Mississippi state Representative Jessica Upshaw was found dead Sunday morning at the home of another Mississippi politician, according to the Clarion Ledger. Simpson County Sheriff Kenneth Lewis said Upshaw died from a single gunshot wound to the head, though he noted it's too early in the investigation to know if the wound was self-inflicted or if foul play was involved.

"It's been turned over to MBI. We can't really call what happened yet. I don't know if it's a suicide or what," Lewis said. 

MBI spokesman Warren Strain said the crime scene unit was investigating.

"Right now it's too early on in it all to really make any comment," Strain said. "It's just real early on, and nothing's been ruled out. They're just now really getting into it all and trying to sort it out."

Lewis said Upshaw's body was found at the home of former Mississippi State Rep. Clint Rotenberry.

Mississippi Rep. Becky Currie noted Upshaw's intelligence. "She was so smart, she could pick a bill apart, and it was comforting to sit by her because nobody could sneak anything past her," Currie said.

Currie also implied suicide seemed unlikely. "I just saw her on Friday, and she seemed fine...She has a new grandchild she was so proud of and couldn't wait to see," Currie said. "They lived out of town, and she'd go visit as much as she could. I know she has a lot she wanted to live for."

[h/t Buzzfeed/Clarion-Ledger/Image via]

For the past several days, The Today Show has been hyping an "exclusive interview" with Jerry Sandusky set to air Monday morning. In this interview, The Today Show says, the convicted child rapist will "speak out for the first time since he went to prison." Sounds like NBC landed a(n ethically questionable) scoop right? Not so much, except for the ethically questionable part. Instead of interviewing Sandusky themselves, NBC is instead airing an excerpt of conservative filmmaker John Ziegler's documentary, The Framing of Joe Paterno.

Ziegler, perhaps best known for his David Foster Wallace-documented career as a radio talk show host and his conspiratorial documentaries Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted and Blocking the Path to 9/11, has long been critical of how the press covered the Sandusky case. In July 2012, he published a 4,800 word screed attacking the media's coverage of former Penn State Coach Joe Paterno in which he acknowledges Sandusky "engaged in illegal behavior" but also asserts his opinion that witness Mike McQueary saw "botched 'grooming'" in Penn State's shower and not a sexual assault.

And now, to hype his new documentary, Ziegler is appearing on the Today Show to show excerpts of and discuss his interview with Sandusky. So, NBC is airing an interview that's essentially a commercial for a film made by a someone who has previously made "documentaries" blaming 9/11 on Bill Clinton and the media for Obama's election. It's also worth noting that even Joe Paterno's son, Scott Paterno, wants nothing to do with the film, tweeting, "Why would we oppose Ziegler's analysis if it credibly exonerated Dad? We oppose it b/c it seeks to do so with a false narrative."

Ziegler-related decisions aside, the network had already drawn criticism for the interview. At least two child advocacy groups have called for NBC to cancel the segment.

[Think Progress]

This has been a big month for prominent politicians coming out in favor of gay marriage. First, Bill Clinton publicly disavowed the anti-gay marriage bill he signed into law in 1996. One week later, it was Republican Senator Rob Portman's turn, and just two years after his own son came out as gay. Then, last week, it was Hillary Clinton, which was surprising only because she hadn't already made such an announcement. And now Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill has announced her support, and via Tumblr, no less.

McCaskill wrote:

My views on this subject have changed over time, but as many of my gay and lesbian friends, colleagues and staff embrace long term committed relationships, I find myself unable to look them in the eye without honestly confronting this uncomfortable inequality. Supporting marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples is simply the right thing to do for our country, a country founded on the principals of liberty and equality.

Good people disagree with me. On the other hand, my children have a hard time understanding why this is even controversial. I think history will agree with my children.

Better late than never. Plus her weird hat creep-shotting expertise makes up for at least some of her tardiness on the issue.

[Image via AP]

A late-night agreement between European finance ministers and the government of Cyprus will keep Cyprus in the eurozone and bail out the struggling island nation—by levying an enormous one-time tax on the biggest deposits in one of its banks. Under the deal, the Cyprus Popular Bank, or Laiki, will be divided into a "good" bank and a "bad" bank; the Goofus will be slowly wound down and closed while the Gallant will be folded into the country's largest bank, Bank of Cyprus. Deposits of over 100,000 euros in both banks will be subject to a haircut of as much as 30 percent—but unlike last week's controversial proposed plan, this deal will not tax smaller depositors. The Cyprus bailout deal has been difficult to reach for a variety of reasons, chief among them the country's desire to preserve its banking sector, the engine of its economy, and the eurozone's desire to punish the Russian oligarchs widely believed to be the largest depositors in Cyprus' banks. ("In my view, the stealing of what has already been stolen continues," Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said in response to the latest deal.) This bailout agreement should allow Cyprus to (sort of) remain in the eurozone (against the wishes of the majority of its citizens; "luckily," no one in Cyprus is voting on the package) and eventually recover its banking income without directly taking money from the little guy—but years of enforced austerity will hurt him just as badly. No one's happy. At least they're less unhappy than they were last week? [Telegraph | QZ | Reuters]

The musical equivalent of the Hatfields and McCoys burying the hatchet (or Itchy and Scratchy burying the butcher knife) occurred Saturday night when Oasis' Noel Gallagher joined Blur's Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon onstage at London's Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust benefit show. Rock legend Paul Weller (of the Jam, among things) and poet Michael Horovitz also shared the stage. They played Blur's 1999 single "Tender," one of the happiest sad songs ever written.

The bands infamously feuded in the '90s, at one point releasing dueling singles in a race to No. 1 (Blur's "Country House" beat Oasis' "Roll With It"). The rivalry was sometimes shockingly hostile for something so silly and in both bands' best interest. As NME recounts:

Former Oasis man Gallagher once famously claimed that he wished Blur's Albarn would "get AIDS and die", while Albarn had retorted: "I can't make up with Noel. Britpop would be over and heaven forbid that we'd ever admit we'd all grown up!"

Albarn and Gallagher seemed to be warming up to each other recently, hobnobbing at February's BRIT Awards and saying nice things about each other. See? World peace is possible.

Gallagher told NME before the gig that they'd be playing "Tender" because it's "easy," so there's at least some spunk left in him. Gallagher's former Oasis bandmate and brother Liam Gallagher played the role of incoherent hooligan as usual, tweeting:

Fun guy, that Liam.

Two hero lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the museum's attempts to make its absurd but optional $25 admission fee appear to be mandatory:

The lawsuit contends that the museum uses misleading marketing and training of cashiers to violate an 1893 New York state law that mandates the public should be admitted for free at least five days and two evenings per week. In exchange, the museum gets annual grants from the city and free rent for its building and land along pricey Fifth Avenue in Central Park.

