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Charlize Theron Broke Up With Sean Penn By Ghosting Him 

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Charlize Theron Broke Up With Sean Penn By Ghosting Him 

According to the rumor mill Charlize Theron broke her engagement with Sean Penn by ghosting (aka, the act of never returning calls, text messages, or e-mails). “Charlize wasn’t responding to his calls and texts,” a presumable person told Us Weekly. “She just cut it off.” Ghosting might be the shittiest breakup method, but generally a person worthy of ghosting has really done something really, truly terrible. It’s worth noting again that Theron did it to Sean Penn, which might alone be a worthy reason. [Us Weekly]


Charlize Theron Broke Up With Sean Penn By Ghosting Him 

Fran Drescher, America’s favorite nanny, wants the world to know that she and her “gay ex-husband” had sex all the time. While accepting a Stonewall award for her advocacy, the nanny named Fran joked:

“I have a gay ex-husband! People always say to me [of her ex], ‘How did you not know?’ He loves decorating and fashion and clothes, but we actually did have sex a lot. I didn’t know at the time, though, that in his mind he was fucking the bartender at Olive Garden.”

Olive Garden, you say.

No worries though, Drescher and her ex remain good friends and she pointed out that she’s happily remarried to “wonderful sophisticated straight man” named Maxwell Sheffield Shiva Ayyadurai. [Page Six]


  • Blake Shelton saved a stranded motorist from flood waters in Oklahoma. [Gossip Cop]
  • Mariah Carey has herself a beau. [Us Weekly]
  • Somedays Kendall Jenner is so busy she only has time to throw on a Yeezus sweatshirt and heels before she steps out on the town. Pants: who needs them? [E!]
  • Scott Disick wants Kourtney Kardashian to agree to an open relationship and Kourtney is “disgusted!” [Radar]
  • This picture of Kim Zolciak and her husband will haunt my nightmares. [E!]
  • Speaking of Houswives, it looks like Brandi Glanville will be one again. [TMZ]
  • If you’re looking for a new house, then check out Johnny Depp’s $27 million French estate, recently put on the market. [People]
  • This is not what I thought Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s son would grow up to look like. [TMZ]
  • Olivia Culpo is sad about breaking up with Nick Jonas. [Us Weekly]

Images via Getty.


“SeekingArrangement’s CEO, Brandon Wade, says that the best way to get a bigger allowance is to land

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“SeekingArrangement’s CEO, Brandon Wade, says that the best way to get a bigger allowance is to land a married daddy—he points out that 40 percent of the site’s male members have a wife.” This is good to know!

Things Unsaid

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Things Unsaid

I never have had to doubt my parents’ love, not even when I had to explain to them what I meant when I said, “I’m queer.” In my days at home, my parents were the type to be at every event; my mother was given the “Team Spirit” award on my tennis team during my senior year of high school. My first girlfriend had called me “Angel Baby” because of the way my mother’s eyes lit up when she saw me for the first time in weeks or months. I knew being gay would be ok. It wouldn’t threaten my mother’s love.

Over the years, their enthusiastic support hasn’t wavered. Although I’m not the first in my family to attend college, I am the first to finish a terminal degree. Of course my parents wanted to participate in my becoming a doctor. When the time finally came for me to defend my dissertation in biochemistry, they flew from Washington state to New York and stayed in my apartment. New York hotels were too expensive for their taste. I had just broken up with my first serious boyfriend.

A few months earlier, this boyfriend had flown with me to Washington for my father’s retirement. The invitation was telling, he was welcoming this man into our family, but my father and I never really talked about it. That’s how he was: always doing the right thing but not saying it in words. My parents wanted grandkids, and, to be honest, so did I. They imagined me achieving a life that did not look too different from their own, and I felt that, in losing this man and our relationship, I had not only lost my own love, but I had also failed to meet their expectations.

By the time I finished graduate school, I still needed the security of my family, but I no longer wanted to need it. I was nearing 30 and yearned to be the type of independent adult I had imagined for myself as a child. My parents and I don’t necessarily share the language we use to describe ourselves. My queerness has sort of baffled them, as I tend to explain it using academic jargon. They roll with my punches, even when I write publicly about sex, even when I invite scrutiny from our family or our neighbors with my skinny jeans and limp wrists.

The weekend they were in New York to watch me become a doctor, I received a text from a friend, Omar, saying he was in town. I was out but not drinking much because of the emotional turmoil in my recent life. Omar lived in DC, but his family was from New York, and he visited often. We would get a drink or a meal when he was in town. If both of us were single, we would usually go out and dance and kiss.

iMessage to Omar: I’m out and about. Just having a drink now in midtown.
iMessage to Omar: … and just FYI, I’m single.
iMessage received: Lets meet!
iMessage to Omar: Ok.

It was that simple. We met around midnight at a gay country music bar in Hell’s Kitchen, and we talked about life and work and boys. Omar was already drunk. We kissed once at the bar. At the end of the night, late but not embarrassingly so, Omar asked if he could stay at my place. His parents’ house—all the way in East Flatbush—would take a couple of hours to get to.

I explained that it would be awkward since my parents were staying over. He did not beg, but I ended up offering. I was sleeping in my roommate’s room; my Dad was sleeping in my room, and my mother was sleeping on the couch. My parents were used to a king sized bed; they couldn’t sleep on a full anymore, not together.

So: Omar and I would tiptoe past my Mom and into my roommate’s room, shut the door, and sleep. It was the night before Father’s Day and my family was going to brunch early. I would text Omar once we left, and he could sneak out.

We got home and made it inside just fine, tip-toeing past my mother and giggling. It felt like high school. Omar was drunk and got naked, fully naked. He looked good, and we kissed. It was late, though, and so we just slept.

I did not learn about what happened next until it was too late. Around 5:30 a.m. Omar needed to pee. He got up and went to the bathroom. He had stayed at my apartment many times, both on the couch and once or twice in my bed. So, when he came out of the bathroom, naked, Omar forgot that I was not sleeping in my own room.

He made a hard right instead of a soft left, and entered my room. He crawled back into bed. Pulled the covers up, naked and drunk.

Omar had crawled into my bed—but with my Father.

My Dad tried to rouse Omar. He shook him, but he didn’t wake up. My father put his arm around Omar and picked him up—even though my father was five inches shorter, only 5’7”—and walked him back to where I was sleeping. He put Omar back in bed, shut the door, and left. He tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. So he got up and went to Starbucks and read for three hours before making his way back home.

I woke up the next morning with Omar next to me, still asleep. I thought that we had made it. Of course we hadn’t. I got up and shut the door behind me. I made coffee. My mother gave me a look that I did not notice.

“Is your friend still here?” she said, the words reaching my ears like a punch to the stomach.

She told me what happened. I felt sick.

“You should apologize to your father,” she said. “What happened?”

