Minions: they’re everywhere. On top the box office, in your social media feeds, lurking on street corners, taking over the whole world. But despite the slow and irksome Minion creep toward pop culture domination, they took the time to save a child’s life.

According to a police report from Colorado Springs, a little girl was saved by her stuffed Minion doll when she fell from a third-story window on Thursday night. The five-year-old and her heroic Minon had been playing in her bedroom when she fell backwards out of a nearby window.

“Fortunately, when the child fell out of the window she continued holding on to a stuffed Minion teddy bear that is believed to have cushioned her fall,” the police report (via NYDN) said.

It looks like the evil of Minions can be harnessed for good.

Image via Getty.

In a video recently obtained and published by British tabloid The Sun, the 7-year-old Princess Elizabeth, who would later be crowned Queen Elizabeth II, is seen to give the Nazi salute. Elizabeth is the middle-sized child in the screenshot above.

According to The Sun, Elizabeth’s uncle Edward—then Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII—was a Nazi sympathizer. Edward is seen to encourage the children to raise their arms in the salute. The video, thought to have been taken around 1933 or 1934, can be seen in full here.

In a statement, Buckingham palace said that it was disappointed the film had been published and raised questions over how it had been obtained at all, The Guardian reports. The film apparently came from the queen’s personal family archive.

“We are not using it to suggest any impropriety on behalf of them,” Sun managing editor Stig Abell told the BBC, referring to the queen—a child, at the time—and her mother, who is also seen to give the salute. “But it is an important and interesting issue, the extent to which the British aristocracy—notably Edward VIII, in this case—in the 1930s, were sympathetic towards fascism.

“That must be a matter of national and public interest to discuss. And I think this video and this footage animates that very clearly,” Abell said. “I think this is a piece of social history. One of the most significant events in our country’s history, the Second World War, the rise of Nazism, one of the most pernicious movements in human history, and I think one is entitled to have a look at some of the background to it.”

“We’re very clear. We’re of course not suggesting anything improper on behalf of the Queen or the Queen Mum.”

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

Thursday afternoon, GQ Magazine revealed photos from their latest issue featuring Trainwreck star Amy Schumer in joking, sexual situations with Star Wars characters like C-3PO and R2-D2. Friday, Lucasfilm responded and not in kind.

In a post on Twitter by the official Star Wars account, they said the following: “Lucasfilm & Disney didn’t approve, participate in or condone the inappropriate use of our characters in this manner.” What “manner” do they mean? Well, the photo above, as well as these.

Obviously, GQ and Schumer didn’t mean to disrespect Lucasfilm with these photos. They’re just supposed to be funny, weird and provocative. Like Schumer and her comedy. In fact, that they chose to use these characters at all is a testament to their cultural significance. It’s kind of a compliment. But Star Wars is owned by Disney. Disney is a family company and they obviously wouldn’t be cool with anyone, even the biggest comedienne in the world, fellating a lightsaber. At least in public.

[GQ Magazine, H/T Yahoo]

“‘The home’s craftsmanship and the grounds’ peaceful tranquility were beyond what I’d ever experienced. The frontage on Georgica Pond, with its never-ending pageant of natural beauty, is breathtaking.’ Mr. Rahr is parting with the estate, he said, because he now summers in Europe.”

In Bill Cosby’s full deposition from 2005, which has recently been obtained by The New York Times, Cosby admits to offering career advice, using his wealth, and even asking one young women about her dead father’s cancer before “pushing them for sex acts.” All of which he spoke about, under oath, with “casual indifference.”

This new report appears to expand upon the recent reveal from the Associated Press that Cosby admittedly bought drugs “to use on women.”

From The New York Times:

He talked of the 19-year-old aspiring model who sent him her poem and ended up on his sofa, where, Mr. Cosby said, she pleasured him with lotion.

He spoke with casual disregard about ending a relationship with another model so he could pursue other women. “Moving on,” was his phrase.

He suggested he was skilled in picking up the nonverbal cues that signal a woman’s consent.

“I think I’m a pretty decent reader of people and their emotions in these romantic sexual things, whatever you want to call them,” he said.

