In 1976, when Black History Month was officially acknowledged by the U.S. government, President Gerald Ford gave a (very brief) speech. "In celebrating Black History Month, we can take satisfaction from this recent progress in the realization of the ideals envisioned by our Founding Fathers.," Ford said. "But, even more than this, we can seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history." Almost 40 years since Ford's remarks, the belief that Black History Month is used as a time to "honor the too-often neglected accomplishments" of blacks that have helped better shape America is only partially true.

What originally began as Negro History Week in 1926, has now become a watered-down, Greatest Hits compilation of talented-tenth blacks. In school curricula across the country, it is not so much the story of black history being taught as much as it is the story of Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Benjamin Banneker, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, and Frederick Douglass. February has also become a time for mega-corporations like McDonald's to get extra black in its consumer branding and for Nike to sell specially patterned sneakers for $200. If you're wondering how we're able to fit all of this, and more, into 28 glorious days, don't—just know that Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington for your right to peacefully eat 20 McNuggets while wearing high-priced, polychromatic sneakers.

I am not particularly sure how we arrived at this point. What does Black History Month even represent now? Whom does it serve? Should we just get rid of it? To answer these questions, and others, I enlisted the help of fellow blacks Lauretta Charlton (Vulture), Jenna Wortham (New York Times Magazine), Rembert Browne (Grantland), Hillary Crosley (Jezebel), and Greg Howard (Deadspin). We were determined to figure this out.*

Lauretta Charlton: Recently, a colleague asked me to provide feedback for a project she was working on. It was a month-long marketing activation for a client who wanted to promote diversity with Black History Month content. This particular coworker was white and she didn't feel comfortable with the task she had been given. I don't know if she reached out to me because she wanted the corporate equivalent of a "hood pass", or if she needed me to reaffirm what she already knew: that this half-baked marketing scheme would do little, if anything, to promote diversity or interest in African American history. I told her I thought the whole thing was a bad idea.

Black History Month is a problem, not least because it gives corporate America an excuse to look fake righteous, but because it leaves many of us feeling bitter and wounded. It's like a month long session of triggering. For example, this month, the Times wrote an amazing feature on the Equal Justice Initiative and I basically cried while reading the entire thing (which, by the way, everyone should read.) I prefer this type of Black History Month coverage to the, you know, "Wow, Wasn't Jackie Robinson Such a Swell Negro" variety, but it's painful no matter what. I'm always reminded of being the only black kid in the classroom. When the subject of slavery came up, it was all eyes on me. It was incredibly traumatizing and I felt pain, not pride. No because I was ashamed, but because I wasn't prepared, as a child to process and deal with the magnitude of racism in America. Sometimes, I still feel ill prepared to deal with it. It's so fucked up.

Hillary Crosley: For me, Black History Month is a chance to celebrate my fabulous blackness, which to be fair I do every day, but seriously, I don't see the 28 days as a tool of oppression. But this is also how I view life as a minority in a country that's largely set up against me. I see the traps put together by the powers that be and do my best to avoid them while acknowledging they exist, this is how I survive or else my fury at the inequities will consume me.

These traps include but aren't limited to: fewer good public schools to prepare minorities for higher education, fewer college opportunities (just look at the dwindling number of minorities in the University of California system, where I attended. I was the first class of undergrads to attend without the help of Affirmative Action thanks to Ward Connerly. Jerk.), fewer job opportunities due to lower skills or fewer connections based on my college alma mater or who I or my parents know, lower dollars in my paycheck, and so on.

I am by no means an 'I don't see color' person—that is not a real thing—I do my best to with the fuckshit, do what I can to change it and step right along.

Growing up, I attended an annual black history program in my area, it was a mix of the local high schools, junior colleges, churches and community organizations. It was kind of cheesy and a timely reminder that I still don't know the second verse of "Lift Every Voice" but in hindsight, I'm grateful for the experience. I'm one of those black people who love being black and leap at chances to dissect how we've come to be, who we are and learn all of the different parts of us as a people. I was the kid whose mother dragged her to hear Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni and Susan L. Taylor speak, hear Leontyne Price sing and watch Alvin Ailey's company perform. We visited the Marcus black bookstores in Oakland and I spent hours plucking narratives from my aunt's vast library, Bebe Moore Campbell, E. Lynn Harris, Revolutionary Suicide and a bunch of other things I was too young to be reading. These cultural moments are fused with the boisterous black people with gold caps at my family reunions as Frankie Beverly and Maze or Al Green played and a bid whisk game got heated. I love us, all of us, and for me, Black History Month is about celebrating us in all of our forms. I look forward to learning new things about us and roll around in what we create—I mean, there's new Kendrick, new Drake and new Kanye, thank the Black History Gods!

And I can't be too mad about capitalism trying to muscle in on BHM, this is America, though if I see that candle lit McDonald's commercial about Martin Luther King Jr. one more time.

Rembert Browne: You know that terrible campaign that McDonalds used to have (or still may have), 365 Black. That's what I hate, mainly because if there's one thing that could take me from 365 Black to 0 Black (dead), it's a frequent diet of McDonalds.

Calling Black History Month "contentious" is interesting, because is it? Yes, the requisite "do we still need Black History Month" post will always pop up by February 3rd, and yes, a back and forth can (and should) exist until February 5th, but the reality is it's not going anywhere. We have some holidays, some observations, that are net-negatives on society (Columbus Day). So even if you think Black History Month isn't doing enough for Black people, it's hard for me to believe it's making things worse. There are flaws, and perhaps some of the flaws can be fixed, but there's a lot worse that should see itself out before that thing where everyone talks about Black people a little bit more during the shortest month.

Over everything, Black History Month is important for the kids—Black kids, all kids—which is why I'm still convinced it has great purpose. Between my grade school indoctrination of Kwanzaa (a celebration I will always clown despite understanding it's importance) and Black History Month, I learned most of what I know about trailblazing Blacks by the time I was 10. Yes, there are some issues with "Jackie Robinson sure was a swell negro," but with every passing year, it's still good to remind/teach people that there was someone named Jackie Robinson. And that he was, in fact, a negro.

Growing up, Black History month wasn't February, February was Black History Month. And I learned about those that came before me like I learned my multiplication tables. And I plan on grilling my kids the same way, not giving them dinner until they tell me who Benjamin Banneker is. Or correctly telling me the song that Nina Simone wrote for Lorraine Hansberry. Or listing all five singles from the first Nelly album. It just gives you some sorely needed perspective on why you exist, in the nature in which you exist.

It is interesting that it was previously noted that BHM can be a time for triggering, for feeling bitter and wounded, for having those memories of being the only Black kid in class. And I get that. But in Example #13525123598 that not all Black people are the same, my experience is the exact opposite. No more relevant or legitimate, just different. For me, those negative realities are 365 Black with the ever-so-slightest relief felt in February. I joyously talk about Black people all the time, but in February i just do so with the expectation that the ignorant response will be slightly smaller. It's not an issue of being louder in February, it's more everyone else being infinitesimally less reckless. And not because society suddenly has a giant epiphany in February, but more because of the power of numbers that has always come with Black History Month.

I think that's really what Black History Month represents for me, 2015: a 28/29 day period where it's more well known that it's probably not the best idea to come at my sideways. If it was significantly deeper for me, I'd begin to think I wasn't doing what I needed to do in the other eleven months.

Lauretta Charlton: There isn't a universal blackness, of course, but before anyone starts thinking abolishing Black History Month would be a form of erasure, they would do well to consider the fact that having corporate interests (including textbook manufacturers in Texas and California) dictate the type of blackness we teach and learn about in school and mass media is, too, a type of erasure. Teaching about Jackie Robinson is great, but it's the nameless black lives we don't and can't teach about—the swinging bodies hanging from the tree Simone sang about in "Strange Fruit"—that we need to remember, every single damn day. Black History Month, like Kwanza, was created to assuage, to de-radicalize. It has worked. It's problematic. Why not call it, Let's All Pretend Slavery Didn't Happen Month instead? I think it would be more effective that way.

Rembert Browne: Let's All Pretend Slavery Didn't Happen Month is a terrible name for a month. But I do see where you're coming from. And you're right. Or at least approaching right.

It reminds me of this conversation I was recently having, regarding editors and writers (the same could be said for athletes and team owners, entertainers and studio execs, etc). Typically, there's the people producing and there's the people making the decisions about what the product will look like. There's no denying the strides that have been made, with regards to Black folk getting a seat at many a table assigned with producing. The ability to teach Black history in the schools is one of these tables. But what about the people that decide what this black history curriculum will look like?