Most people who've been to the Met more than once know that the fee is "recommended" and not required, even if the cashiers are mean about it and the signage is more than a little misleading. But if you are a decent person seeking to support important cultural institutions, you may find yourself feeling obligated to pay out the full $25. These are hard times, after all, and surely a nonprofit like the Met is suffering. Why would it ask for such a ridiculously high figure otherwise? Shouldn't we just treat the fee as the cost of seeing a world-class collection of art and artifacts? (As a Canadian tourist tells the AP, "It's a beautiful museum and I was happy to pay.") Doesn't the Met need our money to survive? Well: no.

The Metropolitan Museum is one of the world's richest cultural institutions, with a $2.58 billion investment portfolio, and isn't reliant on admissions fees to pay the majority of its bills. Only about 11 percent of the museum's operating expenses were covered by admissions charges in the 2012 fiscal year. As a nonprofit organization, the museum pays no income taxes.

So: no, the Met is not suffering; it doesn't need your money; it is required by law to open its doors to the public; and the cost of having a(nother) world-class collection in the city is already partly borne by your tax bill. (And should be borne further.)

Also that "world-class" collection is largely stolen.

[AP, image via AP]

After Dropkick Murphys bass player/singer Ken Casey made it abundantly clear that neo-Nazis are "not fucking welcome" at his band's concerts, the neo-Nazis are apparently responding in kind.

Late last week, the band posted a screenshot to its official Twitter account showing one of several threatening emails they've received since Casey and others forcibly removed a sieg heil-ing skinhead from the stage during a St. Patrick's Day concert, warning them not to perform in Australia or risk the wrath of local neo-Nazis "who would love to kick your ass."

As part of a recently announced series of concerts, the Dropkick Murphys are set to make several stops in Australia starting this Saturday.

The band has yet to officially address the Terminal 5 altercation, but has also made no indication that it plans to shore up security given the threats it's received in the altercation's aftermath.

[screengrab via YouTube, email via Twitter]

After Ann Curry was unceremoniously fired from The Today Show last year, nugget-headed everyman cohost Matt Lauer was demonized as the driving force behind her ouster. But did Lauer really deserve to become morning TV's most hated man? According to a new New York magazine profile by Joe Hagan... yes, he kind of did.

Hagan reports that Lauer "openly complained about" Curry's performance after she became his co-host in 2011. The dislike, it seems, was genuine: "Curry and Lauer had no relationship and barely spoke" when the cameras weren't rolling. Lauer flirted with the idea of moving to ABC, but turned them down at the last moment (and made powerful enemies of ABC executives in the process). He decided instead to accept a $25 million per year deal from NBC, which came, Hagan says, with the understanding that Curry would be fired.

Much internal politicking, backstabbing and strategizing ensued. NBC executives, Today Show producers, and talent schemed against one another for months, some supporting Lauer, others more partial to Curry. Meanwhile, ABC gained in the ratings. Then, last June, came the fateful leak. Hagan reports:

What finally forced a resolution was not an agreement between Ann Curry and NBC but a leak to reporter Brian Stelter of the New York Times that Curry was being forced off the Today show. Stelter, an ambitious reporter and hyperactive Twitter star who once interviewed for a job at NBC, was a hovering presence in the ­morning-TV world as he worked on a forthcoming book called Top of the Morning, which promised to be the definitive account of what was happening at Today. Fingers began pointing over the leak. Was it Jim Bell trying to force Curry's hand? Was it a negotiating tactic by Curry's lawyer? (Stelter, for his part, says it was not Camp Curry.) Lauer assured his booker, "My hands are clean." Bell considered pulling Curry off the air, waiting till the evening to decide whether she could appear on television the next day. The following morning, Curry was discovered crying in her dressing room before airtime.

Then, of course, came that awful, tear-soaked goodbye, which cemented Curry's status as a victim of the scheming machinations of Lauer and his allies. NBC tried to have the pair kiss and make up at the Olympics, but Curry "sat in her car a few yards from the set until her shot was ready, [and] refused to speak to Lauer as he tried making small talk." Lauer has been left bitter by the entire experience. Hagan says that he even accused Brian Stelter (described as "Lauer's nemesis") of working with ABC to try to undermine him.

It sounds paranoid when you put it like that. But it may be true in effect—that is, if Lauer doesn't know how to curry (ha) favor with media reporters, then he may wind up on the wrong side of their reports. At least he still has that $25 million, each year.

[New York. Photo of happier times: Getty]

Who is your favorite Twitterer? Time magazine has assembled a list of the 140 very most important and entertaining users of the short-form social-media service.

Every year, TIME recognizes those who exemplify the very best wit and wisdom Twitter has to offer.

Every year. It is like the U.S. News college rankings. Don't slack off, Wikileaks, or someone will out-tweet you, and then where will you be?

Among the most valuable Twitter users is Gawker's very own Caity Weaver. Congratulations to Caity on making the elite 140. Or but maybe it was 141? Twitter can be confusing. Use it carefully, folks.

Related: 5 Reasons You'll Be Talking About Steampunk in 2013.

Jake Moran, better known to fans of gluttony and greed as that guy who wouldn't share his ice cream with his girlfriend during last week's Pacers-Magic game, appeared on this morning's Good Morning America with his eminently forgiving significant other Georgia Arnett to discuss the motivation behind the snub seen round the world.

"I didn't want her to have my ice cream," Moran responded coolly.

Arnett quickly moved in to assure viewers she wasn't dating a monster. "We do it a lot," she said, "only this time it was recorded."

She also confirmed reports that she was holding her own portion of ice cream just off screen.

Still, Arnett won't need to rely on Moran's generosity for a taste of sweet frozen treats — at least for the coming year.

Deeply moved by the incident, Blue Bell ice cream has agreed to supply Arnett with free ice cream for a year, which, for some reason, Arnett has said she will share with Moran.

[screengrab via FOX59]

Last week songwriter Tracey Thorn, who's best known for her work in the musical duo Everything But the Girl, released her memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star in the U.S. It's a witty and charming chronicle of a career full of happy accidents and success found in the least likely of places — like clubland, which the formerly acoustic-based duo took by storm in 1995 when legendary house producer Todd Terry remixed their "Missing" and the results yielded a global smash.

It was a long road to electronic reinvention. The following excerpt from Bedsit Disco Queen deals with Everything but the Girl's early experiences in the United States, including the recording of their fifth album, The Language of Life, in Los Angeles. Read it and join us a 1 p.m. ET, when Tracey will take part in a reader Q&A in the discussion section of this post.

HEY MANHATTAN!

How quickly a pop career goes by. Leaves behind its beginnings and transforms into something you never imagined, never planned for, perhaps never wanted. It was only 1989. Only five years since I'd left Hull University, wrapped in glory, the indie darling. Now the overwhelming feeling I had within the UK music scene – no longer being part of an indie band, not part of the rave culture, nor happily existing at mainstream level, above such concerns – was that of isolation.