I almost told the truth. I said that Omar had been really drunk and wouldn’t have made it back to East Flatbush. He was used to that being my room and acted on instinct. I didn’t tell her we kissed or that we had kissed before; I wanted to remain fully innocent in my mother’s eyes.

At brunch we ate pizza at Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge. I was hungover even though I hadn’t drunk much the night before. The conversation was sparse, forced, full of heavy silences and white space.

I texted Omar that afternoon:

iMessage to Omar: My father really appreciated his cuddle this morning.

He thought I was kidding; he had no recollection of going into my room, of lying next to my father, of being carried back across the hall and placed back where he belonged, next to me. That’s what I imagine my father saying—“This is where this belongs”—but I’ve never had the heart to ask. Another silence between us. When Omar finally understood that I was telling the truth, he was mortified. I still like Omar, and I think he likes me too, but I haven’t spent time with him since. Our collective embarrassment is too much to bear.

Two days later, my parents left New York. They haven’t visited since. The day they left, my father gave me a big hug. He said, “I love you and I’m proud of you.” And then there was a pause. “Even if you scare the shit out of me sometimes.”

These words, our “I love yous” come rarely, even on the phone. These words were pulled out of him by pride, because I had just finished something hard, or by worry, because my personal life seemed scattered, unkempt, a mess. I don’t know which, and I haven’t been able to ask.

“I love you too Dad,” I said. And I meant it.


Two years later, almost to the day, I was on the edge of crying over my next heartbreak in the bathroom of the boy whom I loved but who couldn’t seem to stop cheating. Another of my selfish choices, another disappointment for my family to bear. My Mom was on the phone. She was in Minnesota, in a big white cushioned chair in her mother’s house. She was watching her mother die. You can only survive cancer but so many times. You can only survive but so many days without food or water. My mother was not crying. She had hardly slept.

“It makes you think about things,” she said, “death; sitting in silence waiting for someone you love to pass. So I am taking my turn to say things while I can. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.” She said, “You and your sister are the most important things to me on this planet. I love you, and I just want you to be happy.”

She said there shouldn’t be things left unsaid. She asked if she needed to ask forgiveness for anything.

“I love you too, Mom.” The words came easier when I said them to my mother, and not because I loved her any more. “You and Dad were the most supportive and loving parents I could have asked for. And I know how rare that is. You have nothing to ask forgiveness for, but sometimes I feel like I do.”

I wonder if my Mom passed this conversation on to her husband, my father. I wonder if it’s a conversation that he and I should have. For all of the ways in which I want to abolish gender norms in my life, the words still choke in my throat when it’s my own father on the phone. For as evolved as I claim to be, I am still guilty of assuming that he doesn’t want to talk about it, that his love will always be demonstrated in action and not in word and that that’s enough. And that my love for him can be performed just the same. Because that’s how we’ve always done it, and the silence never killed us before. He loves me. I love him. Words rarely spoken but written in stone.

Back with my mother on the phone there was silence again, both of us on the verge of tears. I would fly to see her a few days later and to remember her mother, and how she had loved us all, fiercely and no matter what.

But there are things unsaid, things I now need to say to you, Mom. And maybe especially to you, Dad, because it’s always been so difficult. I still don’t know why it can be easier here, on this page, rather than on the phone or over dinner. I know I made it hard for you to love me sometimes, but thanks for doing it anyway. I know that sometimes it feels as though we don’t have that much to talk about, but I know that if I were sick, you’d come and take care of me, and that when I have a child—finally—you will love it with all your might, even when you probably shouldn’t, and so will I because you taught me how. I know it hasn’t been easy for you to have a son who lives so far away, who is so gay, who has loved a bunch of times and failed at each attempt—so far—and who writes down family secrets for the world to read. I have been messy and ugly and selfish and terrible. I have made mistakes that you have had to clean up. I once dropped a boy off naked in bed with you, Dad. On Father’s Day, no less. And yet you love me, anyway. Nothing but a thick, fleshy, bloody love that never seems to dissolve or dissipate. And here is a thing unsaid: I don’t know how you do it.

Joseph Osmundson is a scientist and writer based in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter @reluctantlyjoe or read more of his writing at josephosmundson.com

Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture

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Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture

In addition to two thousand words of contradictory—and, yet, all-too-familiar—racist extemporizing, the website LastRhodesian.com, registered under Dylan Storm Roof’s name, also contains a series of photographs of the Charleston shooter.

In them, Roof is seen variously hoisting the Confederate flag, burning the American flag, and posing at sites of historical significance: the Museum and Library of Confederate History (above); a Confederate cemetery; and what appears to be a plantation.

Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture

Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture

Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture

Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture

Update, 2:25 p.m. – This appears to be McLeod Plantation, on James Island, outside Charleston. We have reached out to The Friends of McLeod, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the property, for comment, and will update if they respond.

Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture

Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture

Roof is also seen posing next to a sign on Sullivan’s Island, outside Charleston, a site of arrival in the United States for tens of thousands of Africans in bondage between 1700 and 1775.

Dylann Roof's White Supremacist Self-Portraiture


Images via LastRhodesian.com. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Rose McGowan Tweets Creepy Script Note From Adam Sandler Movie 

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In case you were wondering why you hated Adam Sandler movies, Rose McGowan has your answer. Remember ladies: put on a push up bra, some tight clothes, spend hours getting ready and make sure your body looks nice in form fitting clothes.

Rose McGowan Tweets Creepy Script Note From Adam Sandler Movie 

Meanwhile, Sandler and his buddies can slap on some stain-covered sweatpants and their nicest sneakers because of some insistent fantasy that shlubby bros get to bone hot chicks. Maybe they do! Who knows?

As proof that fantasy, here’s a picture of Sandler and Kevin James at a June 14 photo call for the upcoming Hotel Transylvania 2. Selena Gomez looks very nice and very uncomfortable.

Image via Getty.

LAPD Shoot Unarmed Man Gesturing With Towel-Wrapped Arm

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On Friday, LAPD officers shot a man who had raised his arm, wrapped in a towel, towards them, the Los Angeles Times reports. Police said the officers thought he had a gun; he did not.

According to authorities, the man, who has not been identified, was trying to flag police down around 6:30 p.m. at Los Feliz Boulevard and Tica Drive.

“This person extended an arm wrapped in a towel. The officer exited the vehicle and said, ‘Drop the gun, drop the gun,’” LAPD Lt. John Jenal said.

Motorists nearby took graphic video of the shooting’s aftermath: officers are seen to handcuff the victim as he bleeds from, apparently, the back of his head.

The man was taken to a hospital and is in critical condition.


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

You Don't Have Daddy Issues But Your Piece of Shit Father Might

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You Don't Have Daddy Issues But Your Piece of Shit Father Might

Until recently, I’d never been on the website AskMen.com, I suppose largely because I never had the occasion to ask a man anything. The site’s tagline touts that it is a place where men can become better men, though on my first visit I’m already suspicious that any of my questions will be answered or that I will become a better man.

