11/16/2005
Gawker Media and Yahoo! come together in content pact?
Katrina Coda: "Remember when the feds stopped the searches and said there we no more bodies to be found, but everyone else said they were lying? They were."
Fritz Lang's Metropolis one-sheet sold for $690,000 at auction, setting new record for a movie poster.
Prince William joins HSBC, becomes office hunk: He's really impressed everyone - including the men. Everyone's dressing a bit smarter. Everyone made sure their poppies were in their lapels before Armistice Day."
Bill O'Reilly checks out Brown University's SexPowerGod party and is shocked to find that at a queer party there are "guys kissing guys and girls making out with girls."
Madonna rocks London nightclub Koko with five song set: "She is certainly one of the few fortysomething women on earth who could stand onstage playing air guitar, her arms windmilling frantically in imitation of The Who's Pete Townshend, and somehow emerge with her mystique intact."
Anderson Cooper and Ryan Seacrest join mutual admiration society. Malcontent has the clip, in which Anderson compliments Ryan's big tie and then goes on to talk about something "taking a pounding."
Homophobic killer Sean Burke, who with fellow high school student Marco Perez, bound, beat, and murdered Richard Reihl in his home after meeeting him in a gay bar in 1988, seeks a reduction in his 40 year prison sentence. The gruesome crime inspired the institution of hate crime laws in Connecticut. The AP reports, "Burke says he is back in control of his life after 17 years in prison." Unfortunately, Reihl is still dead.
Posted 10:24 AM EST by Andy Towle in Elsewhere | Permalink
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gotta love Madonna!!!!!
Posted by: Roy | Nov 16, 2005 10:54:31 AM
Goodness, they were *really* flirting shamelessly on air!
Posted by: max | Nov 16, 2005 11:31:59 AM
Self-promotion alert!
DailyBubble.com has a bunch of links containing various opinions on the Brown University SexPowerGod "scandal," for all interested. (As someone who went to the party several times as a student, they were definitely a blast!)
Posted by: j-vass | Nov 16, 2005 11:42:19 AM
Self-promotion alert!
DailyBubble.com has a bunch of links containing various opinions on the Brown University SexPowerGod "scandal," for all interested. As someone who went to the party a lot as a student, they were definitely a blast, even if you weren't blitzed out of your mind.
Posted by: j-vass | Nov 16, 2005 11:42:49 AM
That Cooper/Seacrest exchange was adorable!! I think they are in love!
Posted by: Ian | Nov 16, 2005 11:54:25 AM
Re: Sean Burke. Obviously, whether he's a different person at 35 than he was at 18 is something to be proven, but you have to admit it's possible. I think our criminal justice system is far too quick to take teens and lock them up for long terms when, I think we all know, we do stupid shit as teens that we eventually mature out of. Some people don't, of course. But I think that persons convicted as youth deserve a little extra chance to prove they've changed, and I think in fairness that has to apply even where the killer was a gay-basher.
Of course, if Burke got released early when another similarly-situated felon wouldn't, and that was because his victim was gay and somehow this made it a lesser offense, that would be wrong.
As for Riehl still being dead: Well, yes, Andy, and Riehl will still be dead even if Burke serves his 40 years. He'd still be dead even if we put Burke to death and drew and quartered his body. Nothing's going to bring Riehl back. So what's your point?
Posted by: Glenn | Nov 16, 2005 11:59:03 AM
Thanks for the info on the continued Katrina misery. I called my Congressman and will post about this on my blog as well.
Posted by: David | Nov 16, 2005 1:00:23 PM
I love how you slipped a Madonna post in there after 2 weeks of self-inflicted abstinence on her topic.
Posted by: Rob | Nov 16, 2005 1:18:11 PM
Gawker explains that they haven't been sold. Check it:http://www.gawker.com/news/gawker/gawker-media-has-not-been-sold-137696.php
Posted by: Steve | Nov 16, 2005 1:19:43 PM
Sean Burke should have gotten the death penalty. He can still laugh, love, learn, whine, f*ck, etc in prison, while Richard Riehl's still dead
Posted by: beautifulatrocities | Nov 16, 2005 1:33:26 PM
Note to Glenn: the point is JUSTICE
Posted by: beautifulatrocities | Nov 16, 2005 1:34:18 PM
Were there a Pulitizer for regularly, perfectly nailing nutjobs' dicks to a chair, Mark Morford would certainly deserve it!
Let Us Blow Up Bill O'Reilly
Of course the PR-sucking Fox News blowhard is off his nut. Again. Question is, Should you care?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
It's almost too easy. He's too easy a target, really, Bill O'Reilly of the casually toxic Fox News, too bloviated and too silly and too undercooked, and no one whose opinion you truly value or with an IQ higher than their waist size actually watches him with anything resembling intellectual honesty or takes anything he says the slightest bit seriously. You hope.
Especially when he, like Pat Robertson ranting about how gays caused Sept. 11 or that Dover, Pa., is now a doomed and godless hell pit, given how the town fired every single one the imbecilic, intelligent design-supporting Repubs from the school board, especially when Billy goes off his nut once again and essentially wishes al Qaeda would attack San Francisco, well, it is up to us to merely look at him like Shiva looks at a sea slug -- i.e., a moment of compassion for his regrettable incarnation -- and then laugh and shake our heads and move the hell on.
I mean, what else do you want to do? Allow him credence? Give his infantile words any sort of weight and import? Let him slither into your heart like a worm and fester and burn? O'Reilly is, after all, the Right's most self-aggrandizing blowhard, one who still vilifies France like a child who hates broccoli, one who has, next to Rush Limbaugh, perhaps the worst spin in all of media.