It was the Summer of Love. All around me young people were heading out to the countryside to take drugs in fields and dance around in cagoules to loud, repetitive beats.

And what did we do? We headed out to the countryside and . . . bought a little cottage.

Did anyone mention the word retreat?

***

In a time-wasting fury of DIY mania, we ripped up carpets and threw them from the upstairs windows, stripped off wallpaper and painted bare walls chalky-white, disconnected the cooker and replaced it with an oil-burning stove and water heater that never really worked. I decided to take on the garden as my project and spent whole days, until late into the evening, struggling to clear beds choked with sticky goose grass and stinging nettles. It took me back to my childhood spent playing in the fields around the village, finding dandelion clocks and the papery seed pods of honesty. I knew precisely nothing about gardening, and would rip away at bunches of ground elder till they broke off in my hand, not realising they had an underground root system, which would ensure they came back bigger and stronger by the next morning. Having cleared an area of a few square yards, I filled the space with whatever was in flower down at the garden centre, then left the plants to fend for themselves, till within a few weeks they had wilted, or starved, or been smothered by the weeds which, reinvigorated by my turning of the soil and dispersing of their seeds, had now returned with a vengeance.

After we'd finished with the inside of the cottage, and had removed anything that smacked of suburban modern comforts, we sat down in our newly minimal space and looked out of the window. And got up to rearrange something, and sat back down again. And watched as it got dark at three o'clock in the afternoon.

‘Jesus,' I said, ‘it's very quiet, isn't it?'

Ben was pacing about a bit.

‘What time does the pub open?' we wondered.

This clearly wasn't going to work. It took us about half an hour to discover that we weren't cut out for the country life at all. The silence at night spooked us, and we couldn't sleep without the soothing sound of traffic. When a solitary car would amble down the lane late, and its headlights sweep across our bedroom curtains, I would sit bolt upright in bed, waiting for the smash of the downstairs window as the inevitable axe murderer broke in. It seemed to be dark more or less all day long, and if we arrived for a weekend it would take us most of Saturday and Sunday to get the place warmed up. What had we been thinking? We were townies, through and through; we just hadn't realised it.

Pretty soon we'd sold the cottage and come back to London full time.

***

But still I couldn't decide what to do next, or how to fill the time while I tried to decide.

I took another very un-rock 'n' roll decision and applied to study for an MA in Modern English Literature at Birkbeck College. I went up for an interview, at which they eyed me suspiciously.

‘So, you say you're in a pop group?' A little glance off to the side, a suppressed smirk.

‘Ye-e-es, that's right. But it doesn't take up all my time, and this is a part-time course . . . '

‘And do you ... go off on ... tours?' Barely keeping a straight face now.

‘Well, yes, but I can read on the bus.'

By October 1988, I was spending Monday evenings in tutorial sessions, talking about Yeats and Pound, Leavis and Empson, Foucault and feminism.

None of these projects or diversions solved the problem, though, or answered the basic question that was nagging away at us both – how we should make another record. And there was no doubt that we would make another one. The dilemma was fundamentally a musical one, and could only be answered in those terms. We'd lost our place within the UK music scene, partly because it had moved away from what felt instinctive to us, but also because we'd drifted into making careless mistakes. And now we felt rejected, misunderstood and blameless, and extremely sorry for ourselves. And so, like many before us, feeling scorned in Britain we went to America to feel forgiven.

***

It was different there. As an English band you always felt glamorous anyway. It was only a slight extension of the way in which all English people are made to feel – smart and sophisticated.

When we toured there, I always felt I was regarded as cooler, cleverer, classier than I was at home. And in the late 1980s we were still seen as being part of a pop avant-garde, experimenting with and updating classic elements from jazz and soul and stripped-down songwriting. Having not had any hits in the US also meant that we were not at all mainstream. Given that we now felt we were widely perceived in the UK as being a bit naff, this was enormously appealing.

We decided it was time to return a phone call that had first come in a few years ago. Soul/jazz producer Tommy LiPuma, who had worked with a catalogue of greats from Horace Silver and Miles Davis through to Randy Newman and George Benson, and who had recently contributed production to Aztec Camera's Love album, had said long ago that he had an interest in producing us. At the time it hadn't seemed the right thing to do, but now we took a leap of faith, contacted him and asked him if he wanted to hear some demos.

Tommy, who came from the old school in the strictest sense, said that he wasn't interested in hearing demos, he just wanted us to come out to New York and play him the songs we had. We obediently got on a plane and went to meet him at his Upper East Side apartment, which oozed Manhattan class, with fine art on the walls and a huge wine fridge in the kitchen. From there, we all went to a downtown studio, where he led us into a small recording room containing just a piano and a mic.

‘OK,' he said, ‘just play me what you got!'

Fuck, this was just like the Brill Building come to life! We were Leiber and Stoller! We were Gerry Goffin and Carole King!

We spent the whole day round the piano, hammering out every song we'd written in the last year, till I had no voice left and no idea whether I was any good or not.

‘That's terrific,' said Tommy. ‘Now we just pick the ten best and get started.'

So it was as simple as that? Apparently so.

This was a whole new approach for us, a kind of Tin Pan Alley tradition of record-making. We were the ‘talent', in the sense that we wrote the songs and sang them, but beyond that we were not expected to come up with much else in the way of making the record. It was decided that we would record in LA, using classic studios like Sunset Sound and Ocean Way. The song arrangements were written for us by Larry Williams and Jerry Hey (both of whom had been instrumental in creating those Quincy Jones–Michael Jackson records), the band was put together for us and consisted of Omar Hakim on drums, John Patitucci on bass and Larry Williams on keyboards, with Ben playing guitar and piano. We simply gave ourselves up to the experience, happy to have been relieved of some of the burden of decision-making.

As for these musicians we were working with in America, they knew little of our background, or the esoteric British scene we'd emerged from, and why on earth should they? They could not have begun to comprehend how convoluted our ideas were about this record we were making, or about records in general. Though fairly diluted by this point, I still carried around a certain amount of attitude that was basically grounded in a punk sensibility. When Larry Williams, for instance, found out that we had recorded at Abbey Road, he was immediately impressed because it fitted us into a Great Tradition of record-making.

‘Oh wow, guys,' he'd say, ‘Abbey Road. The home of the Beatles!'

‘God, I HATE the Beatles,' I replied.

There was a stunned silence.

‘You ha-a-ate the Beatles ...?' he faltered. Clearly this wasn't a stance he had ever encountered before, whereas I had grown up around people who thought there was no greater fun to be had than dissing the Rolling Stones, or saying Bob Marley was crap. A certain iconoclasm was in the very air I breathed back home, but here it seemed it just didn't translate.

If we'd thought that we might be about to recreate some classic 1970s grooves, though, we soon found that we were sorely mistaken. These guys were all fully locked into the rhythm and production ideas of mid-1980s US jazz–soul fusion, and thought the 1970s were old hat, while many of the current innovations seemed to them to be a mere flash in the pan. A bit too trashy, too ‘pop' even, to appear on a serious record. Hip hop and house beats were for kiddies, while they were going to show us how to make a record for grown-ups.

