Someone—Taylor’s PR team, maybe?—realized this dumb Twitter fight with Nicki Minaj was making everyone not named Katy Perry look bad. http://defamer.gawker.com/let-me-explain...
Taylor says she thought she was being called out (which she was). She says she missed the point (which she did). She says she misspoke (did she though?) And of course, she’s super sorry about it (lol).
Whatever, I’m not buying it:http://gawker.com/taylor-swift-i...
Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.
Jose Antonio Vargas’s one-hour doc White People premiered on MTV yesterday. Controversial upon its announcement
Thus, you had a young, possibly well-intentioned white college student in White People declare, “I could care less what race somebody is. I was never really taught to notice it.” In the clip reel above, I collected more nuggets of ignorance, perceived persecution, and flat-out dumbness from the white people that were interviewed. Exposing whites’ misconceptions and faulty logic was probably the most useful thing about the doc.
I also thought the following segment, in which a case is pled for not using the word “ghetto” to describe behavior, was potentially useful. Stop saying “ghetto,” when you mean “black”; anyone with a brain sees what you’re doing.
It used to be, when it came to food, people had a sort of devil-may-care just-put-the-food-in-your-damn-mouth attitude. This is no longer the case. Today there is more culinary-related material to sift through than ever before: Books! Magazines! Zines! Websites! Cookbooks! GOOP! If you live in one of the country’s many rapidly gentrifying cities, there is probably a new restaurant on your block every 15 minutes. On TV every day there is a new cooking show followed by a cooking competition show followed by a four-hour block of Rachael Ray talking to a backyard ghost about empanadas (log on to rachaelray.com to see Rachael and the ghost compete to make nachos).
Also, there’s Preserve.
Everyone in the year 2015 with a disposable income and epicurean pretensions has something to say about food: how we should be eating it and how we should be thinking about eating it, and how we should be thinking about thinking about eating it. Before you feel like you have to publish an eggshell-colored periodical to hand out at Anthropologie until you get kicked out, why not take some solace in reading a writer who will not only impress your foodie friends, but who will bring you lessons on life, love, misery, and more? I’m talking about M.F.K. Fisher, the greatest food writer in the English language.
Fisher was born in 1908 in Albion, Mich., and grew up in Whittier, California, where her journalist father was a co-owner of Whittier News. She spent time at Whittier College, UCLA and Occidental College, but left without a degree in 1929 to accompany her new husband Al Fisher to Dijon, France. It was in Provence—the region and cuisine that Fisher would return to again and again in her writing—that she discovered her love of food, an experience well-documented in one of her exuberant memoir, Long Ago In France. Returning to California, where her husband accepted a teaching job at Occidental, she embarked on a collection of essays that would be published in 1937 as her first book, Serve It Forth.
It would be the beginning of a multi-decade career, during which she’d write fiercely and elegantly about everything from her childhood in California to frugal cooking to her own painful emotional struggles. (Contained within her body of work are over two dozen recipes for oysters, ranging from the satisfyingly facile to the dangerously complex.) Her oeuvre is a working guide to a well-lived life, blemishes included; she is a model for any writer with aspirations or any reader with tastebuds. She is, without question, the person I’ve been most inspired by in my own writing. If you’ve never read her, do yourself a favor and start this week. Allow M.F.K. Fisher to take you back to the basics, before kale and pour-over coffee were staples of every person’s diet this side of the Atlantic. Here is my guide to most everything she’s written.
How To Cook A Wolf is M.F.K. Fisher’s wartime tribute to eating frugally (but fully) at times where money and resources are sparse. Though they were written during World War II, the book’s lessons on combatting an empty stomach or entertaining guests with a handful of simple and easy-to-get ingredients remain relevant—down to the best way to feed your dog or cat when you have precious few dollars.
Also, how to eat pigeon:
“I have eaten a great many pigeons here and there, and I know that the best was one I cooked in a cheap Dutch oven on a one-burner gas-plate in a miserable lodging. The wolf was at the door, and no mistake; until I filled the room with the smell of hot butter and red wine, his pungent breath seeped through the keyhole in an almost visible cloud.”