And he is one who now suggests that because San Francisco dared to ban aggressive military recruiting in our high schools so disadvantaged 18-year-olds won't be unwittingly sucked into the brutish military vortex so they can be shipped off to Iraq to die for appalling and indefensible reasons, al Qaeda should blow up Coit Tower.
What do you do with that? You laugh. Sure, file a formal complaint with the Fox network. Sure, demand that Billy be fired, which is a bit like demanding Ronald McDonald be canned from the McDonald's corporation for poisoning our children. Yes, you have to do it, even if such complaints come from someone like San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, not exactly the poster child for tact and grace when it comes to political maneuvering.
But of course, it won't make one bit of difference. BOR is still Fox's cash cow. He draws big ratings, even here in the Bay Area. And even if O'Reilly's cultural relevance is tanking right along with the bad ship BushCo, he's still getting PR for miles out of the childish comment. Hell, you're reading a column about it right now, which means all those extremist right-wing inbreeding sites get to squeal "San Francisco in Uproar Over O'Reilly Comments," and grunt and revel in our displeasure. Ah well. It matters not.
Here's the takeaway, the only thing you need to know: Bill O'Reilly is a walking, snorting cautionary tale. For those of us who occasionally tread similar terrain of barbed political commentary (tempered, I hope, with satire and hope and sex and humor and fire hoses of divine juice), he is the Grand Pariah, the threshold, the Place You Do Not Want To Go as an intellectually curious human soul. He is the guy you can always look to, no matter how bad it gets, and say, Wow, at least I'm not him.
In a way, we should be grateful for O'Reilly and Robertson and Limbaugh and Coulter and their slime-slinging ilk. They live in those black and nasty psycho-emotional places, so we don't have to. They show us how ugly we can be, how poisonous and ill, so we may recoil and say, Whoa, you know what? I think I need to be more gentle and less judgmental and kinder to those I love. BOR works an inverse effect on anyone with a vibrant and active soul -- he makes us better by sucking all the grossness into himself and blowing it out via a TV channel no one of any spiritual acumen really respects anyway.
Hell, this very column has been known to wallow in political extremes too, often and regularly wishing fiery karmic pain upon Rove and Cheney and Dubya et al. for the humanitarian and environmental and moral hells they have unleashed upon our once-prosperous, gorgeous, diverse nation, and for the wars and the homophobia and the misogyny and the rampant lies and the unchecked ignorance of the workings of the human spirit.
But I would never go so far as to wish terrorists would blow up, say, Washington, D.C. Or Bill O'Reilly's personal fetish dungeon at Fox HQ in New York. I would never take a similar BOR tack and suggest that every red state that openly supports Bush and his miserable wars (and by extension, O'Reilly and his miserable worldview) should offer up their kid as a blood sacrifice to the Iraq War.
Check that: Maybe I would. Of course I would. But I would recognize the inherent silliness of it all, and the futility, and push it so far into satire that I'd suggest we also send in the NRA, and the Bush daughters, and Ashlee Simpson, and moreover I'd suggest they string up Karl Rove as bait because you know what Islamic extremists think of creatures both godless and porcine.
Conversely, BOR, of course, takes himself quite seriously, the inflation of his ego and speed of his rapid-fire fury matched only by the obvious deterioration of his heart.
But maybe that's not quite true. It has been rumored, somewhere, that Bill O'Reilly has a soul, that he was personally hurt and wronged by that sex scandal last year, that he's reasonably intelligent and that his almost comical lack of nuanced comprehension on the air and in his public persona, like Bush's mumbling incoherence or Condi Rice's apparent lack of the slightest hint of femininity, is a bit of a stage act, a dumb ruse that masks a keener intelligence, all designed to milk his bloviation for his bloody, mealy slice of fleeting fame. You may believe this as you wish.
It does not matter. What is clear is that BOR has made a Faustian bargain of the ugliest kind, taken on a worldview where there is no room for humor and light and sex and joy and grace, whereby he gets to unleash streams of rather appalling ignorance upon the progressive segments of the nation -- like, you know, cities that dare to encourage peace and nonviolence and a measured, respectful response to the world -- and he gets paid enormous sums and lives like an angry, sneering king, while the gods of karma can only sigh, and shake their heads, and wait.
Posted by: Leland | Nov 16, 2005 3:55:30 PM
Honest, I meant to type "Pulitzer."
Posted by: Leland | Nov 16, 2005 3:56:57 PM
Os aconsejo la última entrada del blog de Lourdes Muñoz (Parlamentaria Española atrapada en el Centro de Convenciones)
12 Consejos en una catastrofe por James Nolan . Son las conclusiones de este escritor de New Orlenans después de pasar el Katrina, y especialmente de estar en una situación límite sin atención de las autoridades. A todos nos puede servir, ya que no sabemos que nos puede pasar, y sobre todo donde nos puede "pillar" una catastrofe.
http://lourdesmunozsantamaria.blogspot.com/2005/11/12-consejos-en-una-situacin-de.html
Posted by: paris | Nov 16, 2005 8:24:04 PM
you can get that poster for 9.99! Oh what people will for originals!
Posted by: Mac Adkins | Nov 16, 2005 10:00:15 PM
the thing that got me about o'reilly's coverage of our party was his associating liberals, college kids, and homos with ecstacy unfoundedly. no one went to the hospital because of ecstacy, but it's sensational to say so, no?
Posted by: james | Nov 17, 2005 12:14:41 AM
Are shorter postings read by more? Is simplicity the best or simply the easiest?
Bill O'Rielly bites... he couldn't give good head if his life depended on it, altough he probably practices daily on his family's pet... poor doggy!
Posted by: HisHolynessDPope | Nov 23, 2005 8:00:59 PM