Maybe even I got brainwashed a bit into thinking Black History Month is only about the "greatest hits." In a twisted world, it behooves everyone to just think about the "shining" examples of Black (inventors, scientists, political leaders, champions of human rights). Because there's something in there that keeps order. A convenient idea of how we got to this place, as an America, all through the lens of this All-American Black First Team, under the auspices of "trailblazers of the past, inspiring the next generation." Yes, that's partly true, but that's not why it's done—to create better blacks. It's because it's much more marketable to roll out the greatest hits.

It's a lot harder to decorate a Wal-Mart with information about the Poll Tax. This, however:

But that's not honest. Again, it's borderline revisionist history, similar to how Columbus Day remains on the calendar every year. The I know he did every single terrible thing ever, BUT HE DISCOVERED AMERICA.

What if Black History Month was Let's Spend A Month Looking Back At All The Terrible Things White People Did Month. That's even harder to throw a corporate sponsor on, but maybe that's the month we need. And if that isn't an option, maybe no month at all should be on the table.

Did I just flip flop? Perhaps. But this isn't about me. And I didn't come here to win. This is about Blacks. And history. And months. And I'd actually like to get to the bottom of this, instead of going back and forth until it's March, at which point we're not allowed to talk about Black History Month until the following February.

Jenna Wortham: I relate to everyone on all of this. I can remember the complicated mixture of excitement and mortification each time Black History Month rolled around, and the sound of a dozen or so elementary school kids swiveling around to locate and laser in on the black kids in classroom when we had presentations in February and I never liked that much. I loved learned about Supernegroes like Jackie Robinson and George Washington Carver but I hated the feeling of being singled out. Over time, that feeling faded some, and since I celebrate my blackness on a daily—secondly—basis, February has just been a month where I do it a little more loudly, a little more aggressively, a little more unapologetically. Just the other day, I bragged about a triumphant new follower named Nat Turnup and it felt great. All the corporate sponsorship stuff sails right over my head because I don't have a TV slash cable anymore, but now that you all mention it, I have been seeing a lot of AT&T and Verizon ads featuring black people before my stories on Hulu, and I guess that's why.

But Black History Month will never not be bittersweet. It'll never not be undermined by brands and companies who want to bandwagon and have new marketing strategies around it and never not be tinged with the underbite of respectability politics—as in, look at all these shining examples of black folk that are the best your kind has to offer—and the way that detracts from the larger goal and struggle to understand and deal with the systemic structure of white supremacy and oppression that surrounds everything we do, and never talk about in February. I wouldn't want a Lets All Pretend Slavery Didn't Happen Month, but I might be able to get behind Lets Have a Real-Talk About Black Oppression Month. Because that's honestly what we need. Maybe that can be March.

This year, though, I've been trying an experiment. I recently visited MoCADA (the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts) for a writing seminar and I noticed they had all these signs up for what they're calling "Black Future Month." That blew me away. They're using the lens of Afrofuturism to dive into the otherworldly Utopias where we didn't come to this country as slaves, to the imagining of a collective cultural history and present free from all the heavy burdens we carry. Setting that down, and letting myself be inspired to make and create has been indescribably liberating. And fun. So I've been into BFM and Black Present Month, and shifting my practice of examining the culture and history of black people from the past towards the future. To thinking about the potential that lay ahead. In some ways, perhaps, its a little naive and short-sighted—how can we move forward when there's so much in the infrastructure keeping us back—but its put a little spring in my step. I got very into Titus Kaphar, Terrell Davis, Yung Jake and Jordannah Elizabeths, Juliana Hutxable, Tink, Morgan Parker, the works of Patrizia Maimouna Guerresi, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski—and there are so many more of us, its incredible. And then I've been getting back into Octavia Butler, Missy, Sun Ra, and all the visionaries of our past who were imagining a way ahead.

Greg Howard: When I think back on Black History Month, I don't really have too many fond or romantic memories about it from my youth. For me, there was always dread attributed to Black History Month because every year, my elementary school put on a Black History Month assembly, and every year, I had to stand in front of the entire school and read some passage from someone's (auto)biography. I hated reading or speaking in public because all the attention made me uncomfortable, and more importantly, I had a gnarly-ass lisp that I couldn't personally hear, but everyone told me about.

But more importantly, I didn't really get a whole lot out of Black History Month. Most of the black history I've acquired came from other sources, and at all times of the year: my parents, other family members, books, the occasional social studies or history class, television, music. I assume I'm lucky, but in any case, I had very little use for a designated month where teachers could tell me about how Martin Luther King saved the world, or how George Washington Carver made peanut butter.

And so over time, it got me asking a question that I'm still asking now. What and whom is Black History Month even for?

I mean, yes, Black History Month is in large part for the brands to maybe dish out cool sales, but more likely it's for the brands to feign empathy for black folks in hopes that black folks who wouldn't otherwise decide to buy whatever it is the brand is selling, turning a larger profit for the brand. I don't really know if that's worth getting upset with, since brands don't have souls and exist only to make money, and exploit every single holiday and weekend and season and race, etc. to do so. Whatever.

I think, though, that Black History Month is, or at least should be, about education, since black history has been separated from American history. But I don't know who is supposed to be getting educated every February. Is it for white (or more broadly, non-black) people? If so, I don't think a month-long, Disneyfied crash course on slavery is really helping the situation. My best friend, who's been around my family as long as I can remember, is white. We're brothers at this point, and he loves and empathizes with me, even cooler, other black people who aren't me. He gets it. But he doesn't really know shit about black history. He doesn't know where Selma is or why it matters. He can't rattle off Nelly's five singles. If this is what Black History Month is for, it's a failure.

But maybe, hopefully, Black History Month is an education and celebration of black history that has for centuries been ripped from and denied to black people. I can get behind this! If that's the case, then Black History Month is a cool little start, but nothing more. (It used to be only a week long!) Black history isn't tangential to American history, or extraneous. It is American history. The Supernegroes and cool parts should be taught, just as the ugly, heartbreaking, and worst, nigh-unbelievable parts are. That's not a 28-day-a-year endeavor. And so I think Black History Month is a necessary step in the direction of teaching black history as American history. But as long as black history is ghettoized to just one month, it's a lot harder for me to get behind.

Jason Parham: I've been trying to recall traumatizing Black History Month incidents from my childhood, but none come to mind. Or maybe they happened and I just unconsciously forced them from my memory (the effects of childhood trauma can be tricky like that). I grew up in a loving, black community in Los Angeles and, for the first twelve years of my life, went to a school that was mostly black and Mexican. So black history—or speaking more broadly, the histories of othered peoples—was default. It was all we knew, even if we didn't always encounter it in our textbooks or only got extra doses of it during February while at school. In the morning, during recess, and after school we communicated our histories—both familial and shared—via kickball arguments, lunch-time chatter, and as we chilled across the front-lawn waiting for our parents to pick us up (at least until we were old enough to walk home by ourselves). Our history was our currency. There was a daily exchange.

As I've gotten older, my understanding of Black History Month—what it represents to/for black folk and non-black folk—has become more complicated. Rem said something that I've been parsing over the last few days, this idea of being more aware of "the nature in which you exist." That's important. For me, at least. So, I think, Greg and Jenna are onto something here: it's about education, and the ways in which we educate ourselves about our history. It's about constantly digging deeper, and expanding our view; it's about reminding ourselves of our possibility and potential. Many have come before. Many are here now. Many more will follow.

As for what should be done about Black History Month, I don't exactly know. I wouldn't call Black History Month a problem, though I do find parts of it problematic—the history of blacks in America is full or triumph, but it's also a story of terror and trauma caused by systemic oppression. The latter is rarely studied in elementary and middle school classrooms, and I suppose it would be too emotionally crippling to teach to kids. (Or would it?) I'm proudly black every day of the year, so doing away with BHM wouldn't lessen my pride. Maybe, honestly, it should be more about de-centering whiteness from the story—no matter if we're telling Jackie Robison's greatest hits (the preferred narrative) or Richard Bruce Nugent's b-sides (the unlikely narrative).