Who to Buy It For: A friend with a small kitchen and a tiny budget, or anyone you know who has the ingenuity to make a “Baked Ham Slice” or a one-dish meal such as Southern Spoon Bread; anyone who has ever experienced hunger but not cheerfulness simultaneously; a WWII historian.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Wolf-...
Be honest with yourself: Do you have any idea how oysters have sex? I learned about oysters’ sex lives within the first minute of picking up the first ever M.F.K. Fisher book I read, Consider The Oyster. This is the shortest of all of Fisher’s works and is an immaculate example of the author’s delicate and informative prose. The book’s first line is proof enough:
“An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life.”
Oysters tend to be heralded for their simplicity, but Fisher provides over 20 ways to cook them— in particular Pain d’Huitres, or oyster loaf, which Fisher’s mother used to secret away with her chums at boarding school. Read:
“It was made in a bread loaf from the best baker in the village, and the loaf was hollowed out and filled with rich cooked oysters, and then, according to my mother’s vague and yet vivid account, the top of the loaf was fastened on again, and the whole was baked crisp and brown in the oven. Then it was wrapped tightly in a fine white napkin, and hidden under a chambermaid’s cape while she ran from the baker’s to the seminary and up the back stairs to the appointed bedroom.”
Who to Buy It For: A reader with a short attention span; a friend who insists on doing oyster happy hour every Thursday; a fisherman; a lover winkwink; any David Foster Wallace fans who don’t quite know his influences.
http://www.amazon.com/Consider-Oyste...
Over the years, Fisher proved to be not just a vivid memoirist and passionate cook, but also a winning scholar of culinary history. She famously translated Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s famous gastronomical text The Physiology of Taste to much acclaim, but for the fan of historical food trivia, nothing beats her first book, Serve It Forth.
On what the ancient Egyptians ate:
“Ox meat was roasted or boiled, but many kinds of little birds, and even quails and ducks, were salted and eaten raw. And melons in increasing variety made fine the poorest fare, with grapes and figs and dates, and barley beer, and sweet wine in great pottery vases glazed with blue.”
A suggestion on what to do after eating ancient Grecian chicken chronicled in Apicius:
“To cool your enraged palate after this strange dish you would most probably be served a goblet of red wine mixed with spices and sea water.”
Perhaps the most beautiful paragraph in the history of humanity:
“In Dijon little gingerbread orange slices are stuffed with marmalade and glazed, or great square loaves are sliced several times and spread with apricot jam before they are put together again. Or currants and candied fruits are baked in the loaves. Or they are left plain, the be sliced very thin and be spread with sweet butter for tea.”
Who to Buy It For: a cook interested in culinary history but only tolerant enough to learn through conversational communication; a traveler; your boyfriend if you’d like to test if he’s actually taking your book recommendations (this book is particularly good for pop quizzes)
http://www.amazon.com/Serve-Forth-Ar...
This is Fisher’s most beautiful memoir, and the book through which most people know her. It contains some of the best, most succinct, and most inimitable lines about food, and it’s embedded itself so deeply into my memory that I can’t eat a lot of the foods Fisher describes in her memoir without thinking of them exactly as she has described them.
The memoir’s first line, on strawberry jam:
The first thing I remember tasting and then wanting to taste again is the grayish-pink fuzz my grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of strawberry jam.
On the food at boarding school:
“I don’t remember, because all that we thought about then, or could recall now if we ever dared to think at all of those days, were the hot crisp fried halves of young chickens, stiff and tempting. We could have all we wanted, even three or four, and we could eat with our fingers, and yell, and gobble. It was wonderful.”
On preparing cauliflowers:
“There in Dijon, the cauliflowers were small and very succulent, grown in that ancient soil. I separated the flowerlets and dropped them in boiling water for just a few minutes. Then I drained them and put them in a wide shallow casserole, and covered them with heavy cream and a thick sprinkling of freshly grated Gruyère, the nice rubbery kind that didn’t come from Switzerland at all, but from the Jura. It was called râpé in the market, and was grated while you watched, in a soft cloudy pile, onto your piece of paper.”
Who to Buy It For: Everyone.
http://www.amazon.com/Gastronomical-...
A is for dining Alone, P is for Peas, Y is for Yak. In a format that plays nicely with readers who haven’t grown out of children’s books and for the pragmatist who would prefer to have colorful musings categorized, An Alphabet For Gourmets is Fisher’s most fun book. Not to mention, she touches on all the essentials: cooking for kids, eating kosher, eating in excess, and, of course, zakuski, the Russian term for hot and cold appetizers.
