Believe His Marine Tattoo

We know Richard Matt is a convicted killer on the loose. We know, thanks to my colleague Jordan Sargent, that “Matt is very handsome and, in all frankness, very well endowed.” Now we also know that Matt, for some weird reason, has this massive Marine Corps tattoo, even though the Marines say he never served.

The Marine Corps Times has the scandalous details:

Images released of Richard Matt, convicted of killing and dismembering his boss, show that he has the Marine-style tattoo on his right shoulder. The eagle, globe and anchor became the Corps’ official emblem in 1955, and Matt’s tattoo raised questions about whether he was a veteran.

But the Marine Corps has no record of Matt serving, Yvonne Carlock, a spokeswoman with Manpower and Reserve Affairs, told Marine Corps Times.

If You Meet This Insane Escaped Killer, Don't Believe His Marine Tattoo

Indeed, a Gawker search turned up no military records for Matt—whose other shoulder tattoo originally read “Mexico Forever.” His fake Marine tattoo may help explain why, as one ex-cop who put him away says it, “He gets girlfriends any place he goes.” Add stolen valor to the list of this fugitive’s crimes, along with two prison breaks and kidnapping, robbing, and killing his “76-year-old boss, William Rickerson, whose headless torso and legs were found in the Niagara River.”

[Images via Military Times]


Contact the author at adam@gawker.com.
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Telegraph Your Internet Misery on a Swarm of Lettered Browser Tabs

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Telegraph Your Internet Misery on a Swarm of Lettered Browser Tabs

If you’re brave or masochistic enough to willingly drown yourself in tabs, here’s Favicon Poetry, a Chrome extension that lets you send messages of internet-induced despair (and other stuff too, I suppose) using websites with single-letter logos.

The extension, created by Maddy Varner at the Free Art and Technology Lab, generates a new Chrome window with a series of tabs that spell out whatever text you enter into its interface. Varner writes:

let’s face it, we lost! the internet is no longer a wild frontier full of delicious possibility and now just a series of corporate websites. i love it!!!!!!!!!!!!

here’s a chrome extension that lets you easily make sentences/words/whatever using the little website icons that show up on your tabs. perfect for your screenshot needs. hell yeh

A series of corporate websites like Gawker.com, which proudly lends its G. Get the extension here.

Telegraph Your Internet Misery on a Swarm of Lettered Browser Tabs


h/t Waxy. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Reports: Escaped Murderers Fled to Upstate New York Town

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Reports: Escaped Murderers Fled to Upstate New York Town

The New York Daily News reports that dozens of heavily-armed cops have swarmed Willsboro, New York, after authorities tracked big-dicked fugitive Richard Matt and his partner in crime David Sweat to the town, which is about 40 miles south of the correctional facility the two escaped from Friday night.

From the Daily News:

Law enforcement learned of the whereabouts of the wanted men about 2 a.m. Monday when a state trooper stopped a car in which they were riding as it drove on rain-slickened Middle Road near State Route 22, sources said.

“They ran into the woods,” a worried resident said in an email.

The pair then reportedly broke into a nearby house and “stole a gun,” the resident wrote.

A town resident told the Daily News that police have been in the area since late this morning and are checking all cars in and out of the town.

“This is a hard place to find someone,” Richard House said. “This is a very dense area. We are in the middle of the mountains. It’s easy to walk into Canada from here. I’ve done it by mistake.”

New York State police didn’t confirm the News’ report, though a spokeswoman told the paper that they’re “tracking a lead [in Willsboro].” CNN also reports that authorities are searching the area near Willsboro.

According to the New York Post, the convicts’s getaway driver failed to show up after their escape from Clinton Correctional Facility on Saturday, forcing them to flee the prison on foot. The tabloid, citing the Albany Times Union, says the duo could still be within 10 miles of the prison.

Meanwhile, authorities continue to investigate allegations that Joyce Mitchell, a training supervisor at the prison, may have helped the two escape. From the Post:

Cops on Saturday grilled Mitchell and rummaged through the trash at the home where she lives with her husband, Lyle Mitchell, a general manager of industrial training at the facility. The officers also inspected a small shack the couple owns nearby.


Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

500 Days of Kristin, Day 135: Kristin Slams 500 Days of Kristin

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 135: Kristin Slams 500 Days of Kristin

It’s been 135 days since Kristin Cavallari commenced work on her debut memoir, The Book Formerly Known As Balancing on Heels, and I began following her efforts with this column. Though I have not yet been able to review Kristin’s work (365 more days), today she has chosen to review mine.

In a new interview with Elle...dot com at her Nashville home, Kristin discusses Laguna Beach, her family life, the photo shoot for her book, and—for the first time ever (in public)—500 Days of Kristin. From Elle (dot com):

...[L]ike anyone else who the public perceives as having been gifted a better life on a silver platter, Cavallari is not without her detractors. In anticipation of Balancing in Heels, Defamer launched a tongue-in-cheek column called “500 Days of Kristin”; a statement about a controversial parenting choice has courted Internet backlash. “She’s trying to make me sound stupid,” Cavallari says of the author who writes the satirical countdown, “but all it’s doing is giving my book really good publicity.”

500 Days of Kristin trying to make Kristin sound stupid, says Kristin.

Kristin is reading back her own words, taken from public sources, published verbatim, and thinking, “Whoever printed these words is trying to make me sound stupid.”

I’m grinning so hard there are tears in my eyes?