I’m hoping that the site will help me find answers to my questions about our modern understanding of “daddy issues,” but I learn within moments that AskMen.com is the kind of men’s rights-enthusiast-run site full of chum content that sits and waits until a dude without a brain needs to know how to bring his girlfriend to the Big O as he masturbates near an open laptop. That’s okay, though, because I’m still learning something. I’m learning what a pick-up-artist-type guy thinks of when we talk about a woman having daddy issues. AskMen.com is still an important resource, i.e. the second result when you google the term “daddy issues.”

“Are her daddy issues to blame?” asks the post I land on. In it, the author describes the symptoms of diagnosable daddy issues, which your girlfriend or hookup partner may be suffering from, adding that he plans to advise you on how best to “handle” them if you are tasked with the daunting, unfortunate task of reversing years of neglect and mistreatment from a woman’s father.

Sexual aggressiveness is listed as a the first symptom of daddy issues, excessive flirting the second, and clinginess the last, all of these comprising the holy triumvirate of characteristics you do not want to see yourself dealing with in a girlfriend. If you end up with a woman who exhibits any one of the these behaviors, you do your best to curb them, as with a dog:

Every woman wants care and assurance from her partner and, of course, girlfriends want to spend quality time with their boyfriends. But a girl with daddy issues wants those things in excess. She may throw a fit whenever you make plans without her. She might beg and bargain whenever you try to leave her apartment. It’s important to keep her daddy issues in check by establishing strict boundaries. Stick to your guns and maintain a separate social life. If you give in to a bout of clinginess once, you’re sunk forever.

Sunk forever, broham, is not where you’d like to be.

As I’d expected from even my first seconds on AskMen.com, this was grade-F male-advice “locker room” pandering, the kind that seems almost too perfect to be true or available for the casual reader of the web. Because of its home, there was no reason for me to be taking any of this seriously or thinking of it as a representative of what most rational people would conjure up when the term “daddy issues” arose.

But for reasons beyond myself—I found the page threatening. If this was the second result when googling “daddy issues,” then there was one of two things going on: either the idea of “daddy issues” had been downgraded to low priority in our modern vernacular or this was our best resource on an outdated, monstrous, and completely wrongheaded idea.

And of course, the first result when googling “daddy issues” is Urban Dictionary. Here’s a little screenshot of what that page looks like:

You Don't Have Daddy Issues But Your Piece of Shit Father Might

Slut. Sluts. Cougar. Sugar daddy. Attention whore. Bitch. Usually to the chagrin of any poor male in their life.

While it goes without saying that AskMen.com and Urban Dictionary are the last resources anyone should use to determine historical integrity or background on any term, they do serve a significant purpose in understanding popular culture, which affects even the people who think they know better. In an informal poll of the Gawker.com staff, the term daddy issues was batted around to mean several related things: it could mean that a person sought attention sexually or that a person was eager to please their partner or that a person was often jealous or angry or mercurial or spastic in relationships. This person was almost always a woman.

None of this is particularly surprising, even as I thought about my own understanding of daddy issues. The term “daddy issues” has been so ingrained as to become commonplace, almost forgotten—one of those colloquialisms that no longer seems significant or relevant. It can be brushed aside and dismissed almost as a joke, a Lana Del Rey song so obvious that it’s surprising. But the connotation is still singular. Unlike a man who’s a “mama’s boy,” a woman with “daddy issues” has nothing soft or pleasant circling the problem. If you have daddy issues, you are certainly, without question, fucked up. Don’t ask me—ask men:

If her dad failed to show her love and affection, she might grow up expecting the worst from men. If you find her blowing up over minor screw-ups, it might be because your mistake reminds her of her father’s poor parenting.

The term “daddy issues” originates from Carl Jung’s theory of the Electra complex, a counteracting theory to the Oedipus complex that suggests women want to compete with their mothers in possession of their fathers. It’s cropped up again and again in pop culture, most notably in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy,” where the author claims to be through with her issues surrounding her father after killing them at the conclusion of the poem.

“Daddy issues” may not be the hottest term in psychobabble right now, as women are encouraged to Lean In and take responsibility for themselves despite what their fathers have wrought, but something about how normalized the term is is troubling. When it appears that we’ve let this concept slide relatively unnoticed through our cultural dialect, is there ever a way to correct and reverse that harmful language—or is it like this forever? When “she might grow up expecting the worst from men” is written down as symptom of a problem women suffer, who exactly is to blame?

You Don't Have Daddy Issues But Your Piece of Shit Father Might

Let me back up a bit. I’ve been thinking a lot about daddy issues because, well, like lots of women, I was wondering if I had them. I was roped in by this patriarchal narrative, so subtle it haunted me like a ghost. It’s incredible the paranoia that women live with every day—Do I act this way? Am I crazy? What is crazy anyway? Who is responsible for the way I am? Is the way I am right or wrong? Should I be this way or that? Did I do the right “womanly” thing today? Was the “womanly” thing the way the men wanted me to act or the way the women wanted me to act? Was I true to myself and was that enough? Who am I at all?

Am I a good woman? Do I have daddy issues?

So I went to Scotland at the end of last year to see my estranged father, who—to put it plainly—is an alcoholic narcissist who has lived his life spitefully resenting every decision he’s ever made.

I went under the auspices of a reconciliation tour, as we have not had a relationship for most of my life. The long, complicated mess of this relationship is not condensable to one essay, but I flash back frequently to being on the phone with him when I was 11 years old, begging him on behalf of my mother to pay child support, because we were a struggling single-parent home and my mother was stretched thin. He plied me with excuses and was condescending and cruel, spitting out drunken curses. He made me feel responsible for our lack of connection, which was mostly predicated on the fact that he only loves two things: to drink and watch sports, and throughout our short relationship, I was a young girl who did not.

Even then I knew he treated me differently than he did my brother. I theorized eventually that I reminded him of a precocious version of my mother, whom he resented, whom I looked up to and still do. He had no clue what to do with a woman, let alone how to parent one. I was 13 years old the last time I spent any real time with him; that experience ended with me requesting of my mother that I never have to see him again.

But as an adult, I convinced myself that perhaps I’d been biased. I wanted desperately to see what I’d missed out on all these years of feeling ruthlessly unforgiving toward him. My eventual decision to visit Scotland to see him was to seek answers about whether or not my bias against him was based in fact.

Then, when I saw him in Scotland, a lot of feelings about our lack of connection came back to me—most of which had prevented me from trying to reach out to him in the first place. He was a bitter old man who had hate in his heart. He treated me with disdain, choosing to bury his face in drink rather than have conversations with me. When we would talk, he would tell me stories of bringing women back to his hotel rooms when he visited me in America, or get into arguments with me about my mother and her apparent transgressions, calmly explaining that I had been an impossible daughter. During one particular heated moment at a pub, during which he was drinking and I was not, he said very plainly—on the brink of inebriated tears—“I wish I’d had different kids.”