On dining alone:
“There are few people alive with whom I care to pray, sleep, dance, sing or share my bread and wine. Of course there are times when this latter cannot be avoided if we are to exist socially, but it is endurable only because it need not be the only fashion of self-nourishment.”
This recipe for Raspberries Romanoff, archived under V is for Venality:
“Raspberries Romanoff
1 pint carefully sorted raspberries
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup kirschChill berries. Beat cream stiff, gradually adding sugar and kirsch. Mix lightly with berries, chill thoroughly, and serve in tall thin glasses, with thin unsugared wafers if desired.”
Who to Buy It For: A pre-school teacher with culinary inclinations; a new cook; a friend who color-codes or alphabetizes the books on their bookshelves.
http://www.amazon.com/Alphabet-Gourm...
One of the things I love most about Fisher is her skill at cutting people down to size with her insightful descriptions and blunt declarations. As They Were, one of her more direct memoirs, covers her family and friends and husbands and children in obsessive detail as she chronicles her life from California to France and onward. This memoir also features excellent first-hand details of a meal aboard a ship.
On her babysitter:
“My sister Anne and I never liked her much, one way or t’other, but I cannot remember why, for she read to us and was not sly or a tattletaler.”
On a chef’s accomplishment aboard a small ship:
“It was a replica, about as long as a man’s coffin, of the cathedral at Milano. It was made in white and pink sugar. There was a light inside, of course, and it glowed there on the deck of the little ship, trembling in every flying buttress with the Mexican ground swell, pure and ridiculous; and something about it shamed me.”
Who to Buy It For: Your friend the essayist or your friend the problem child.
http://www.amazon.com/As-They-Were-M...
Fisher spent a good portion of her life living in and coming back to France, and her stories about the years she spent in Dijon with her husband, Al, are both her sweetest, and the most painful to read. Her tiny apartment, which she details lovingly, is drawn with such mastery, it can feel frustratingly small to the reader; and her spats with Al are as concerning as any between a friend and her husband. Long Ago In France is delicate like an eggshell. I would suggest reading Fisher’s memoir over Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast any day.
On the pleasures of France:
“And in two minutes my mouth was full of fresh bread, and melting chocolate, and as we sat gingerly, the three of us, on the frozen hill, looking down into the valley where Vercingetorix had fought so splendidly, we peered shyly and silently at each other and smiled and chewed at one of the most satisfying things I have ever eaten. I thought vaguely of the metamorphosis of wine and bread.”
Who to Buy It For: The Francophile, the divorced-or-soon-to-be-divorced, the independent woman, your friend who longs to be Zooey Deschanel.
http://www.amazon.com/Long-Ago-Franc...
Bonus round! There are a great number of books, essays, and collections published that memorialize and praise MFK Fisher, as well as cite her as an influence. While Anne Zimmerman’s An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher is a delightful dive into Fisher’s life and letters, for the uninitiated, Joan Reardon’s compact look at MFK Fisher’s kitchens is a grand place to start.
The book is illustrated by Avram Dumitrescu, showing in exquisite detail all the kitchens and houses that Fisher cooked and lived in. The portraits (as well as photographs) are intimate accompaniments to stories such as this one:
“Because the students were allowed to purchase one chocolate bar every day, Mary Frances was able to accumulate six or seven during the week. Then, on Saturday, she would leisurely and deliberately eat all of the bars in the solitude of her room, sometimes alternating a bite of chocolate with a bite of a salty cracker and at other times unwrapping them one by one and slowly eating the pieces while reclining on a heap of pillows, sultan-style.”
In Amanda Hesser’s foreword, her assessment of Fisher’s well-traveled life is astute: “I’ve often had the impression that she reveled in the hardships of a place. Only a few times in her life did she have a kitchen with four walls.” An added thrill of Reardon’s book is that she painstakingly updated several of Fisher’s own recipes for the modern cook.
Who to Buy It For: An illustration obsessive; a fan of gift books and small kitchens; a reader of biographies with finite patience.
Image Getty. Contact the author at dayna.evans@gawker.com.