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]


Cyclone Could Bring Rare Rains to Brutally Hot, Dry Arabian Desert

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Cyclone Could Bring Rare Rains to Brutally Hot, Dry Arabian Desert

The Arabian Peninsula is beautiful in June—precious little water, vast expanses of nothing, brutal sunshine, and temperatures hot enough to kill you in a few hours. It’s Disney without the high prices! However, nature will break the monotony this week as a tropical cyclone aims for Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Thankfully, Tropical Cyclone Ashobaa has stayed relatively weak as it inches closer to land. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimates that the cyclone has winds of about 50 knots—58 MPH—which would make it a moderate tropical storm if it formed in the Atlantic.

Cyclone Could Bring Rare Rains to Brutally Hot, Dry Arabian Desert

The agency, which is the tropical forecasting branch of the U.S. military, expects that Ashobaa will remain a tropical storm as it spins towards the eastern tip of Oman, south of the country’s capital of Muscat. After landfall, the storm is expected to push into the far southeastern extent of Saudi Arabia as it dissipates in the harsh desert environment. Tropical cyclones can strengthen and weaken beyond what’s forecast with little notice, so there’s always the chance that Ashobaa could explode or fall apart before it reaches shore.

The greatest risk from Ashobaa will be heavy rains, which would lead to flooding in this desert country. Oman and Saudi Arabia usually see very little (if any) rainfall during the summer months outside of tropical cyclones, so even a little bit of rainfall from this storm could cause flash flooding, especially in locations near the Al Hajar Mountains in the northern part of Oman.

However, the threat for heavy rain is a huge “maybe” at this point.

Cyclone Could Bring Rare Rains to Brutally Hot, Dry Arabian Desert

The two big models—the European (ECMWF) and the American (GFS)—wildly differ on what the storm will do. The Euro shows the storm stalling and dissipating just off the coast, leaving the land high and dry like it should be during the summer, while the GFS brings Ashobaa inland through Oman while dropping more than a year’s worth of rainfall in just a few days. The intensity and pervasiveness of dry air seems to be the deciding factor in whether or not Ashobaa goes on to produce flooding rains or if it’ll peter out just before making landfall.

Tropical cyclones form frequently in the Indian Ocean, but there aren’t too many that have made a direct landfall on the Arabian Peninsula in recent years. Only six cyclones have come ashore on the Arabian Peninsula (either Yemen or Oman) since 2000; all but one (2010’s Cyclone Phet) was a tropical storm at landfall.

You can track the storm’s progress with the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, and you can keep an eye on Oman’s radar network (yes, they have one!) over at the government agency’s website.

[Images: CIMSS, JTWC, WeatherBELL]


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

Hastert Pleads Not Guilty to Hiding Hush Money for Alleged Abuse Victim

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Hastert Pleads Not Guilty to Hiding Hush Money for Alleged Abuse Victim

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert pleaded not guilty Tuesday to breaking federal banking laws by hiding as much as $3.5 million from federal authorities. Hastert, a former high school teacher, allegedly gave the “hush money” to a former student, who agreed not to reveal that Hastert had sexually abused him.

The charges against Hastert include making withdrawals smaller than $10,000 with the explicit purpose of avoiding detection and then lying to federal investigators who questioned him about the money, saying he was keeping it for himself. “Each carries a penalty of as much as five years in prison and a $250,000 fine,” the New York Times reports.

His potential defenses, the Times adds, include claiming he didn’t understand that withdrawals over $10,000 had to be reported—a tough case to make when he allegedly made 106 large withdrawals just under the limit, totaling more than $900,000—and arguing that lying to the FBI didn’t actually impede their investigation.

Hastert is not charged with sexually abusing “Individual A,” who remains unnamed in the indictment, as the statute of limitations has likely run out. Hastert’s teaching career ended in 1981.

Since the hush money scandal first broke, the family of another alleged victim, Steve Reinboldt, has come forward to tell his story. Reinboldt died of AIDS in 1995, but his sister believes “Individual A” was aware of Reinboldt had been abused by Hastert.

The only public statements Hastert has made since the allegations against him were first reported last month came today in court: “Yes” and “yes, sir.”

He’s currently free on a $4,500 bond.

[Photo: AP Images]

Benny Johnson’s Comeback Profile Was Written by His Friend

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Benny Johnson’s Comeback Profile Was Written by His Friend

Today the Washington Post published a lengthy and (mostly) flattering profile of Benny Johnson, the serial plagiarist who was fired from BuzzFeed last summer and now peddles viral conservative content at Independent Journal Review. “D.C. has always been the city of second chances, now it just moves at meme speed,” reporter Ben Terris writes. “And no one can ride a meme like Benny Johnson.”

Terris is an experienced reporter, so it’s somewhat surprising he would bother to write what amounts to a rehabilitation of a person who repeatedly stole the work of other journalists. That sense of surprise immediately begins to wear off, however, once you take a look at both men’s Twitter feeds:

What kind of journalist would forgive Benny Johnson? The answer seems to be: “A journalist who happens to be friends with Benny Johnson.”

Update, 6:50 p.m.

After this post was published, Washington Post spokesperson Catherine Olsen emailed the following statement to Gawker:

Hi Keenan,

I saw your story and wanted to send you a response attributable to a Washington Post spokesperson. Ben would not have been assigned the story if there was a conflict of interest, such as a personal relationship with the subject of the story.

Best,
Catherine

We’ve asked Olsen what she means by “personal relationship,” and will update if we hear back.