Hillary Crosley: I was raised to know the good and the bad in American and world history. For example, I remember my eighth grade Jewish middle school teacher forcing our class to watch the gruesome Mein Kampf documentary, with Nazis, piles of dead bodies, and Jewish workers wrenching god caps out of corpses mouthes. It was horrible, it gave me nightmares. After the first day, I came home and told my mom, 'Please write me an excuse to get outta there!' She declined, and I guess it was because, you know, you gotta know the real, kid. It's not pretty but it happened and you have to know what came before to inform what's happening now—or she could've just been a tired mom who thought I was doing too much, who knows. Either way, I feel the same way about black history in America and life in general, the truth is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult route, from peonage to lynching to Supernegroes. It's why Americans are always trying to re-write stories like Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings or throw a new shine on Gone With the Wind or take "nigger" out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

It's too late, America's already racist, forged from it, so perhaps Black History Month can serve as more than a greatest hits but rather a platform to have that overdue discussion about why America even needs a "nigger" or boogie man to play against as this thread suggested. And then we can move forward as a country. Although my sarcastic mind is already saying, 'But, but, but human interaction is often built upon separation, so undoing the need for a "nigger" would undo THE FABRIC OF SOCIETY.'

Jason Parham: So should we end Black History Month? My vote is no.

Jenna Wortham: No.

Greg Howard: Nah. It's still doing important work right now. Maybe one day we won't need it, but we aren't close yet.

Hillary Crosley: I don't know what the solution is but I am firmly against abolishing Black History Month because that, to me, would serve as further erasure of our story in this country. And if nothing else, you gotta slap people with the real at least once a year because they might not hear it otherwise. Also, like most things, teaching alternative and enlightening information begins at home, relying on the US school system to teach us about ourselves will always be a sure path to failure.

Jenna Wortham: Yes to everything Hillary said, and I want to bold this: "but I am firmly against abolishing Black History Month because that, to me, would serve as further erasure of our story in this country," because it's not even just the erasure, but the further marginalization of the importance of acknowledging how integral black history and black culture is to American history and black culture. Taking away Black History Month makes it even more okay to not recognize the work that was done to build and shape this country, and is still done. We're already living in a world where the lack of recognition of black people in modern institutions, like film (aka the Oscars), which becomes a throwaway punchline at a huge awards event that is really the performance of the privilege of committing the crime of non-inclusion and getting away with it! I don't want to give anyone or any institution any additional reason to ignore us in mainstream culture, or focus on the pain of white people—aka Chris Pines tears—instead of focusing on actual black pain—David Oyelowo's tears. That last point came up in the latest 2BrownGirls podcast, and it is an incredible point and everyone should listen to it. So while Black History Month is far from perfect, it's hard to ignore. And maybe that's as important as the performance of the month itself?

Rembert Browne: Nah. So here's the thing: maybe Black History Month needs a yearly theme. You know how affinity conferences—ones surrounding some common group, profession, ideology, whatever—often have a theme for that year's event. Maybe Black History Month needs that. It's clear Black History has been the theme of Black History Month for a while now. But maybe there should be something a bit more specific—and not just, "Black Scientists" as a theme.

And in no way am I suggesting some council of elite blacks—the CBC—decide what this theme is. I think the theme can be different, in every setting: every school, every workplace, every household, every whatever. I'd love a school, a neighborhood, a community center, a city to focus on the black history of that school, that neighborhood, that community, that city, instead of always going default-Benjamin Banneker. And that's just one example of giving the year a theme. It could go in so many different directions.

Lauretta Charlton: No, let's not get rid of it, but I can't stress enough how important it is for us to continue to have these conversations. What's disheartening to me is when folks talk about being raised to love our blackness and identity, but we speak of it as a personal endeavor, one that is removed from larger conversations related to American culture and how that culture continues to marginalize, edit and devalue our history. There is no one black experience, sure, but if you're not black, that doesn't matter. A racist sees a black face and thinks the same thing: Nigger. In a way I feel like celebrating Black History Month means being complicit in an agenda cooked up by politicians who would rather talk about Jackie Robinson and August Wilson (both incredible, obviously!) than the ways in which our penal system can be consider an extension of the peculiar institution that is slavery.

I mean, lift every voice and sing, yes, loudly, but, let's call a spade a spade, Black History Month is definitely problematic so long as we continue to treat the lives of black men and women in this country as lesser.

Rembert Browne: I still think there's value in it existing. But just like anything that becomes a part of the mainstream, you take it for granted, it's taken less seriously, and it's very easy to approach it lazily. My only worry, though—one that just arose as I typed that last paragraph, is that I'm attempting to turn Black History Month, with this idea of themes, into Kwanzaa.

Maybe we need to funnel all of our energy in to Black History Month and get rid of Kwanzaa. I don't even know if I believe that, but it's always been hard to think about one without the other, because they both are very much about us Blacks and both long overdue for a rebrand, or at least a reconceptualization.

[Illustration by Jim Cooke]

Ruth Shalit, the infamously bad journalist with whom the '90s-era media had a very deliciously tortured relationship, is back.

It seems to be a quiet return. This blogger would never have noticed Shalit's return from journalist purgatory if not for thumbing through last month's paper copy of Elle while in line for the office bathroom. There, on a profile of Fifty Shades of Grey heartthrob Jamie Dornan, was a strange byline: Ruth Shalit Barrett. Could it be? It was. Has she returned for more whippings from the press? Or is she here to whip us? Oh, my Fifty.

In 1999, Shalit was the subject of a lacerating profile by David Carr in the Washington City Paper, noting her numerous journalistic fuck-ups, including plagiarism and gross inaccuracy in several pieces for the New Republic. Her attempt to take down The Washington Post over its affirmative action policies was disastrous—she pinned one writer as Latino when he wasn't; accused editors of rising to the top because of their race when they got there by merit.

Shalit represented the ills of media cronyism—even when she was thoroughly discredited and left journalism for advertising, she was rewarded with a column in Salon to write about that business.

As Carr wrote of her:

She certainly had a snug purchase on permission at the New Republic, judging by the way she held on in a Washington she deems unforgiving. She made it through myriad plagiarism charges, a blistering counterattack from the Post, a libel suit—and, it should be mentioned, three editors. That the New Republic would be so publicly in the unaccountability business is low farce. A shop that practically invented comeuppance, it specializes in tough-minded hit pieces that lay bare the shortcutting and self-dealing of countless intended targets. ("I wrote a lot of tart, skeptical pieces that probably did not increase world happiness in the aggregate," Shalit observes.) But the magazine never diagnosed the same sort of malignancy in Shalit.

When the olde New Republic imploded in December, there was spirited discussion of the stain Shalit left on the magazine. She is indeed a part of the storied magazine's semi-dark legacy. And now she is a part of Elle's, too, for this:

My heart is pounding. My legs are pure jelly. I'm a quivering mess. Christian Grey is sitting across from me.

He's so good-looking, it's unnerving. His hair is tousled. His gaze is steely, like molten gray fire.

Oh my. I swallow my Diet Coke convulsively. What's happening? What's he going to do now?

His long-fingered hands reach for the cheese plate. I gasp and flush scarlet as he piles Manchego and chorizo on crusty bread. "Mmmm," he says.

He looks up at me, his eyes full of some unfathomable question.

Holy cow. Could this be more erotic?

"Is this whole-grain mustard?" he asks.

(I have taken this article to my own personal Red Room to check it for plagiarism. It seems to have behaved.)

[Pic via Getty]

What do we know about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez? We know they are celebrities, for one. We know they are former lovers, as well as actors. We know their names. Finally, we know that they are Oscar presenters who attended the 2015 Oscars without their significant others Jennifer Garner and Casper Smart, respectively. Seems like a lot of things that we know, yes, but I can assure you there is at least one thing we don't know about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

The AP reports Ben Affleck was seen whispering to Jennifer Lopez—whispering—to Jennifer Lopez—at this year's Academy Awards. What we don't know? Exactly what Batman said:

After "Citizenfour" was crowned best documentary, Ben Affleck went over to Jennifer Lopez during a commercial break and whispered something to her. His words prompted the "American Idol" judge to playfully smack the "Gone Girl" star — and her famous ex — across his arm.

Hmm. Reminds me of a Kierkegaard quote, if you'll indulge me for a moment: "Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so Ben Affleck longs for the moment during the 2015 Academy Awards when in another soft whisper—second to the first soft whisper I mentioned earlier—he can, as it were, prompt American Idol judge Jennifer Lopez to playfully smack him, her famous ex."

Yes, a whisper that led to a smack. But what did he say? Like with all great hollywood mysteries, we can only guess.

Was it, "Jennifer...do you remember me, Ben Affleck?"

Was it, "Jennifer, did you know that I'm Batman now? (This is Ben Affleck speaking.)"

Was it, "Jennifer, I didn't marry Jennifer Garner because you guys have the same. I'm not sure if you thought that—not to be weird if you didn't. I just always, hah, I mean. I guess I just always wanted to make sure you knew. Anyway."