In 2011, Kristin Cavallari—whose debut memoir Balancing in Heels (f.k.a. Balancing on Heels) is due out in 321 days—competed as a Star on the 13th season of Dancing with the Stars. She was the third contestant to be eliminated, besting only Metta World Peace and one of George Clooney’s ex-girlfriends.
Here is a snippet of Kristin’s most memorable performance—an ambulance-inspired “samba” set to an occasionally flat cover of “Crazy in Love.”
Why did she get eliminated so soon? An earlier version of the “Kristin Cavallari” Wikipedia page provides an explanation. We cannot say for sure if the following was written by the dancing Star herself, but it was certainly composed in the emotional style of Kristin:
Cavallari was on the thirteenth season of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and partnered with two-time champion, Mark Ballas. Despite having high scores, Cavallari was the third to be eliminated, shocking the audience, judges, and fellow dancers alike. One of the judges, Len Goodman, commented that he expected to see Cavallari dancing in the final. The cumulative average of Cavallari’s dances were higher than of contestants who had lasted twice as long as she did.
The paragraph has since been edited on Wikipedia to read:
Cavallari was on the 13th season of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and partnered with two-time champion, Mark Ballas. She was the third to be eliminated.
Defamer can confirm that the facts presented in the edited version are correct.
Here is the full video of Kristin’s samba that shocked the audience, judges, and fellow dancers alike.
Shortly after she was sent home, Kristin told Us Weekly, “It is what it is. That’s the thing with Dancing with the Stars, you never know. It’s clearly not a dance competition!”
This has been 500 Days of Kristin.
[Photo via Getty]
Deadspin LeSean McCoy: Bring Me All Of Your Women
If only humans looked this graceful running away from a thunderstorm.
The video comes to us from YouTube user OprGrl, who filmed the clip this past Monday overlooking a beach in Ocean City, Maryland. Outflow winds ahead of the thunderstorm swept across the flat terrain, picking up the umbrellas and carrying them away like parachutes attached to metal spears.
Someone else a few hundred feet to the camera’s right filmed the exact same incident from a slightly different angle and with louder commentary:
The spray over the ocean likely wasn’t from waterspouts, as the guy states in the clip, but the strong outflow winds kicking up spray and foam as they moved ashore.
It doesn’t look like anybody was injured, but that isn’t always the case. Just five years ago, also in Ocean City, a woman was severely injured after she was impaled by a beach umbrella lofted into the air by strong winds. Afternoon thunderstorms are commonplace at the beach during the warm months, and every year we see cases where people get in the way of beach equipment blown around by thunderstorm winds. Earlier this year in March, a widely-circulated video from Brazil showed a waterspout coming ashore on a densely-packed beach, tossing debris at panicked visitors as they tried to run away from the whirlwind.
[Videos: OprGrl and Nick Wilkes via YouTube]
You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.
Two teenage brothers suspected of fatally stabbing their parents and three siblings ranging in age from 5 to 12 years old were arrested in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
18-year-old Robert Bever and his 16-year-old brother allegedly ran out a back door when officers responding to a 911 call arrived at the home were the five bodies were found. The teenage suspects were reportedly captured about an hour later in a wooded area during a police dog-assisted search.
According to police, an unharmed 2-year-old and a wounded 13-year-old girl were also found at the scene. From NBC News:
Police went to the house after emergency operators received an “open 911 call,” where the line is connected but there’s no one speaking, at 11:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday, [Broken Arrow Police Cpl. Leon] Calhoun said.
The arriving officers heard moaning from behind the front door of the home, they forced their way inside and found the injured 13-year-old, who apparently made the 911 call, and pulled her to safety, Calhoun said.
Authorities say they are still trying to determine a motive for the slayings.
“Anytime someone murders their family members as young as 5, I don’t see how there could be any type of mental process to that to justify anything,” Broken Arrow Police Sgt. Thomas Cooper told NBC News.
[Image via Broken Arrow Police Department]
Two years ago, Jason Whitlock was hired at ESPN and charged with creating a black sports and culture site, originally billed as a “Black Grantland” and eventually named The Undefeated. Last month, he was ousted as the head of the site after failing to get it off the ground, undermining the entire project in the process. Whitlock’s minder/nominal lieutenant, Leon Carter, was named the interim EIC, and ESPN president John Skipper announced that the company was still committed to launching a black-interest site. Since, there’s been little news.