H/T Libby Watson

McKinney Police Officer Who Brutally Detained 15-Year-Old Girl Resigns 

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McKinney Police Officer Who Brutally Detained 15-Year-Old Girl Resigns 

Officer Eric Casebolt resigned from the McKinney police force Tuesday, three days after a video of him violently throwing an unarmed 15-year-old girl to the ground was published on YouTube.

Casebolt’s attorney, Jane Bishkin, confirmed the news to WFAA Tuesday afternoon. Casebolt was suspended on Sunday, one day after 15-year-old Brandon Brooks posted a seven-minute long video of the officer screaming at and arresting children at the McKinney community pool in Texas.

UPDATE 6:53 pm: At a press conference this evening, McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley called Casebolt’s actions “indefensible.”

“As the video shows, he was out of control during the incident,” he said. “I had 12 officers on the scene and 11 of them performed according to their training.”

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

Deadspin Tell Us Your Pettiest Golf Club Stories | Gizmodo The Boy Who Built A 500-Million-Degree Nu

Crazy Video Shows Wall of Cops Awaiting Deranged Prison Escapees 

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Video purportedly shot near Willsboro, New York shows an army of cops presumably awaiting signs of the big dicked-escaped convict and his accomplice, who have been on the run since they escaped from a maximum security prison Saturday.

Richard Matt (the well-endowed one) and David Sweat (whose dick we really know nothing about at this point) are both convicted murderers.

The jarring video, which shows a wall of armed cops knee deep in a field, was originally posted to Facebook and lines up with official reports: police reportedly believe the convicts fled into the woods near Willsboro after a state trooper apparently stopped the car they were traveling in early Monday morning.

Cops say the men are now armed with more than just their virility after reportedly stealing a gun from a home near the woods.


Video via Facebook, h/t Gothamist. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Fact: Union Members Earn More Money

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Fact: Union Members Earn More Money

If you are not in a union, you are leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars in lifetime earnings on the table. And the CEO is tilting that table, so it all spills into his pocket.

Today, The Century Foundation released a new report on the prospects for using technology to assist in labor organizing. Please read the full report if you are so inclined. Or, you can just lazily pay attention to this portion of the report which we are breaking out: the numbers showing how much more money unionized workers earn over a lifetime.

On a very basic level, unions are a mechanism that allow workers to get a larger portion of the money generated by a business for themselves. Absent an organized work force that is able to assert its power through collective bargaining, that extra money tends to go to executives and managers at the very top of a company, or to outside investors, rather than to the mass of workers.

From the report, bolding ours:

According to published reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), median earnings for a two-income, nonunion family are $400 a week less than that of a union family. Over a lifetime, that adds up to more than a half million dollars in foregone wealth.3

Even when one accounts for characteristics that can affect earnings other than unionization, such as education, experience, occupation, hours worked, marital status, having children, state of residence, and (unfortunately) sex, race, and citizenship—the gap between union and nonunion workers remains nearly as large. Among private-sector workers who are otherwise similar, union members have per hour earnings that are 27.6 percent greater, on average, than those of nonunion workers.

And here is a lovely chart, also from the report, that illustrates this dynamic across a number of different industries. How much money are you sacrificing because you are not able to bargain collectively for higher wages?

Fact: Union Members Earn More Money

The fact that the vast majority of American workers are not unionized means that they make less money than they could, and that money goes to the relatively rich people who run the companies rather than the many poorer people who do the work. If you want to change that, organize.

[The full report. Photo via AP]


Contact the author at Hamilton@Gawker.com.


Police Now Searching Homes Near Prison for Escaped Murderers

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Police Now Searching Homes Near Prison for Escaped Murderers

Now in its fifth day, the manhunt for escaped convicts Richard Matt and David Sweat has shifted back to Dannemora, the upstate New York town that houses the Clinton Correctional Facility.

Law enforcement agents are hoping to retrace their steps in the town after spending most of yesterday searching the area surrounding Willsboro, N.Y., where the fugitives were reportedly spotted running into the woods.

From the Albany Times Union:

“Law enforcement will be searching homes in the village of Dannemora on Wednesday. These searches are not the result of a new lead, law enforcement are retracing steps made early in the investigation. Residents will notice an increased police presence in the area,” troopers leading the search said in a statement released Wednesday morning.

The convicts escaped from Clinton Correctional sometime Friday night. Sweat was serving to life without parole for fatally shooting a sheriff’s deputy 22 times in 2002. Matt has murdered at least two people, including a 75-year-old New Yorker who he dismembered in 1997, and was serving a 25-year sentence.


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

Remember: Brands Can Turn Your Dumb Tweets Into Embarrassing Ads

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Remember: Brands Can Turn Your Dumb Tweets Into Embarrassing Ads

Before you run your mouth on Twitter, think to yourself: would I be okay with some scared intern in digital marketing using my own words to sell their dumb product? That’s what happened to this young woman. Beware!

On May 13, 2015, @issa_pltnm aka “CHANCLA GOD” tweeted the following:

The crackerjack promo team who runs the Head & Shoulders Twitter account sprang into action:

A few days ago, CHANCLA GOD (who says she goes by “Kettles”) told me via DM, Head & Shoulders decided to pay to promote the tweet, essentially turning her message into shampoo spam for an untold number of internet strangers, typo and all (it popped into my timeline this morning). Promoted tweets are a common tactic for online marketers, but seeing a brand appropriate an offhand remark by a civilian is rare—even Twitter’s own documentation of tweet promotion refers to the act as something done to one’s own tweets, not the tweets of others.

