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Solving the Aging Problem: Janet Jackson’s Unbreakable

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Solving the Aging Problem: Janet Jackson’s Unbreakable

How should a pop diva grow older in public? When your career is based not so much on virtuosic vocal ability but charisma, X factor, taste, and performance, where do you end up? What is the “age appropriate” equivalent to singing standards for the artists whose output is rooted in the dance pop of the ‘80s? How does the artist who is characterized in part by her command on culture and ability to communicate with the masses thrive when the masses stop listening? How do you make pop music when you know it has little chance of actually being popular, per the ageist standards of the music industry?

You can fight it. Madonna has been doing that, going as far as to make cultural ageism a talking point during her media tour for this year’s Rebel Heart. Her cause is at least as self-serving as it is noble, and ultimately ineffective—Madonna’s biggest hits these days are antics, not songs. Rebel Heart contains more songs than any Madonna album (23 on the U.S. release of the Super Deluxe Edition), but on it she has less to say than ever. Its clearest statement comes between the often excruciatingly trite lines—the throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks ethos is so prominent that the album’s primary aesthetic is desperation.

Another survival tactic is to just chill the fuck out and talk when you are ready. The most arresting thing about Janet Jackson’s first album in seven years, Unbreakable, is how relaxed it sounds. Produced with longtime collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the independently released Unbreakable is a sigh of comfort stretched out over 17 tracks. Jackson, who watched her last three albums flop and has had only one single in the past 10 years reach the Top 20 single of the Billboard Hot 100 (“Feedback”), has seemingly come to terms with her reduced marketability. She has, after all, had plenty of time to think about it.

“Hello,” says Jackson on Unbreakable’s opening, title track, radiating humility. “It’s been a while. Lots to talk about. I’m glad you’re still here. I hope you enjoy.” This one’s for the people—not all of them, but those who are still interested in what Jackson might have to say. The woman who was once, per her ex-boyfriend and –producer Jermaine Dupri, no longer interested in making albums because they just weren’t selling, has shifted her focus. Now it’s on the album, not the selling. (It’s not like Jackson, a millionaire who married a billionaire, needs the money at this point, anyway.) In 2010, Dupri said, “Janet is just trying to figure out her landscape.” In 2015, she has.

Solving the unsolvable problem of aging in pop, it turns out, is as easy as not treating it like a problem but an opportunity. The mellow Unbreakable is largely unconcerned with pop trends, and when it is, it’s just because they make sense when infused with Jackson’s vibe. “Dammn Baby” and “2 B Loved” both interpolate DJ Mustard’s skeletal and bouncy approach to melodic hip-hop, an unrelentingly sunny style that recalls vintage Jackson at her most ebullient. Some Unbreakable songs don’t have much by way of choruses (particularly material on the album’s second half like “Lessons Learned” and the stunning “Black Eagle”). Many more choose vibe over insistent hooks (see the first single “No Sleeep,” where Jackson sounds positively somnambulant during the verses).

And what of the “lots” that Jackson has to talk about? It certainly doesn’t involve sex—for the first time since 1993, there is not one explicit sex jam on a Janet Jackson album. Given all of the ground she has covered—from S&M to bondage to public sex to singing with a dick in her mouth—she’s perhaps run out of kinks to explore in her music. That’s reasonable. Instead, the topic most frequently discussed on Unbreakable is social justice. Its discussions are polished with the vague idealism of someone who has repeatedly sheltered herself from the world throughout her career (between projects, Janet is just not visible).

“Wish I could create a perfect place (Wouldn’t that be perfect someday) / Without jealousy, abuse or hate (And all just living off love) / And I’m never giving up / Because I wanna master love / ‘Cause the world is just so beautiful / I just wanna see it come to life,” she sings over Chi-Lites-inspired soul retroism on “Dream Maker/Euphoria.” “Just can’t feel casual about the casualties,” she sings over the percolating house beat that explodes into guitar-laden U2 grandiosity of “Shoulda Known Better.” “Because every life matters (We all need to do better) / So we all should try (We all need to do better) / A smile / A kind word / Or extending a hand / Helping someone to feel human again,” she murmurs over the minimal rumble of “Black Eagle.” Given the album’s generalities, the similarity to Black Lives Matter counter-sentiment (“All lives matter!”) is in all likelihood a coincidence.

Jackson touches on her marriage to Wissam Al Mana, whom she married in 2012 and, for a few years, disappeared with entirely in the Middle East (“If fairytales are mine, you would be the one that saved me oh baby,” she coos in “Take Me Away”). She’s a bit more pointed about her union when discussing the press’s reaction to it. “Don’t like seeing people happy / Is it jealousy or personal? / ‘Cause I don’t see why loving someone / Or what I do seem so radical to you,” she sings in the highlight “The Great Forever,” which shares a shuffle beat and disdain for gossip with her brother Michael’s 1987 single “Leave Me Alone.” What exactly she is actually referring to, though, is unclear—the only real controversy her marriage to Al Mana spawned was regarding how secretive Jackson was about it. And furthermore, those most likely to care about Jackson’s personal life at this point are the fans she still has, the ones she told just three songs earlier, “I dedicate my life to you.” “It’s never the critic that counts / ‘Cause critics only wanna talk,” she sings in “Shoulda Known Better,” seemingly unaware that there’s a rather large Venn diagram of critics and Janet Jackson fans. Jackson has been regularly acclaimed, particularly during the pre-Nipplegate period of her career.

As with Madonna’s Rebel Heart, the truly profound messages of Unbreakable are not found in its text but its subtext. Jackson’s relationship with feedback is complicated—it’s what brings her back (“I wouldn’t be here / Without the love I stand on”) and what pushes her away. Let’s not forget that whatever contradictions or self-entitlement that may strike us as odd regarding Jackson (any Jackson, for that matter) comes from the fact that she’s been famous since she was a child. Her development has been atypical, her perspective is a rare one. “It’s sad when you take such a beautiful thing / Blow it up and call it the news,” she sings, creating a binary that may initially seem off but does check out. How often, after all, is the news “beautiful?”

On Unbreakable, Jackson concentrates on being soothed by and soothing with beauty. “In every race / Every place that I’ve ever been / There is so much beauty,” she sings in “Well Traveled,” a country-tinged ballad that works shockingly well. That’s about as much insight as she allows in this song about her perpetual motion across our great planet. But her vast experience is noted, her entire public life is tattooed on this release. With her Minnie Mouse timbre and minuscule range, Janet Jackson has never been the picture of “soul,” and yet what other word can we apply to the work of someone with a rich, complicated narrative, someone who has learned lessons and integrated them into her art? Sometimes soul is a gift, and sometimes it’s earned. Janet Jackson has earned hers. Aging in pop, it turns out, is a beautiful thing.


Jeb Bush Delivers Eloquent Speech on School Shootings: "Stuff Happens"

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Jeb Bush Delivers Eloquent Speech on School Shootings: "Stuff Happens"

Jeb Bush, who try as he might just isn’t so great at the business of running for president, was at an event in South Carolina today, where he was asked about school shootings like the massacre in Oregon yesterday. The two-word key phrase at the center of his response: “Stuff happens.”

According to video of the back-and-forth at a Conservative Leadership Project forum at Furman University, Jeb was responding to a query about whether prayer in public schools might help to stop these shootings before they happen. His full response:

It’s a—we’re in a difficult time in our country, and I don’t think more government is necessarily the answer to this. I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It’s very sad to see, but I resist the notion—and I had this challenge as governor, because we had—look, stuff happens. There’s always a crisis, and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.

What he seems to be trying to say is that the federal government shouldn’t respond to the killings with an attempt to enact stricter gun control. These things happen, you know, and—well, shit—I don’t know, you know?

Your thoughts, President Obama?