Cosby apparently spent much of his time during the four day-long deposition making jokes, with one of the lawyers even saying that she believed he was “making light of a very serious situation.” Cosby replied, “That may very well be.”

According to The Times, Cosby described a number of inappropriate encounters with women, but “it is through his long and detailed descriptions of his relationship with [Andrea Constand, a young woman who worked at Temple University as a basketball manager], that Mr. Cosby’s attitudes, proclivities and approach to women are most clearly revealed.”

According to The Times:

Early on in his courtship, he arranged an intimate meal alone with [Constand] at his Pennsylvania home, complete with Cognac, dimmed lights and a fire, he said....“I take her hair and I pull it back and I have her face like this,” he said. “And I’m talking to her ...And I talked to her about relaxing, being strong. And I said to her, come in, meaning her body.”

But the two remained inches apart, he said, and he did not try to kiss her because he did not sense she wanted him to. Nevertheless, at the next dinner he said they had what he described as a “sexual moment,” short of intercourse. He described her afterward as having “a glow.”

Still, Cosby was adamant that he didn’t want Constand’s mother to consider him a “dirty old man,” which led him to instruct her to “tell her mother ‘about the orgasm’ so that she would realize it was consensual. ‘Tell your mother about the orgasm. Tell your mother how we talked,’ he said he remembered thinking.” Worried, that her family might still “seek to embarrass him,” Cosby offered to pay for the rest of her education.

Cosby, who continues to deny any accusation of sexual assault, has yet to be charged with a crime.

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

Earlier this week, a drunk man, sleeping in the middle of railroad tracks in an upstate New York town, got run over by a slow-moving freight train, state police said. Apparently, the man was fine.

According to police, Aaron Collins, 38, of Stillwater, was sleeping on the tracks in Schaighticoke, NY around 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday when a 7,000-foot-long Pan Am freight train approached, WNYT reports. The conductor stopped the train when he saw Collins, but not before the first two engines passed over the sleeping man.

After the engines were separated, Collins was found to be uninjured (but still drunk). “When you’re drunk, your body goes fairly limp,” said Sgt. Victoria Lovett.

WNYT reports he was flown to Albany Medical Center for a precautionary evaluation. Collins could face charges.

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

Sharks are in the lineup. @Mick_Fanning is OK. The #JBayOpen Final is on STANDBY http://t.co/Kq8bZ5eIA7 http://t.co/FusEoR2EHM

July 19, 2015

Good morning! Competition in the J-Bay Open has been suspended until....when exactly?

Update (10:15 a.m.): You don’t say!

Due to the shark incident, #JBayOpen has been called OFF for the day. The athletes are unharmed. More info soon http://t.co/Kq8bZ5eIA7

July 19, 2015

“There were many decades when there would have been no reflexive analogies to be made between East Hampton and whatever might be on offer at a city beach. As the aesthetic of wealth has become ever more dominant, so too has the upscaling of public recreation space.”

For the people who proudly display their Myers-Briggs results on their online bios, there’s a new personality test you can take. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have categorized drinkers into four different roles, inspired by cultural icons and film characters. Right next to your Myers-Brigg “INFP” type, you can now say you’re one of the following kinds of alcohol imbibers: “Ernest Hemingway,” “Mr. Hyde,” “Mary Poppins” or “The Nutty Professor.”

If you’re a Mary Poppins-type, that means you’re a sweet and responsible drinker. Probably the kind who would hold a friend’s hair back while they barf and not get mad if it gets on your shoes. If you’re a Nutty Professor, you’re the type that is more quiet and reserved when sober, but gets wild when you knock back a few whisky sours. Mr. Hyde types become hostile, and are thought to be the ones most likely to get arrested or experience blackouts, according to the Telegraph.

Those whose behavior doesn’t seem to be affected much by alcohol are known as Hemingways. The researchers stated, “Two previous studies have found that, on average, these two factors reportedly decrease the most with intoxication, so the moderate decreases demonstrated by this group make its members stand out as being ‘less affected’ than drinkers in some of the other groups, much like the author Ernest Hemingway, who claimed that he could ‘drink hells any amount of whiskey without getting drunk’. Most of the subjects fell into that category.