CHANCLA GOD tells me neither Head & Shoulders nor its parent company Proctor & Gamble asked her for permission before promoting her comment about her own dandruff, and that her timeline has become annoying “beyond belief”:

And so forth. The lesson is simple: our dumbest throwaway remarks are being constantly mined by advertising entities with the hope that they can be converted into “native” advertising that will increase the “authentic” “goodwill” of said brand and boost “awareness.” I asked Kettles if she’s planning on remaining a Head & Shoulders customer, and she told me “I already switched to tresseme before they promoted the tweet so.” So, good work everyone.

Alyssa Weiss, a Head & Shoulders spokesperson, denies CHANCLA GOD’s claim:

Thanks for reaching out! We do have written permission from this consumer to promote her tweet. Furthermore, Twitter nor P&G allow brands to promote consumer tweets without this written consent.

If you’d like to discuss further, please give me a call at the number below.

Best,

Alyssa

CHANCLA says that the company reached her via DM and said it might retweet her, but not promote her scalp comment on a running, daily basis, sans compensation.

Remember: Brands Can Turn Your Dumb Tweets Into Embarrassing Ads


Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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You Should Care About the Women's World Cup

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You Should Care About the Women's World Cup

Last year, the U.S. men’s national soccer team was eliminated from the World Cup in the first knockout round of the international tournament. The disqualifying match, played against the very good Belgian national team, was watched by twenty-two million people, making it the second-highest-viewed soccer match ever aired on American television. Belgium, to the dismay of these 22 million people, beat the U.S. 2 to 1. America, as a result, folded up its interest in soccer as a national rallying sport and put it back in the closet for another four years. Maybe in 2018, we’d have a chance to right our past wrongs, and to prove to the world that we could be a dominant soccer nation, too.

The 2014 World Cup was a thing of great anthropological beauty. With the rapid growth of new Major League Soccer teams in several American cities, it appeared that the sport would maybe, hopefully, finally gain a significant stronghold in the States. More Americans than ever seemed to care if the Stars & Stripes did well in the big soccer showdown—fans flooded bars to watch matches with fervor usually reserved for more important American sports. After our loss to Belgium, we looked to 2018—surely then we would advance to the quarter-finals. And at the Qatar World Cup of 2022, perhaps we would have the chance to secure a first World Cup win for the United States. What a spectacle that would be for us all.

Except, wait—hadn’t we already won the World Cup twice? In 1991 and 1999? Didn’t we also have the significant chance of winning the World Cup again this year, in 2015? Wasn’t our national team one of the best soccer teams in the world and wasn’t that something to be proud of? If we were really looking to become a soccer nation—one on par with all the other soccer nations of the world—why weren’t we looking to our women’s national squad to be the torch-bearers for this newfound love and interest? Why did all of our soccer-ball-shaped-eggs have to end up in one men’s regulation-net-shaped basket?

The U.S. women’s national team has always had stars: Brandi Chastain, Sydney Leroux, Mia Hamm, Alex Morgan, Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe, Shannon Boxx, Abby Wambach, the last of whom is the all-time goal-scoring leader in international competitions (for both male and female soccer players) and who will never play in another World Cup. As a squad we’ve not only qualified to play in every single tournament, we’ve also won two of them and made it to the final of a third (2011’s tense match against Japan). This year, our team is jacked with star power, determination, and skill. The rules of the game are the same as the men’s tournament (though studies have shown female players fake far less injuries than male soccer players), and more women’s teams get added to the tournament every go-around, doubled from 12 to 24 teams in as many years. While all of this would surely preclude an equivalent if not greater interest in the women’s World Cup this year as we showed during last year’s men’s matches, that isn’t the case. But why?

The 2015 Women’s World Cup began this past Saturday, but you probably didn’t know that. The USWNT has already won their first game (3-1 against Australia), but maybe that wasn’t on your radar. While it’s no secret that sports were designed by men for men, the absence of excitement around women’s soccer, which on paper in America is arguably better and more competitive than men’s, is alarming.

During the 2014 men’s World Cup—excuse me, feel free to preemptively remove the “men’s” qualifier—the interface of Twitter completely changed so that anyone who wanted to follow the month-long event would be able to do so in real time. Suddenly you could feel close to the games without even watching; you could curate Twitter’s homepage to better connect with your favorite soccer reporters, players, and teams; everything about the live feeds felt seamless and clean and well organized. On their blog after the tournament ended, Twitter reported that 672 million tweets were sent related to the 2014 World Cup. Their social campaign to show the enormity of the World Cup was a success.

If you log onto Twitter.com or Facebook or now, the same attention is difficult to find even if you go looking for it. While it’s only a few days into the Women’s World Cup, there is a sense that only niche fans—like those of polo or darts—are watching, rather than the great swath of humanity that would normally indulge a major international tournament of the world’s most beloved sport. The Columbia Journalism Review lauded FOX Sports’ commitment to rigorous coverage while also pointing out that the simplest technology—online brackets for fans to fill out—are surprisingly absent and forgotten.

If certain publications weren’t determined to cover the Women’s World Cup just as breathlessly as they had the men’s matches only a year before, one may truly have little idea the former was even happening. Add all of this to the fact that less than two weeks prior to the start of the tournament, the U.S. Department of Justice moved to arrest fourteen FIFA-connected officials on charges of bribery and corruption and you’ve got a classic story of misplaced coverage: the women’s World Cup gets buried underneath the “more exciting” news about men behaving badly.

For god’s sake, the tournament takes place in Canada . . . on artificial turf . . . even after the players argued heavily against it. How much worse could it get?