Behind the scenes, however, Skipper has been making moves. Just a couple of weeks after Jason Whitlock was relegated to substitute
The site’s future appeared bleak, with ESPN sources saying that some in Bristol have wondered why a site focused on race should exist at all. Instead of killing the project, though, Skipper has decided on what appears to be a full revamp. Earlier this month, Skipper flew to London for Wimbledon. On July 7, he met with ESPN The Magazine columnist and author Howard Bryant, who was covering the event. Skipper asked Bryant to help lead the relaunch.
Skipper and Bryant are still early in talks, so for now, the role is being described as “editor-at-large.” Bryant still has his magazine column. Carter is still the head of a dead website, but there’s no word on what this means for the interim EIC down the road, or for the rest of the staff that Whitlock hired. That staff consisted of Whitlock friends and allies—some of whom share his politics, which are broadly unpopular in Bristol—and a gaggle of talented young writers who haven’t published a single word since joining.
We’re told, though, that there’s real excitement among ESPN minorities. One of Whitlock’s biggest obstacles as EIC was that he had so alienated blacks and women throughout his career that ESPNers who otherwise might have been interested in a site like the one he was tasked with launching flatly refused to work with and for him. With him out of the way, though, the site is once again attractive. This network rakes in billions, burns millions, has a stranglehold on sports coverage, and has real talent at least interested in this project; it would seem almost impossible to fuck it up again.
According to the Associated Press, a gunman shot nine victims at a showing of Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana Thursday night, killing two, before fatally shooting himself.
Sources tell us there was a shooting at The Grand on Johnston. Several injuries reported, including the shooter. pic.twitter.com/cyEC1gNGXt
July 24, 2015
BREAKING: Multiple people transported via stretcher at the Grand on Johnston Street. Bystanders count at least 7. pic.twitter.com/TJ8T9ASU8W
July 24, 2015
Prayers for Lafayette at Grand Theater. Talking to state police colonel about shooting in Lafayette.
July 24, 2015
“We heard a loud pop we thought was a firecracker,” witness Katie Domingue told The Daily Advertiser, saying she then saw “an older white man” standing up in the theater and firing a gun.
“He wasn’t saying anything,” said Domingue. “I didn’t hear anybody screaming either.”
Other witnesses described a chaotic, terrifying scene following the shooting. From CNN:
“A whole bunch of girls started screaming and we heard that someone was shot,” Roxy Martinez told CNN affiliate KATC. “There were a lot of people running.”
Her brother saw a woman who had been shot in the stomach.
“I see a lady full of blood in a dress,” Robert Martinez said. “She was just looking at me in complete fear.”
UPDATE 10:10 p.m.: Quoting an ambulance official, the Associated Press reports that 10 people were brought to the hospital after the shooting and two, including the gunman, were pronounced dead on arrival.
UPDATE 10:25 p.m.: The AP has corrected their article to state that six people were injured.
UPDATE 12:10 a.m.: The Associated Press has again updated the number of dead and injured.
[Image via KLFY]
On Thursday, officials said an autopsy of Sandra Bland found no signs of a violent struggle and her death has been ruled a suicide. “I have not seen any evidence that this is a homicide,” said prosecutor Warren Diepraam, telling reporters that Bland’s body showed none of the defensive wounds consistent with murder.http://gawker.com/cops-release-n...
In a newly released episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Daily Show alum Wyatt Cenac recounted his troubled relationship with host Jon Stewart, which culminated in a blow up over an impression the former correspondent found racially insensitive.
Cenac says Stewart screamed at him after he admitted cringing at an impression of Herman Cain he found reminiscent of the Amos ‘n’ Andy character Kingfish.
“He got incredibly defensive,” Cenac told Maron:
“I remember he was like, ‘What are you trying to say? There’s a tone in your voice.’ I was like, ‘There’s no tone. It bothered me.’ And then he got upset. He stood up and he was just like, ‘Fuck off. I’m done with you.’ And he just started screaming that to me, and he screamed it a few times. ‘Fuck off! I’m done with you.’ And he stormed out. I didn’t know if I had been fired.”
Cenac said he had an emotional breakdown after the confrontation but stayed on the show for another miserable year before quitting.