Contact the author at marie.lodi@jezebel.com.

Image via Shutterstock.

On Thursday, two women were found dead in an SUV after a car chase on Interstate 20, in Alabama. Police said that Lisa Brown had kidnapped Sandra Barnett from her home on Wednesday. Barnett was the wife of former NFL player Buster Barnett; Brown was his mistress.

Barnett, who was drafted by the Buffalo Bills as a tight end in 1981, told police that Brown came to his place of employment on Wednesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. She was upset about a trip that he and his wife were planning.

Officer Charlene Watson-Fraser, Clayton Police spokesperson, said that Brown then went to the Barnetts’ home in Ellenwood, Georgia. There, she kidnapped Buster’s wife Sandra. “She was upset about a trip that his wife was going on with him,” Watson-Fraser said. “It was one she didn’t know about.”

Sandra Barnett was speaking to a friend on the phone when Brown arrived, Watson-Fraser said. Brown was armed with a gun. The friend heard a struggle and called another, male friend to ask him to check on Sandra.

The man drove past the Barnett’s house and saw a woman in the driveway. “When he turned back around, the SUV was gone,” Watson-Fraser said. From the Journal-Constitution:

Law officers spotted Brown’s Dodge Durango in Carroll County on Thursday and pursued it into Alabama, Watson-Fraser said.

The car stopped on Interstate 20 in Cleburne County, Ala., where both women were found with fatal gunshots, Watson-Fraser said.

“The driver stopped in the middle of the highway, pulled out a handgun and shot (Barnett) and then turned the gun on herself,” Watson-Fraser said.

“We’ve uncovered a set of handcuffs and some receipts,” Clayton County Police Capt. Richard Gandee told WXIA. “[Brown] had purchased the handcuffs prior to this kidnapping.”

“Lisa Brown was actually on probation for kidnapping out of the state of Texas,” Gandee said. “She had kidnapped her child that she had lost custody of, and the jurisdiction down there had to track her for like three days to find her.”

Neighbors told the station that Sandra had recently replaced a lock on the gate to the Barnetts’ property that she believed had been tampered with.

The car being driven by Brown was actually in Buster’s name, according to Watson-Fraser, as was her home: “He said he was trying to help her out.”

TMZ reports that Buster was at work at the time of the kidnapping, is unharmed, and that he is not a suspect or person of interest.

Image via 11 Alive. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

This weekend, the KKK held a rally on the steps of the South Carolina statehouse: “‘They took our flag, so be it,’ said Bader, a member of the Ku Klux Klan for the past two decades. ‘They’re taking our heritage from us. They’re taking the freedom out of America.’”

On Sunday, Beijing police said that they had arrested the couple captured in a sex tape apparently filmed at China’s flagship Uniqlo store, the Los Angeles Times reports. Four other people have also been arrested.http://gawker.com/chinese-couple...

According to the Times, the Cyberspace Administration also said that police were investigating the country’s two primary web portals, Sina and Tencent, for failing to limit the spread of the video, which they said “violated core socialist values.” The investigation is focused on two questions, the Times reports:

First, who posted the video and second, whether the tape was a publicity stunt intended to drum up business. A brief police statement said one 19-year-old man surnamed Sun was charged with disseminating obscene material, while three others were being detained, along with the couple. Police indicated the video dated from April.

Chinese criminal law mandates jail terms up to two years for those convicted of disseminating (heh) obscene books, films, pictures, and video, the Times reports. Those producing obscene products for profit can receive life in prison.

Investigators are also looking into whether the video was a publicity stunt by Uniqlo, the Associated Press reports. Uniqlo has denied any involvement.

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

According to TMZ, a 21-year-old man was found dead in Demi Moore’s swimming pool. A police source told the site that the young man drowned in the pool, and his body was found early this morning. Moore is currently out of town and neither she nor her family were present. But if TMZ is to be believed, an unidentified neighbor told them that Moore’s children have been frequenting the home, hosting “parties every day, day and night.”