Starting work on a track in the studio one day, Ben tentatively suggested that he'd always heard it with a kind of swung beat, which he thought would sound great played in real time by a real drummer. They burst out laughing, and began to play the rhythm he'd suggested.

‘Shit, man, that's a boogaloo!' they chuckled.

‘People gonna say, "That's hysterical! You got Omar Hakim playing a boogaloo!"'

Whatever a boogaloo was, clearly it wasn't cool.

Another time, they started up a cabaret-style version of a current popular beat. Again, they obviously thought it was pathetic.

‘New Jack Swing?' they declared. ‘Noo Jack Shit!'

And we were on their turf, after all. We had come here specifically to buy some of what they were selling. There didn't seem to be much point in flying all the way out to LA and then demanding we make the same record we could have made back home. So for once, we kept our mouths shut and let ourselves sink into what was actually an extraordinarily easy and enjoyable experience.

We were innocents abroad, in many ways. We decided it would make sense if we stayed at the same hotel as Tommy LiPuma, so we checked into the Four Seasons Beverly Hills and stayed there, in a luxurious corner room with a wrap-around balcony and a view, for eight weeks. Being in a hotel meant that we had to send our clothes off to the hotel laundry service, and at the end of the first week I asked to see a running total of the bill, just to keep a check on things. The laundry bill alone was equivalent to the entire recording budget of my earliest records.

For the next eight weeks there were dinners every night in fancy restaurants. Anyone who happened to be in the studio was invited along. Tommy would order the wine and we would all drink it. We learned about Californian chardonnays and Caesar salads and grilled swordfish, when these things were unheard of in England. Ben hired a car and drove us through Laurel Canyon every day to the recording studio, and at night would drive it back to be valet-parked at the hotel. On a weekend off we drove up to the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara, where Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh had got married, and stayed in a bougainvillea-draped cabin with a wood fire burning. Another weekend, we flew out to the Grand Canyon and stayed in a hotel right by the rim, overwhelmed by the vastness of the landscape outside. I took photos of the view and of cactus flowers that looked like birthday candles on a cake, and in the clear desert air the damp and chill of England seemed a long way away.

In LA, in the hotel pool in my bikini, I was Joni Mitchell in the photo on the back cover of The Hissing of Summer Lawns. The hotel smelled of lilies, and every time we wanted to leave we called down to reception for the car to be brought to the door. It was impossible not to be seduced by the California sun and the luxury lifestyle.

Back in the studio, it seemed Tommy only had to pick up the phone and any musician we wanted would come along to contribute. We needed a sax solo on one song and I said, ‘We sort of need someone who plays like Stan Getz.'

‘Stan, it's Tommy here,' he said into the phone. ‘Listen, I got a song I want you to hear ...'

And I was very much ‘just the singer'. I played not a single note on a guitar or piano, and so long hours were spent sitting in the control room while the tracks were recorded. Then, when the record was being mixed, I realised that I couldn't, as I would do in London, pop home for a few hours and come back to hear more finished results. I've never been able to sit in the room while a bass-drum sound is laboured over for six hours, and have always thought that I could offer more by returning with fresh ears and being the one to say, ‘But the vocal's too quiet!' or, ‘What have you done to the piano? It sounds like a hurdy-gurdy.' Here, in LA, I had to retire to the lounge while Ben sat in on a lot of the mixing. I learned to play Super Mario Bros., and in the evenings Joe Sample would tap on the door and come and sit with me, having had a row at home.

***

But the whole project was expensive, and who on earth did we think was paying for all this? I certainly never gave the matter any serious consideration. I knew enough to realise that ultimately we ourselves paid the full costs of any recording budget. But I hadn't stopped to think that being away from home meant that all these extra expenses – every hotel room, every breakfast, every car-parking bill, every bottle of wine – became part of the recording budget. When we got back home, we had two things under our arm: a fully realised, immaculately performed and produced modern American soul–pop record, and an enormous bill, which we were going to have to sell a lot of records to pay off.

Our chat with Tracey has concluded. Buy Bedsit Disco Queen (seriously, it's great), and continue the discussion in your own head. Also, Tracey is on Twitter and she's awesome at it.

A photo allegedly showing an infant child locked inside a car in New Zealand has shocked many, but police say they don't intend to investigate the matter any further.

Eyewitnesses say the baby was left alone inside a parked car near a supermarket along with a note telling passers-by to contact the mother with any problems.

"[The note] was written from the baby's perspective," a witness told the New Zealand Herald, "and it said, 'My mum's in doing the shopping, call her if I need anything', and it had the cellphone number."

According to the unidentified man, two other passers-by called the mother and waited by the car for her to show up.

Despite sufficient proof to charge the mother with a crime, a national police spokeswoman said the incident would not be investigated as none of the witnesses have come forward to file a formal complaint.

"We don't know who the people are, we don't know the phone number, we don't know where to start," said Annie Coughlan. "We would launch an investigation if we could but at this stage no one's come forward."

A local police rep told the Herald that, even if someone were to come forward, it's unlikely the mother would be charged.

"[Incidences like this] need to be taken on their merits and often it's a mum that's run into a shop, for example, and is only away for five minutes," said Porirua police Senior Sergeant Justin Rakena. "Absolutely [it should be reported to police], but it doesn't mean to say we'd prosecute. I would suggest the majority of people in that situation aren't prosecuted."

[photo via Facebook]

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are the two identical twins from whom Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook while they were all students at Harvard, in order to get rich and have sex with women, as depicted in the 100% true documentary The Social Network. The only reason anyone has heard of the Winklevii is because of their constant whinging and carrying on and winning multimillion dollar settlements over Mark Zuckerberg's betrayal. But now they would like to move on from their storied role as the world's most successful losers.

So the Winklevoss appeared in The New York Times in a Styles profile this weekend that was only... roughly 50% about the fact that owe their fame and most of their wealth to being screwed over by Mark Zuckerberg. They are totally over it. ("It" being, spending many years and millions of dollars suing and re-suing Facebook in order to avoid the realization that they got utterly schooled by Mark Zuckerberg.)

Now the Winklevii are embarking on new adventures that have nothing to do with Facebook, like investing in tech companies that they hope might be the "next Facebook," since, you may remember from The Social Network, they were weaseled out of the real Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg. And they just opened a 5,000 square ft. office in the Flatiron District, which happens to be just down the street from Facebook's 150,000 square ft. New York office.

Will the Winkelvoss twins be able to emerge from out of Facebook's shadow? We'll have to wait and see if Mark Zuckerberg steals any of their new ideas, because that's the only way anyone will write about them again.