I was 27 on this trip. This was a telling age: the age when a lot of female acquaintances of mine were warming up to men, forming long-term relationships, getting married, finding love and happiness in significant others. I, on the other hand, was not only not doing that, I was finding commitment difficult. I was not ready for long-term relationships. I could not find a boyfriend that I liked. I did not want to be with anyone for very long. I did not find men tolerable, interesting, or worthwhile. It took me a long time to trust any man, let alone imagine myself committing to them for a lifetime, and the thought of having a child (a CHILD!) with one of them felt scarier than jumping off a bridge. I had, some might say, the opposite of daddy issues. I thought that perhaps in seeking some closure or stability in my relationship with my dad, I’d be able to solve my problems in relationships. I believed I’d cure my daddy issues by making up with my daddy.

But I found something else entirely in Scotland, something even more freeing than giving my dad the permission to “cure” me of my “daddy issues.” Instead, in our fights and our inability to connect, I was able to put those feelings back on him. The narrative I’d been told my whole life—that because I’d been neglected and mistreated by my horrorshow of a father, I would suffer forever from daddy issues—was actually a complete lie. The person who suffered from daddy issues wasn’t me. I was actually quite together. I had a friendships, goals, a career. I had a full heart, I was eager to give, I was trusting.

By simple principle of the fact that my dad could not handle being a dad, he was the one who had daddy issues, not me. I just happened to be raised in his crossfire.

Our understanding of “daddy issues” has been defined and controlled by what men think are women’s failings. But it’s the ways in which men have failed that have made things this way. It’s on women now to define and understand our suffering, so here’s a try. Daddy issues: the issue of men finding it easy to throw away the responsibility of fatherhood, the issue of all of us excusing them. We locate the problem of abandonment in the abandoned. Turn that around, and then we can talk.


Contact the author at dayna.evans@gawker.com.

Images via Married... With Children and Mad Men.

NRA Board Member Blames Charleston Shooting Deaths on Victim

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NRA Board Member Blames Charleston Shooting Deaths on Victim

National Rifle Association board member Charles Cotton blamed Clementa Pinckney, a state senator and pastor at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, for his own death and for the death of his parishioners, Thinkprogress reports in Charleston this week.http://gawker.com/everything-we-...

In a now-deleted comment on a Texas-based message board for gun owners, Cotton attributed Pinckney’s death, at least tangentially, to the fact that he voted against concealed-carry:

Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.

NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker provided the following statement to the New York Daily News:

Individual board members do not speak for the NRA... We are praying for the victims and their families and out of respect for their tragic loss we do not feel that this is appropriate time for a political debate. We will have no further comment until all the facts are known.

Here, via Thinkprogress, is the deleted comment:

NRA Board Member Blames Charleston Shooting Deaths on Victim


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


“The makers of Tic Tacs had a problem on their hands.

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“The makers of Tic Tacs had a problem on their hands. After 18 months of internal study, they had concluded that the all-important millennial generation might not be content with a mere mint. No, the millennials wanted entertainment, release from boredom, ‘emotional rescue.’” Rescue us from emotions, Tic Tacs.

Meet the Lady Who Ruined Dylann Roof's Chance at an Insanity Plea

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Meet the Lady Who Ruined Dylann Roof's Chance at an Insanity Plea

Now that Dylann Roof is in custody and has been charged with nine counts of murder, the question is: how will he plead? The speculation in days following in the massacre is that Roof will plead like fellow mass shooter James Holmes did and claim not guilty by reason of insanity. That scenario seems much less likely now thanks to the efforts of a professional wrestling fan and an ardent Communist who’s down $49 bucks.

Twitter user @HenryKrinkle was searching for Roof’s online footprints but to find websites registered under the name Dylann Roof would cost him $49 dollars, so @HenryKrinkle tweeted to his followers:

A lady who goes by the pen name Emma Quangel threw down the cash. Now Roof’s deranged white supremacist manifesto is public and it could qualify as evidence showing that Roof was not in a delusional state during the shooting. Given the content of the manifesto it’s pretty clear that Roof’s murders were primarily motivated by ideology and not psychosis.

Quangel told the Daily Beast, “As a communist, it is my duty and obligation to spend at least $49 to help ruin this guy’s insanity plea.” She also tweeted:

We reached out to Quangel for comment but she’s mad at Jezebel for ‘pinkwashing’ our coverage of Israel. Well, Quangel, we might disagree on Middle Eastern politics and some tactical decisions regarding the Kronstadt Rebellion, but we still salute you, Comrade.


Contact the author at natasha.vargas-cooper@jezebel.com.

Russell Simmons Called De Blasio a "Punk" and a "Bitch"

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On Thursday morning, during a radio appearance on Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning” show, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons called Mayor Bill de Blasio a “punk,” and also a “bitch,” over his perceived deference to Governor Andrew Cuomo and Commissioner Bill Bratton.

“Our police commissioner is bullying our punk mayor that we worked so hard to put in office,” Simmons said. “He knows his kids are at risk. He knows that if a cop shoots his kid and there is no footage, that cop is not getting charged. And that’s because there are no special prosecutors. There should be independent prosecutors who don’t work for the police who have to look at these cases individually.”

“The governor can appoint one tomorrow,” said Simmons. “He has the legal right, and he promised me—Governor Cuomo said, if I can’t change the law, if there is no legislation that brings in special prosecutors to oversee police, then I will appoint one. And that was Governor Cuomo’s promise not only to me but to the people of New York State. And he has not done it. And Mayor de Blasio has not said a word because he’s a punk.”

Simmons also said that that mayor should not have tolerated the police unions literally turning their backs on him after the killing of two officers in Brooklyn last year.

“He should have told them, ‘turn around or go home,” Simmons said. “He got the police commissioner pushing him around like he’s a bitch. And it’s shocking to me that he’s not stood up for the people of New York.”

De Blasio spokesperson Karen Hinton provided a statement to Capital New York:

At Mayor de Blasio’s direction, Commissioner Bratton has retrained officers and stopped excessive stop and frisk which the Mayor believes led to unconstitutional searches of innocent people of color but did nothing to reduce crime overall.

We also welcome and encourage Mr. Simmons’ help with convincing Albany and the Governor’s Office to reform rental regulations by ending vacancy control and developer bonuses, as well as the exorbitant tax credits that developers get without building any affordable housing.

These reforms would go a long way toward helping people of color find and keep homes they can afford.

Capital New York reports that Hot 97 has played the “bitch” quote in promo spots numerous times since the interview on Thursday.


H/T Capital New York. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Man Suspected of Fatally Shooting New Orleans Cop Arrested

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Man Suspected of Fatally Shooting New Orleans Cop Arrested

New Orleans police have apprehended 33-year-old Travis Boys, accused of fatally shooting Daryle Holloway, a 22-year NOPD veteran, while being transported in the back of Holloway’s squad car.