When a reporter confronted Jeb about the soundbite, he stood by his unfortunate choice of words, except to say that “things” might have been more appropriate than “stuff.”

“Explain to me what I said wrong. Things happen all the time.” Well said.


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

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

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Twenty years ago, on October 3, 1995, former football star and popular character actor O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Immediately after the verdict came down, O.J. Simpson tweeted the following:

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

What resulted were some of my favorite tweets of all time:

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

My Favorite Tweets From the O.J. Simpson Verdict

What tweets do you remember from the O.J. verdict? Share your favorites below!

[Images by Jim Cooke]

Deadspin The Biggest NFL Story Today Is Whether Jim Tomsula Farted At A Press Conference | Gizmodo M

Saturday Night Live Fans Barf All Over SNL's Instagram In Protest of Miley Cyrus

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Saturday Night Live Fans Barf All Over SNL's Instagram In Protest of Miley Cyrus

Tomorrow night Saturday Night Live returns for its 41st season. But there’s a whole lot of drama brewing around an arguably comedic television show—and frankly, Lorne Michaels’ questionable choices are making a lot of viewers downright sick to their stomachs.

I’m talking, of course, about a little lady called Miley Cyrus, who’s set to host the season’s opener—much to the chagrin of the show’s Instagram followers. For the show’s Instagram account—once a safe space to scroll through pictures of Aidy Bryant goofin’ off—has become a ground zero for hilariously enraged viewers who, unlike you, remember when SNL used to be good.

A strange reaction, the casual observer might think, to a television show that features approximately 20 famous people, ranging from who? to meh each season. But there’s nothing America likes more than arguing on the internet, and this week the internet’s wearing her nipple pastys out in public.

Saturday Night Live Fans Barf All Over SNL's Instagram In Protest of Miley Cyrus

JerryM doesn’t even watch SNL anymore. He gave up on Weekend Update when “Party in the USA” was released.

Saturday Night Live Fans Barf All Over SNL's Instagram In Protest of Miley Cyrus

jjbarney91 wanted nothing more than to stay at home tomorrow night, put on his Nike slides, and slip into an hour and a half of laughs.

Saturday Night Live Fans Barf All Over SNL's Instagram In Protest of Miley Cyrus

That’s nothing compared to deedee_gee, who actually just barfed when she found out the news. She saw a photo of Miley Cyrus standing next to Taran Killam and just ralphed all over her outfit.

Saturday Night Live Fans Barf All Over SNL's Instagram In Protest of Miley Cyrus

celticscorp is passing on this first episode and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this won’t affect the ratings.

Photo from Getty

You Don't Pass a Pool Fencing Law After a Child Drowns, Says Jeb, Who Did Just That

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You Don't Pass a Pool Fencing Law After a Child Drowns, Says Jeb, Who Did Just That

Stuff happens” was the dumbest and most unfortunate thing Jeb! Bush said Friday in reaction to the mass shooting at an Oregon community college one day earlier, but his fumbling attempt to clean up that mess was nearly as rife with dumbitude and non-fortune.

http://gawker.com/jeb-bush-deliv...

After challenging a reporter to tell him “what I said wrong,” The New York Times reports, Bush clarified that he meant “Things happen all the time. Things. Is that better?”

Not really, but that didn’t stop him from going into detail about what he meant by “Look, stuff happens. There’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something, and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do.”

“A child drowned in a pool and the impulse is to pass a law that puts fencing around pools,” he said, “Well it may not change it. Or you have a car accident and the impulse is to pass a law that deals with that unique event. And the cumulative effect of this is, in some cases, you don’t solve the problem by passing the law, and you’re imposing on large numbers of people burdens that make it harder for our economy to grow, make it harder to protect liberty.”

A liberty-eroding, people-burdening law about pool fences is an oddly specific example. I wonder if any state has ever actually passed such a—

After the House voted 109-8 for the bill on Friday, Preston met Gov. Jeb Bush, who committed to signing a bill that requires new pool owners to pick a way to keep unsupervised children out of the water.

Oh.

That’s the Sun-Sentinel’s Tallahassee bureau, reporting in May 2000 on a law requiring pool fences, named after a child—Preston de Ibern—who nearly drowned. Florida’s Preston de Ibern/McKenzie Merriam Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act was pushed for three years by then-state rep. (and current Democratic National Committee chair) Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and finally signed by Gov. Jeb! despite its inherent imposition of burdens on large numbers of people.

Stuff happens. Also things. All the time.

[h/t Farhad Manjoo, Photo: AP Images]

Doctors Without Borders Hospital Hit During U.S. Airstrike in Afghanistan, 9 Staffers Dead

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Doctors Without Borders Hospital Hit During U.S. Airstrike in Afghanistan, 9 Staffers Dead

At least nine staff members at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, a city in Afghanistan, were killed during a United States airstrike early on Saturday. Thirty people are still missing.

The Afghan military has been fighting to retake Kunduz since Monday, the AP reports, when Taliban fighters overran the city. The U.S. military confirmed the 2:15 a.m. airstrike—the 12th in the area since Tuesday—in a statement. A spokesman, U.S. Army Col. Brian Tribus, said the strike “may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.”

Doctors Without Borders said the trauma center, where 105 patients were being treated and more than 80 international and Afghan staff were employed, “was hit several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged.”

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Sediq Sediqqi, said at a press conference that 10 to 15 “terrorists” had been using the hospital as a hiding spot: “All of the terrorists were killed but we also lost doctors.” A Kunduz police spokesman, Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, also told the New York Times that Taliban fighters were using the hospital as a firing position.

However, two hospital employees who survived the bombing disputed this account, saying that not only were there no Taliban fighters inside the hospital but that there had been no fighting nearby. According to the Times, the hospital’s policy of treating wounded from all sides of the conflict regardless of affiliation has been a consistent source of tension with Afghan security forces.

The Times reports that, according to the United Nations, 19,368 civilians have been killed in the fighting in Afghanistan since 2009, and nearly 33,300 have been wounded.


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

Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

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Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

Here are the best of today’s deals. Get every great deal every day on Kinja Deals, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to never miss a deal, join us on Kinja Gear to read about great products, and on Kinja Co-Op to help us find the best.


Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

If you want to stop paying your cable company $100/month for channels you don’t watch, it might be time to cut the cord. Between services like Netflix, Hulu+, Sling TV, and HBO Now, it’s easier than ever to declare cable independence, but a good antenna is still a critical piece of equipment for picking up your local broadcast stations.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-choose-...

Today on Amazon, refurbs of the Mohu Leaf are down to $20, which is one of the lowest prices we’ve ever seen. If you need an endorsement, note that Lifehacker readers voted the Leaf as their favorite antenna, praising its unobtrusive design and great performance.

http://lifehacker.com/five-best-indo...

Even if you’re totally happy with your cable package, it might be worth picking this thing up anyway for the rest of football season. Unlike cable broadcasts, OTA HDTV is uncompressed, which means your programs will be free of the artifacts you can see during fast action scenes. It might not make a huge difference, but it’s definitely noticeable in my experience, particularly for sports. and $20 is a steal if you want the best image quality possible. [Refurb Mohu Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna, $20]

Update: Price has gone up to $22. Still a good deal though.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...


Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

With in-body 3-axis stabilization, a compact body, and the same sensor as Olympus’s high end OM-D line, the Olympus E-PL6 is a fantastic Micro 4/3 shooter for anyone looking to graduate from smartphone photography. I’ve owned the nearly-identical E-PL5 for a couple years, and I’m still consistently blown away by the quality of images it produces.

Today on eBay, you can get the body, a pair of lenses, a starter SD card, and an $80 Visa gift card for just $400. For comparison, the camera with a single kit lens is currently selling for $300 on Amazon, so when you account for the gift card, you’re basically getting a telephoto lens for $20 extra. [Olympus E-PL6 with 14-42mm II, 40-150mm, 8GB SD Card, and $80 Visa Gift Card, $400]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3218824260...


Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

If your phone supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0, you might as well throw out all of your old chargers and replace them with these.

Aukey Quick Charge 2.0 PowerAll 18W USB Car Charger Adapter ($6) | Amazon | Use code 2P77G62C

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

Aukey Quick Charge 2.0 42W 3 Ports USB Desktop Charging Station ($12) | Amazon | Use code 2GXWZ585

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...


Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

Today only, Amazon’s offering huge discounts on a ton of Swiss Legend watches, starting at just $50. They won’t count your steps or show you texts, but they look better than pretty much any smart watch out there right now. [Swiss Legend Watches start at $50]


Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

The compact Ninja Professional blender is one of the more versatile kitchen gadgets you can own, and Amazon is offering it for an all-time low $80 today, down from $100.

Want to mix up a frozen smoothie? Chop some onions? Puree a few tomatoes? The Ninja is designed for all of that, and includes three different-sized jars to handle your disparate kitchen duties, and a powerful 900 watt motor to chop through just about anything you throw at it.

Despite the low price, the Ninja has a stellar 4.6 star review average on Amazon, which would be impressive for any inexpensive blender, let alone one as versatile as this. [Ninja Professional Blender, $80]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...


Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

Jawbone’s Big Jambox is several years old at this point, but it’s still one of the best oversized Bluetooth speakers you can buy, and an open box model will only set you back $120 today, one of the best prices we’ve ever seen. [Open Box Jawbone Big Jambox, $120]

https://www.tanga.com/deals/93d6b327...

http://gizmodo.com/5906423/jawbon...


Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

We’ve seen sub-$200 KitchenAid mixer deals before, but they’re almost always refurbs. You don’t get to choose a color in this Amazon deal, but your new prized kitchen possession will be brand new.

Just note that this is the smallest and lowest powered KitchenAid mixer, so it’s probably not ideal for stiff doughs. [KitchenAid K45SSOB 4.5-Quart Classic Series Stand Mixer, $180]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003OXNBYC/...


Saturday's Best Deals: $20 Mohu Leaf, Swiss Watches, Olympus Camera, and More

Need a new DualShock 4? Amazon’s selling the black one for $45 today (for Prime members only), which is a pretty solid discount as far as these things are concerned. [DualShock 4 Controller, $45. Prime members only. Discount shown at checkout.]

http://www.amazon.com/DualShock-Wire...


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Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more. We want your feedback.Send deal submissions to Deals@Gawker and all other inquiries to Shane@Gawker

Send deal submissions to Deals@Gawker and all other inquiries to Shane@Gawker


Michigan Farmer Digs Up Woolly Mammoth Skeleton

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On Monday, a Michigan farmer digging in his field came upon the ancient remains of a butchered woolly mammoth. “It was probably a rib bone that came up,” said the man who just fulfilled the fantasies of 5-year-old aspiring paleontologists everywhere. “We thought it was a bent fence post.”

A professor at the University of Michigan, Dan Fisher, who helped excavate the skeleton, told the Ann Arbor News that the enormous animal had likely been around 40 years old, lived between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, and appeared to have been hunted down by humans who would have killed it, butchered it, and weighed the pieces down, with rocks, in a pond.

“They did that to store meat and come back to it later,” Fisher said. Smart!

The discovery was made by farmer James Bristle and his friend, working in a soy field in Lima Township, in Michigan’s Washtenaw County. Fisher said that there had only been 10 similar finds in Michigan, although many more mastodons (around 300) have been found.

According to the New York Times, researchers have found the mammoth’s skull and tusks, as well as vertebrae, a pelvis, pieces of its shoulder blades, and one kneecap; however, the animal’s fore and hind limbs are missing. It’s possible they had already been eaten.


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

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

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How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

In the hours between the shooting spree at Umpqua Community College and the moment news networks were able to name Chris Harper Mercer as the alleged gunman, crowds on social media clamored for a name to fill the informational void. 4chan gave them two, both of whom turned out to be alive, and neither of whom has been named by authorities in connection with the tragedy. For a couple of hours, though, mobs on Twitter and Facebook believed these were the guys, and openly speculated about what drove them to do it.

The confusion started with a couple of troubling posts on /r9k/, a.k.a. ROBOT9001. It’s the 4chan messageboard where dudes who identify as “beta” males lament that they’ve been dealt an unfair hand by a world where women have all the power and only “alpha” bad boys and assholes ever win.

Posters on the board are locked in an ongoing debate about who can be one of them— a “robot.” Can white guys be robots, despite their privilege? Can black guys? Women love them! It goes on and on. Only one rule really seems to be agreed upon: “If you have no friends and no gf you are a robot.”

The natural nemesis of a robot is his polar opposite, the “normie”: a socially adept “normal” guy who, although he is boring, has no trouble attracting women. He easily navigates the same society that robots experience as fucked-up and unfair. Robots look upon normies with a mixture of envy and hatred, and they can be hostile to anyone displaying normie characteristics on the board.

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

That’s the context for this screengrab, which you may have seen attributed to Chris Harper Mercer (although the FBI has confirmed they’re investigating it, no official source has linked it to Mercer directly):

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

“Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest. happening thread will be posted tomorrow morning,” the anonymous poster wrote the night before the UCC shooting.

“Is beta uprising finally going down?” someone else responded, referring to the robots’ shared fantasy of a violent retaliation against the normies, in the vein of California mass shooter Elliot Rodger. It now seems that a “beta uprising” wasn’t part of the shooter’s motivation, but in the hours after the shooting, the media took it and ran with it.

Tabloids like the U.K.’s Mirror even cited a separate /r9k/ thread that wished everyone “an enjoyable Elliot Rodger day” and threatened, “Personally I will mark this day’s celebration of our Hero’s deeds by announcing that I have an elaborate plan...Needless to say; it shall be glorious. The horrible kind of normies will pay for their misdeeds, and the world will be bettered.”

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

The Mirror didn’t mention that the thread was from May of this year, on the first anniversary of Rodger’s shooting spree. There was nothing in particular to tie it to this week’s tragedy.

But, with the 4chan meme spreading on social media and getting mentions on national news reports, it appears trolls on /r9k/ took the opportunity to frame some of the board’s best-known posters for the shooting, just for the lulz. Or top keks, or whatever they’re calling fun these days.

Eggman

Although 4chan is mostly anonymous, some prominent users drop that anonymity in favor of tripcodes that identify their posts. One well-known “tripfag” is Toby “Eggman” Reynolds, who became a meme because of his funny-looking head, and started making YouTube videos for his robot audience. He was basically in on the joke, and even posted more photos of himself to feed his fans.

“Eggman appreciation threads” were not unusual:

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

But, as Eggman explained in a video posted in August, he got sick of the fame at one point, and dropped his tripcode. Unfortunately, that only led to a bunch of trolls pretending to be him. He reckoned at the time that he’d had “about all that I can take of r9k. I’ve had enough of that fuckin’ board.”

In general, Eggman’s videos are about his life: his loneliness, his struggle to find a job after dropping out of college, and his views about women vis. robots and normies. The most recent one, posted Wednesday, announced he was in Seattle and asked if anyone wanted to meet up.

This is important because it potentially explains why the “don’t go to school if you’re in the northwest” post was made Wednesday in the first place: threats like that aren’t exactly unique in an environment where people casually discuss the “beta uprising” and approvingly mark Elliott Rodger Day, but they’re typically just trolling with no intention behind them. Knowing that Eggman was in Seattle that day made it easy to troll him.

And when a real shooting went down, that made it easier still. There were plenty of jokes on 4chan about Eggman finally losing it and being behind the attack at UCC, and amateur investigators picked up on them and took them at least semi-seriously.