[Image via Getty]

A school in the UK has banned its cafeteria staff from feeding students triangle-shaped flapjacks after one pupil suffered a "sore eye" during a recent food fight.

Not to be confused with their American counterparts, the British flapjacks are actually baked oat treats better known elsewhere as "granola bars."

"I can confirm that the texture and shape of the flapjacks were reviewed following an isolated accident last week," said a spokesperson for Castle View School in Canvey Island, Essex.

The incident in question involved a boy who had a triangular flapjack hurled at his face by a classmate, resulting in "an injury around his eye" that was treated by the school nurse.

A decision was subsequently made to cease production of all three-sided flapjacks. Henceforth, flapjacks baked on site must be either rectangular or square-shaped.

Of course, this is likely a temporary stopgap rather than a permanent solution.

As The Independent notes, "Critics have pointed out that a square flapjack has more sharp edges than a triangle shaped one."

Not to be out-mocked, the US recently had a baked-goods brouhaha of its own when a school in Baltimore suspended a student for eating his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun.

[photo via Shutterstock]

When I decided last week that I'd attend Saturday's Black Party—the 34th annual iteration of it, and my first—I reached out to some friends to gauge their interest level or otherwise get their reactions.

"Sorry, Rich, that's my nightmare," said one.

"Wear a butt plug," said another.

"I've heard horror stories," said a third.

The narratives about the Black Party—the leather-themed bacchanal for gay men, which is generally modified on first reference by "infamous" and "notorious"—are as insistent as the house beats that ostensibly fuel its fun. A sense of darkness pervades it, from the name to the history to the raunch it prescribes. It originated in 1980 at the East Village nightclub the Saint, a place so synonymous with gay scene that when men started dying of a mysterious cancer-like ailment in the early '80s, some people initially referred to it as "Saint's Disease." Nowadays, the party is at the otherwise respectable Roseland Ballroom, a concert venue taken over by wild displays of public sex, both onstage and off, by professionals and amateurs alike.

There would be back-room black holes, people in the know told me, in which your guiding sense becomes touch. There might be shit involved, so I should choose shoes that I wouldn't mind ruining.

For the uninitiated, this all seems overwhelming and downright scary, tending to produce uneasy-to-horrified essays. But I was going to seek light in the darkness. The event sounded so utterly bleak, so mean in its countenance, that it seemed ready to buckle under the weight of its own gear and bend right back around to absurdity.

The Black Party, for instance, falls on the weekend closest to the vernal equinox, to echo a rite practiced by the Druids. This one was named Rites XXXIV. You know who else invoked Druids and Roman numerals? The '90s midtempo chant-and-cheese dance outfit Enigma. And then there is the idea that men come from all around the world to pay up to $160 to attend this thing that runs from Saturday night through Sunday afternoon, but "doesn't get going" until at least 5 a.m. Sunday morning, thus obliterating an entire weekend in the process. I can think of fewer things more ridiculous than taking fun so seriously.

Based solely on research and the expectation of "strange acts" (as advertised every year in the Black Party's literature) and of bumping into men giving blowjobs wherever the fuck, I figured it was possible to read the Black Party as camp, making it gay not just in practice but in removed sensibility—the recipient of a sort of cultural double penetration.

"I think it's the most culturally significant event in New York because you can do whatever you want—things that are otherwise internalized as those that you shouldn't or wouldn't do," is how my friend, A, put it at his apartment, where we pre-partied. There were seven of us in all, and the majority of us had never attended the Black Party. A was dressing in a leather jock strap and some rain boots. B, his roommate who had done some work on previous Black Parties, wore a tank top and shorts. C, a mutual friend of A's and mine, wore a shirt that looked like chain link and a leather harness over one shoulder. He aimed to look like something out of The Legend of Zelda.

I was going in jeans and a T-shirt, which is generally what I wear to everything. I do not go out of my way to be difficult—it's just that I don't go out of my way at all, generally, when it comes to fashion. Wearing leather or dressing sexily would have required me to make an extra effort. Whatever, I rationalized that going against the grain at this transgressive event would make me the queerest of the queer. I think it mostly made me seem unfuckable, or uninterested in fucking.

We arrived a little before 2 a.m. to ass, ass, ass everywhere, firm and plump and hanging out of jockstraps. At least half of the dudes I saw were wearing leather harnesses on their otherwise bare upper halves and at least half of those wore the same simple X configuration around their pecs. There's normal and then there's Black Party normal.

There was a Coney Island theme to this year's party—a giant wood entrance to the main floor was the gaping mouth of a painted wooden clown head. Lasers shot from its eyes, creating vivid displays that crawled like caterpillars, separated into fingers of light, and united into a sheet of color. At the far end of the room on the main floor, where the stage usually is, was a giant metal wheel. I never got to see it in use, but under it, in a caged-off area, I would later see some sort of group tarring-and-feathering with what looked like caramel.

A balcony ran around the perimeter of the hall. In the middle of the room, on the right, was a proper stage that had a chain-link fence backdrop, a leather couch and various neon beer signs for the likes of Corona and Heineken. Later, I'd watch a guy in a rubber horse mask get fingered on that couch by a beefy dude with a mean dick that pointed straight up at his meaner face. Then a stocky dude with FAGGOT written on his stomach in an arch of Olde English lettering took a turn getting fingered there.

A bunch of people in clownish getups—two guys in day-glo singlets that dipped below the navel, a guy in a Knife mask and Speedo, what I think was a woman-born-woman in a bikini and neon fishnet body suit—danced sexually without so much as touching each other. It was about as sex-provoking as five clones of Nicki Minaj half-heartedly jiggling for this crowd.

The music on the main floor was, and would stay, entirely disappointing: an unrelenting torrent of percussive, loud, ugly, anti-melodic house (or tribal, I guess, to be more accurate on a subgenre level). It was exactly what I would have expected 10 or 15 years ago. Every once in a while, we heard a remix of a classic—Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody," Whitney Houston's "Love Will Save the Day," Sylvester's "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)"—that only made me wish we could hear the original.

Upstairs and directly across the room from that giant wheel and behind the DJ were little carnival booths. Around the side was a fairly well-lit hallway that provided an endless stream of dudes—such a stream that the ceiling dripped with what I assume was condensation from all the sweat. Every time I was dripped on, I thought about the meningitis vaccine I still need to get.

Before 3 a.m., I saw my first public sex act of the night: a guy getting a blowjob under a light who nonetheless blocked the view of the action with his left hand, a small gesture of politeness.

The back-room space came after that corridor and around to the right. A large hallway led to the various debauched zones of sensory deprivation. On entering the darkness, everyone adopted a vintage-zombie gait, a slow left-to-right hobble. The first room on the left was dimly lit, as opposed to not being lit at all, and featured a DJ playing much cooler, funkier stuff than the four-on-the-floor animosity of the main room.

It felt normal: A bunch of dudes hanging out, listening to Azari & III. A lot of them had their asses hanging out and I could tell exactly what they were packing, but still.