There are the same old excuses that men and sports fans make about women’s soccer to justify a collective lack of interest. The athletics aren’t as tight; the running isn’t as fast; the tactical decisions aren’t as sharp. The games are sloppier, the scoring higher (and thus not as thrilling), the overall spectacle somehow less exciting or captivating than the men’s games. There aren’t as many star players to recognize, there are fewer stories to be told, the interest just simply isn’t there. Maybe if we had a good story to rally around, or if we had women’s players whose names we knew, that’d make all the difference. These women are new to soccer, therefore they’re not as good. But why are they new to soccer? For the same reason women were given a late start in every other field—men barred their entry. Of course there will be a learning curve, but women have been cresting that curve with fearless determination for years. It’s time to start leveling the playing field between genders.

But how can we have a storyline to rally around or a narrative to care about if the media doesn’t invest in covering the tournament in an equivalent way to how it enthusiastically covers the men’s tournament? In a piece for The Atlantic titled “Women’s Soccer is a Feminist Issue,” writer Maggie Mertens explores the misconceptions about women’s soccer:

The problem is, sports media isn’t covering women’s sports either. In 2014, ESPN’s SportsCenter dedicated 2 percent of its on-air time to covering women’s sports, according to a study published this week in the journal Communication & Sport. The study found that three local Los Angeles news networks did slightly better, devoting 3.2 percent of their sports coverage to women athletes.

Cheryl Cooky, one of the study’s co-authors and a professor of women’s studies at Purdue, says these numbers are actually lower than they were when this study began 25 years ago. But even this clearly unequal treatment is difficult for people to understand as sexist.

[...]

But as Cooky points out, a lot of our perceptions of how interesting women’s sports are come from the media itself. “Men’s sports are going to seem more exciting,” she says. “They have higher production values, higher-quality coverage, and higher-quality commentary ... When you watch women’s sports, and there are fewer camera angles, fewer cuts to shot, fewer instant replays, yeah, it’s going to seem to be a slower game, [and] it’s going to seem to be less exciting.”

Mertens’ headline alone says a lot. As women are given a seat at the table in more and more industries, it’s incredible that we accept the fact that female athletes are somehow less qualified for national attention, or that they should be seen only as athletic entities relative to men. Marta, a female Brazilian soccer star who is largely regarded as the best women’s soccer player on earth, was given the nickname “Pele with a skirt” by Pele himself.

Deadspin.com—or Gawker with a fedora—has some great coverage of the Women’s World Cup, both in previews and match day recaps and updates. FiveThirtyEight—Gawker with a calculator—has also done a nice job putting together predictions. The games are being broadcast on FOX Sports, can be streamed here, and a handy schedule of all the matches is available through Google Calendar. This, like any other international sports tournament, will be an exciting month-long event where you can watch some of the greatest athletes in the world go up against each other. Whether those athletes are male or female should make no difference at all.


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

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

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Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal founder and noted #GIRLBOSS Sophia Amoruso is worth $250 million. She’s also a bride-to-be and, in going through all the assorted motions, has assembled an impressive gift registry. Ah, yes: Rich people love asking people to buy them more rich-people things.

According to one survey, the average American registry has 153 items and is worth around $5,158. Sophia Amoruso’s registry has 99 items and is worth close to $19,000. Some (all) would say that if you are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, you have no business asking anyone for gifts, let alone such expensive gifts. But Sophia Amoruso didn’t get to where she is now by playing by the rules, you losers. So you can take your unimpeachable moral code of good taste and nastily shove it where the nasty sun don’t nasty shine.

Amoruso will marry Joel DeGraff is this Saturday, June 13, at a “private estate in Silverlake,” which sounds like the perfect faux-alt place for the obscenely rich. If the password-protected wedding website is any indication, the affair will be the perfect Wealthy Wedding as filtered through the lens of thirtysomethings who think they’re still punk.

From their requisite About Us page:

We met sometime in the summer of 2002 in Seattle. He was a raw vegan and I was on psilocybin. I asked for an apple and he obliged. It was the first time I’d heard Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Say no more. Seriously, the rest of their story is not worth your time.

The dress code is black tie optional, with one stipulation:

Please wear solid colors.

Before anyone gets huffy, note that the bride did say “please,” which was really nice of her, and she’s even letting her guests wear whatever color they want. She’s chill.

Less chill is the gift registry. Absent is any polite suggestion along the lines of “your presence is enough.” She does offer the guests the option of donating to charity (Dollar a Day and the ASPCA are “preferred”), but that’s an afterthought—it’s the registry that is advertised front and center on the website. The registry is the star of this wedding, and it is audacious.

Now just because Sophia and Joel have no interest in the boundaries of good taste doesn’t mean we’re not happy for them. (And Sophia’s going through a tough time, after all — her company is being sued for allegedly firing pregnant employees, so we should be particularly supportive of her personal life.) We love love! So we bought Sophia and Joel something from their registry:

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

We purchased one of the sixteen small ramekins they wanted. It was $10, plus $8 for shipping. Only fifteen to go!

You’ll find the full registry below. Note that with just a few days before the big day, very little has actually been purchased for the happy couple, probably because their guests are aware that Amoruso has a crisp fortune to her name and could buy every single thing on this list herself.