This post, from Liberty News (whatever that is), was running rampant on social media Thursday:

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

“Anonymous 4chan users who earlier exposed a forum discussion where they say the Oregon campus shooter allegedly warned what he planned to do are now saying they know who he is. The group is spreading the user’s name and image on social media.

They allege his name is Toby Reynolds and associate him with the picture above. The user used screen name “eggman” in the forum.

While none of this is confirmed by government officials at this time, CNN and Fox News are referring to the discussion we posted screenshots of and suggesting it very well could be the real deal.”

As we now know, it was not the real deal. But it spread far enough and fast enough that people on Facebook and Twitter were discussing Reynolds’ supposed motivations and comparing him to Elliot Rodger. He eventually had to contact NBC to confirm that he was alive and not the shooter:

The Liberty News post has since been updated to remove Eggman’s photo, but the headline (“BREAKING: Is this the Oregon shooter? 4chan forum says his name is Toby Reynolds”) remains the same, and these are the top Google results for Reynolds’ name as of Friday afternoon:

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

Plork

Hours before a suspect was officially named, right-wing conspiracy theorists had already decided the perpetrator of the Umpqua shooting was a Muslim. The release of his name was being delayed, they speculated, so that Muslim King-President Hussein Obummer would have time to wipe all of the Muslim shooter’s social media profiles and disguise his ties to radical Islam.

This outcry for a perp with a Muslim-sounding name ended up screwing over another infamous 4chan poster, Plork, whose real name is apparently Shiv Sharma.

According to some anons, Plork sometimes posted on /r9k/ espousing the unpopular position that “white guys can’t be robots”—which most robots seem to reject as too “Tumblr,” or too “social justice warrior.” Plork has been getting trolled on 4chan’s videogames and business boards since at least March, when an anonymous poster doxed his name, phone number, and full address. His photo has been all over the board, and he’s been the subject of a few memes, mostly having to do with the Metal Gear series of games.

Here’s a joke wiki page from 4chan’s general Metal Gear group mocking Plork as a “faggot” who dropped out of business school.

Here’s a joke about Plork hanging out with Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima:

Plork also tends to get photoshopped to look like Solid Snake. You get the idea. It’s mostly harmless, laid-back trolling.

On Thursday, though, anons began trolling him by repeatedly starting threads in /r9k/ with his photo and “SHOOTER IDENTIFIED AS SHIV SHARMA.”

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

Those threads made their way to Twitter—either through those same anons or through outsiders whose eyes were on /r9k/ because of the alleged shooting threat and the Eggman rumors—and created an explosive reaction with the conservatives on the hunt for a Muslim-sounding person to blame.

Never mind that “Shiv Sharma” is a common Indian name that’s more likely to be Hindu than Muslim. Also never mind that guessing someone’s religion based on their name alone is a pernicious form of jumping to conclusions. In the judgment of the court of Extremist Twitter, Plork was a suspect.

Unfortunately, not even the release of Chris Harper Mercer’s name has fully cleared Sharma.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. The photo of him that was spreading on Twitter even had the tiny birthday hat that 4chan automatically added to all posts during its 12th anniversary Thursday.

On /r9k/, the SHOOTER NAMED AS SHIV SHARMA threads were declared a success.

“That’s probably the best trolling someone can accomplish...” one robot wrote, “memeify your friend as a mass shooter.”

How 4chan Trolled Two of Its Friends by Framing Them for the Oregon Mass Shooting

I contacted Plork Thursday night via the phone number and email address that 4chan had leaked back in March, and he confirmed that he’d been the victim of a hoax.

“just some butthurt faggots who i blocked raging out,” he told me over Gchat, “hoping that someone will dox them for me.”

He hadn’t been contacted by any authorities, he said, and wasn’t particularly worried.

“like i said... some faggots who i blocked are just having another case of autism.”

When I asked him about the rumors spreading on Twitter, he seemed to be unaware of them. He asked for a link, so I sent him the search results for his name.

Before I even had time to ask for his reaction, he’d signed off.

[Screengrab via First Last/YouTube]

Vatican Fires Gay Priest on Eve of Bishops' Synod on Church Outreach

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Vatican Fires Gay Priest on Eve of Bishops' Synod on Church Outreach

On Sunday, the Associated Press reports, the Vatican fired Krzysztof Charamsa, a monsignor and mid-level official in its doctrine office, who came out as gay in newspaper interviews in Italy and Poland just ahead of the Catholic bishops’ synod to discuss church outreach.

“I have to say who I am. I am a gay priest. I am a happy and proud gay priest,” Charasma told the Polish weekly Gazeta Wyborcza, after receiving hate mail in response to earlier criticisms he had made in the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny of a right-wing homophobic Polish priest.

“I came out. This is a very personal, difficult and tough decision in the Catholic church’s homophobic world,” Charamsa said at a press conference in Rome, joined by his boyfriend (identified only as Eduard), with whom he said he was in love, after his firing was announced. Charamsa also said he has written a book to “lay bare” his experience “in front of all those who want to confront me.”

According to the Associated Press, tomorrow’s gathering of bishops is expected to address how the Catholic church might better administer to members of its flock who are gay.

“The decision to make such a pointed statement on the eve of the opening of the synod appears very serious and irresponsible, since it aims to subject the synod assembly to undue media pressure,” Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said in a statement.

Charamsa will remain a priest (for now), Lombardi said, but he can no longer work at the Vatican or its pontifical universities. (The rule excluding homosexual men from joining the priesthood was introduced in 2005, by which point Charamsa had already been ordained.)

The Polish theologian had worked at the Vatican’s doctrinal office, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, since 2003, Reuters reports. The Church does not consider homosexuality to be a sin, but priests—regardless of sexual orientation—must be celibate.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Charamsa said, “I would like to tell the Synod that homosexual love is a kind of family love, a love that needs the family. Everyone—gays, lesbians and transsexuals included—foster in their hearts a desire for love and family.”

“Everyone has the right to love, and that love must be protected by society and law. But above all it must be nourished by the Church.”

He continued: “If I failed to be open, if I didn’t accept myself, I couldn’t be a good priest in any case, because I couldn’t act as an intermediary for the joy of God.”


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

Killed on Holy Ground: Dispatch from a Sea of Blue

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Killed on Holy Ground: Dispatch from a Sea of Blue

Memphis. July 17. A Friday. Carefree black boys call it a night. Darrius Stewart is just around the corner from his mama’s house when blue light hits the rearview mirror of the Chevy Malibu. A routine traffic stop. A simple thing. One week ago, Sandra Bland was stopped in Texas for a simple thing.

A white cop emerges from the blue light. The cop demands identification from the carload of black teenagers, from both driver and passengers. Seated in the backseat, Darrius pats his pockets. He wasn’t driving that night. He left his license at home.

The police database conjures out-of-state juvenile warrants for a child that may or may not be this unverified passenger, this teenage civilian without papers, this Darrius Stewart on his way home. The cop detains Darrius in the back of the police Charger and drives a mile away. The Charger comes to a stop outside a church, holy ground no less sacred than Canfield Drive, Cudell Park, the Beavercreek Walmart, or the Waller County Jail.

He shoots Darrius three times. Later, Officer Connor Schilling tells investigators that he tried to handcuff the teen and the teen fought back. Darrius kicked and cussed and swung and ran toward green grass, toward home, toward life. The cop chased Darrius, tackled him, and fatally shot him as he kneeled in a bed of plump Delta grass.

Eyewitness cellphone footage ends before the cop reaches his gun. Autoplay to the next scene: blue soaked footage, a street covered with Chargers, a soundtrack of threats hurled at Darrius’s family. “Take your ass that way,” a cop hollers at Mary Stewart. “Get the fuck out of here,” the cop screams again at a mother who wants to know if that’s her boy dying in the field.