We stumbled further into the darkness. Given the crowding, the back rooms felt impenetrable, but only, of course, figuratively. At a sloth's pace, we passed by one room just as the worst thing happened: Its light turned on. There were too many bodies inside and out for me to discern exactly what was going on, but a giant circle of men was standing around … someone. Something. They all hissed like vampires at the light.

And so there was a lot of shirtlessness, a lot of milling around, a lot of dancing, but that's about it. The vibe seemed celebratory and light. I don't know if it was the Adderall I popped for the sake of being able to stay awake and lucid for enough hours to get a piece of writing out of this experience, but as I waited to order a vodka Red Bull at the bar, I decided that maybe for the first time since getting to New York over 15 years ago, I was in no hurry. "I'm just happy to be here," I said.

I wandered, sometimes with the friends I'd come with, sometimes bumping into people I knew, sometimes having random interactions with passing strangers. A trans woman from Manila asked me if I was straight. "No!" I said in the same incredulous way that I do when anyone asks that anywhere. "Oh, because you have your clothes on," she said.

She had a point. Being dressed was certainly doing me no favors in the attention department. But also, even after 4 a.m., there was still something tame about all that was going on. I had seen the one blowjob and a little bit of making out and fondling and whatever those vampires in the back room had been doing when the light beamed in and killed them, but that's about it. Do I repel sex? I mean, I have plenty of it, but it just seems like places where it should be happening, if not to me then to other people—high school, the Meat Rack on Fire Island—are still and sexless when I pass through.

I had spoken to myself too soon. I reunited with A, who had with him this boy whose dick he wanted to suck. We made our way back up to the dim, DJed back room upstairs, which was no longer cool but hot—in temperature and activity. Like everywhere else I'd go that night, the smell was standard dude musk, nothing weirder than that. Two guys were standing up fucking in a corner. One seemed to be getting ready to sit on another's dick on the leather couch, jacking himself off in anticipation. Across the room, behind the DJ table, a group of guys stood up, stroking their dicks. Something was coming.

A perched on the leather couch and starting sucking his boy's cock. I stood with my back to them and felt … unmoved. I wasn't mad at any of this. I didn't disdain these people for getting their specific rocks off, but I really didn't want to participate, and I avoided eye contact with the conveyor belt of men cruising their way through. Then I worried that I was blocking A's exhibitionism.

A and his boy moved across the room. An extremely handsome athletic dude who had been trying to catch my eye finally walking up to me and asked if I was having fun. "Well..." I said. At first I was pausing to consider how to answer, and then I let my dangling sentiment be the answer. "It doesn't look like you are," he said. Well, whatever. When in Black Party, scowl. He ran off, I plopped down on the couch, and someone with very small breasts in a sequined dress started rubbing me. Christ. I didn't want to be mean, especially to someone so clearly different than everybody else, but it was about as erotic as being bitten by a mosquito. When A came back, I excused myself.

Around 6 a.m., A and I decided that we would split up. Before he left, he urged me to take my shirt off. It felt like a compromise of my principles. But it did seem like a stupid principle to stand up for, as if I were 14 and trying to be different for the sake of being different. And it was hot everywhere now. Also, someone in the bathroom had complimented my shirt, and I wondered if he was shading me. I stripped it off. I think I was the last organism in the building to do so. In a nearby corner, a pack of rats tweaked each other's exposed nipples and struck curious poses. They felt the heat, too.

I wandered by myself for the next half hour. I made out with a guy halfheartedly. When I finally squirmed away, he was surprised, which surprised me. There had been no discernable chemistry between us. Back down on the dance floor someone said to me, "Great job!" At what, I have no idea. If he meant achieving a body fat percentage that's more than 10 percent (more like 15, tbh), to him I say, it wasn't a job but a pleasure and a delicious one at that.

I met back up with A, and we lamented the general vibe, which if increasing on the sleaze, was somehow lacking excitement. "I keep waiting for something to happen," he said.

Instead of waiting, I set out to find it. I wandered some more upstairs, bumping into a friend, D, who I'd had no idea would be attending. I'd hooked up with him before, and was startled to see him in a harness. I'd never known he was into that sort of thing. He told me it was borrowed. We made our way back to those carnival booths by the DJ. There, a super cute, youngish guy with buckled leather forearm coverings asked D for a cigarette.

"How has your night been?" D asked the kid.

"It's been great so far. I had sex with this guy that I had been wanting. I had no idea he'd been wanting me too," the kid responded.

"How many guys have you had sex with tonight?" asked D.

"I'd say ..." the kid started.

He was already to the point of having to estimate? Whoa. That's a lot, I thought.

"...Six or seven," he said. He assured D that he'd have no trouble getting his dick hard again, ha ha.

"What do you want to do?" D asked me.

"Go home, I think," I said.

"Yeah," he said.

I walked away. Then I realized D wasn't behind me. I turned around to see him making out with the kid. A little later, I received a text: "I'm a slut. Have fun."

Fat chance. I really was ready to go. But then a trancey remix of Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know" was playing, and I saw a wide-framed dude with pneumatic muscles and in a jockstrap being penetrated by a tight, lean dude with a backwards baseball cap. They fucked hard, backwards and to the beat. "How will I know if he really loves me?" wondered Whitney. Well, if he fucks you up against a stage while small, unfazed women wheel around trashcans for all of the condoms and wrappers on the floor, he really just might!

So that was kind of fun and worth staring at. Still, I was legitimately ready to turn away and get my coat when B came up, now shirtless and more flirtatious than he had been when we congregated at his place. We danced a little bit, but he demurred when I made an attempt to kiss him. OK, whatever. It was good, at least, to have a roaming buddy. At this point, it was after 7 in the morning. We passed tables full of fruit and coffee. I walked by a guy who was totally nude and eating a banana, his giant banana of a dick bouncing as he moved to the beat. B thought this was cliché, but I thought it was thematically sound.

I saw what looked like a random splatter of discoloration on the carpet and thought, "Oh my god. It really happened. Someone really did shit there." But no—on closer inspection, it was part of the flower pattern on the Roseland carpet. I wasn't getting tired, but my brain was.

B and I bumped into E and F. E was someone I had been introduced to a few times and had always thought was cute, but never thought he had any interest in me. F was simply the hottest guy I'd seen all night. He was 27, had the slightest touch of a corn-fed vibe, friendly eyes, a wicked grin and a firm, round ass. I expected to say hi and move on, but E said, "Do you want to come with us?"

The standard Black Party narrative had found me after all. As we walked to the back room, going single file, E told me to hold onto F. As we entered the darkness, F put my hand on his dick. The DJ room was mostly empty, because the temperature was unbearable, so we walked back around to the booths.