“I was shaking, and I just sat there by myself on the bleachers and fucking cried. And it’s a sad thing,” Cenac told Maron. “That’s how I feel. That’s how I feel in this job: I feel alone.”
“I represent my community,” added Cenac. “I represent my people, and I try to represent them the best that I can. I gotta be honest if something seems questionable, because if not, then I don’t want to be in a position where I am being untrue not just to myself but to my culture, because that’s exploitative.”
[Image via Getty Images/h/t Hollywood Reporter]
Perhaps one of the biggest mysteries in Bill Cosby’s alleged modus operandi was, “Where on earth was this man getting so many Quaaludes?” And now, thanks to his damning 2005 deposition, we know: he was getting them from his gynecologist.
According to the Washington Post, Cosby would make appointments with Hollywood lady doctor Leroy Amar—not for a routine pap smear or an annual mammogram, one might be surprised to learn—but rather, with the intention of making future victims a bit more compliant.
In the transcript, Cosby says he received seven prescriptions for Quaaludes, all of which were obtained from Amar, a gynecologist, ostensibly for a sore back.
“Did he know when he gave you those prescriptions that you had no intention of taking them?” a lawyer asked Cosby in the 2005 deposition.
“Yes,” the entertainer replied.
“Did you believe at that time that it was illegal for you to dispense those drugs?”
“Yes,” Cosby answered.
And, according to the transcripts, Dr. Amar knew or eventually found out exactly what Cosby was using the drugs for: in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s Cosby allegedly assaulted a friend of Amar’s, leading the doctor to “confront Cosby, almost coming to blows.”
But the doc’s one-time, semi-chivalrous reaction couldn’t make up for the fact that he was a horrifyingly uncaring and criminally inept physician, the Post reports.
In California, the medical board revoked Amar’s license in 1979 after finding that he acted with gross incompetence and negligence and had “engaged in the most serious misconduct.” In 1985, his license was reinstated under a host of conditions, including that he would never again perform surgery. But he failed to pay his licensing fees and never practiced in California again, records show.
The disciplinary documents reveal harrowing details of numerous plastic surgeries gone awry, including one woman whose implant ripped through her stitches and protruded from her breast as she developed a 102-degree fever and an infection. In another case, no one was available to administer general anesthesia, so Amar performed breast surgery with only a local numbing agent.
Cosby’s lawyer says his disgraced client only used the drugs for “recreational purposes and during consensual sex,” citing “countless tales of celebrities, music stars, and wealthy socialites in the 1970’s.”
Amar, like Cosby’s career, reportedly died in the early 2000’s.
Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.
Police identified the man responsible for killing at least three people in a Lafayette movie theater Thursday night as 59-year-old John Russell Houser, a “kind of drifter” who had been living in a nearby motel.http://gawker.com/shooter-kills-...
Houser apparently walked into the movie theater around 7:30 p.m. and fired at least thirteen shots with a 40-caliber handgun, killing two people—Macy Breaux, 21, and Jillian Johnson, 33—and injuring “numerous victims.”
He later turned the gun on himself and was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Evidence suggests Houser originally planned to escape after the massacre: he’d switched the license tags on his 1995 Lincoln Continental and officers found “wigs, glasses and disguises” in his room.
“It was apparent that he was intent on shooting and then escaping,” Lafayette police chief Jim Craft said during a press conference Friday. His plan was foiled when responding officers “forced him back into the theater.”
Cops say they know he moved to Lafeyette from Alabama in early June. But Craft says officers “have very little information about Houser” and are still working to determine his motive. He did appear to be a member of the Tea Party—a profile registered in 2013 matches his biographical details.
Sreenshot via Buzzfeed. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.
Bill Cosby’s deposition
Cosby told modeling agency owner Sue Charney he was looking to meet in the Cosby Show studio with girls who were “not financially doing well,” and saw it as a “present” Charney could offer her clients, the Washington Post reports.
“It’s a very, very good meal, probably better than anything they’ve had the time that they’re in New York,” Cosby said in 2005, describing the arrangement under questioning.
Jennifer Thompson, a 17-year-old actress who wanted to move from Maryland to New York, was one of the women who accepted Cosby’s offer. She’d later become one of the 13 Jane Doe witnesses who joined Andrea Constand’s 2005 lawsuit against Cosby, which was dismissed in 2006.