It’s highly recommended that you scroll through, but here are a few of our favorites:

  • Tiffany & Co. Ladybug straw - $275
  • Libertine Linus Bike (2) - $899 apiece
  • Smythson 4x6 Picture Frame - $245
  • American Black Walnut Oval Bowl - $375
  • Incense Box - $245
  • Obligatory KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer - $430
  • Heritage Garden Hose - $58
  • Elsa Peretti Tiffany & Co. Heart Box - $900
  • Ceramic Pouring Bowl - $145
  • REI 2 Burner Camp Stove - $109.95
  • GoPro HERO3 Camera Adventure Package - $399.95

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Nasty Gal's Crazy Rich Founder Asks for Crazy Expensive Wedding Gifts

Contact the author at jessica@jezebel.com

Top image via Getty.


Jesus Would Hate This Christian Blogger Just as Much as You Do

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Jesus Would Hate This Christian Blogger Just as Much as You Do

Have ever thought to yourself, “What the fuck, who actually says that?” while looking at Facebook? Then you’re probably familiar with the blogger Matt Walsh.

Matt Walsh the blogger—not to be confused with Matt Walsh the actor—was a conservative talk radio host before he turned to blogging full time in 2012. A devout Catholic with a severe fundamentalist approach to theology, in 2014 he was adopted by The Blaze as a regular contributor. Since then his wonderful articles, with titles such as “The Duggars Aren’t Hypocrites. Progressives Are” and “Calling Bruce Jenner a Woman Is an Insult to Women” have surged in popularity.

Walsh, a 28-year-old married father of two from the Baltimore area, writes with a level of arrogance that makes Bill O’Reilly look like a monk. As the mighty defender of the majority, he offers a much-needed perspective for heterosexual, white, American men. Walsh is the cool Christian millennial for oppressed conservatives everywhere. He drinks! He smokes! He has tattoos! He’s not like those other stuffy right-wingers. If you feel like today’s conservative Christian pundits are just too kind and tolerant, don’t worry: Walsh thinks Christians should be more judgmental.

Pandering to the masses of right-wing fundamentalists, Walsh responds to current issues with a degree of moral outrage that asserts the stupidity and wrongness of anyone who disagrees with him, regularly touting that “liberals” and “progressives” are the ultimate enemy against God and country. Wait, what if you’re a Christian and a progressive? Don’t raise your hand, because Matt Walsh doesn’t think you really exist: he’s fully prepared to determine whether you’re a Christian or not. But his perspectives aren’t actually based in theological truth, much less Christian love.

I’ve taken some of Walsh’s more asinine viewpoints and put them side-by-side with passages from the Bible. I ask, and attempt to answer, in all sincerity: What would Jesus think?


Matt Walsh Thinks Transgender People Are Ill. Jesus Said They Should Live the Way They Want.

Walsh doesn’t just believe transgender people should have equal rights; he believes they aren’t real. In his most recent article discussing Caitlyn Jenner’s debut in Vanity Fair, Walsh wrote that her transition was an “appropriation of womanhood” and described his horror as he was forced to sit through descriptions of her photo shoot on ESPN:

You know, if I want to be preached at by humorless progressive gasbags, I don’t need the worldwide leader in sports. I have Comedy Central for that.

In another article about Jenner, Walsh described being transgender as “an illusion, a sickness, and a burden.” When Planet Fitness made headlines this spring by revoking a woman’s membership when she complained about a transgender woman in the ladies’ locker room, Walsh accused them of not respecting the privacy and safety of women. He also thinks that fighting transphobia is going to kill America, pretty much:

If progressives can wield the power to demolish and remake even the definition of “man” and “woman” in their ideological image, then they have achieved a total and irreversible cultural victory. They have reached into the universe and reshaped reality itself. They have become gods, or at least that’s the kind of power we give them. You can blab on and on about economics and foreign policy, but if we live in a country where confusion, perversion, and self-worship reign supreme, what’s the point? America will already be dead.

Where does Walsh’s self-assurance come from? Certainly not Christianity. The words and concepts for transgender individuals don’t exactly appear in the Bible. While many fundamentalists take this to mean that God intended all people to be cisgender and heterosexual, that does not mean that there were only binary gender systems in place. In fact, in Matthew 19:11-12, Jesus addresses the subject directly:

Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

I would argue that Jesus himself was not only aware of people who did not identify their gender by their biological sex, but that he actually encouraged those individuals to live in the way they felt most comfortable for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let that sink in for a moment. But Walsh argues, of course, that these are not real people, despite the fact that Jesus Christ stated otherwise.

Matt Walsh Thinks Women Belong in the Kitchen. Jesus Thought They Should Be Elevated to the Status of Men.

Walsh believes that his wife’s role is at home rolling him cigars, pouring his bourbon, and raising his children, while his role is to stay at home beating out angry words on a keyboard to affirm bigots’ poorly structured worldviews. Because that’s masculine, and only men should do masculine things. He claims to value the complementary roles that feminism offers, but not really. In one post, he scoffs at couples who live by “egalitarian principles” and charges men to stop letting women be the boss of them:

So, fellas, your wife is not your boss. Or if she is, she shouldn’t be. And, if I may be so bold, I doubt very much that she wants to be.

To women, he writes that incompetent husbands shouldn’t have to earn their wives’ respect, because it’s a woman’s job to make her man feel special:

Every once in a while, I think we should talk about what wives need to do. And here it is. This, above all else. Respect your husbands. Even when he doesn’t deserve it.

In the same post, he bemoans the fact that women these days just aren’t being brought up right:

Society tells our daughters that men are boorish dolts who need to be herded like goats and lectured like school boys. Then they grow up and enter into marriage wholly unprepared and unwilling to accept the Biblical notion that “wives should submit to their husbands” because “the husband is the head of the wife.”