The shooting took place on Saturday morning, the Times-Picayune reports. Boys was arrested in the Lower 9th Ward on Sunday after a city-wide manhunt.

From the Times-Picayune, on the shooting:

Boys was arrested for aggravated assault and on his way to Central Lockup around 8 a.m. when he somehow managed to maneuver his hands — which were handcuffed behind his back — to his front and make his way through an opening in the cage inside Holloway’s vehicle, said NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison. He and Holloway fought, Harrison said, before Boys managed to fatally shoot the 22-year veteran officer and father. Boys then fled the area, police said, while Holloway — having crashed his police SUV into a utility pole near North Claiborne and Elysian Fields avenues — was rushed to an area hospital.

“There’s speculation he was double jointed,” New Orleans Police Department spokesman Tyler Gamble told the New York Daily News. “He didn’t get out of the handcuffs. He made his way to the front of the car through an opening in the police cage. The officer tried to stop him from leaving the vehicle, but he wasn’t able to because of his injury.”

Police said no one was hurt during Boys’ arrest on Sunday.


Images via NOPD. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Let's Hear It For Goofy Dads

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Let's Hear It For Goofy Dads

It’s Father’s Day, so let this be the year we all finally recognize that dads and their goofy dad stuff—monster faces, silliness, mockery; perhaps even dad jokes, if the judges are feeling lenient—could be as essential to childrearing as any of that mom stuff. Or, at least, that a Platonic ideal of “mom” is not the ultimate standard for parenting. Who’s with me?! Moms and dads are different! But equal!

Standard research that looks at how parents bond with their children has typically focused on moms and used mom-styled parenting as the line to which everything else must measure up. After all, moms kind of do all the work—and have for most of history, whether they felt up to the task or not. But in spite of all the good aspects dads bring to the rearing of their children, they haven’t historically scored well on bonding tests. That’s all changed, thanks to new research.

In a piece over at the WSJ, Sue Shellenbarger looks at studies from the last two years that focus on the ways in which uniquely “dad” approaches to parenting are a valid and useful part of bonding between parent and child and also child development. Shellenbarger talks to Dr. Kathryn Kerns, a psychological sciences professor at Kent State who discovered that, when she surveyed 30 teens and preteens about their relationships with their dads, many kids described their dads in warm terms but gave answers that put their dads in a low score range on Kerns’s standard bonding test. She found that, when she tweaked the test to add questions about whether dads were encouraging and/or enriching, the scores went up.

Shellenbarger writes:

Dr. Kerns is one of a growing number of researchers creating new tests and techniques to document the father factor. More than a dozen studies in the past two years are yielding new insights into the nuances, and the value, of the seemingly random, sometimes silly play many dads engage in with their children.

The research could offer dads more leeway in their play with children, suggesting there’s no need for moms or others to worry when fathers stir up or challenge their children—as long as the kids are happy and having fun. Also, dads sometimes can stop a child’s fussing or crying through joking or physical play.

It’s hard for me to imagine that no mothers have ever used these silly tactics, or that if they did, joking or physical play would actually be ranked somehow lower than calming a child with soothing or comforting—whatever works, right? This stuff also has something to do with temperament and disposition. But the important thing to note here is that exploration and risk-taking—things typically more associated with dad parenting—have been getting short shrift in these studies. They shouldn’t, nor should other methods dads might use more often to get a kid to calm down so long as they are effective and not harmful, like using intrusiveness or interruption. The equalization of parenting techniques will be good for everyone: Research shows that when moms interrupt a child’s play or pick a game for them, it’s regarded as a bad thing, but when dads do, it isn’t.

Other research Shellenbarger cites includes “The Laughing Task,” where parents are given two minutes to make their child laugh in a room with no toys. Children were said to display a more expansive range of feeling with dads, evincing an invaluable regulation skill that allows kids to work on self-control while excited. (Mothers were more bothered by the lack of toys, apparently, but just as skilled at producing the laughs, and with more sensitivity.)

At any rate, turns out that much like dad parenting, dad research is more fun, too:

The new research is sparking some freewheeling antics. In one study, when a preschooler grew tired and started crying, his father flipped the child upside-down into a midair headstand. Another dad sparked his toddler’s interest in playing by yelling in mock distress, “Ow, that smarts!” when the child used a toy doctor’s kit to give him an imaginary shot in the arm.

Oy, my aching, softening mom heart. And:

New parents also exhibit differences in bonding behavior. In a study of 100 mothers and fathers interacting individually with their five-month-old infants, mothers tended to gaze into their babies’ eyes, mimic their babbling and touch them affectionately, according to a 2013 study in Attachment & Human Development. Fathers were more likely to arouse the babies, using quick motions to get them to laugh or encourage them to explore.

Of note, the brains of dads who are gay “show as much activation of the amygdala-based parenting network as the brains of mothers, according to a 2014 study led by Ruth Feldman, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. This suggests the brain’s parenting network can be developed by anyone who takes the lead on infant care.”

To me, this is the more important takeaway—obviously, research that looks at how parents bond should look at parents, regardless of gender. Different approaches are valid and should be treated as such. But hell yeah! We can all adapt! This stuff has its roots in deep gender socialization, but it’s not written in stone.

Shellenbarger:

The yardsticks researchers typically use to assess parent-child bonding have been tested mostly with mothers, and work best in capturing the soothing, comforting behaviors more common to moms. That is partly because it is difficult to get fathers to take part in lab studies, says Natasha Cabrera, a professor of human development at the University of Maryland in College Park and a leading researcher in the field. Fathers tend to work long hours, to be less likely to live with their children, and to be more private about their parenting. Dr. Cabrera once spent three years finding 50 fathers willing to take part in a study.

It’s a smidge funny, the lengths to which researchers have gone to give dads a leg up on feeling valid to the parenting process. If only we could go to such lengths to include women in studies where they get short shrift because the baseline is a male standard, like military service, sports performance, medical research and psychology, in the interest of fairness and inclusivity.

But: Dare to dream.

At any rate, if you’re showing any trad-dads in your circle appreciation for their dadding this weekend, be sure to let them know all those silly faces really paid off, in case they were feeling less than appreciated. Though they probably weren’t. Moms still seem to have the monopoly on that.


Contact the author at tracy.moore@jezebel.com.

Illustration by Jim Cooke.

Oligarch Possibly Feels Modicum of Shame

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Oligarch Possibly Feels Modicum of Shame

As she strikes an increasingly populist pose ahead of the 2016 Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton may have to forego a Hamptons house this summer, the New York Times reports. Houses on the Hamptons rent for hundreds of thousands of dollars a month: the “optics,” as they say, are not great.

In 2011 and 2012, the Clintons rented an eight-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot home in East Hampton for part of August. According to the Times, comparable homes rent for $200,000 per month. In 2013, they stayed in a six-bedroom mansion in Sagoponack, where Hillary apparently worked on her memoir, Hard Choices.