“He promised my parents he’d take care of me. The first time I met him, I had tears in my eyes,” she told People last year under a pseudonym. (Thompson revealed her real name in March, as further accusations against Cosby mounted.)
Her parents agreed to let her move to New York only because of Cosby’s assurances he’d take care of her, she said, but it became clear to her that Cosby had more in mind than nurturing a young actress’s career.
“He said, ‘Get that magazine, pick an outfit and I’ll get you that outfit. You’ll wear that outfit and we’ll go out to a nice dinner. And then you can come back here,’ “ she told People,“ ‘and you can have Amaretto, your favorite, and you’ll be tired so you can just stay here and sleep on the couch.’”
Eventually, she said, Cosby pressured her for sex at his home, and she reluctantly gave him a handjob. She said he gave her $700 before she left. He responded in the deposition that any touching he’d done had been consensual.
Like Andrea Constand
“Defendant admitted to the police and in his deposition that the plaintiff and her mother did not ask for money or the “educational trust” which he called to offer to her after the initial phone conversation with plaintiff and her mother. He further admitted that he had previously used the “educational trust” device to pay one of the Rule 415 witnesses, when he believed that she was going to reveal their liaison,” Constand’s attorney wrote in the newly unsealed documents.
[Photo: AP Images]
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. has erased nearly all references to the wrestler Hulk Hogan from its main website, reportedly due to an audio tape soon to be released by the National Enquirer in which Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) can be heard referring to black people as “niggers.”
According to Wrestling News Source (as highlighted by The Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern):
On WWE.com, Hogan is no longer listed on the WWE Hall of Fame page, and all of his merchandise has also been removed from WWEShop.com. The only thing currently remaining that mentions Hogan involves WWE’s upcoming Australian tour, which Hogan was scheduled to take part in as General Manager. However, when any attempt to access this page is made, a message appears stating “you are not authorized to access this page.”
The Daily Beast speculates that the removal is tied to a 3-year-old audio clip from a radio show where Hogan discussed being referred to, and referring to others, as “niggas” and “niggers.” Per the gossip website MediaTakeOut, however, the erasure appears to be tied to an audio tape that recently surfaced during legal discovery for Hogan’s trial against Gawker Media. In that tape, which was reportedly obtained by the National Enquirer, Hogan is allegedly heard “referring to black people as niggers”:
MediaTakeOut.com got a sneak preview of on an AUDIO TAPE - which allegedly shows HULK HOGAN using the “N Word”. And he’s not using the “N*GGA” word either. After listening to the tape, which is DISGUSTING, there can be NO DOUBT that Hulk Hogan is a racist . . . at the level of the KU KLUX KLAN. The tape was discovered during the GAWKER LAWSUIT - it was from a legal deposition and was sold to the National Enquirer. We’re told that the audio tape will be out early this morning. When it comes out, we’ll post it here.
Hogan is suing Gawker Media for $100 million in Pinellas County, Florida
The only comment from Hogan so far is a cryptic tweet issued earlier today:
In the storm I release control,God and his Universe will sail me where he wants me to be,one love. HH
July 24, 2015
Neither WWE nor Hogan’s lawyer, Charles Harder, immediately returned requests for comment. If you know any more about this, please get in touch.
Email/chat: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · DM: @jktrotter · Photo credit: Getty
The Blackjack (RQ-21A) was deployed last year. For the Navy and Marine Corps, it fulfills a requirement for a small tactical unmanned aircraft system (STUAS) to follow-on to the ScanEagle
In some ways, it is a cataclysmic advance for the military, moving to open architecture in the operating system. But the twin-tailed Blackjack is more than just an experiment. While many drones have been deployed as emergency systems and circumvented the normal procurement processes, STUAS has gone through a formal and lengthy process that began in January 2005. The Navy awarded a contract to Insitu, Inc. (a part of Boeing) for the design, development, integration and test of an open architecture drone in July 2010. In late 2011, the Marine Corps exercised an early operational capability option and took delivery of two Blackjack systems. The system formerly reached initial operational capability in 2014. The Marine Corps requirement is 32 RQ-21A systems, and the Navy requirement is 25 RQ-21A systems for shipboard and special operations missions.