Police are still investigating.

Image via Getty.

Earlier this month, jurors in a civil suit ordered 50 Cent, a.k.a. Curtis James Jackson III, to pay $5 million in compensatory damages to Lastonia Leviston, whose sex tape 50 Cent edited, narrated, and leaked to the Internet in 2009. Leviston is the ex-girlfriend of Rick Ross, a.k.a. William Leonard Roberts, Jr., with whom 50 Cent was then feuding, and the mother of his child. The jurors also voted to impose punitive damages, but, before they could hear testimony about his net worth, 50 Cent filed for bankruptcy in Connecticut, incurring an automatic stay in the Manhattan trial. Last week, Leviston’s attorneys moved for relief from the stay—to allow the second part of the sentencing to move forward—and, on Friday, a judge granted that motion, over 50 Cent’s lawyers’ objections.
http://defamer.gawker.com/50-cent-wishes...

50 Cent’s lawyers filed the objection on Thursday. In it, an account of the rapper’s life is given. “It is easy to forget that Mr. Jackson grew up in poverty [sic.] in South Jamaica, a rough neighborhood of Queens, New York,” the filing reads. (It is?)

“His single mother was murdered when Mr. Jackson was only 8 years old. After her death, he was raised by his grandparents,” the objection continues. “As a boy, Mr. Jackson dreamed of being a boxer, but by the time he was a teenager, he was caught up in a life of crime. The consequences of that lifestyle were realized in 2000 when Mr. Jackson was shot nine times outside of his grandmother’s house.”

“After recovering from his injuries, Mr. Jackson determined to improve his life and focused on his music, and the rest is music history. In many respects, Mr. Jackson typifies the American dream.” Also, he tried to get people to stop masturbating.

The filing goes on:

As a result of Mr. Jackson’s success, he has been fortunate to acquire a significant amount of assets. Like many other celebrity entertainers that make their living in full view of the public eye, however, Mr. Jackson has accumulated a substantial amount of liabilities as well. Notwithstanding this fact, Mr. Jackson’s bankruptcy filing is not primarily a result of excessive current expenses exceeding Mr. Jackson’s current revenues, but rather the substantial costs of litigation and resulting awards against Mr. Jackson in the past year which total in excess of $20 million, and which are discussed in more detail below. While Mr. Jackson has substantial assets, he does not have the ability to pay the full amount of these litigation claims and all other asserted claims at the present time, thereby necessitating this Chapter 11 filing.

According to the New York Daily News, bankruptcy Judge Ann Nevins said, “It is in everyone’s interest here, including Mr. Jackson’s, to reach finality,” in the New York trial. (Heh. Maybe!) According to a “creditor matrix,” submitted in Connecticut on Friday, 50 Cent has 72 different creditors, including a landscaper, a carpet cleaner, and one Curtis J. Jackson, Sr.

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

Doris Payne is one smooth criminal. The infamous 84-year-old jewel thief is believed to have stolen a $33,000 engagement ring from the David Yurman store inside the upscale SouthPark mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. In an email ​​​​​the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department sent to local stores, officers say that Payne uses a sleight of hand trick. “Basically, she will have employees pull jewelry out of a display case. Once the employee is distracted, she quickly conceals them. She is very good. She fooled the manager at David Yurman,” the email stated.

Payne may have been using the alias Amy Dillard, according to People. She was first spotted by a Tiffany & Co. employee who attempted to warn the David Yurman store, but Payne had already swiped the goods. “Doris Payne is certainly infamous and she is a fascinating woman,” said Dovy Klarberg, vice president of Diamonds Direct, a jewelry store located across the mall. Payne’s cunning thievery is internationally known. She is believed to have stolen up to $2 million in jewels over the past 60 years, throughout the world, including Greece, Switzerland, Britain and France.