Several local real estate agents speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Times that the Clintons have looked into renting a home on the eastern end of Long Island again this year—the family has summered there on and off since the ‘90s—but have not signed a lease.

From the Times:

But the Clintons’ go-to vacation spot for the last several summers now seems problematic, as Mrs. Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, delivers a populist economic message that the deck is stacked in favor of the wealthiest Americans and that she plans to “reshuffle the cards.”

Thus, it may not be ideal for Mr. and Mrs. Clinton to be photographed mingling at summer cocktail parties with the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Alec Baldwin, Steven Spielberg and other wealthy Hamptons regulars.

Never any lack of hard choices for Hillary, then.

The real trouble, though, is that the Clintons are likely to be spending a lot of time on the Hamptons anyway, for fundraising. “There is only going to be one fund-raiser for Hillary in the Hamptons this summer: it starts on Memorial Day and ends on Labor Day,” Robert Zimmerman, who has a home in Southampton, told the Times.

“It’s a time for people to show their allegiance and show off their houses at the same time,” said public relations exec and “Hamptons hostess” Alison Brod.

“Some of us will go into catastrophic withdrawal if we’re not tapped to raise money for one of the Clintons,” PR exec and Democratic activist Ken Sunshine joked (?).

If you ask me, she can’t afford not to rent a place!


Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

NFL Looking Into Alleged Video Of Saints Player Hitting Woman With Belt

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NFL Looking Into Alleged Video Of Saints Player Hitting Woman With Belt

According to NOLA.com, the Miami Beach brawl in this video depicts New Orleans Saints linebacker Junior Galette fighting multiple people, and smacking one woman with a belt.

The video was upload on March 25, 2013, but apparently no one noticed until recently. The Saints were made aware of the video, and said they sent it to the NFL. Here are a couple of screencaps of the man in the video:

Galette’s attorney denied that the man in the video was his client:

Update [8:11 p.m.]: Here’s a screencap of a photo Galette posted on his Instagram page the day before the video was posted online. You can see that the man alleged to be Galette in the video is wearing the same sunglasses in the photo.

[NOLA.com]


Surfers Set World Record In Stupid Bullshit Way

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Surfers Set World Record In Stupid Bullshit Way

On Saturday, at California’s Huntington Beach, 66 extremely small people packed onto a normal-sized surfboard, setting the record for most people to ever ride a single surfboard simultaneously. Haha, no, just kidding—66 normal-sized people packed onto an oversized surfboard, which is bullshit, if you ask me.

The record-setting board is 42 feet long, 11 feet wide, and 1,300 pounds, the Los Angeles Times reports. This is bullshit and this record doesn’t make any sense. Who cares about a record for most people on a surfboard if you can just make a bigger surfboard. Seems to me like the plaudits should go to the people who made the surfboard, if they have to go to anyone, which they shouldn’t.

“You guys were officially amazing,” said Michael Empric, adjudicator for Guinness World Records, according to the Times. (Some bullshit.)

Here’s a video of these stupid idiots.

“It was crowded, it was scary, but we had to focus,” Tim Stamps, a participant—ugh—told NBC Los Angeles. “We were all happy, everyone was screaming and yelling. It was a good time.”

Whatever, Tim.


Stupid bullshit photo via AP Images. Contact the stupid author of this bullshit post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Charleston's Emanuel AME Church Reopened For Service Today 

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Charleston's Emanuel AME Church Reopened For Service Today 

Emanuel AME, the South Carolina church where nine people were murdered reopened for Sunday service today. The service, led by Reverend Norvel Goff, focused on themes of love and forgiveness. During his sermon, Goff said:

“It’s been rough. We some of us have been downright angry. But through it all, God has sustained us and encouraged us. Let us not grow weary.”

He promised that he and other community leaders would “pursue justice,” and continue to hold “elected officials accountable to do the right thing.”

The AP/Guardian reports that the service, which was both solemn and emotional, began with a reading of the victims’ names. The service was also marked by the visible presence of police, who were checked bags outside of the church and stood throughout the sanctuary.

Charleston's Emanuel AME Church Reopened For Service Today 

Regardless, the congregation remained welcoming.

Via AP/Guardian:

On Saturday, Harold Washington, 75, said he expected the sanctuary to host many newcomers after the shooting shattered the group’s sense of peace and security.

“We’re gonna have people come by that we’ve never seen before and will probably never see again, and that’s OK,” he said. “It’s a church of the Lord, you don’t turn nobody down.”

Images via Getty.

Dylann Roof Said To Have Attempted Suicide After Shooting

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Dylann Roof Said To Have Attempted Suicide After Shooting

On Wednesday night, after killing nine people in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, Dylann Roof allegedly put his gun to his head and pulled the trigger. The gun, however, was empty.

Kevin Singleton, the son of 59-year-old Myra Thompson, relayed this account to the Los Angeles Times. Singleton was told about Roof’s suicide attempt by one of the two adult survivors, 69-year-old Polly Sheppard.

“He pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger, but it went click,” Singleton said. “His plan was never to leave that church.”

From the Times:

A woman who answered the telephone at Sheppard’s house Saturday refused to comment.

Singleton said that it appeared Roof’s original intent was to kill Emanuel’s well-known minister, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was the first one shot.

But when the Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74 and retired, grappled with Roof, he unloaded on Simmons and the others who died, Singleton said.

A website registered under Roof’s name, Lastrhodesian.com, discovered yesterday, is no longer online.


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

Taylor Swift Criticizes Apple Music For 'Not Paying Artists'

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Taylor Swift Criticizes Apple Music For 'Not Paying Artists'

Taylor Swift has joined the chorus of musicians and producers criticizing Apple for refusing to pay royalties during the three-month free trial period of their new streaming service, Apple Music. In a blog post on Tumblr, Swift explained her decision to keep her latest album off of the service:

I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.

Swift emphasized that the decision “is not about me,” but rather about independent labels and new musicians:

This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field…but will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs.

Her decision comes after an outcry from independent labels who have argued that they would be the most affected by the loss of revenues. Last week, The Guardian reported that Beggars Group, a UK-based indie label that represents FKA twigs, said:

Whilst we understand the logic of [Apple’s] proposal and their aim to introduce a subscription-only service, we struggle to see why rights owners and artists should bear this aspect of Apple’s customer acquisition costs.

Swift concluded the post by urging Apple to revisit its policy:

But I say to Apple with all due respect, it’s not too late to change this policy and change the minds of those in the music industry who will be deeply and gravely affected by this. We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.

Image via Getty.

George W. Bush Is the Father of the Year

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George W. Bush Is the Father of the Year

On the morning of the Father of the Year Awards Luncheon, I ran out of bread enough to even make cinnamon toast for my children, and I ended up serving them some Chocolate Chex and the last apple in the house. Not that I was going there to win Father of the Year. I was merely going to watch.