Once there, we made out in various configurations: E and me, F and E, F and me, all three of us together. E pulled F's dick out and started blowing him. The previously dark booth was almost immediately illuminated by the roving lights of that giant fucking clown. Asshole. I hate clowns. Now we had attracted a group of men who were slowly closing in, leering and bumping and rubbing us, like we were at the end of the "Thriller" video. None of them interested us, and we were undeterred. I pulled my dick out and E switched from F's to mine.

Despite my intense interest in both of these dudes, I couldn't really get into this particular scene and only got half hard. No one cared. F blew me. I blew him. More guys pushed in and pawed us. We finally had enough and decided to go down for some dancing, which meant simulating fucking and more making out. We also licked each other's pits.

E told us he was going to the bathroom and would be right back. More than 10 minutes passed, and it was clear to that he wasn't coming back. I figured he'd gotten distracted (fair enough) and really, that was OK, because I could devote my full attention to F.

"We either need to get out of here or go find somewhere dark upstairs," F told me.

"Let's get out of here. Come to Williamsburg," I said.

"OK."

We went to retrieve our coats and F's cell phone. Because my friend had a friend with a connection to the event, I had been able to bypass security and keep my own cell phone all night. Waiting in these lines struck me as the evening's true rituals—the labor of returning to the reality of modern existence. It was fine, though. We had plenty to talk about.

Back at my place, F and I were about to shower and devour each other. Talking in the cab, he had revealed himself as a bottomless pit of kink. "What's one thing that you always wanted to try but never did?" he asked me. I told him and we did it. We ended up fooling around for about an hour and a half, directing and discovering each other. I spent that time in awe—first that someone so beautiful, nice, and sexually talented existed, and second that this person was in my bed.

"This is the real party," I told him, at one point. "Everything that the Black Party purports to offer, all that sexual abandon and freedom, I'm getting from you." In the past 12 hours, I hadn't so deeply felt the symbiosis of inspiration and exploration than I had while naked with this guy in my white sheets.

"I think you need to explain that to me again after I've rested and gotten some of my brain back," he said. I came, he came, and we went to sleep around 11:30 am.

At 3 p.m., I woke up, fully alert. I closed my eyes a few times, but was conscious for the next hour, spooning F while he remained asleep. His once-glistening muscles now sparkled like sand in the sun pouring in through my curtainless windows.

[Photo by Victor Jeffreys II.]

Breastfeeding photos posted on Instagram by Brazilian model, DJ, and former Pamela Anderson impersonator Sabrina Boing Boing are causing some commotion in her native country.

But, for once, the critics may have a point: Her decision to stop by the side of the road and photograph herself breastfeeding a herd of calves meets the textbook definition of "bad taste."

Boing Boing, also formerly of the Pussycat Dolls knock-off Sexy Dolls, accompanied her "heavy petting zoo" photo series with the caption "some things don't need to make sense, just worth it!"

A self-described animal lover, Boing Boing made headlines just last week when she was photographed feeding an ostrich fruit she kept tucked underneath her fully exposed breasts.

[H/T: The Daily Dot, photos via Instagram]

Let's say your brother was going to stand trial in June for shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager. What would you do? Would you keep your mouth shut? Or would you tweet at the NAACP and the NRA about black teens? Robert Zimmerman, brother of the George Zimmerman who killed Trayvon Martin last year, has chosen the latter:

On Saturday, Zimmerman went on a Twitter tirade against "black teens," equating the boy killed by his brother with De'Marquise Elkins, the 17-year-old suspect in the murder of a Georgia infant. [...]

Zimmerman tweeted the photo at Michael Moore, the NAACP, the NRA, and a Breitbart.com editor. He followed it up with another comparison between the two, tweeting "Teen to West: "Do you want me to shoot your baby?" #TrayvonMartin to #GeorgeZimmerman: You're gonna die tonight Motherf**ker."

Zimmerman claims he was "[m]aking a pt abt media," which he seems to believe "suppressed" Martin's "'self-portraits.'" He is still tweeting as of this writing.

[ThinkProgress]

A housekeeper at West Point who was busted with a bag full of frozen meatballs that didn't belong to her is facing two years in prison on federal charges of larceny and possession of stolen property.

Put in perspective, that's the same amount of time Trent Mays was sentenced to serve following his conviction in the Steubenville rape trial.

56-year-old Estelle Casimir stands accused of trying to make away with a bag of frozen meatballs that were slated to be served to at the West Point Cadet Mess Hall.

According to court documents, a supervisor became suspicious after spotting Casimir with a grocery bag in her hand.

Confronted, Casimir, who is responsible for cleaning the mess hall latrines and does not handle food, claimed she found the meatballs in a trash container "and was on her way to dispose of them in another trash container."

An affidavit signed by the operations manager on duty does not specify how many meatballs were in the bag.

At an initial court hearing earlier this month, Casimir pleaded not guilty to the charges. Her next court date is scheduled for April 19th.

In the meantime, she has been forced to look elsewhere for employment after the food services company Watson Services, her employer of 28 years, suspended her pending the outcome of the trial.

"I just sit in the house," Casimir is quoted as saying. "I don't have anything to do."

[photos via AP, Hot Cheap & Easy]

New York magazine's lengthy dissection of the ultimate first-world problem that is morning-news drama is a good read, if you're into media navelgazing. Covering Matt Lauer's role as the villain in Ann Curry's unsentimental firing from the Today Show, and the Today Show's subsequent fall from grace, the piece contains a lot of interesting information that helps shed darkness on the sometimes frustratingly bouncy world of morning news programs.

But one tidbit stands out as being quite a bit more ugly than all the others, showing exactly what kind of sociopathic babies are propelling all this absurd turmoil. In the narrative structure, it comes after Curry was paid millions of dollars in order to leave her Today spot and serve as a roving reporter with her own production unit:

Ann Curry was gone but not gone, which created a situation of spectacular awkwardness. Any trust that had existed between Curry and Today was shattered. When Robin Roberts left Good Morning America a month later to get treatment for MDS, Curry asked NBC if she could tweet a note of sympathy for the ABC co-host. NBC said no, afraid she was trying to aid the enemy.

In deference to those who don't know, Roberts, host of Today Show competitor Good Morning America, was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a cancer-like blood disease. But god forbid NBC let any of its employees extend a branch of kindness—even one as relatively meaningless as a nice tweet—to a very sick ABC employee. They've got ratings and Matt Lauer's feelings to worry about.

[Image via AP]

From the Spanish-American War all the way up to the 40 Hottest Women in Tech, the past century has borne witness to some epic trolling, bro. This amoral art form—loosely defined as "the media fucking with you on purpose"—has defined our modern era of outrage. It is time that we honored the very best trollings of the past 115 years.

The Spanish-American War
In 1898, our nation's glorious barons of yellow journalism decided that a war with Spain would be good for business. The sinking of the USS Maine in Cuba was attributed (in blaring headlines) to "Spanish Treachery" or "Enemy's Secret Infernal Machine," despite the fact that the Navy itself didn't know what had caused it. Oh well! Then we had a war. LOL.