Was it, "I've never seen American Idol, what is it? Just kidding."

Was it, "Jenny from the block! Just kidding."

Ah, we'll never know. But isn't that magical, in a way?

[images via Getty]

Over the past week, Fox News has aggressively rebutted accusations that its star host Bill O’Reilly lied about his whereabouts during the Falklands War in 1982. But after a new report challenged O’Reilly’s recent claim that he was present at the violent suicide of a Lee Harvey Oswald acquaintance in 1977, the network declined to defend him. Is Fox blinking?

The new charges, which were first aired in 2013 by the website JFKFacts.org and further corroborated in a new report by Media Matters, concern George S. de Mohrenschildt, a Russian geologist who became friends with Oswald’s family in the early 1960s; he killed himself with a shotgun at his home in Palm Beach, Florida after the House Select Committee on Assassinations asked him to testify about his ties to Oswald.

In two recent books recounting his experience as a young reporter covering President John F. Kennedy’s death for a Dallas television station, O’Reilly claims he was standing on Mohrenschildt’s front porch when he pulled the trigger: “As I knocked on the door, I heard a shotgun blast. He had killed himself.” He has repeated this story during at least one Fox News segment. But two of O’Reilly’s former colleagues told Media Matters that he was actually in Dallas, not Palm Beach, on the day of Mohrenschildt’s death. Their claim is supported by several other official accounts, including a lengthy police report submitted by the Palm Beach County Sheriff.

In other words: O’Reilly’s story, intended to portray him as an enterprising journalist unfazed by potential danger, is a fiction. It is precisely the sort of claim that would otherwise earn Fox’s condemnation, and draw sophisticated counter-attacks to undermine the accusers’ reputation.

Yet in the 20 hours since Media Matters posted their report, Fox News has either refused to comment or directed questions to O’Reilly’s book publisher. This response is telling. The network immediately dismissed allegations that O’Reilly fabricated his account of reporting on the Falklands War, and even let O’Reilly brand one of his accusers, Mother Jones reporter David Corn, as an “irresponsible guttersnipe” and a “far left zealot who has attacked Fox News many times before.” The network’s senior executives, including Roger Ailes, said they were fully supporting the host. This line of attack worked so well that media reporters quickly declared victory for O’Reilly. Not because he hadn’t lied—he had—but because he’d successfully portrayed his critics as shifty liberals desperately trying to smear him.

But neither Fox nor O’Reilly have attacked Media Matters or even questioned their reporting. And the thing is, Media Matters is far more ideologically aligned against Fox News than Mother Jones or David Corn. Founded in 2004 by Clinton ally David Brock to combat “conservative misinformation,” the non-profit press watchdog has since focused its efforts on subverting Fox’s right-wing narratives. In 2011, Brock told Politico that his organization would engage in “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” against the network, which remains the dominant cable news outlet in the United States. In return, Fox aired dozens of counter-attacks on Media Matters and even called for the I.R.S. to revoke its tax-exempt status.

Today, however, Fox News is declining to defend its most valuable asset from an organization dedicated to its destruction. O’Reilly might want to ask his boss about that.

Update, 5:40 p.m.: Two hours after this post was published, Fox provided the following statement to Mediaite (without addressing the substance of the Media Matters report):

Bill O’Reilly has already addressed several claims leveled against him. This is nothing more than an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates Mother Jones and Media Matters. Responding to the unproven accusation du jour has become an exercise in futility. FOX News maintains its staunch support of O’Reilly, who is no stranger to calculated onslaughts.

Okay then.

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · Photo credit: Getty Images

Oopsie daisie.

As far as basehead mayor memorabilia goes, the tie Rob Ford wore when he admitted to smoking crack cocaine is hardly a museum piece. It is, however, something you can actually buy and own, one of several personal items Ford put on eBay Wednesday night.

New items up for sale on eBay! http://t.co/v5V8UDk9Qo http://t.co/4RhDuFEJQX http://t.co/bt5L4niker http://t.co/sDOMCTcJqn

— Councillor Rob Ford (@TorontoRobFord) February 25, 2015

Under the less-than-inspired handle "torontorobford," the former mayor also put some moose print jammie pants, a size 4XL football jersey and a poster that looks like it came from Spencer's Gifts up for auction.

Each item it seems, has a special connection to the Ford administration . The listing for the pants, for instance, boasts, "These are the print patterned pants that Councillor Rob Ford was seen wearing on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart."

But caveat emptor, eager Rob Ford collectors: torontorobford currently has a feedback score of 0.

[Image via eBay//h/t Mediaite]

On Monday, Fabian Akesson of Karlskrona, Sweden got an unexpected visit from police investigating a possible link to the Islamic State. The evidence? Two birthday balloons, which, when viewed from afar by an idiot, appeared to read "IS."

These balloons were confused for Isis propaganda and the police were actually called http://t.co/uzH3Yw6kCc pic.twitter.com/bME3XVCwPD

— The Independent (@Independent) February 25, 2015

"I laughed about it and they showed me a photo that they had taken where from their perspective," Akesson told Swedish newspaper Kvällsposten, "it did almost look like the letters IS."

According to The Local, the balloons were hung up to celebrate the birthday of Akesson's 21-year-old girlfriend. Later, a passerby spotted the initials and alerted police to the mylar threat.

Once there, the officers quickly realized their error but still asked the balloons be taken down "to avoid further misunderstanding."

"We understand why someone would report it if they thought it looked like IS-propaganda," Akesson told The Local, "although everyone else just thought it looked like the number '12' from outside."

[Image via Shutterstock]

Paul Bennett, the British man convicted of indecent exposure last month after rubbing his genitals on a mailbox and shouting "wow," was found dead this week, the New York Daily News reports. He was 45.

According to the Daily Mail, Bennett's body was discovered early Sunday morning behind the Shanghai Palace in his hometown of Wigan. Authorities do not suspect foul play, a police spokesperson saying, "His death is non-suspicious so the coroner is now dealing with it."

In January, Bennett was sentenced to 12 months of supervision with alcohol treatment and to register as a sex offender after dropping his pants in a shopping center and making "sexual advances toward" a postbox. From the Manchester Evening News:

He then rubbed himself against the postbox while holding his hands in the air and shouting "wow".

After completing the act he pulled his trousers up and started swinging on a lamppost.

An alarmed eye-witness called police, who found him exposing himself again when they arrived.

An acquaintance spoke well of Bennett, telling Wigan Today, "He had his troubles but he wasn't a bad lad."

[Image via Shutterstock]

With limited evidence and few witnesses, it's often difficult to make arrests in arson cases. Other times, however, there's a guy with a burnt-up face, as there was after a house fire in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin this week.

On Sunday night, the planned home of sex offender Harold Nyberg was set on fire for the second time in three months, The Journal Times reports. Nyberg, currently on supervised release, has faced "vocal opposition" to the move from his potential neighbors, including 50-year-old Russell A. Speigle.

Not so coincidentally, police say they found Speigle with fresh burns on his face while canvassing the area. After a brief hospital stay, Speigle was booked on charges of arson.

Sheriff Dave Mahoney condemned the fire as an "unacceptable" act of vigilantism on Tuesday, saying, "Not only did the actions of Mr. Speigle endanger public safety professionals, it endangered his own neighbors."

[Image via Dane County Sheriff's Office//h/t Death and Taxes]

In a new report by the Washington Post, Jihadi John, the black balaclava-clad face of the Islamic State's gruesome beheading videos, has been identified as 27-year-old Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwait-born British national who grew up in London.

Emwazi first emerged as an ISIS figurehead in a video released last August in which captured American journalist James Foley is beheaded, seemingly by Emwazi himself. His presence and British accent became a motif in subsequent videos depicting the beheading of other captives.

A senior British security official, the New York Times reports, has confirmed that Emwazi is indeed Jihadi John, who apparently first travelled to Syria in 2012. More from the Post:

The Kuwaiti-born Emwazi, in his mid-20s, appears to have left little trail on social media or elsewhere online. Those who knew him say he was polite and had a penchant for wearing stylish clothes while adhering to the tenets of his Islamic faith. He had a beard and was mindful of making eye contact with women, friends said.

He was raised in a middle-class neighborhood in London and on occasion prayed at a mosque in Greenwich.

The friends, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, believe that Emwazi started to radicalize after a planned safari in Tanzania following his graduation from the University of Westminster.

That trip to Tanzania, in 2009, at one point led Emwazi to Amsterdam, where the Independent previously reported that Emwazi (identified in the paper as Muhammad ibn Muazzam) claimed to have been picked up by MI5 and accused of attempting to travel to Somalia to enlist in al-Shabab, an ally of al-Qaeda.