I don’t usually watch these playlists of black death on work release from corporate servers, these commodities collecting adsense dollars. Did Darrius hide from these lynching postcards of our gigabit age too? Or had he clicked and watched and shared videos of routine stops, routine confrontations, routine final seconds? Did he mourn—crying into his phone, his laptop keyboard?

Did these scenes haunt Darrius as he cruised past Chargers lurking in parking lots? As he walked past the omnipresent Blue Crush SkyCop surveillance towers stalking his middle school, high school, McDonald’s, his mall? As he Hit the Quan? Could blue light kill this black boy’s carefree?

Feeling himself in that loud, loose-fitting prom tux, that Wooddale High School regalia, did Darrius Stewart caption his respectable-Negro selfies #iftheygunnedmedown? Did he punctuate hungry ambitions and swole-headed prophesies, love notes to kin and baes, and necessary love notes to himself #ifidieinpolicecustody?

One year to the day after Eric Garner was choked to death gasping for life, three months after Walter Scott was shot in the back while running to save his life, four days after Sandra Bland died in a jail cell after fighting to save her life, one week before Ralkina Jones begged police for life—“I don’t want to die in your cell”—and died of poisoning two days later, I wonder if an old song groaned from holy ground as the blue light engulfed that Chevy, as Darrius sat trapped in the back of that Charger, as Darrius kicked and ran for life and tomorrow on that lawn.

If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

“We heard two shots…” a voice cries from the shaky, low-res darkness of the cellphone video, interrupted by lens flares of blue, and Mary Stewart’s apocalyptic screams.

Another voice breaks, sobbing: “They shot him. He was on his knees when they shot him, mama.”


Memphis has a black police chief with the name of a superhero. After that grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson last November, protestors paid the city to stage a protest at a busy intersection, steps away from a popular strip mall. The city of Memphis requires a permit for any public gathering of more than 25 people. A slave code. Negroes with passes.

Fearmongers spread rumors of a riot. The police chief conscripted a small regiment of cops to guard Petco and collect overtime. Out back, officers warmed the engines of their wagons.

The city’s top cop was out shaking hands, grinning, giving speeches to the cameras. We got good Negroes here in Memphis, the police chief said to jittery civilians at home, anti-black white folk and anti-black black folk, idolaters of the gun, tough-on-crime disciples of safety and law-n-order.

The police chief applauded protestors for acting “in a peaceful manner.” Our Negroes aren’t “disruptive to our city,” the police chief said. None of this shut it down, take the interstate stuff. “We are a nation of laws,” he continued. “We depend on a system to reach these decisions. Now is the time for healing.”

Don’t disrupt unjust laws, the police chief warned. “Healing” must not disrupt the system that consumes you. “I think we have an opportunity here to do something to set an example for the nation,” he said about Memphis, the city where Dr. King was murdered after thirteen years defying unjust laws.

A redneck in a Jeep Wrangler drove by, lips pressed to the microphone of a PA system, the kind of loudspeaker a cop car would have. “If you don’t break the law, you won’t get shot,” the redneck hollered through the speaker.

An old white cop chuckled. “You hear that?” the cop hee-hawed to other cops—black and white cops—wanna-be Judge Dredds: judge, jury, executioner. “If you don’t break the law, you won’t get shot.”

According to the local newspaper, Memphis police have shot and killed 24 people in the last five years. The District Attorney’s Office decided that all 22 closed cases were instances of “justifiable” murder, including the case of an unarmed man shot in the back as he was running away, eight other killings of unarmed suspects, and cases where officers clearly lied.

This census leaves out state murder by other means. The Memphis Black Autonomy Federation documented 23 killings by Memphis police from February 2012 to October 2013. During that period, Memphis cops fatally shot fourteen people. Nine other victims died after beatings and blasts of pepper-spray to eyes, nose and throat, after speeding Chargers collided with civilian cars and motorcycles, after suffocating—as Aaron Dumas suffocated—surrounded by fire, pyrotechnic gas, and chemical white smoke, huddled in a bathtub, face covered with a towel, 9mm Ruger in his lap.

Since 2000, approximately 100 Memphis cops have been arrested for all manner of crimes other than murder: kidnapping, domestic violence, DUIs, robbery drug trafficking, assault. More than 20 police officers have been arrested in the past year alone. Many of their crimes are acts of violence against black women and girls: sexual battery, sex trafficking, sexual exploitation of a minor, rape and statutory rape. One cop lured a 14-year-old girl into his police Charger and sexually assaulted her there, another rapist searched a police database to locate his victim’s home, another Memphis cop raped a woman after responding to a domestic violence dispute—Just a few more questions, Ma’am; Do you mind if I come in? The city waited fourteen years to test the rape kit.

In July 2013, Officer Schilling slammed a young black woman’s head against her car during a routine traffic stop. In July 2014, off duty and tanked, Schilling was arrested for a DUI as he stalked a woman home from a party. He couldn’t take no for an answer. In July 2015, Schilling killed Darrius Stewart.

These are the stories we know, the data from police reports, the news that’s fit to print. We don’t know what we don’t know.


Three days after a black boy was killed on holy ground, the black police chief and the white district attorney meet the press.

POLICE CHIEF: A Caucasian police officer shoots and kills an African-American male. We all know of the examples that have occurred in the last year from Ferguson to Baltimore, and the climate that we now live in must be taken into account. We are going to be transparent. And to get to the bottom of what happened and why it happened.

The police chief hands the investigation over the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). Investigations by TBI are anything but transparent. TBI records are not open to the public. In 2013, the TBI investigated the murder of Justin Thompson, a 15-year-old shot and killed by Memphis cop Terrance Shaw. District Attorney Amy Weirich refused to indict the police officer. The investigation remains sealed.

TBI will investigate all police shootings going forward, the Police Chief says. There is no such protocol for investigations of civilian killings of police. No pretense to a “fair and impartial investigation.” Local police investigate killings of local police, of friends, of coworkers, of brothers in blue.


Fifteen days after a black boy was killed on holy ground, a blue-domed police Charger pulls in front of an old Mercedes parked the wrong way, against traffic, on a sleepy residential street. The Charger’s spotlight hits the windshield of the Mercedes and two men inside. The driver of the Mercedes sprints into the night. He leaves his friend Tremaine Wilbourn in the passenger seat. Blocks away, the driver hears gunshots. He fears Tremaine is dead.

Only Tremaine Wilbourn knows what happens next. There’s no police body cam footage, no eyewitness cellphone video. The police have refused to share dashcam footage with Tremaine’s lawyers. The police have refused to say for sure whether dashcam footage exists.

On the run, Tremaine calls his sister Callie. He tells Callie that the cop was angry when he got to that passenger-side door, pissed that the driver ran off. The cop snatched him out the car, Tremaine says, locked him in a wrestling hold.

The cop, Sean Bolton, was a champion heavyweight wrestler in high school. He was a combat veteran, a retired Marine, a trained killer. An obsessive gym rat according to friends, Bolton was a brawny powerlifter who could tote 500 lbs. Caught in that meaty vise-grip, Tremaine struggled to move. He struggled to comply. But compliance wasn’t enough. Clinging to life, Tremaine resisted like Sandra resisted, he fought back like Darrius fought.

“He needed to defend himself,” Callie tells reporters days later. “It was kill or be killed,” she says—a police cliché, something killer cops would understand, something killer cops say all the time.

Roused by gunshots, neighbors discover the empty Charger and an officer dying on the driveway. Folk call 911. A young man comforts the cop. He picks up the cop’s radio. “Please hurry up,” the youngster shouts into the radio. “He’s shot.”

Blue, pulsating Chargers clear city streets for the ambulance. Walls of blue light block all exits along the interstate. A Tron grid leads to the hospital where Darrius Stewart died, where Sean Bolton dies.


Late that night, local news interrupts regularly scheduled programming. The black police chief stands outside the hospital, surrounded by microphones and mean mugging reporters exposing all their forehead creases.