Girls need to know their place right from the start! They have specific gender roles for which they are destined. What are women not destined for, according to Walsh? Pastoring. Being accommodated by your employer during pregnancy. Birth control. The military.

Are you a religious person who is also a feminist? Matt Walsh doesn’t think so. You have to choose, he writes in his post, “Christian women, feminism is not your friend.” Under the guise of “education” he attempts to mansplain why feminism—in all its forms—is a destructive force for humanity, and that if you consider yourself a feminist, you’re ruining your marriage and you don’t love your children:

So I urge you: unbind yourself from the bondage of this term that’s become inexorably tied to a demonic dogma that obliterates the unity of the family, drives a wedge between a wife and her husband, and digs a giant chasm between a mother and her child.

Many Christians, including Walsh, take the approach that women should be submissive to men based on some of Paul’s letters, such as Ephesians 5. These letters, written to specific churches in a specific time period, in no way indicated support for the system of patriarchy in our churches and political systems today: Paul himself said all people were equal in Christ in Galations 3:28—

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Elsewhere, Paul also instructed women to keep their heads covered (1 Corinthians 11:6) not to wear jewelry (1 Timothy 2:9) and remain totally silent during church (1 Corinthians 14:34) but those practices seem to have fallen to the wayside—I suppose those are no longer necessary in order to keep women nice and submissive.

By contrast, Jesus’ teachings and interactions with women gave them voices and dignity. Despite the fact that it was extremely controversial for rabbis to even speak to a woman, he did so with regularity. From his conversation with the Samaritan woman that broke through ethnic boundaries (Jews and Samaritans were enemies) to the inclusion of Susanna, Joanna, and other women involved in his ministry, he broke through convention of the time in a bold and radical way.

The most prominent example of Jesus’ adherence to the idea that women should be elevated to the status of men came by way of Mary and Martha, two of his most devoted female followers. When Jesus is teaching, Mary is sitting at his feet, listening. Martha scolds her, and tells her to get to her chores—washing and cleaning, a woman’s duty—and Jesus gently corrects her in Luke 10:41-42—

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

To Jesus, it was better that a woman should be involved, educated, and informed: given the same respect and honor as any of his male disciples. Not just toiling away in the kitchen.

Matt Walsh Thinks Gay People are Harmful. Jesus Told His Followers to Stop Being So Judgmental.

“The gays” are probably Walsh’s No. 1 enemy. He doesn’t believe it should be illegal to discriminate against them, he accuses them of the “destruction of the nuclear family,” and he insists that if you harbor gay feelings, you should live a life devoid of intimacy and pleasure and simply choose a different lifestyle. Regardless of the fact that he’s never actually experienced same-sex attraction, he feels qualified enough to order those who do to suppress the urge the same way you repress feelings of anger while doing something you hate (like reading Matt Walsh’s blog).

Jesus said absolutely nothing on the topic of homosexuality, and other clobber verses have been reinterpreted as not being as bigoted as originally thought. Even mainstream evangelicals are accepting same-sex couples into their congregation. But it doesn’t matter to Walsh, who will use any excuse for his obvious disdain of homosexuals in order to remain prejudiced against them.

Worst of all, perhaps, is his stance on gay adoption in his post “Gay Adoption Might Be Good for Gay Activists, But It’s Terrible for Children.” In it, he takes studies that indicated two-parent families were more beneficial to children than single-parent families, and attempted to make it sound as if that somehow proved the ineffectiveness of gay parenting and gay adoption. He likens gay adoption to near child abuse:

For [the children’s] sake, gay adoption should be illegal in every state. There are all kinds of rules in place determining who can adopt children and who can’t. It’s only for political reasons that we move gays from the “can’t” list to the “can.” It has nothing to do with the welfare of the children, as there is, from that perspective, not a single good reason to allow gay people to raise kids.

That’s a pretty shocking perspective to hear from a pro-life Catholic; especially considering all of the Bible verses that command people to care for orphans, like James 1:27—

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

The fact of the matter is this: gays and lesbians adopt far more often than heterosexual couples. 21.2 percent percent of same-sex couples have adopted children, compared to 4.4 percent of married, opposite-sex couples. That’s a huge difference. By those statistics, gays and lesbians are doing far more to aid orphaned children than heterosexual couples.

Matt Walsh Thinks Poor People are Lazy and Uneducated. Jesus Says the Kingdom of God Belongs to Them.

Fiscal conservatives always believe they have the best grasp on economics, and Walsh is no different. During the fast food strikes last month where workers protested for $15-an-hour minimum wage, Walsh delivered an article with his enlightened opinion: “Fast Food Workers: You Don’t Deserve $15 an Hour to Flip Burgers, and That’s OK.” This is a viewpoint shared by many, but Walsh’s article takes special care to degrade and devalue people working in the fast food business:

It’s come to my attention that many of you, supposedly in 230 cities across the country, are walking out of your jobs today and protesting for $15 an hour. You earnestly believe — indeed, you’ve been led to this conclusion by pandering politicians and liberal pundits who possess neither the slightest grasp of the basic rules of economics nor even the faintest hint of integrity — that your entry-level gig pushing buttons on a cash register at Taco Bell ought to earn you double the current federal minimum wage.