It's unclear when exactly American and British intelligence agencies identified Emwazi as John, but as the BBC notes, he has been a person of interest to MI5 since 2010 "because he features in semi-secret court cases relating to extremism overseas and back in the UK":

Emwazi has been previously described as a member of a network involving at least 13 men from London - and at least two of them were subjected to house arrest control orders or T-Pims. One absconded. The chances of Emwazi ever returning to the UK are vanishingly small.

"I have no doubt that Mohammed is Jihadi John," one of Emwazi's "close friends" told the Washington Post. "He was like a brother to me...I am sure it is him."

Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

Jill Abramson, who was unceremoniously ousted last year as editor of the New York Times, has signed a $1 million book deal. Her book's topic will be "the future of media in a rapidly changing world." This development can be interpreted as folly, or farce.

"I've been a front-line combatant in the news media's battles to remain the bedrock of an informed society," Abramson told the New York Post. "Now, I'm going to wear my reporter's hat again to tell the full drama of that story in a book, focusing on both traditional and new media players in the digital age."

As a participant in the news media's battles to remain the bedrock of an informed society, allow me to point out: most people don't care about this. News about the media is hands-down the single category of news whose importance and public appeal is most overestimated by people who are employed in all aspects of the media. Including book publishing. As someone with a personal familiarity with both traditional and new media players in the digital age, allow me to also point out: those people are not all that interesting. The most interesting thing about both traditional and new media players in the digital age tends to be the media content they produce, which is available outside of book form.

Even if a publisher did believe that a book about "the future of media" is worth a million-dollar book deal, why would they believe that Jill Abramson is the one to write it? This is not a dig against Jill Abramson, who is a talented journalist with an illustrious resume and who is undoubtedly capable of writing an insightful book on any number of topics. Jill Abramson is also a 60 year-old former newspaper editor and career employee of the oldest of America's old media institutions. The only demographic less well positioned to have good insight into the future of media would be illiterate octogenarians.

Abramson's publisher, Simon and Schuster, told The Guardian that this will not be a "a score-settling book" about Abramson's ouster from the Times, removing even the possibility of it containing some level of prurient gossip appeal. For hot content like that you will have to read Jill Abramson's last book, which was about her dog.

David Carr, the actual media columnist at Jill Abramson's paper, wrote an autobiographical book called Night of the Gun (which became a best-seller.) I once attended a promo event for that book, held on the very top floor of the multilevel Barnes & Noble near Union Square. During the Q&A, someone asked Carr, "Why didn't you write a book about the media?" He pointed to a shelf of books off to the side of the stage. "See that? That's where they keep the media books. That's about as far away from the front door as you can get."

Our admiration of Abramson's book agent knows no bounds.

[Photo: Getty]

He's responsible for the likes of 1983's Videodrome, 1986's The Fly remake, 1988's Dead Ringers, and 2005's A History of Violence, but David Cronenberg may have delivered his most disturbing movie with Maps to the Stars. It's a tale of celebrity aspiration and Hollywood misery that weaves together incest, mental illness, a dead kid or two, a burn victim (played by Mia Wasikowska), a washed-up actress gunning for another hit who resembles what Lindsay Lohan might be like in 15 years (Julianne Moore as Havana Segrand), and a Bieber-esque child star who's already been to rehab (Evan Bird as Benjie Weiss). It's full of desperation, violence, and excruciatingly grim humor. There are images in this movie that are as indelible as they are hard to look at.

I recently spoke to Cronenberg by phone about Maps, which has taken decades to make (Bruce Wagner wrote the script about 20 years ago, and figuring that the project was dead, repurposed it for the 2012 novel Dead Stars). Maybe it's his Canadian politeness, but I found him to be warmer and decidedly less terse than his veteran director peers that I've spoken to in the past like Brian De Palma, John Carpenter, and Spike Lee. Below is an edited and condensed transcript of our conversation.

Gawker: It seems like every step of the way until its U.S. release (which is behind several other countries), it's been a fight to get this movie out.

David Cronenberg: I don't know if it's been a fight, but there have been different rhythms than what we're used to. Focus World, which is distributing in the U.S., really felt that they wanted to release it this year, as opposed to the end of last year because their primary platform is video on demand and it's just a new game, especially for any sort of independent film, any art film, any film that's not a huge blockbuster going out to 3,000 theaters. It's a slightly different ballgame.

Has the subject matter caused any specific complications in terms of getting this movie released?

I don't really think so. It's gotten a pretty good reception at the screenings we've had in the U.S. and even in Hollywood. I don't think that's been a factor. What is a factor is the tone of the movie, that it's dark although it's funny, and that it's difficult in some ways. Not difficult to understand, but not normal, middle-of-the-road sort of fare. That's really what's been the problem, not really that it's been about Hollywood and can be seen as a critique of Hollywood.

I think in some ways this is your most horrifying movie.

I can certainly understand that. Part of it is, of course, there's not much fantasy in it. [Screenwriter] Bruce Wagner and I like to say it's not even really a satire because it's too accurate, too real. Although condensed, perhaps, in terms of narrative, it's almost like a docudrama.

I have a feeling that Maps isn't something that you could have made at the beginning of your career.

I certainly wouldn't have been able to verify the truth of what Bruce had been writing, because in my early career I didn't have a lot to do with Hollywood. It was only later that I gradually ended up with more meetings in Hollywood and with studio heads, and so on. I can now say I've had the actual personal experience to be confident in the veracity of what Bruce was writing. That's aside from hopefully having mastered the medium a bit more than in my early days, of course. Those two things gave me the confidence to make this movie and it was only a 29-day shoot, which required real economy and efficiency, which is something you have to learn.

Have you seen with your own eyes or experienced secondhand the horrors of this movie—the amount of trauma that some people live with and come into the industry carrying?

Yes, I have. In fact, sometimes it's brought onto your set by actors who have come from Hollywood. I don't want to mention any names. I've had pretty good relationships with all of my actors, but some of them have been more neurotic and more needy and more damaged than others. You can see it. You don't have to live in Hollywood and be part of the Hollywood filmmaking process there to have been touched by it. Plus, even on Maps itself, John Cusack said, "I was Benjie." He was a child star. He knows. That's why he lives in Chicago.

Do you think there's something about the industry that attracts or perpetuates that sort of damaged psyche?

Oh sure. It's hugely seductive, Hollywood, and filmmaking and all that goes with it. Even if you're someone who just wants to be famous, or on the other end of the spectrum, someone who's quite creative and wants to have the tools to do that kind of creation, Hollywood, I've often said, is this incredibly dense planet with a huge gravitational pull that draws people all over the world to it. But then that pull is so intense that it's hard to get out of there and not be deformed by it, not be twisted and pressured out of shape. And so I have seen that. I also have heard many tales of it told to me by people who were refugees from Hollywood. I still have great affection for Hollywood, really, for its past and for what it has done, the kind of movies it has created. All this movie magic kind of stuff is real, and has affected many people mostly in a positive way. It's not all black and white there. There's a lot to be said positively about Hollywood. Obviously in this movie, we're not focusing too much on those positive aspects, but it doesn't mean they don't exist.

Would you say the good outweighs the bad?

I can't say Hollywood has had a huge effect on my career-wise. Hollywood certainly doesn't owe me anything, and conversely, I don't owe Hollywood anything. I've had some moments of seduction where I've tried to get a big Hollywood movie made and it hasn't worked out, but I don't have any bitterness about it. One of the times, for example, was trying to get The Matarese Circle made, which was a project based on a Robert Ludlum spy novel. I had written several drafts. This was for MGM. I had met Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise, both of whom we were hoping would be together in the movie. They were very interested. But then MGM went bankrupt. It wasn't as though they screwed up my script or promised me stuff that they didn't come up with. It was nothing like that. They were in trouble, and that's what killed the project. I have nothing to complain about. I have had some bizarre meetings, though, as I've said. If I were a different kind of person, I might have been insulted by them, or offended or shocked, but actually I was just completely amused by them. I thought, "I'm watching an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett here. This is quite interesting." In other words, there's no taste of bitterness or anything. If there is some of that in the movie, which I guess there is, I would say it comes from Bruce, not from me.

One of the things I appreciated about the movie, in terms of critique, is its discussion of child stars. We have so much evidence of the havoc that fame can wreak on a young soul, and it's not something that people talk about. I wonder sometimes if children should be allowed to act at all.