Last year, Payne was sentenced to four years for stealing a 3.5-carat, $22,500 ring in Riverside County, California. She was set to serve half of the time in jail and the other under mandatory supervision, but was released only three months later due to overcrowding, reports the Charlotte Observer. “She is a fascinating character. Payne is infamous in our industry, certainly someone to watch, and someone who is interesting to watch,” Klarberg said. A documentary called The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne was released in 2013 and Halle Berry was once set to portray Payne in a movie about her life. Klarberg continued, “Certainly, her age and her persona would never lend you any hints that she was a world-famous jewelry thief.”

Contact the author at marie.lodi@jezebel.com.

Image via Shutterstock.

“As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.” Oh, do go on, won’t you? (He does.) (It’s good!) (Well, interesting, at least.)

Serial child molester and former reality show star Josh Duggar has just welcomed a new baby girl–Meredith Grace Duggar—into his lovely, litigation-plagued household.

While baby Meredith Grace just missed her chance for TV show-stardom, she did arrive just in time to catch the upcoming TLC special on child abuse, which was inspired by her father’s abuse of five young girls in his teenage years, four of whom were his own, young sisters.

Congratulations, Josh Duggar. And to Meredith Grace—we are so, so sorry.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

AMES, IOWA—Abortion. Abominable gays. And god’s abiding dislike of the current Democratic administration. Hey 90s kids: remember 1996? Remember the Culture Wars? They’re back.

On Saturday morning, under the sweltering Iowa sun, all four corners of the street outside of Iowa State University’s auditorium were held by ideological armies. On one corner were the Iowa atheists; on the next, people protesting the prison-industrial complex; on the next, people calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood; and on the next, the pro-life crowd. Men waved signs urging god out of public schools just yards away from an anti-abortion group’s mobile health clinic.

Inside, thousands of Iowans and hundreds of members of the press corps had come out to see rumpled Republican language whisperer Frank Luntz, sporting garish red and white sneakers with his suit, quiz ten of the major Republican presidential candidates. He quizzed them not just on policy, but on something more meaty: their faith. “Have you ever asked god for forgiveness?” he asked Donald Trump. “Is there ever a time you cursed god?” he asked Rick Santorum. “How many of you think the collapse of the family and culture is the most important issue?” he asked the audience. There was opportunity for much solemn head-nodding.

There is not an inch of space between the candidates. All of them deplore the recent Iran nuclear deal, support the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, and want to stop abortion, dismantle Obamacare, and secure our great nation’s borders. If presidential elections were about public policy, they could have all just issued a joint press release on this points and gone home.

The only candidate, in fact, who dares to stray from the orthodoxy of the pack is Donald Trump, who does so out of sheer idiocy. While most candidates use coded dog whistles to signal their racism and xenophobia, Trump just blares it all out. He’s swallowed the dog whistle. Now everything he says is a full-throated bark. It’s all rather entertaining, as long as we all agree he’s never going to actually be elected. He behaves like a dotty retired truck driver trying out for a role as the mob boss in a community theater production of “Analyze This!” No one would give him an Oscar, but it does break up the tedium.

Trump’s remark about John McCain, “He was a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured” ended up drawing all the headlines from the event, portrayed as a vicious and undeserved attack on an American hero.

That’s unfortunate, because it obscures the degree to which Donald Trump is completely incoherent. He is clearly just thinking on his feet, poorly. His stab at appeasing the Christian crowd was to say, “I drink my little wine, and I eat my little cracker, and I do that as often as possible—because I feel cleansed, okay?”

On national defense: “We send weapons to our so-called allies, and one shot is fired, and we lose 2,300 Humvees—armor plated!”

On child-rearing: “From the time they’re two years old I’d say, ‘no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes.’”

And on America’s bright future: “We’re going to hell. Our country’s going to hell.”

What accounts for Trump’s wide appeal are the facts that he thinks and speaks about political issues with the same level of contemplation and refinement as most of the voting public, and that the entire national press corps follows him around like devoted puppies, because he provides such good copy. He therefore attains high visibility and grabs the interest of people who are mostly disinterested in all this shit, a cycle that feeds on itself. Alas, he may have burned himself out after Saturday. Au revoir, Donald.