It’s clear that Walsh has never actually talked to a family whose entire livelihood depends on fast food workers’ income. He thinks it’s a temporary situation that can easily be cured by “working hard” and “getting an education,” despite the fact that half a million people with college degrees now work for minimum wage. And he easily ignores the fact that fast food workers regularly have their minimum wages stolen, and in fact, the minimum wage at fast food restaurants costs taxpayers $7 billion a year. Common sense would tell us that, while America’s rich are wealthier than ever, all wages across the board should be increased to allow people to survive without government benefits and to help shrink the increasing income gap. Anyone who practices Christianity, a religion that heavily emphasizes care and value of the poor, would at least agree that people deserve a living wage, right?

Nope, not Walsh. He demonizes the poor with a level of ease that would make Fox News proud and make Jesus weep. The cruelty and ignorance in which he addresses economic issues not only goes against half of Jesus’ ministry, but is in direct defiance of the Roman Catholic Church, of which Walsh is a member. Pope Francis, an outspoken critic of greedy American economic policies, stated:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed.

Walsh speaks out against abortion with regularity, but assuming that a fast food worker became pregnant, he would theoretically be against this child receiving government benefits or its mother receiving a living wage after her likely unpaid maternity leave. That’s not pro-life; that’s pro-birth.

He’s the sort of Christian who follows the “God helps those who help themselves” logic, despite the fact that the saying never appears in the Bible. Here’s what does appear, in Proverbs 31:8-9:

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Jesus, son of God, chose to manifest himself in the form of a simple fisherman and chose to live a life of poverty, in order to identify more closely with those who needed his message the most. It influenced all of his commands and teachings, as he states in Matthew 5:42—

Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

When Matt Walsh is more concerned with “the government” taking his money to make sure poor people don’t die from starvation or lack of medical attention than he is with actually trying to better their lives, he is truly in direct defiance of the words of Jesus.

Matt Walsh Thinks Black Protesters are Violent Criminals. Jesus Flipped Over Tables When He Saw Injustice.

As a white man with relative privilege, Walsh obviously has a lot to say about how black people should be protesting, what they should be angry about, and what constitutes racism. Who better to tell an entire racial group how to behave than a smug blogger with no empathy? Not Jesus, who protested economic injustice by overturning tables in the temple. Surely if anyone understands the systematic oppression of blacks throughout American history and is qualified to understand their reactions to it, it’s a conservative white dude!

In his post, “Hey Ferguson Protestors: Justice Has Been Done, But You Never Wanted Justice” he called out the black community in a show of stunning racism:

Look, protestors, if you’re not ready to go home, if you still want to protest something, why not protest the culture that encourages young black men to act like Michael Brown? Why not protest the thousands of black men who kill black men every year? Why not protest the black men who kill cops every year, or have you convinced yourselves that such violence is always justified? Why not protest the black men who abandon their families and create the chaotic family situations that lead to these tragedies? Why not protest the black rappers who actively teach young men like Michael Brown to behave like bullies and gangsters? Why not protest the infantilizing white liberals who treat minorities like children who can’t be expected to take responsibility for their actions?

Here we have the typical Fox News arguments pointing out black-on-black violence and painting them all as cop-killers, gangster rappers, and absentee fathers.

He doesn’t mention the number of unarmed people killed by cops since 1999, or the fact that blacks are killed by cops at a higher rate than whites. The enduring racist stereotypes of black fathers are blatantly untrue: 70 percent of black fathers reported bathing, diapering, or dressing their children every single day.

The patronizing and condescending manner in which Walsh feels comfortable addressing the black community is a cause for concern, because he’s far from being the only conservative to do so. For every right-wing Christian who bemoans the existence of “thugs” in their community, it further divides our society and and promotes the continued existence of racism in this country.

As a Jew living in an empire under Roman rule, Jesus himself was a victim of institutionalized prejudice. The Hebrew people were marginalized and oppressed, having to operate under the laws of Rome in order to practice their customs and religion. They were tolerated as long as they didn’t step out of line, but they were certainly not elevated to the high status of everyday Roman citizens: a chilling parallel to how blacks are treated in American society today.

When Walsh, who lives in Baltimore, complains about the violence and crime that began once a subway was built to bring “inner city” people into his suburban mall, when he compares the protestors to animals, when he has the gall to say that people who live under the extreme poverty of the Inner Harbor aren’t experiencing oppression—not only is he wrong, but he’s excessively brutal. It’s clear he holds nothing but contempt for the problems of minorities. The lack of compassion is directly in contrast to the words of Jesus in Matthew 25:45 where he reminds us in a parable to always seek out injustice and work to defeat it, saying that failing to do so is the same thing as failing to serve Christ:

He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

A little understanding would go a long way. Unfortunately, Walsh only offers shock value, not actual value.


Walsh may continue to carve out his place as the new face of conservatism (and the bane of your social media feeds). But let’s not be mistaken: he is not representative of Christianity.

The sort of hateful, vile speech found in Walsh’s writing is far more reminiscent of the legalistic Pharisees than of anything Jesus said. Walsh may be the hipster manifestation of Rush Limbaugh, but he’s definitely not channeling the God he claims to serve.

Unlike Walsh, I won’t presume to determine whether or not he’s a “real” Christian: that’s not up for me to decide. But I can assure you that Jesus would not approve of almost anything that he says. If Walsh wants to portray himself as a misogynistic, homophobic, racist bigot—by all means, he’s free to do so. But in supporting his outdated political theories with the words of Jesus Christ—the humble, radical, progressive feminist who fought injustice and brought mercy—he brings together two viewpoints that are simply incompatible.


Image via Facebook. Contact the author at jcm.the.writer@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @notreallyjcm.

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