Yeah. I mean, when I cast the role of Benjie with Evan Bird, he was 12. He gives an amazing performance, but he lives in Vancouver. He's done some TV, he did the American version of The Killing, which is where I first saw him. I don't think the experience of being an actor is bad for him. But it depends on your context. If I had to move to Hollywood to get my movies made, which I thought in the early '70s that I might have to do because there really was no film industry in Canada at the time, I'm sure my filmmaking would have been totally different. I wouldn't have been able to make the same kind of films and I probably wouldn't have wanted to make the same kind of films. So powerful is the zeitgeist in Hollywood. But to ban kids from being actors? No, I wouldn't do that. But obviously the potential for damaging a kid is huge. And you see it in spades in the movie, but it doesn't take much to find cognates in real life.

Speaking of that, what's the official word on the similarity of Julianne Moore's character to Lindsay Lohan? I know that Julianne has said that her character is a composite, but there are times when I just see Lindsay in Maps to the Stars.

Bruce wrote this before there was a Lindsay Lohan. He wrote the script 20 years ago. In a way, maybe he invented Lindsay. But there's so many examples of that, and women that Julianne Moore grew up with and colleagues of hers who didn't make it past the age of 40. They were hot for a minute and then suddenly weren't getting phone calls and were discarded by the industry. It's notoriously tougher on women than men in terms of aging. I'm sure she had lots of examples. She didn't have to look very far to find a template for her character.

I think that your career is really fascinating because a lot of directors peak and drop off, especially directors who were so stylistically distinct in the '80s. You see it happening a lot—take De Palma for example. You have evolved with the times and are just as relevant as ever.

Well, bless you for saying that. I have never dwelled on the past. I'm really looking forward, even technically. I love the digital era. I couldn't wait for typewriters to go away and I couldn't wait for editing on a Moviola to go away. I think perhaps that has kept me young: my enthusiasm for the moment of now. Maybe that's the kind of '60s person that I am, you know? "Be here now" used to be the mantra. I do feel that way. I remember some young critic asked me if I was influenced by my old movies. I said, "You've got it really backwards. I'm not influenced by my movies. I made those movies. I influenced them." It's not only the medium of cinema, but I also published my first novel last September, called Consumed. I'm currently writing another one. It's the creative act that's exciting to me, and engaging with the present version of what it is to be human. What is the human condition right now? That's always been my inspiration and what excites me to be creative. Therefore, it disconnects me from what I've done in the past. That's history to me.

Was there a moment, I guess, after eXistenZ where you sort chopped it and said, "New phase"? I think there is a palpable Old Cronenberg and New Cronenberg.

Except you have to remember that The Dead Zone was very early on. Dead Ringers was 1988. I was never only a horror genre filmmaker or a sci-fi filmmaker. There was always other stuff. In fact, I had wanted to make Dead Ringers ten years before I was able to. It's not as cut and dry. Yes, even somebody like Guillermo del Toro can tell me that he loves the old movies the best, but on the other hand, he was very enthusiastic about my recent movies, so maybe he shifted himself.

Are you happy, looking back at your career and where you are now?

Sure, yeah. I'm very realistic. It's just like, "Well, it's done." That's what I did. I've always made the movies I wanted to make. I've totally been able to say, "If you don't like this movie, it's my fault." And that's what you want to be able to say. It wasn't because some producer took it away or some studio took it away or someone betrayed you. I wanted to make those movies as I did and if there's something wrong with them, you can definitely blame me.

Maps to the Stars will be released in theaters and on demand Friday, February 27.

[Image via AP]

In this fraught American media landscape, who can be trusted? Brian Williams is a faker, and Bill O'Reilly is too. The credibility of our most cherished cultural lodestars is crumbling before our eyes, and the mighty haven't stopped falling. That's right: Xzibit is a fraud, and Pimp My Ride was insane bullshit.

The Huffington Post interviewed several contestants who appeared on the show, and their experiences included barely functioning cars, gadgets that were removed as soon as the cameras stopped rolling, fat-shaming, bad relationship advice, and a little friendly verbal coercion by some dude named Big Dane.

On a show like Pimp My Ride, it would be surprising if the pimped rides actually did run as intended, so lets get the obvious out of the way first: much of the time, the cars didn't work. Of course they didn't! Rest assured that the interview—which you are strongly urged to read in full—contains many more anecdotes like this one.

"There wasn't much done under the hood in regards to the actual mechanics of the vehicle," according to Seth Martino. "For the most part, it needed a lot of work done to make it a functioning regular driver, which they did not do." Martino said he had a hard time even driving the car home. "They added a lot of extra weight but didn't adjust the suspension to compensate so I felt like I was in a boat, and every time I hit a bump the car would bottom out and the tires would scrape inside the wheel well." According to Martino, the car would only run for about a month. Then he had to save up his own money to replace the engine.

Co-executive producer Larry Horchberg, interviewed as a kind of character witness in defense of Pimp My Ride, even admitted to having a tow truck driver on call in case pimped rides broke down. To Horchberg, this constitutes a demonstration of the diligence and care with which the show treated its contestants and their beloved automobiles.

A contestant named Justin Dearinger told HuffPo that years later—and after he'd done extensive work to the car on his own—his pimped ride spontaneously burst into flames while he was driving it. He even took video.

Other pimpees told HuffPo—and Horchberg corroborated—that amenities like TVs, champagne dispensers, 24-inch rims, and robotic arms(!) were added strictly for on-screen appeal and removed before the cars came off the lot. Contrary to the quick turnaround time implied on the show, contestants were left without their rides for up to seven months while the team worked.

But the juiciest bits aren't really about the cars at all. Jake Glazier, whose face you may remember, said that when he didn't appear stoked enough about his revamped ride, Big Dane made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

Jake Glazier had a bit of a different experience, remembering they had to coax him to go "ape shit" as his natural reaction to being genuinely excited is a more silent shock. His first real reaction to the car was just a quiet amazement where he said, "This is good." They immediately yelled "re-do!" And then things got a bit weirder.

"I remember this very clearly, Big Dane, very big dude, he like puts his arm around my shoulder, kind of walks me around the shop for like 10 minutes and he's like, 'Listen, we put a lot of work into this ... we expect you to be a little more fucking enthusiastic,'" Glazier recalled.

Also mentioned: candy stuffed in one overweight guy's car to make him appear more gluttonous, producers urging a contestant to dump his girlfriend because it would make for a compelling storyline, workers purposefully damaging pre-pimped rides so that they looked especially busted.

To be fair, one satisfied pimpee—the guy whose car blew up, incidentally—said Pimp My Ride "gave me some confidence. And it made me the person I am today."

I owe it all to Xzibit, you say, nervously looking over your shoulder at Big Dane, who's giving you that Undertaker throat-slashing gesture behind your back. I sure do love Pimp My Ride!!!!!

Closing things out is a batshit crazy Xzibit story from Glazier, presented without commentary:

"I don't remember why he brought it up, but we were just kind of talking about what we were doing that weekend and he said he's going to go down to hell to kill the devil so he can make some Satan skin boots."

Read the fulll interview at HuffPo.

[Image via AP]

We periodically run letters from death row inmates. Today's is from Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip, who came within one day of being executed last month before being (temporarily) spared by the Supreme Court.

Richard Glossip has been on death row for 17 years, after being sentenced to die for the murder of Barry Van Treese, an Oklahoma motel manager. Glossip, however, did not kill Barry Van Treese; a man named Justin Sneed did. Sneed testified that Glossip hired him to kill and rob Van Treese. Glossip says that he is innocent, and that Sneed lied to save himself (he received a life sentence). Justin Sneed's daughter recently wrote a letter urging clemency for Glossip, saying that her father had spoken to her about recanting his testimony about Glossip's role in the crime.

On January 28, the Supreme Court postponed the executions of three Oklahoma inmates, including Richard Glossip, citing problems that the state of Oklahoma has had with its lethal injection procedures. Glossip had been scheduled to be executed the following day. Now, his execution will wait until Oklahoma deals with its deadly chemical issues. The letter to us below is dated January 6, three weeks before Glossip believed he would be put to death. (Some portions of the letter were too long for the scanner, but the full text is typed above each page.) As with all of our death row letters, we present this only to hear the inmate's own voice, and we do not take any position for or against the veracity of the inmate's claims.

January 6, 2015

Dear Mr. Hamilton

Thank for your letter and opportunity to tell my story. I don't know if you have heard about what's going on with me here yet or not. I have been on a hunger strike since being put in the cell I am in now, which is 14 days now. So it is not easy for me at this point to write long letters. So I'm writing a short letter so people can see why I am where I'm at and that I'm innocent. I'm also enclosing a website that your readers can go to to see the whole story and my innocence. I'm also listing another website that will give them the chance to connect and be a party of trying to stop this unjust execution.