POLICE CHIEF: We’ve been here before. Sadly to say we’ve been here before. This is my third time in the fours years that I’ve been the director, and it doesn’t get any easier.

REPORTER: As a community, what can be done about a situation like this?

POLICE CHIEF: As community, we say so often there is a theme that do Black Lives Matter? At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves…Do All Lives Matter? Regardless of race, creed, color, economic status, what profession that person holds…All Lives Matter.

SECOND REPORTER: One time is too many.

POLICE CHIEF: (nods in agreement) One time is too many. But how do you put a value on somebody’s life? How do you say one life is more important than another?

The police chief goes viral. Conservative websites—Breitbart and Fox News—pick up the story. “BLACK MEMPHIS POLICE DIRECTOR REBUKES BLACK LIVES MATTER.” Media vultures fixate on the number three. Three police have been killed in four years. Three is also the number of civilians shot and killed by Memphis police in eight months.

All Lives Matter, the Police Chief declares.


Sixteen days after a black boy was killed on holy ground, the police chief calls another primetime press conference. He shares a simple story: a routine traffic stop, a drug deal gone wrong. There was a pocket-sized digital scale in the Mercedes, and 1.7 grams of bud, half an eighth.

POLICE CHIEF: To show you how senseless this is, we’re talking about less than two grams of marijuana. You’re talking about a misdemeanor citation.

The Police Chief holds up a mugshot of the suspect: Tremaine Wilbourn. He is black. His long hair is plaited, goatee lineup razor-sharp. His gaze is direct. Chin up. Defiant.

POLICE CHIEF: When you look at this individual, you’re looking at a coward. He’s a coward. You gun down, you murder a police officer for literally less than two grams of marijuana. You literally destroy a family. Look at the impact this has had on this department, this community, this city, for less than two grams of marijuana.

To the police chief, to audiences polishing their guns at home, it’s “senseless” how someone could kill a cop over an amount of weed that could fill two slender blunts. The motive is senseless because it doesn’t make sense. The motive is the creation of storytellers who have a record of inventing senseless narratives, a department with a record of senseless killing, of routine killing, of killing for no reason at all.

The police chief doesn’t mention the destruction wrought on the city, on communities, on the integrity of his department by 24 people killed by cops, 24 funerals, 24 families, 24 communities terrorized, disemboweled in five years.


It’s election season. Everybody is tough on crime. Everybody calls for more cops. Only one politician, a city councilman running for mayor, calls for an FBI investigation into the killing of Darrius Stewart. On local TV, the image of Officer Sean Bolton, “Fallen Hero,” appears at every commercial break. The Fallen Hero is a mascot, a campaign slogan for an opportunistic city council, a white-haired mayoral incumbent, and the black police union president running to replace him.

The only white candidate for mayor is running a campaign of zero tolerance Jim Crow revivals: more police in schools, stronger truancy laws and curfew laws to propel black children into prison at warp speed. The white mayoral candidate says nothing of poverty except to say that poverty isn’t the most pressing issue; Crime is. Meanwhile Memphis is starving. Nearly half the city’s children live and die in poverty.

Tennessee is friendly to business. This state has the highest percentage of minimum-wage workers in the country. Our petrol-titan governor auctions off this “low cost labor force” to corporations. Our billionaire king also plans to outsource management of all public facilities, including jails and prisons. Legislators from both parties, all districts, are on the payroll of Corrections Corporation of America, headquartered in Nashville, the state capital. Poverty and prison are revenue-generators for the governor and his cronies. The police act as overseers.


Seventeen days after a black boy was killed on holy ground, the black cop and mayoral candidate appears on Fox & Friends during a segment about the Fallen Hero. “All Lives Matter,” he says, parroting his boss.

Fox & Friends: Would you say that in the last year, since we have seen all the protests across the country, do you think the officers not only in Memphis but across the country are more hesitant to do their job?

Translation: Are they more hesitant to kill?

Civilians have become “more aggressive,” he explains. Cops are more likely “to back up a little bit” because they are “under more scrutiny.”

Six months earlier, in February 2015, a police officer snatched a fistful of a motorist’s hair, dragged the woman out of her vehicle, pressed her to the ground, and beat her up. “Stop,” she screams repeatedly on the YouTube video, shackled on the ground, a knee in her back. “What did I do?”

In response to public outcry about the incident, in response to public scrutiny, the black cop who is running for mayor told reporters: “Understand that if you do not comply with the commands of the officer, if he has a valid reason for detaining you, then it’s going to be by force. That’s the nature of our jobs.”

More scrutiny didn’t convince Officer Connor Schilling to “back up.” Schilling chased Darrius, tackled him to the ground, and pulled that trigger three times into the teenager’s kneeling body. That’s the job. The job of force. The job of violence, of last breaths.


Tremaine Wilbourn was 19, Darrius Stewart’s age, when he helped his uncle rob Friendship Bank in Covington, Tennessee. The getaway car wouldn’t start, so they ran off on foot, shedding several thousands of dollars during a brief escape. Uncle and nephew had $2,000 on them when the police took them in.

Tremaine begged the court to see him as something other than a bank robber, a thug, a nigger. He offered the only evidence white folk accept as evidence of a black kid’s humanity: Tremaine said that he was headed to college, applying for scholarships, talking to athletic recruiters. His lawyer tried to get him a plea deal. Tremaine was a youngster, the lawyer said. He could turn his life around.

Tremaine was sentenced to 120 months at the low security federal penitentiary in Forrest City, Arkansas, a town named in honor of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Tremaine spent nine years at the prison in Forrest City, nearly a third of his life, almost all of his adult life, before he was paroled in January 2014.

Tremaine’s sister Callie says that prison wounded her brother, broke him. This is what prison does. “If you are a real human being,” she told the Associated Press, “jail is not for you.” A profound, simple truth. Felon, noncitizen, Tremaine was ineligible for most jobs in our starvation-wage state. Like most people I know, Tremaine smoked weed to ease his wounded mind, to sleep, to laugh, to get carefree, to stop him from putting a bullet in his own head. After one year of supervised release, he failed a drug test and was ordered to see a psychiatrist. He started therapy. That was one month before Officer Sean Bolton approached the passenger side door of that Mercedes.

“I think you have an individual who went above and beyond to demonstrate that he’s a violent individual,” the police chief said about Tremaine. Tremaine: an individual on early release from a minimum security prison, on early release into poverty, on early release into a city that hates and hunts black people like him, poor people like him, felons like him. I am reminded of a friend’s words: Thugs need love, need saving, need protecting, need listening too.

The Fallen Hero volunteered for a violent life. According to the family’s official statement, “Sean was the first to run towards danger, regardless of his personal safety.” Sean Bolton ran towards danger, towards combat. Bolton volunteered for the Marines, volunteered for the Memphis Police Department, volunteered for jobs of force and violence. War “kinda messed him up a little bit,” a family friend says. This is what war does.

The encounter that August night was between two troubled, messed up, wounded individuals. Two individuals traumatized by a violent police state converged on a dark residential street. One was a veteran of an unending imperialist race war abroad and a willing foot soldier in the unending war against the poor at home. The other was a civilian, a felon, a noncitizen, an enemy combatant.


Tremaine Wilbourn doesn’t want Memphis Police to kick in his door Hollywood style and shoot him up while he’s cooking dinner. He doesn’t want to die as a hot pan sizzles on the stove, like they did Anthony Bess. He doesn’t want Memphis Police to empty 22 rounds in his car as he slept, like they did Steven Askew. He doesn’t want Memphis Police to shoot him in his back from 20 yards like they did Hernandez Dowdy, shoot him point blank in the grass like they did Darrius Stewart. He doesn’t want to die in police custody, his body maimed and mangled, like they did Lorenzo Davis and William Howlett. He doesn’t want to die choking on tear gas and smoke bombs like they did Aaron Dumas. If we must die let it not be by TACT raid, let it not be another justifiable homicide.

