This Times Headline Is Not An Error [Publicity Stunts]

Thank you, everyone who is awake right now, for emailing us about the nytimes.com headline pictured at left. I hope you don't feel bad when I tell you that it's not a "major fuck up," as one tipster put it. The headline is, in fact, "[headline about unlikely broadway musical]", which is kind of meta, un-Times-ian joke title for a story about a real play called "[title of show]." Even one Gawker editor, who IMed me, hysterical, was briefly fooled. Please, Times, it unnerves and confuses everyone when you put on these airs. It's like an old person trying to talk like a teenager. [additional point about Times trading onetime air of unimpeachability for presumption of error!] [Times]

New York Yuppies Suffer [Parochial News]

"Turmoil on Wall Street, with thousands of jobs being lost in the wake of the housing crisis, was blamed for New York's drop from first to fourth in the Forbes survey of upward mobility... San Francisco leap-frogged over New York into the yuppie top spot thanks to a more diversified economy." [UPI]

Fox News Chief Buys Newspaper [Journalismism]

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes bought his very first newspaper! It's a tiny paper, upstate, and was a gift to his his third wife, or at least that's the cover story. The wife, Elizabeth Ailes, is a former NBC News executive and big supporter of George W. Bush who told the Times (the Times? go figure) the "quaint paper" will "probably stay the same." In other words, the staff is already learning how to work Keith Olbermann insults into virtually any story, and reporters for competing community papers should start burning their garbage. [Times]

New Julia Allison Thing: Horizontal Blogging [Protocelbrities]

So Julia Allison and fellow internet fameballs Meghan Asha and Mary Rambin have launched their big new project thing, Non Society, which they describe as "YOUR WINDOW INTO OUR CRAZY LIVES." On the site, they are each "lifecasting," which consists of taking the Tumblr blogs they already had and turning them sideways, so they scroll horizontally. CRAZY. Also, they made a four-minute video in which Allison rides on the lap of a zamboni driver, Asha poses topless with an iPhone and Rambin buys merchandise without insurance. CRAZY. The video is filled with the sort of footage the trio was already shooting, but heavily-edited, MTV style, and with an Aerosmith song in the background ("Pink"). This is the "online show" Allison talked about after she was fired from Star magazine, the one for which she lined up outside investment? That actually is truly crazy. Intro video after the jump.

[Non Society]

Obama Camp Finds New Yorker Cover "Tasteless" [God Damn America]

This is the New Yorker's new cover, depicting Barack Obama and his wife Michelle in the Oval Office. It accompanies a big article about how Obama maybe was not always about CHANGE but in fact may have been a skilled Chicago politician at some point. The cover promises to become an election flashpoint, and the presumptive Democratic nominee's campaign has already called it "tasteless and offensive." The caricature, according to the Huffington Post, "combines every smeary right-wing stereotype imaginable" about Obama. Ha ha, as if. Sure, the stereotypes about Obama being a flag-burning terrorist muslim and Michelle being an ashamed-of-America black power revolutionary are all there, but shouldn't Obama somehow also be an aloof Harvard elitist who hates "bitter" working-class whites? Instead, he's in rags and robes, with no jewelry or caviar or sociology texts and so forth. Anyway, the cartoonist said he's trying to mock the stereotypes, not perpetuate them:

I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.

Rachel Sklar, who jumped on the story over at the Huffington Post, isn't buying it:

...it's got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama's campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who's tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who's tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism— well, here's your image.

Right, because if there's one source right-wing scaremongers love to cite, it's the New Yorker!

Jake Tapper of ABC News agrees with Sklar:

Knowing the liberal politics of the magazine, I believe the magazine's staff when they say the illustration is meant ironically, as a parody of the caricature some conservatives (and some supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.) are painting of the Obamas.

But it's still fairly incendiary, at least as these things go. I wonder what the reaction would be were it the Weekly Standard or the National Review putting such an illustration on their covers.

Intent factors into these matters, of course, but no Upper East Side liberal — no matter how superior they feel their intellect is — should assume that just because they're mocking such ridiculousness, the illustration won't feed into the same beast in emails and other media. It's a recruitment poster for the right-wing.

So participants in important political discussions, especially those who have loud voices by dint of talent, power or medium of publication, should tailor their self-expression in such a way that it can't possibly be misappropriated by extremists! Gee, that sounds familiar.

Well, this is the part in the campaign where we find out who among Barack Obama and his supporters truly do want to set aside the melodramatic hysterics that have cropped up around political dialog in this country over the past seven years, and who is instead destined to join the extreme right in opposing a long and proud American tradition of brazen free speech and rough-and-tumble dialog that have all too often been set aside in recent years in the name of sensitivity — patriotic or otherwise.