RichardEGlossip.com

Change.org

January 6th, 2015

I have ended up on death row because of a horrible crime that was committed by (Justin Sneed). I managed a motel here in Oklahoma City where (Mr. Sneed) worked as well. (Mr. Sneed) one night killed the owner of the motel while he was asleep in his room. He came to my room very early in the morning and knocked on my and my girlfriend's door and woke us up. When I answered the door he then told me 2 drunks broke a window and what should he do. I told him to clean it up and that we would deal with it later. Then he says that he had killed the owner (Mr. Vantrese) I look at him and said yeah right. And that's where it was left. I did not believe him. I went back to bed and wasn't awoken again until my normal time by my desk clerk (Billy Hooper). I did my usual rounds to make sure people were doing what they were suppose to and then my girlfriend (D-Anna Wood) and I went to cash my check and go to Wal-Mart. While there we received a call from the desk clerk saying they found (Mr. Vantrese's) car but not him. So we headed back to the motel. When we got there it was kind of crazy. I was told by the desk clerk that the motel had been searched already and nothing. I went into my apartment behind the desk where my girlfriend (D-Anna Wood) was and asked her if I should tell them what (Justin Sneed) had told me and she replied I shouldn't until I knew for sure. Which led to a few bad choices I mad through that day. That was taken the wrong way.

I was taken in and interviewed for a while and then released. After my second interview I was arrested and held until (Mr. Sneed) was arrested. When (Mr. Sneed) was interviewed he repeatedly told detectives that I had nothing to do with it. That it was a robbery gone bad. But after going off camera for 45 minutes (which no one knows what was said except for them) and a deal from the state to save his own life, he then comes back saying I told him to do it. His next story he claimed that I had offered him $7,000 to do what he did. Later it became $10,000. Then he claimed that after he did it, he then went to the car of (Mr. Vantrese) and got what money he had in it and that it was less than $4,000 which he then claimed he split that with me. He also claimed that I had came to him at 2:30 a.m. to ask him to do this. We had a tape from the gas station next door to the motel that clearly showed (Mr. Sneed) there at 2:30 a.m. He then changed that time as well. There has never been any evidence against me (physical or other) to connect me to any of (Mr. Sneed's) accounts of what happened. I was convicted solely on the self serving testimony of (Justin Sneed) who is the sole reason [continues]

I am here on death row.

I was arrest on no evidence at all (physical or other) was held in the county jail for almost 2 years before getting to trial (again I have never been in trouble in my life). My trial went very wrong because of the attorney I had and I was convicted of a crime I did not commit and sent to death row.

After 2 years on death row my case was thrown out by the higher courts because of hearsay testimony, denial of the use of items which would have contradicted the states so called theory of the case and for the job my attorney did, who was disbarred for his actions. The Judges said it wasn't a trial.

I was tried again after 3 years at the county jail. The D.A. who prosecuted my trial, it being her last trial with the D.A.'s office used every trick in the book to convict me.
(1) She was allowed to take large posterboards with partial statements on them and hang them all over the court room in front of the jury and state witnesses throughout my trial.
(2) Was allowed to put on hearsay testimony again by the Tulsa motel manager who said he had had a conversation with the deceased and he told him that the OKC motel was short money. No witnesses or proof that this conversation even took place, and there was no way to cross examine it.
(3) The D.A. was allowed to claim that money was missing from the OKC motel even though the D.A. had informed the courts before my first trial that the paperwork for the time I worked at the motel had been destroyed by a flood. We were denied the chance to prove it wasn't true, but she was allowed to claim it was with no paperwork to prove it.
(4) She was allowed to claim evidence existed that didn't by telling the jury that I must have wiped it away or I wore gloves without any proof that happened. Alls you have to do is look at the crime scene photos to see that would have been impossible. There is no way I could have wiped away my prints and no one else's, should never have been allowed.

In the D.A.'s opening arguments to the jury she admitted to the jury that they had [continues]

no actual evidence against me, just the testimony of the killer (Justin Sneed).

(Justin Sneed) testified against for a deal to save his own life. The D.A. portrayed (Mr. Sneed) as this meek, normally non violent person who was easy to control who I took advantage of. We had a report by the state's own psychiatrist who stated that (Justin Sneed) was a very angry person, prone to acts of violence and hated authority figures (which I would have been to him). We were denied the use of that report to prove that the state lied and misrepresented (Justin Sneed) to the jury.

The judge denied us the right to take a picture of the posterboards so that we would have it in case of appeals to show the courts how they influenced the jury.

There was so much more that the judge allowed that she shouldn't have. There is no way I was given a fair trial by any means. The worse thing about it is that if you don't have money and can't afford a good attorney you have no chance at a fair trial especially in Oklahoma. I was wrongfully convicted and they know it and they still want to execute an innocent man.

You asked about the psychological burden of having a death sentence. This will most likely surprise everyone, but having the death sentence has done nothing to weaken me or has it been a burden on me. It has actually made me stronger and has become a great motivation to me. It makes me get up every day and fight with everything I have to make sure that death isn't going to be the outcome. I've seen people who have not been able to deal with this and the hell it is. But I decided long ago that I would not let it take that toll on me. I will fight with my last breath. I don't fear the future, I just take it one day at a time. When and if that time comes, I will deal with it the same as I have everything.

You asked about the daily life in here. Here on H-Unit things are different than regular prisons. You locked down 23 hours a day. you can go to what they call a yard (a room completely cement with 20 foot high walls with steel grating over the top. You don't see trees, cars, grass, houses etc. You can see the sky but only through the grating). We use to be able to go to yard with other inmates, but about 3 years ago they stopped it. So now you either go by yourself or with your [continues]

cellie. It truly isn't much different than being in your cell so a lot of people don't even bother to go any more. It just seems to be a hassle to go. The days can be long so you do what you can to get through them. Write letters, watch TV, read books. Thank God about 3 years ago they let us buy MP3 players which helped a lot. It is truly sad that getting mail and canteen had become everything you had to look forward to. But it truly was great when it came.

My daily routine before I was moved up to this cell. I would get up every day clean the cell completely, take my shower, eat something simple cookies. Do my Bible study. Then I would listen to my MP3 for a few hours. Then I would start writing letters to everyone I could from Senators (in which I had gotten several letters from John McCain), Judges, reporters and anyone else I could write, then I would watch TV until about 1:00 a.m. then finish the night listening to music. This I did every day.

Now that I am up in the cell I am, I'm not allowed cleaning materials so can't clean the cell, I'm not allowed my MP3 or canteen, or other personal belongings, sweats, razors etc. (This happens 35 days before execution) so you have to eat what they bring you and trust me if you saw that food you would not eat it. My routine now is I get up hungry wanting to clean the cell but can't. I still do my Bible study and then I began my writing for the day, to reporters etc. In the evening I call family and friends. I then watch what I can on TV until 1:00 a.m. and go to bed. Then repeat it the next day.

I don't have a fitness routine. Being on a hunger strike it makes that task difficult.

People in here get along for the most part. It is hard not to now that we have no more contact with each other except for talking through the door, or sending kites (small notes) through the run man who gets out to clean the showers and pod area and to pass out our laundry when it comes back. Up here i have no contact with any other inmates.

About my past I was born in Galesburg, IL where I was raised and grew up. I spent over 20 years there. I was married twice and I have 4 kids. 3 girls, 1 boy. I have worked very hard my whole life and I have always tried [continues]

my best to do the right thing and to help anyone who needed it. I hope that you will go to the website for the complete story of my life. RichardEGlossip.com

You asked if being in jail has changed my political views. Yes they have, after going through this. I have always thought that our government was put in place to protect us from injustices from happening to the American people. Our government has gotten bigger for all the wrong reasons. Our justice system has rapidly gone down hill. How could a justice system in a country like ours allow a man who has never been in trouble in his entire life, no evidence and the fact that the state admits didn't kill anyone, be about to be executed. (It should scare the hell out of everyone that it has and it can to anyone. We have a Supreme Court who says actual innocence is not a reason to stop an execution. That truly blows my mind. Things have to change, we cannot keep wrongfully convicting people and executing innocent people and think that it is ok to do so. Why even have a Supreme Court.