While I was trying to get ready to go out the door to the Father of the Year Awards Luncheon, my younger son, the three-year-old, with magic marker scrawled all over his arms, pleaded, “Let’s first play superheroes. Let’s first play superheroes, OK, Dad?” He got distracted by something else before we ended up playing superheroes.

Dad. Chopping the second syllable off “Daddy” was a unilateral decision by the three-year-old. “Dad” is what I called my own father when I was growing up, mostly, although his later years we would both turn to the more gruffly silly and hence more tender “Pa.”

In the world at large, “Dad” operates as a cheery low-grade putdown, which seems fine to me—both as a mark of the overall erosion of patriarchal authority and as a personal measure of the credential I’ve been allowed to claim for just over eight years now. Dad is the old guy in the young office, who has cranky opinions and skips after-work drinks. Dad is carrying a few extra pounds around the middle. Dad enjoys the music and the sneakers that were cool half his lifetime ago but which are now comfortable.

The headliner at the Father of the Year Awards Luncheon was going to be George W. Bush. That is how far the currency has been devalued—George Walker Bush, the definitive little son of a bigger father, so incapable of embodying traditional masculine authority that he had to delegate the work of being old and serious-seeming to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Who were feckless idiots themselves, as it turned out, but gray-haired and slow-moving ones. The appearance of gravity. The Dad of the 21st Century: Bush slackfaced behind The Pet Goat, with no idea how to handle either these kids or the real grown-up business that had just landed on him.

If there was any one moment I particularly felt the weight of the office I had attained, it was when my older son was quite little and we were riding on an airplane with a group of members of the military—terribly young ones, their faces above their BDUs still blotchy and fuzzy with unfinished adolescence. Suddenly, though I was still only in my 30s, I realized that these representatives of our fighting forces, committed to an open-ended set of wars, were closer in age to my child than they were to me. My tiny child, wide-eyed, still in his diaper. This was the world I had brought him into.

Outside the Hilton, where the Father of the Year Awards Luncheon would be, there were four women holding signs denouncing Bush as a war criminal. How could a war criminal be Father of the Year? A fifth woman showed up and joined them. They had some extra signs ready.


The Father of the Year Awards are given out by the National Father’s Day Committee, which is part of the Father’s Day Mother’s Day Council Inc. The organization, according to its press handout, was founded as the Father’s Day Council in 1931 “by businessmen, civic leaders and concerned citizens....with the initial objective to achieve universal observance of the then little known holiday—Father’s Day.” Some other sources give the date as 1938. Other sources also emphasize the fact that the group that had created the Father’s Day Council was the Associated Men’s Wear Retailers of New York City, a bit of paternity unmentioned the handout.

The Council began distributing Father of the Year awards in 1942, and in 1978—six years after Congress and President Richard Nixon had fulfilled the Council’s formative goal and made Father’s Day a permanent national holiday—the Council branched out into broader philanthropy. This year’s luncheon, for instance, was dedicated to raising funds for Save the Children.

Nineteen seventy-eight was also, the press handout recounts, the year that

the Father’s Day Council, in order to achieve a more universal approach to the important role parents play in the family unit, formed the National Mother’s Day Council by purchasing the National Committee for the Observance of Mother’s Day.

This unabashed paternalism suggested that the Father of the Year Awards were oriented perhaps toward an older culture of fatherhood. The third floor of the Hilton, where the luncheon would be, was full of men in suits—real suits, some with pinstripes or chalk stripes. Dad though I was, I had merely chosen to wear an unlined blazer, over a button-down shirt and tie. Also I had been issued a hanging badge that read MEDIA in white letters, though Gawker had officially been denied press entry and had paid $750 for a ticket. Everyone else in sight was a GUEST or STAFF.

There were two cocktail receptions, one for the general attendees (and MEDIA) and one for VIPs. A staffer stood near the place where the curtain between the two spaces gapped open a little. Sometimes a dad or possible dad would get a long-necked beer from the open bar, possibly shrouding the label with a napkin. The bartenders also were pouring sparkling wine. I did not see, in the brief time I studied the matter, any of them reach for the liquors behind them, but it was before noon. More and more suited dads packed the room, as well as somehow dad- or apparel-industry-adjacent women and young men, till it became necessary to skirt the whole mass to get from one side to the other. I flipped through my phone and looked at a few photographs of my kids.

At the far end of the general-admission reception stood Robert Reid, one of the 2014 Fathers of the Year. Other fathers of that year were Chris Christie, Curtis Martin, and the CEOs of Bloomingdale’s and the footwear-and-apparel Camuto Group. Fathers of the Year come in groups of three to five. The list of past honorees was broken down into nearly two dozen categories, including Stage (Peter Ustinov, 1958); National (Douglas MacArthur, 1942); Labor (Albert Shanker, 1977); Music (L.L. Cool J, 2006); Literature (Tom Clancy, 1987); and Sports (Luis Tiant and Dave DeBusschere, both 1976).

Dad is obviously a status that transcends boundaries of class and profession, but since 2005, that principle has been codified by the inclusion of the Ashok C. Sani All-Star Dad, selected from the broader non-famous public through an essay contest. (The normal guy: a “Dad” in the “Father of the Year” slate.) Reid, a vice president of a medical-device company in Massachusetts, had been the Ashok C. Sani All-Star Dad. One of his daughters submitted the essay without his knowledge, he said, and he got the phone call telling him he had won right after attending her college graduation. “He thought I was playing a joke on him,” said Marissa Mediate, his fiancee.

The dad is often, in our culture, the butt of a joke; Father’s Day itself struggled to overcome or co-opt public derision, as the historian Leigh Eric Schmidt wrote:

Father’s Day promotions were regularly unmasked and mocked, even by merchants themselves, but it nonetheless got progressively harder for consumers simply to leave the event unheeded and unobserved.

I ducked out into the hallway to look for people coming or going from the VIP reception and was rewarded with a glimpse of Mark Shriver, a 2008 Father of the Year winner (“Humanitarians”) who now emcees the events. He headed in the door with a flash of white Kennedy teeth and the big Kennedy walk, which I briefly thought of as his patrimony till I remembered they’d come down his maternal line.

In the sleekly appointed men’s room outside the reception, in the handicapped-accessible stall, a gray plastic diapering table hung open.


Plates of roast chicken and cold shrimp and grilled vegetables—squash, eggplant, eat-your-vegetables vegetables—were waiting in the banquet hall. Also waiting at every seat was a copy of 41: A Portrait of My Father, the biography of George H.W. Bush of which George W. Bush is the author of record. Even as a Father of the Year, he was still a son.

The guests of honor entered from the right, and there was George W. Bush. The last time I’d seen him in person—no, wait, it must have been the 2004 Republican National Convention. Before that, though, was 2002, on the South Lawn of the White House, where he was sweating through a blue shirt, presiding over a tee-ball game with Cal Ripken, Jr. I was five years away from being a dad then. The presidential tee-ball initiative had been announced in the spring of 2001, part of Bush’s first 100 days, setting the tone of the administration’s goals and priorities for the next eight years.