On Monday, August 3, seventeen days after a black boy was killed on holy ground, Tremaine Wilbourn, accompanied by clergy and kin, surrenders himself to the U.S. Marshals. “I’m not a cold-blooded killer,” Tremaine tells the Police Chief. “I am not a coward.” If we must die, let it not be as the fiction the MPD, Fox News, and the others have made him out to be.

“In this country you’re innocent until proven guilty,” the black cop mayoral candidate told local news six days after Schilling killed Darrius Stewart. “We’ve already crucified him, hung him up on the cross,” he said about Schilling. “And we’re ready to bury him, simply because he’s a white officer and that was a black youth.”

The cowardly pack refuses to “entertain” Tremaine Wilbourn’s innocence. As soon as they knew his name, the police chief, the City Council, and the press declared Tremaine Wilbourn guilty of first degree murder.

On Wednesday, Tremaine Wilbourn appears in court via video stream. Framed by the computer monitor, Tremaine doesn’t appear shattered and swollen like others, like Duanna Johnson, called “he-she” and “faggot” as a police fist wrapped in handcuffs pummeled her face in the county jail. Johnson refused to comply when police called her out her name. Johnson refused to surrender after they tortured her and pepper sprayed her wounds. Johnson condemned state violence and trans-hate in a city where police routinely harass and detain and bludgeon transgender women just for walking in public. Nine months later, Johnson was executed, assassinated in a Memphis street. The murder of Duanna Johnson was the third murder of a transgender person in Memphis in three years. Another unsolved crime. Another uninvestigated murder. Another justifiable homicide. Another unmattering life.

Tremaine enters no plea. He has no lawyer. He has no money. The judge sets the bond at $10 million.

That night, after the arraignment, hundreds of Chargers and light cycles parade the streets, washing the city in a sea of blue. The police collect overtime in honor of the Fallen Hero, in honor of themselves. The parade stalks the neighborhood where Tremaine Wilbourn shot Sean Bolton. The procession is totalitarian tantrum, an illuminated memorial to their authority, the sovereignty of white and blue lives, heroes and martyrs and killers, a reminder of their power, their unity, and—above all—their capacity for retaliation. The Sea of Blue is a dazzling threat to civilians standing on the sidewalks, civilians at home, watching behind windows and television screens, a reminder that All Lives Matter, all voices matter, all testimony matters—except for yours.


One month and some days after Darrius Stewart was killed on holy ground, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation hands over their report. It’s District Attorney Amy Weirich’s decision whether Schilling will be charged for a crime. She hasn’t decided, she says. She doesn’t say when she will decide.

REPORTER: You’ve had to handle cases before where officers have used deadly force.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: [nods] Um-hum (19 cases. 17 justifiable homicides. 2 pending.)

REPORTER: Can you explain what the law is a little bit about officers using deadly force and what you have to look at as a prosecutor in these cases?

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: It’s not the law of officers using force. It’s the law in the state of Tennessee that every citizen is protected by. And it’s called self-defense. And so when there have been situations in the past where a homicide is ruled justifiable, whether it’s someone with a badge and a gun who pulled the trigger, or whether it’s a homeowner or a business owner.

But not a felon. Felons can’t defend themselves.

We know what happens next. After Officer Terrance Shaw killed 15-year-old Justin Thompson in 2013, District Attorney Weirich refused to indict the police officer. “We were left with two individuals, one who claimed one thing and one who was deceased and nothing, nothing in between,” the DA said then. “He was not prosecuted because there was not enough facts.”

In life and death, killer or killed, Blue Lives have words, PR representatives, and audiences to listen. From the grave, Blue Lives have facts invented and spoken for them, in honor of them.

In life and death, killer and killed, Blue Lives are presumed innocent, declared innocent, heroic. In life and death, killer and killed, Black Lives have no honor, no innocence.

Blue Lives get a racing ambulance, a police escort, a tearful news conference interrupting Saturday Night Live and syndicated episodes of Burn Notice. Black Lives bleed out in the grass.

Blue Lives get a taxpayer-funded citywide processional, a Sea of Blue, $20,000 in crowd-sourced funds for live-televised funerals in segregated, white supremacist, gay-bashing, trans-hating mega churches.

Black killers, black self-defenders get round-the-clock manhunts, character assassination, $50,000 dead-or-alive rewards, swift indictments, first degree murder charges, $10 million bonds and public defenders, death sentences and state executions, a Justice that’s both blind and wearing earplugs.

Killer or killed, Black Lives end.

Black mourners are told to wait, forgive, have patience, slow are the wheels of justice.

Overseers will never save us. Prosecutors will never save us. Indictments will never save us. Justice will never save us


Over two months has passed since Officer Connor Schilling killed Darrius Stewart on holy ground. Two months of silence from the police and the DA. Two months of paid vacation for a killer.

Meanwhile the Fall Semester has commenced. We’re already at midterm now. I’ve heard that Darrius was planning to attend the University of Memphis, where I teach. I’ve heard that he was planning to major pre-med. I hope that he would have found the time to take a black history class. From the pictures his family has shared, I imagine his grin and laugh when I tell my corny jokes. I imagine us debating and fussing and loving as we marinate in the gifts of Ida B. Wells and Claude McKay.

Near the end of the semester, around the time we discuss Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, my students, angry, crocodile-tears falling down their cheeks, share personal histories of the prisons that have become their middle schools, their high schools, the routine police violence they experienced as schoolchildren, the routine traffic stops once they got that driver’s license, the routine profiling and threats and assaults.

We don’t know what we don’t know until we start trusting, listening, hearing. I hope Darrius would let us listen. I hope that he would bless us with something to share. Nervous at first, he might speak up near the end of class. Aright, lemme play devil’s advocate then, Darrius might say, like students say. He paints the picture of a mid-July night, Friday, just around the corner from home, when blue light surrounds a friend’s Chevy. Something about a taillight. I dunno, maybe I was lucky, Darrius says. It was a small thing, a routine thing. The officer gave us a warning. Directed us to the nearest Autozone. Let us on our way. He wasn’t so bad. Kinda cool, actually. A good cop. Good white folk.

W. Chris Johnson was raised by a retired black cop in Lowndes County, Alabama, where he first learned about Black Power. He teaches at the University of Memphis.

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

According to statistical and computer analysis conducted by the Associated Press, pollution produced

Hope Solo Will Face Domestic Violence Charges Again

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Hope Solo Will Face Domestic Violence Charges Again

The domestic violence charges against Hope Solo that were dropped earlier this year will return after a higher court in King County reversed a lower court’s decision to dismiss them. Solo had been charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault. In January, her lawyer successfully argued to a judge that the case against her should be dismissed because he said the victims—Solo’s half-sister and teenage nephew—refused to be deposed by the defense team.

Local prosecutors immediately appealed and, according to multiple reports today, they won. A document filed today with the state court said, “The court reverses the decision of the lower court and remands the case to the Kirkland (Washington) Municipal Court,” ESPNw reported. Solo’s lawyer, Todd Maybrown, followed it with a statement saying they would appeal.

Solo was accused of attacking her sister and nephew, then 17, on June 21, 2014. After the charges were dropped, she tried staging a national redemption tour in the lead-up to the Women’s World Cup, with the starting goalkeeper insisting she was the victim. This was followed within a week by an Outside the Lines report that portrayed exactly the opposite: it described a drunk Solo who repeatedly punched her nephew in his face and slammed it into the concrete of a converted garage before punching her half-sister in the face. After she was taken by police, Solo reportedly told one officer “I’d kick your ass.”