Now, The Average Voter—a being well represented at the Family Leadership Summit, where the crowd was made up of upright Iowans who all looked like maybe they used to own a small local propane business—will have to find another candidate willing to field their questions with such enthusiasm. And what questions they are! The Family Leadership Summit allowed members of the public to ask questions of men who could soon become the world’s most powerful leader, and they did not squander the opportunity.

“Are you willing to call the terrorism we’ve been fighting Islamic terrorism? And how will you prevent it from sucking our children...” a white-haired woman asked Marco Rubio, trailing off most unfortunately at the end.

“Tell me how we as businessmen, as employees, can make a CHANGE in this country,” a terrifyingly intense bald, portly man with a Bluetooth earpiece in asked Rick Perry, “before my kids and my grandkids have nowhere to live.”

“If you were president today, how would you specifically move our country forward?”

“Do you believe all members of our military should be armed to defend themselves?”

“We have judges citing Sharia law. Why aren’t these people arrested? Why aren’t these judges impeached?” an elderly man who looked like he might be farmer, trembling with either rage or fear, asked Scott Walker, who nodded politely. “That is my question.”

No one was on the receiving end of more bad questions than Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-wingnut darling who has the misfortune of being the only black candidate, and therefore becomes the garbage can into which the Republican party vomits all of its racial confusion. Frank Luntz, after pointing out the lack of “people of color” in the conservative movement, asked Carson, “Why are you here?” After a brief, embarrassing pause, he added, “And I mean that in the deepest spiritual way.”

When Carson made a remark about “black people,” Luntz interjected. “I’m someone who cares about language. Why did you use the word ‘black,’ rather than ‘African-American?’” Though Carson’s politics are as atrocious as everyone else’s, it was hard not to feel a little bad for a man with the highest level of intellect among all the candidates being treated like the new kid in school who just moved to Iowa from South Central L.A. During the Q&A period, a woman rose and pointed out to Carson that while corrupt congressman Michael Grimm was just sentenced to prison, “Al Sharpton is still walking free. What would a president do to address the corruption in Washington?”

The only group who might have felt less welcome at the Family Leadership Summit than black people or abortionists was the media. We were given the first three rows in the auditorium, the best seats of the house. This was less a gesture of magnanimity from the organizers than a move to ensure that the press was conveniently placed for insults from the stage. At one point, Frank Luntz stopped the proceedings to ask the press corps how many of us went to church regularly. For reasons I cannot fathom, a smattering of reporters raised their hands. “That’s nine out of what, sixty or seventy there?” Luntz said, in a tone of sadness. The crowd was appropriately disgusted. “Wow.” “Jeez.” A few hisses even rained down. Later, the single biggest standing ovation of the entire day—bigger than any ovation for Jesus himself—came when Luntz pointed to press row and asked Bobby Jindal, “What are you critical of?”

“They don’t hold this president to the same standards they do the rest of us,” Jindal said. At this, the crowd rose en masse and thundered on clapping for a solid half minute. I could only thank my lucky stars that America has successfully fought off Sharia law thus far, or we surely would have all been stoned to death.

For a non-churchgoer, it is rather disconcerting to hear powerful public officials campaigning for such an important job plainly lay out their belief that a magic man in the sky will be the key to all of their efforts. Ted Cruz, who looks like a crooked mortician in cowboy boots, voiced the opinion that the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage “will awaken the body of Christ and lift us up to say: we will take our country back for our values.” I don’t know what awakening the body of Christ entails exactly, but it sounds terrifying for non-Christians. (Cruz went on to criticize Iran for being “theocratic.”)

Mike Huckabee, his voice smooth from years of radio work, proposed a simple solution to America’s rash of racist police violence and subsequent riots: magic. “I think people forget: god will heal this land,” he said.

So simple it’s rather shameful that Barack Obama hasn’t pursued this already.