You asked do I have any thoughts on the way the news media in our country cover crimes. My biggest problem with the way the media covers crimes is that the majority are in a hurry to tell the state's side of events and not so much the inmates or accused. When you cover the news and you bring stories to people, they should be allowed to hear both sides of the story not just the state's, which not has a proven track record of wrongful conviction after another. Over the last 10 years so many people have been released from prisons all over this country who it has been proven that prosecutors lied, hid evidence and put what they knew to be false testimony on the stand to convict people. People believe the media, so when they only tell the state's side, it becomes what they believe.

And yes I truly believe it would be a great thing for these issues to get more or different kinds of public attention. It would help more than people know.

I would like to say to everyone here and around the world. I am an innocent man. I have never been in trouble in my entire life. I have always done my best to do the right thing and to always help others. I have always worked very hard since the age of 15 to get everything that I ever had. And now I am in the biggest fight of my life to stop the state of Oklahoma from [continues]

executing an innocent man who they know is innocent. And it should truly scare the hell out of all of us to know that this is happening in a country like ours.

I'm pleading with everyone in this country and around the world to join our fight to stop this from taken place. Please to (RichardEGlossip.com) and sign on there or at (Change.org) Richard Glossip to help stop the execution of an innocent man. My time is getting short so please act now before it is too late.

Thank you

Richard E. Glossip 267303

Previously

The full archives of our "Letters from Death Row" series can be found here.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

As we've tirelessly covered this year, Hershey, Inc. decided to yank the fun from Easter by suing a company responsible for importing British Cadbury chocolate into the United States. Why buy real Cadbury—creamy, smooth, delicious—when you could have Cadbury made by Hershey—acrid, sour, gritty, and painfully dissimilar?

In an inarguably scientific experiment featuring some of Gawker's best-looking staff members, we decided to put Hershey's Cadbury product to the test. If this was the only version of Cadbury we Americans were going to have access to for the foreseeable future, it had better taste real good. What we discovered may surprise, shock, and downright disgust you in response to Hershey's unabashed malfeasance.

As Nicky Perry, owner of British import store Tea & Sympathy, told the New York Times, "Things in the world are bad enough as it is and now you're going to take away our chocolate?"

If you haven't already filed your taxes, you're probably considering TurboTax, the widely used software that makes filing a return easy for our nation of babies and dimwits. Consider an alternative: according to two former high-ranking employees, the company ignored rampant refund theft because it could take a cut.

Intuit, the corporation that owns TurboTax, is an unequivocally evil firm that's spent millions of dollars lobbying the IRS to make sure filing your taxes is enough of a pain in the ass that you'll continue using TurboTax. The company also took some heat after widespread fraud and identity theft was discovered inside the system—so much heat, in fact, that TurboTax had to briefly stop processing state returns. Now, two Intuit insiders say the existence of mass fraud wasn't just an oversight, but intentional negligence from the top: TurboTax was able to rake in revenue from faked filings.

Robert Lee and Shane MacDougall, both former security executives at Intuit, spoke with KrebsOnSecurity.com about the company's dubious practices: Identity thieves have been creating fake accounts in droves to cash in on strangers' legitimate refunds. It's a simple maneuver: plug in someone else's Social Security number and other tax identification, then go through the same TurboTax steps as normal—only they bank the refund deposit, not you:

Lee said he was mystified when Intuit repeatedly refused to adopt some basic policies that would make it more costly and complicated for fraudsters to abuse the company's service for tax refund fraud, such as blocking the re-use of the same Social Security number across a certain number of TurboTax accounts, or preventing the same account from filing more than a small number of tax returns.

"If I sign up for an account and file tax refund requests on 100 people who are not me, it's obviously fraud," Lee said in an interview with KrebsOnSecurity. "We found literally millions of accounts that were 100 percent used only for fraud. But management explicitly forbade us from either flagging the accounts as fraudulent, or turning off those accounts."

It's a near perfect online scam: with hacked social security numbers and other personally identifying fragments flooding the web, fraudsters need only create a free TurboTax account to siphon away someone else's refund. And because TurboTax allows filers to pay for the price of the software with their refund before they actually receive it, there's no need to submit or falsify a credit card number—it's free money for both Intuit and crooks.

Even more disturbingly, MacDougall says he was brushed off by management when he told them their company was providing an extremely easy and effective way to steal from the very people it purports to help:

"Complainant repeatedly raised issues with managers, directors, and even [a senior vice president] of the company to try to rectify ongoing fraud, but was repeatedly rebuffed and told Intuit couldn't do anything that would 'hurt the numbers'," MacDougall wrote in his SEC filing. "Complainant repeatedly offered solutions to help stop the fraud, but was ignored."

Intuit denies that it has a large fraud problem, or that it deliberately allowed fraud to take place because it was good for its bottom line. Which, of course, because that's the response from every thoroughly evil corporation when they're caught with their pants down. I suggest using a certified accountant, because there's a statistically much lower chance that you'll be letting a sociopathic entity handle your taxes.

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: E93A 40D1 FA38 4B2B 1477 C855 3DEA F030 F340 E2C7

In addition to working tirelessly on her forthcoming teen vampire novel Balancing on Heels, Kristin Cavallari designs mid-priced jewelry that retails online. This fact was recently brought to our attention by Kristin, who posted a photo of said jewelry on her Instagram account along with the name of her line: Emerald Duv.

Emerald Duv.

Duv.

Doov? Duhv? Dee Yoo Vee?

Since EmeraldDuv.com provides no pronunciation clarification—the ABOUT US page states only that Emerald Duv jewelry is handmade "in Bali & L.A." with lots of love, and the rest of the site consists primarily of photos of Kristin wearing a bikini, pigtail braids, and three to four pounds of silver and turquoise jewelry she designed herself—we contacted the company via email for an explanation.

Here is what we wrote:

Good afternoon,

How do you pronounce "Emerald Duv"?

And here the email Kristin's design partner Chelsea Bulte sent in response:

Ah.

[Photo via Getty]

Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich, one the leading Republican candidates for governor of the state, died in a St. Louis hospital on Thursday after shooting himself in his home, the Associated Press reports.

"Everything at this point suggests that it is an apparent suicide," Clayton Police Chief Kevin Murphy told reporters Thursday afternoon, saying there was "nothing to suggest anything other than that."

Minutes before the 911 call was made from his home, Schweich reportedly called the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to request an interview concerning "Schweich's belief that a top state GOP official had spread false information about him."

An editor at the newspaper says that in the days leading up to his death, Schweich had privately shared plans to accuse Missouri GOP Chairman John Hancock of making anti-Semitic remarks against him.

According to Hancock, Schweich—who had Jewish heritage but attended an Episcopalian church—called the chairman last November to say "he was aware I had made anti-Semitic remarks," a claim Hancock calls "demonstrably untrue."

"This whole thing doesn't make any sense," Hancock told the Post-Dispatch. "Three months of allegations about me that are not true don't make any sense. Suicide doesn't make any sense. It is a tragedy."

[Image via AP Images]

Today Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall tweeted the following blind item:

It's weird seeing columnist explain what really counts as rape when you've seen a woman cringe when she's subjected to his unwanted groping.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 26, 2015

So who is Marshall talking about? We couldn’t find any recent columns in a mainstream outlet about “what really counts as rape,” and Marshall didn’t respond to an email requesting clarification. We did come across a few hints, though.

The first hint: If you search Marshall’s Twitter history for “rape” and “columnist,” you’ll find exactly one prior tweet, from February 2014, in which Marshall uses both of those words:

WSJ Columnist: Women need to step up and take their share of the blame for date rape. http://t.co/cI6dkxtDur #youreadthatright

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 12, 2014

The columnist mentioned in that link, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, argued at the time that “what is called the problem of ‘sexual assault’ on campus is in large part a problem of reckless alcohol consumption, by men and women alike.”

The second hint: Earlier today, Taranto mockingly linked to a column of Marshall’s on Twitter (using a picture of himself standing next to the 2014 Mel Bechner painting Ha Ha):

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! http://t.co/A1ji7YGs97 pic.twitter.com/RFgTSy1gOF

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) February 26, 2015

Perhaps all of these tweets are somehow related?

If you have any other theories, shoot us an email.

Since it hit Tumblr yesterday, the image below has started an internet schism that may never be healed. Some maniacs, it seems, see the dress as gold and white, while other completely reasonable people see it as blue and black.

This is not a joke. This is not a prank. This dress is blue and black but some people say it's not.

Buzzfeed even opened a poll to try to get to the bottom of this, and things are looking bad for the side of the sane:

In private discussions, Gawker staff have been unable to agree on the color of the goddamn dress or develop a workable theory as to why it appears different colors to different people. With that in mind, please take our own poll below, and remember, there's only one right answer (blue).