With a range of 50 miles, the fully autonomous Blackjack provides persistent maritime and land-based surveillance. The RQ-21A “system” consists of five air vehicles and two ground control stations for up to 12 hours per day continuous operations with a short surge capability for 24 hours a day. Literally hundreds of different payloads are anticipated, to include day/night full-motion video cameras, infrared marker, laser range finder, communications relay package and receivers for tagging, tracking and locating devices. Future and experimental payloads include hyperspectral imagers capable of detecting explosives, Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) payloads capable of monitoring everything from cellphones to radio, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground moving target indicator (GMTI) radar capable of detecting targets through clouds and tree cover, and cyber payloads capable of jamming and spoofing electronics.
Blackjack completed its first shipboard flight in February 2013 from the amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19). Low-rate initial production was approved in May 2013 and accepted by the Marine Corps in January 2014.
Also known as Integrator and as Sentinel Hawk in various developmental stages, the military is in the process of changing the naming convention for Blackjack from RQ-21 to MQ-21 to honor the drones missions beyond reconnaissance.
[Top image courtesy of Insitu, Inc., remaining images courtesy of U.S. Navy.]http://www.amazon.com/Unmanned-Drone...
Louisiana’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, told Fox and Friends Friday morning that he’s suspending his presidential campaign in light of the shooting that killed three and injured nine Thursday night at a movie theater in his home state. http://gawker.com/louisiana-movi...
Jindal is an avid hunter—“More duck hunting than deer hunting”—and a vocal Second Amendment advocate who’s made guns part of his campaign stops as recently as this month.
My kind of campaign stop; Capital Armament in Sibley. #IAPolitics pic.twitter.com/26VDrrr9sY
July 3, 2015
Honored to have the #NRA support my reelection. We will continue to protect the second amendment together!
August 31, 2011
In June, he described President Obama’s call for gun control in the wake of the mass shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C. as “completely shameful” and “trying to score cheap political points.”
“I’m not for stopping law-abiding citizens from being able to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Jindal said to Fox News’s Neil Cavuto, “But now’s not the time; there are children wondering, why do things like this happen?”
At least he’s consistent: after Thursday’s shooting, he decided now’s not the time to talk about gun control. Or about Bobby Jindal being president. Or about anything else, really.
It’s not yet clear when he’ll resume campaigning. The 1.2 percent of GOP voters who support him are surely heartbroken.
[h/t TPM, Photo: AP Images]
The government announced Friday that four major airlines—Delta, American, Southwest and JetBlue—may have temporarily raised ticket prices to take advantage of the May Amtrak crash that left eight people dead and hundreds injured. http://gawker.com/amtrak-train-r...
The crash, which caused major service disruptions on the Northeast corridor, apparently led to a series of consumer complaints alleging that the airlines had been price-gouging, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Friday.
The Transportation Department reportedly launched the investigation Friday morning by sending official letters “seeking information” to the four airlines.
Foxx told reporters gathered at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that an “initial review of pricing by those four airlines after the crash gave the administration confidence to move forward with the investigation,” but cautioned conflating correlation with causation.
“We are looking at his from a consumer point of view,” Foxx said. “Yes there is natural shift in prices depending on demand (following a rail shut down.) But the question is, was that beyond the pale? And we will find that out.”
Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.
Donald Trump wants to be the next president of the United States. As with matters of such magnitude, it is important to understand where a candidate stands on critical issues, such as immigration, healthcare, domestic surveillance, marriage equality, abortion, and black people, who account for 13 percent of America’s population.
Here, a collection of quotes from Donald Trump on “the blacks.”
“A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. I think sometimes a black may think they don’t have an advantage or this and that... I’ve said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.’’
(1989)
“Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
(1991)
“Laziness is a trait in blacks.”
(1991)
“You’re fired”
(2004)
“You’re fired.”
(2008)
“I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”
(2011)
“You’re fired.”
(2013)
“Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!”
(2014)
“Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore.”
(2015)
“And if you look at black and African American youth, to a point where they’ve never done more poorly. There’s no spirit.”
(2015)
“And, you know, I have a great relationship with African Americans, as you possibly have heard. I just have great respect for them and you know they like me.”
(2015)
[Image via Getty]