"The War of the Worlds," by Orson Welles
In 1938, long before the Onion and the Daily Show, the American public's ability to detect fake news was at an all-time low. Still, the fact that thousands of people across the nation fell for a fake alien invasion (of New Jersey, of all places) goes to show that, had the internet been invented back then, the commenters would have been just as stupid as they are today.

Hitler, Man of the Year
"Look, our 'Man of the Year' is simply the most important person in the news that year. It is not a comment on their moral worth," Time Magazine people would say then, and forever after. Later at the bar, they cackled. "Hitler. I can't believe we actually did that shit."

"Is God Dead?"
The key is they ran this in 1966, when such a thing was considered provocative. (Also note the pioneering use of the Question Headline Used To Retain Plausible Deniability.) To achieve similar shockwaves today, the cover would have to be something far more thunderous, like "Is Justin Bieber Dead?"

"Oh, Wow"
In 1979, Joan Didion slammed Woody Allen (fairly!) in the pages of the New York Review of Books. John Romano, a Columbia professor, sent a letter of more than 600 words disputing Didion's complaints about Allen. To which Didion replied, in print: "Oh, wow."
This reply to an angry letter will never be topped.

Andy Kaufman's Feuds
Though not a member of the media per se, comedian-ish performance artist Andy Kaufman was more committed to fucking with the media than any other entertainer of his era. Perhaps the most impressive: his feud with pro wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, which caused Kaufman to break his neck (or did it???), was not revealed to be a hoax until ten years after Kaufman's death. That is the type of commitment to a "bit" that Gawker readers will appreciate in 2023, when it is revealed that "Caity Weaver" is simply a pen name adopted by the struggling former star Billy Crystal.

CYBERPORN
IT'S 1995 AND CYBERPORN IS COMING FOR YOUR KIDS—WHO ARE PROBABLY MASTURBATING RIGHT NOW (into your good sheets).

Roseanne Guest Edits the New Yorker
One could legitimately consider the entire Tina Brown era at the New Yorker as a large-scale and subtle act of trolling. But nothing drove it all home quite so well as when she had noted journalist Roseanne Barr guest edit the magazine in 1996, prompting some staffers to quit. Imagine if they'd known what Tina Brown would do at future magazines. At least Roseanne was alive!

Christopher Hitchens' Book-Length Takedown of Mother Teresa
Sure, he made a very viable argument. He also named his takedown of the world's most beloved nun "Missionary Position." It was even more incendiary than his later book-length takedown of god himself. Chris Hitchens was a master troll because he could devise a trollish idea ("Fuck Mother Teresa") and then actually pull it off. May he rest in peace, in hell.

Ayelet Waldman Loves Her Sexy Husband More Than Her Boring Baby
Ayelet Waldman, the writer wife of Michael Chabon, had to write a "Modern Love" column to let all of the mommies out there who are not having sex know: Ayelet Waldman is still having lots of sex, because she loves her husband more than her baby. That's right. Yeah, she said it. All she wants to do is to fuck her famous husband, who gave her HPV.

Zombie Princess Diana
Tina Brown's tenure as editor of Newsweek was the most complete and breathtaking example of sustained trolling ever undertaken at a major magazine. She put zombie Princess Diana on the cover and didn't even laugh about it. I mean... respect that troll. However...

"Muslim Rage"
By late 2012, Tina Brown was so bereft of real ideas that she'd resorted to simple xenophobia. This is trolling at its ugliest: a borderline racist caricature that appeals to its audience's basest emotions. Tina Brown is not a hero.

The Tiger Mom
Trolling is not about whether or not you have an actual argument; it's about how you make that argument. Amy Chua did, in fact, have an argument, about the merits of a particular parenting style. Then she wrapped it up in a brand called "Tiger Mom" and let the Wall Street Journal run an excerpt with the headline, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior." (She also advocated being a monster to your kids, for good measure.) Talking shit about someone's parenting skills is a great way to get them to spread your story around like the ebola virus.

Michael Wolff's Career
Michael Wolff is intelligent enough to be an actual, serious media critic; he's also canny enough to know that few people give a shit about serious media criticism, so he can get a lot more readers by tossing off ridiculous white whines about restaurant reservations and incendiary mansplanations; and, he's both needy and amoral enough to just, you know, insult people for attention. Michael Wolff, Le Trolle Extraordinaire.

The Atlantic's Vague Woman-Concern
As one of America's oldest and most respected magazines, the Atlantic has covered wars, politics, and everything else for many generations. But recently they discovered that nothing gets as many hits as vague meditations on unanswerable existential questions about women, such as whether they can "have it all." And hey, more power to them, clickety click click click. We, too, have always wondered, uh, whether women can, you know... get.... everything? *Checks traffic stats* Or not?

"Why Women Hate Me For Being Beautiful"
Samantha Brick wrote a feature for the Daily Mail about the trials and tribulations of being a beautiful woman. The story was illustrated with copious photos of Samantha Brick, who is not especially attractive. Five thousand seven hundred twenty five comments later, we know: It's a simple formula that really works.

Time Magazine on Attachment Parenting
Good cover.

"I Did Something So Horrible This Morning That I Can't Even Put It In My Headline"
XOJane.com is a site specializing in an advanced version of trolling in which A) a community of like-minded readers is cultivated and B) that community is led, little by little, to ever more ridiculous editorial horizons, until they wake up one day wondering, "What the fuck am I reading?" (That day has not come yet.) We could choose any number of gross articles about bodily functions to illustrate this point, but even better is this Emily McCombs post, "I Did Something So Horrible This Morning That I Can't Even Put It In My Headline," which, after blatantly refusing to state its own topic in the headline, still ends up being a gross article about bodily functions.
Do not try this at home.

The 40 Hottest Women in Tech There are plenty of "Hottest Women" slideshows, and there are plenty of poorly concealed sexist attention-grabbing honey traps, but none were done quite so ham-fistedly as Complex Magazine's thing last week. Right in the middle of a big argument about misogyny in the technology industry, Complex reminded everyone that women are for looking at. Guys, the formula is showing through the hot sexxxy see-through... computer screen. This attracted mega traffic precisely because it was so fucked up. Which is the point.

The Entire New York Times Style Section
On a weekly basis, nothing in American journalism comes close to the steady and dependably loathsome trolling of the New York Times Style section. We could list any one of hundreds upon hundreds of trolling examples from the section, which tend to be either "Straightfaced Story About Outrageous Rich People Behaving Outrageously, But We Act Like We Don't Realize That And We're Just Writing a Straight News Story, Which Will Only Make You More Mad," or "Completely Fabricated Trend." Your life will be much less rage-filled (we say from hard-earned experience) if you simply accept up front that the entire section is bullshit.

This Listicle
Thanks for clicking all the way through. Clickety click click click. LOL.

[Image by Jim Cooke. ]