The candidates can be slotted into rough and sometimes overlapping groups. Marco Rubio and Rick Perry are the blowdried TV-anchor lookalikes. Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee are the ultra-religious warriors. Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and, improbably, Rick Santorum are the cowboy boot wearers. Scott Walker is the aw-shucks kid, the Paul Ryan of 2016. Perry, Trump, and Jindal are the morons. (Indeed, Jindal’s entire campaign strategy seems to be to offer the least informed slice of the electorate exactly what it wants to hear, regardless of plausibility. In the space of ten minutes he called for abolishing the Supreme Court and putting unnamed government bureaucrats in prison. “The EPA has no right to regulate the water in your back yard!” he thundered, dubiously.)

The outlier is effeminate South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the sort of timeless politician who seems to have jumped in the race just to have something to do, and could perhaps be classified as “the sad candidate.” He walked onto stage muttering “more roads for Iowa,” and complained that it took too long to drive anywhere in the state. He had the overall manner of the unpopular coworker who can put a jolly conversation to rest just by entering a room. “We’re in a religious war, don’t you think?” he asked with the funereal bearing of a bitter drunk. “They’d kill everyone in this room if they could.” The crowd was silent for a moment, then clapped politely.

Frank Luntz, displaying a killer instinct for showmanship, asked Graham a question about his dead parents, which made him start crying. He staunchly refused to participate in the anti-government rhetoric which the crowd craved, making him even less likely to win applause. “We’re all one car wreck away from needing government help,” he sniffled. Debbie Downer in the flesh. Later he began an answer with, “Let me tell you about Lindsey Graham, Africa, AIDS, and helpin’ people,” an unlikely start to anything thrilling. Of all of the candidates he would be the safest to vote for. He would spend most of his time in the Oval Office with the curtains drawn, weeping into a Lime-a-Rita.

Though the gay-bashing, racism-encoding, proselytizing, and settled zealotry of the culture war crowd is disturbing—particularly the one damn anti-abortion activist who kept repeating the phrase “that sack is not translucent” over and over—it is also comforting. The fact that these issues are back at the center of our national debate feels like a return to a more innocent time, before 9/11 and a vast global war and a crippling economic collapse reminded us that there are more important things to worry about than who and how people fuck. We may dread the prospect of watching the Republican Party wade back into an interminable argument over whose beliefs are more aligned with Christ Our King. But we should embrace it. As long as we can distract ourselves with culture wars, we won’t be focused on starting real wars.

That sack is not translucent.

An elderly Florida man was shot in the buttock with his own gun this week after confronting an intoxicated man who was disrupting sea turtle nests, the New York Daily News reports.

According to witnesses, the suspect later identified by police as 38-year-old Michael McAuliffe began harassing a group of volunteers watching over hatching sea turtles on Friday, saying, “I’m going to get you, you fucking sea turtle people” and “I’m going to beat the fuck out of you.”

“I figured if I showed a handgun that would be enough to diffuse any situation,” one of the volunteers, 73-year-old Stan Pannaman, told the Daily News.

Unfortunately, Pannaman had not diffused the situation. From the Sun-Sentinel:

[S]econds after Pannaman put the gun back in his pocket, McAuliffe “lunged at me, grabbed me and threw me down onto the sand,” [Pannaman] said.

As they wrestled, McAuliffe hit him in the face and gouged his head, Pannaman said. “I saw stars for a few minutes,” he said.

When McAuliffe got hold of the pistol, he stood up, Pannaman said, and declared, “I’m going to shoot you with your flare gun.”

“Sir,” Pannaman said, “it’s not a flare gun. It’s a real gun.”

Pannaman says McAuliffe then shot him, leaving him with a bullet lodged in his left buttock.

“He asked me ‘Are you all right?’” said Pannaman. “I looked at him and I said ‘No, I’m not all right. You just shot me.’”

Shortly afterward, authorities arrived at the scene and arrested McAuliffe. He now faces charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon and battery on a person 65 or older.

[Image via WSVN]

President George H.W. Bush has been discharged from a Maine hospital after breaking a bone in his neck earlier this week, CNN reports. In a statement earlier on Thursday, a spokesperson said Bush had fractured his C2 vertebrae in a fall at his home but had not injured his spine.http://gawker.com/former-preside...