Solo stayed on the U.S. National Team, which went on win its first World Cup since 1999. She also plays for the National Women’s Soccer League’s Seattle Reign, which lost in the title game this week to FC Kansas City.

Image via Getty

Senior Pentagon Intelligence Official Indicted in Extremely Shady Weapons Deal

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Senior Pentagon Intelligence Official Indicted in Extremely Shady Weapons Deal

A senior Navy intelligence official, David W. Landersman, has been indicted on theft and conspiracy charges, the Washington Post reports, connected to an ongoing federal investigation into the covert production and shipment of illegally manufactured rifle silencers.

Landersman is the former senior director of intelligence for the Navy’s Plans, Policy, Oversight, and Integration (PPOI) Intelligence Directorate, which the Post describes as “an obscure Pentagon office that dabbled in covert programs.”

Last year, a bankrupt California hot-rod mechanic and a civilian Navy intelligence official, Lee M. Hall, were found guilty on federal conspiracy charges stemming from the investigation. The mechanic is Landersman’s brother, and the official used to work for Landersman at PPOI.

Prosecutors allege that Landersman helped arrange the $1.6 million defense contract for his brother to manufacture 349 untraceable rifle silencers (that only ended up costing $10,000 in parts and labor). Hall helped arrange the delivery.

All of that is shady enough, but it gets weirder. From an earlier Post story on the investigation:

Hall later told another Navy official that the silencers were intended for Navy SEAL Team 6, the elite commando squad that killed Osama bin Laden. But representatives for SEAL Team 6 told agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that they had not ordered the silencers and didn’t know anything about them.

Although the purpose of the silencers was never established, the trial featured a constant undercurrent of intrigue with carefully couched references to classified projects and black operations. Many filings in the case were placed under seal. At the request of military officials, participants at the trial were prohibited from making overt references to the Navy SEALs .

And another:

The exact purpose of the silencers remains hazy, but court filings and pretrial testimony suggest they were part of a top-secret operation that would help arm guerrillas or commandos overseas.

Oddly, too, Hall and the civilian Landersman—despite having been convicted last fall—still have not been sentenced, without explanation.

“Many filings in the case were placed under seal,” the Post reports. Haha. You don’t say!


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


At Least One Dead, Three Injured After Building Explodes in Brooklyn

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At Least One Dead, Three Injured After Building Explodes in Brooklyn

At least one person is dead and several others injured—including a child—after a possible gas explosion caused the collapse of a building in Brooklyn on Saturday, NY1 reports.

The FDNY says more than 160 firefighters remain at the scene after crews responded to 4206 13th Avenue, in Borough Park, just after 1pm. Per Gothamist, one of those injured is believed to be a firefighter; three people with non-life-threatening injuries were taken to a local hospital by Hatzolah EMS.

According to the New York Times, the cause of the blast has not yet been determined, but the Fire Department suspects a gas leak:

The building, which was built in 1930, has a storefront on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors. It has not been cited for code violations since 1997, according to records available online.

Records show that the building’s owner installed a gas-fired boiler in 1993 to replace an oil-fired boiler. An inspection of the gas boiler by an insurance agent in July 2014 found no defects, according to the most recent records available on the Buildings Department’s website.

Governor Andrew Cuomo released a statement calling the explosion part of a “disturbing trend,” referring to the building explosions in Harlem and the East Village:

Earlier today, an explosion took place at a building in the Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn. This explosion is the latest in a disturbing trend of incidents that occurred in Harlem and the East Village. In light of this, I am directing the State Department of Public Service to undertake an investigation into the cause of this incident. That investigation is ongoing, and updates will be provided to the public as soon as they are available.

The Department of Buildings warned of a possible building collapse and said that staffers were on their way to the site of the explosion to inspect the damage.

“We heard like the floor shake and like there was a big exploision. We just grabbed everything, my uncles everything. We grabbed everybody and just left out,” one witness told NY1.

“I see a man who was hopping on one leg. And I think he got injured because something fell down,” another said. “And so then I didn’t know what to do because I was with my little sister so I was like, ‘Let’s go! let’s go! We can’t be here.’”


Photo credit: NYPD/Twitter. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Selfie-Loving Sorority Girls Ask for Donations to Domestic Violence Charity 

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Selfie-Loving Sorority Girls Ask for Donations to Domestic Violence Charity 

This week the members of Arizona State’s Alpha Chi Omega sorority divided the internet. The young women dared to take selfies at an Arizona Diamondbacks game instead of focusing their full attention on baseball. Those selfies proved highly controversial for some dumb reason. The least amused was, no doubt, the Diamondbacks announcers who were incensed by youth.

But the women of Alpha Chi Omega are taking it in stride and using their newly-found internet fame to spread good vibes. The sorority sisters were offered free tickets to Thursday night’s game but declined, instead asking the Diamondbacks and Fox Sports to “provide tickets to a future game for families at A New Leaf, a local non-profit that helps support victims of domestic violence.” From their Facebook page:

Alpha Chi Omega at Arizona State University would like to thank the Arizona Diamondbacks and Fox Sports for reaching out to the chapter after last night’s game and subsequent media frenzy. We appreciate their generous offer of tickets to tonight’s game. However, instead of chapter members attending the game, we have asked the Diamondbacks and Fox Sports to provide tickets to a future game for families at A New Leaf, a local non-profit that helps support victims of domestic violence.

Today, October 1, marks the beginning of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If everyone who viewed this statement took the time to make a donation in recognition of domestic violence awareness, which is Alpha Chi Omega’s national philanthropy, we would be so grateful! We are happy to have the opportunity to shed some positive light on such a sensitive subject. All proceeds will go directly to A New Leaf to help struggling Arizona families get back on their feet by providing housing, food, childcare and more. You can donate using the link below. We appreciate your support!

http://donate.billhighway.com/DVAwareness

So much for that half of the world that thought these girls and their appreciation for selfies were responsible for the moral downfall of the nation.

“Rosy forecasts for American Dream also fly in the face of predictions that, ultimately, Internet sh

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“Rosy forecasts for American Dream also fly in the face of predictions that, ultimately, Internet shopping will all but eliminate brick-and-mortar shopping.” Just like The Great Gatsby!

Giant Container Ship Lost in Bermuda Triangle During Hurricane Joaquin

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Giant Container Ship Lost in Bermuda Triangle During Hurricane Joaquin

The search continued Saturday for a container ship that lost power and began taking on water somewhere between Florida and Puerto Rico during Hurricane Joaquin, the Associated Press reports.

http://thevane.gawker.com/hurricane-joaq...

Authorities lost contact with the ship, which was making its way from Jacksonville, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico, early on Thursday, at the height of the storm. According to the AP, the 790-foot El Faro would have been sailing through 20- to 30-foot waves.

In its last communication, officials said the crew had reported the ship had lost propulsion, had taken on water (which was being pumped successfully), and was listing 15 degrees, but that the list was “reported to be manageable.”

The ship’s owner, TOTE Maritime, describe the crew of 33—28 from the Unites States and five from Poland—as experienced and “more than equipped to handle situations such as changing weather.” The El Faro was carrying 294 cars below deck and 391 cargo containers above deck.

The Coast Guard’s search covers about 850 square nautical miles of ocean. “Obviously it’s very concerning that we have not found the ship and not had communications with the ship,” Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Commander Gabe Somma told the New York Post on Saturday.

The search had paused overnight. “There’s an operating limit to what we can go out in, and we were pushing the envelope” on Friday night, said Somma. “We were just fighting to get to the scene.” Efforts resumed early Saturday morning.


Image via TOTE Maritime via EPA/NBC News. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

500 Days of Kristin, Day 251: Hair and Makeup Wednesday

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 251: Hair and Makeup Wednesday

Kristin Cavallari’s hair and makeup Wednesday:


By @thescottycunha and @spencerbarnesla for an event for Kristin’s shoe line.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

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