Did he look any different now? A little thicker, maybe, and his hair all gray but still boyishly full and wavy. He cocked his arm and gave a jaunty little wave from the elbow as he walked onto the dais. The suited dads gave him a standing ovation.

The New Amsterdam Boys & Girls Choir sang the National Anthem, with a backdrop of corporate logos behind them. Bush put his hand firmly over not his heart but his solar plexus and held it there with a practiced unwaveringness.

“Helloooooo, good afternoon,” Shriver said, exhorting the crowd. He launched into reminiscences about the many prior charitable occasions on which he’d worked with the Bush family. At one, in Houston, Shriver said, a man in the elevator, wearing a cowboy hat, had asked him if anyone had ever told him he looked like a Kennedy. Shriver had allowed as to how yes, people had told him that. “That must make you so mad,” the man had said.

“That’s actually a true story,” Shriver said. Dads tell stories. A dad is not necessarily epistemologically reliable, in this storytelling.

Shriver encouraged the attendees to make donations to Save the Children via cell phone. Text messages with dollar amounts began appearing on the screen behind him.

The saving of the children underway, it was time to start in on the dads. Howard Mittman, the publisher of GQ, which administers the Ashok C. Sani All-Star Dad essay contest, introduced the 2015 All-Star Dad, David Gonzales, an HVAC technician from Jacksonville, Florida.

First, his daughter Marissa read her winning essay: “My dad and I met when I was three,” she said. He had fallen in love with her mother and the family that came along. “He took me and accepted me as his own,” She told how Gonzales had worked extra jobs on the weekend to support them. More important than any of the formal life lessons he might try to impart, she said, was the example he set of unconditional love. (Even as a source of wisdom, a dad is on some level endearingly clueless.).

Gonzales, a compact man with a pink necktie, received his Father of the Year trophy, which looked more like an Academy Award statuette than awards are generally allowed to look. He apologized for not being a “great public speaker”: “I passed out during my best friend’s wedding, giving a speech,” he said. Warm and reassuring applause. He returned his daughter’s praises. “I hadn’t even remembered that I wasn’t your biological father until I read this essay,” he said. The sentiment read as awkward jotted down in black and white, but in context, between these two particular people, father and daughter, it was sweet.

The next Father of the Year was Morris Goldfarb, the president of the G-III Apparel Group. The program listed G-III as a Presidential sponsor of the event, the highest tier. There was a certain implicit and occasionally explicit tension between the celebration of an industry-leading businessman and the celebration of a Father of the Year. Here was a man whose work had meant years of overseas travel, lining up manufacturers. “When he was home,” his grown daughter said, “he was there 100 percent.”

Goldfarb, tall and stooped, opened his own remarks by reciting figures on the sad fates of the fatherless—disproportionately represented among homeless and runaways, dropouts, the incarcerated. Then he offered a roast of his own credentials. Five years ago, he said, he had been proposed for the award. His family’s responses: “Why you, Dad? What did you do to deserve the title?” “I don’t get it, Dad. Maybe you could be Granddad of the Year, but not Father.” “A good father, fine, but why Father of the Year?”

So, he said, he resolved to do better. He began making sure to show up on “family trips to our home in St. Barth.” It was not clear whether this was meant as humor. His next bit, about giving his wife more money to spend, was clearly a joke. But later on, when he talked about his annual bonding ritual with his son of “going to Super Bowl games together,” it was earnest, just a thing that a father and a son do.

Everyone’s lives and families are different, as a holiday dedicated to universal fatherhood reminds us. Every generation is different. Goldfarb spoke of his own father, a Holocaust survivor, who emigrated to Israel, then moved on to the United States and built a prosperous business—a man with a “tough outer shell.” He spoke of his son: “If his seven-year-old daughter...is on stage for 30 seconds, Jeff is there.” It was conceived as praise, but in a room full of people who’d succeeded in the industry themselves, the change from the founding generation to the inheriting one didn’t quite make a convincing parable of progress.


The donations were at $14,000 as Shriver introduced Barbara Bush, the former first daughter. “I grew up thinking everyone’s grandfather was president,” she said. Three days before, her Uncle Jeb had announced his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election with a speech attacking “the pampered elites of Washington.” Fifteen years earlier, her father had declared “I don’t have a lot of the things that come with Washington,” as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination with his own father, the ex-president and former CIA director, in the audience.

Here now too was a recitation of her father’s accomplishments, sounding little different than it had so many years before, the presidency no more convincing than his stint in the Air National Guard or his foray into business. “And now he is a world-renowned artist,” Barbara Bush said. A substantial fraction of what any Bush says in public is nastily barbed—a moment before, Barbara had been talking about her and her sister, Jenna’s, work in “global health, education, and [subtle, knife-twisting pause] now the Today Show, for my sister”—but on the subject of her father’s painting, she sounded sincere.

Before the end of the introduction, in fact, Barbara Bush was choking up. At this routine midday banquet, built around a second-rate knockoff of a fourth-rate holiday, after a lifetime of watching her father collect accolades, it was near incomprehensible.

There was no such wobble from her father (“a man my sister and I lovingly call ‘Popsicle’”). “I deserve to win,” George Bush said, “only because I raised two great girls.” He was as loud and blurty as ever, the old macho aggression performing the social role of humor. He spoke of Barbara (“I guess an overused word in the global health space is ‘amazing’”) and Jenna (continuing “the warm relations I’ve always had with NBC”) and his grandson (“the smartest grandchild in America—this kid speaks Mandarin!”).

Then he turned his attention to Mark Shriver: “You know what really irritates me? Someone’s got a famous family name.” It was shaped like a joke, and the audience laughed, but it was hard to find an angle from which there was anything really funny about it.

Now: fatherhood. If not for being a father, Bush said, “I don’t think I would have quit drinking.” Consider the counterfactual history. “Fatherhood meant sobriety from 1986 on.”

After that confession, and a quick meditation of his own on unconditional love—”one of the greatest gifts a dad can give a child”—it was time to turn to the book everyone had received. This “may be confusing” to his critics, Bush said: “Not only can I read, I can write.”

“By the way,” he said, “it’s not an excuse not to go buy another one.” So the founding spirit of Father’s Day, the moving of merchandise, carried on. The rest was a reading: George H.W. Bush insulted his son’s paint-spattered pants. George H.W. Bush jumped from an airplane on his 90th birthday.

George W. Bush discharged his oratorical duties, got the standing ovation, shot out a stiff-arm of a wave, and headed for the exit arm in arm with his daughter. Between the gate and the phone donations, someone announced, the event had raised $1.3 million for charity.

“Hug and kiss your children,” an official said, by way of farewell. The protesters outside the hotel had gone away. One of my shoes was starting to come apart at the seam and it was too muggy for the blazer, so I detoured back home to change. “Hello!” I called out as I came in the door. The babysitter shushed me. The three-year-old was asleep.

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