Or maybe I'm just sensitive because these anti-French-defamation people weren't happy with my own caricature of stereotypes over the weekend. Whatever, talk amongst yourselves!

[Huffington Post]

Spitzer Hooker Keeping It Classy [Gawker Stalker]

Stalker sighting, via email: "Just saw Ashley Dupre, ex-gov Spitzer's prostitute, at the Parker House in Sea Girt; Jersey Shore NJ. She was hanging out conspicously with a group of girls. Wearing a white halter string bikini top with her cell phone tucked in between her ta-tas. She was petite and had muscular shoulders and arms. She looked good but unfortunately had a flock of elder (gentle)men hanging around her group." See? The iPhone is not for everyone, Apple people.

One More Thing: Greatest Films of the 90s [Nostalgia]

Sure, our end-of-the-day video-fests are usually about the 70s and 80s, but the 90s were pretty long ago. And, the fact is, it was a fairly rocking decade for the cinema. So let's celebrate it! I'll get us started with an instant classic.

Why Queens Rules [Photos]

This incredible walkway through the treetops is the Rhizotron, and it's Kew Gardens, Queens. Seriously! It's five minutes from me and I never even knew about it. More shots after the jump. Update: How could this be five minutes from me without my knowing it? Coz it's in Kew Gardens, London. To be fair, Forest Park in Kew Gardens, NY, is fairly huge, and should totally have one of these. And ponies.

[NoisyDecentGraphics]

Forget the Sharks, the Snakes are Coming! [Snakes!]

There's that cuddly animal video I was looking for! Over 100 totally deadly snakes confiscated from an illegal reptile dealer in Frankfort, Kentucky! You southerners! What will you think of next? Video after the jump.

San Francisco Columnist Declares Giddy Victory Over Angry Evangelicals [Politics]

Couldn't we all use a little feel-good vitriol right about now? "Hey, remember the angry evangelicals? The quivering clan of militant Christoholics who propelled Bush into office and seized the national narrative for a few terrifying moments about five years back, ran deep into the woods with it and rubbed it all over their naughty bits in a frenzy of fear and confusion and lust for all things homophobic and saccharine and spiritually denigrating? Dying. Nearly dead. Gasping their last. Very soon to be a footnote, a caricature, a gag, a punch line, blasted to the dustbin of history like dried housefly limbs after a sneeze. You should know this now."

You were not much younger than you are right now. As the Bush era crested, as the neocons' power reached nuclear levels, when female nipples and f-words and evil gay agendas ruled the news, the evangelical Right — led by the most virulent, spittle-flecked gaggle of mental throwbacks to ever stain the American newswires, Focus on the Family (Dr. James Dobson's clan) and the American Family Association and its nefarious leader, the Rev. Donald Wildmon — these groups controlled, for a brief, awful moment, the national dialogue. They were the temporary arbiters of taste, the warped conscience of a freaked-out culture. And lo, it was ugly.

Rejoice, won't you? For their time is over.

Did you know the AFA recently boycotted McDonald's? That's right, this once semi-powerful tub of right-wing brain-caulk recently declared a comestible fatwa against America's foremost purveyor of toxic foodstuffs because, apparently, some high-ranking McD's VP just joined the board of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, which, to the AFA, somehow translates directly into free pink condoms and mind-controlling rainbow flags in every toxic God-fearing Happy Meal.

Did you read about that? No? Of course you didn't. Here is why: No one cared. Well, that's not quite true. McDonald's sort of cared, just enough to write up a nice letter of response to Wildmon stating, in essence, that the AFA is a bunch of troglodytic knuckle-draggers with the sociosexual awareness of a fungal spore, and they should crawl away right now before God spanks them even harder with the 2x4 of total irrelevance.

I might be exaggerating. What they actually said was: Thank you, AFA, for your hateful consideration, but we support our employees' right to join whichever socially responsible and positive groups they like. And thusly did McD's flick the AFA away like a tick from a dog. Isn't that amazing? [San Francisco Gate]

Here's What I Missed [News]

I should not have dared venture out. Lots of important stuff happened! Hellboy 2 made $35.9 million. Brad Pitt cut the umbilical chord! John McLaughlin called Barack Obama "Oreo"—sort of. The Times' public editor wondered at length about using the word "nuts" in his paper. Somebody leaked a photo of Miley Cyrus in a wet T-shirt, and then she got a manicure! And Jose Canseco got his ass kicked. Now that we're all caught up, I'm gonna look for some cute animal videos.

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