News: Matt Damon, Cannes, Eggless Chicken, FDA

The Knoxville City Council voted to pass a non-discrimination hiring policy.

In other Tennessee news, the state senate passed a bill prohibiting the censorship of students' religious views, even if those views include verbally discriminating against LGBT people.

Jake Gyllenhaal is headed to the stage to star in the off-Broadway production of Nick Payne's If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet.

Mystery solved? "A Sri Lanka hen has given birth to a chick without an egg, in a new twist on the age-old question of whether the chicken or the egg came first."

Colon versus cologne.

James Franco on James Franco.

Simon Cowell puts gay rumors to rest in a new book about the mogul. “If I was gay, why wouldn’t I admit it? It wouldn’t harm me and my mother wouldn’t freak out," he said. Meanwhile, that same book claims that The Voice coach Jessie J is a lesbian, but was told to tell the public that she's bisexual. She claims that's a lie.

Atlanta gay activist Ken Britt announced that he's running for the state's House of Representatives.

Matt Damon offers George W. Bush love for the former president's work on HIV/AIDS: "I would kiss George W. Bush on the mouth for what he did on PEPFAR." Damon says he would kiss Bush for a total of three seconds with no tongue.

Michele Bachmann claims President Obama is "waving a tar baby" to distract from gas prices. "Tar baby" is of course a term often used as a pejorative for black people.

President Obama is way more likeable than Mitt Romney, say voters, but the men are still pretty close in campaign polls.

Joe The Plumber thinks he's got God's vote in his bid to become a congressman.

Director, writer and general cinematic philosopher Werner Herzog did not realize for 35 years that John Waters is gay. "For me, a man is a man. I cannot distinguish a gay man from a straight man. I just cannot distinguish. Unless the man comes in drag and is so obviously gay, then I would notice."

Ryan Murphy has revealed some new details about the forthcoming second season of American Horror Story. Sorry, still no shirtless Dylan McDermott.

Right wing group Traditional Values Coalition is going after the National Institute of Health for using images of naked men on an HIV awareness website. It's "gay porn," says the organization's president, Andrea Lafferty.

Sir Anthony Hopkins really looks like Alfred Hitchcock.

Students at Western Connecticut State University are calling on the FDA to lift its archaic ban on gay men giving blood.

Dream date? President Obama's reelection campaign is raffling off a dinner with him and George Clooney.

Is Invisible Children, the evangelical-backed group behind Kony 2012, trying to overshadow Day of Silence, the annual event that combats anti-gay bullying in schools?

Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman sing on set for Les Miserables.

Rachel Maddow was "totally shocked" when Keith Olbermann was fired from Current.

A full list of all the movies competing at Cannes.

Keith Olbermann Tells David Letterman He's a 10-Million-Dollar Chandelier That Didn't Fit the House: VIDEO

Keith Olbermann explains his departure from Current TV to David Letterman:

"If you have a 10-million-dollar chandelier, you should have a house to put it in. Just walking around with a 10-million-dollar chandelier isn't going to do anybody a lot of good, and it's not going to do any good to the chandelier.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Keith Olbermann to Sue Current TV After Being Fired

Current TV has parted ways with Keith Olbermann.

Wrote Network founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt in a statement:

Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers.  Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it. 



We are moving ahead by honoring Current's values.  Current has a fundamental obligation to deliver news programming with a progressive perspective that our viewers can count on being available daily -- especially now, during the presidential election campaign. Current exists because our audience desires the kind of perspective, insight and commentary that is not easily found elsewhere in this time of big media consolidation.

Olbermann replied on Twitter that he will sue the network:

I'd like to apologize to my viewers and my staff for the failure of Current TV. Editorially, Countdown had never been better. But for more than a year I have been imploring Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to resolve our issues internally, while I've been not publicizing my complaints, and keeping the show alive for the sake of its loyal viewers and even more loyal staff. Nevertheless, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract.

It goes almost without saying that the claims against me implied in Current's statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently. To understand Mr. Hyatt’s “values of respect, openness, collegiality and loyalty,” I encourage you to read of a previous occasion Mr. Hyatt found himself in court for having unjustly fired an employee. That employee’s name was Clarence B. Cain. http://nyti.ms/HueZsa

In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out. For now, it is important only to again acknowledge that joining them was a sincere and well-intentioned gesture on my part, but in retrospect a foolish one. That lack of judgment is mine and mine alone, and I apologize again for it.

Olbermann will be replaced by a program hosted by Eliot Spitzer.

Meet Rhiannon Pyle, the NH Student Who Confronted Santorum Over Same-Sex Marriage

Buzzfeed speaks with Rhiannon Pyle, who confronted Rick Santorum on same-sex marriage yesterday: "When I got that opportunity I was like, I got this."

She says she wish she'd pushed harder: "I wish he'd answered about that because he just kind of like didn't even answer that part of it."

In other Santorum news, Dan Savage wrote a piece for The Guardian about Santorum's "homophobic frothing" and appeared on Keith Olbermann's show on Current TV on Tuesday night, reminding viewers that not only does Santorum have an anti-gay agenda, but an anti-straight one as well.

Writes Savage:

But Rick Santorum and the GOP have a much bigger problem on their hands than a joke my readers made at Santorum's expense nearly eight years ago. The GOP's doubling down on homophobia, the non-stop gay bashing, is going to cost them votes – and not just the votes of 9,000,000 (or more) LBGT Americans out there, but, again, the votes of tens of millions of our straight family members, friends and coworkers.

Watch the Olbermann clip, AFTER THE JUMP...

Lt. Dan Choi Ejected from Bradley Manning Trial, Thrown Off Base: VIDEO

Lt. Dan Choi, who was thrown out of the courtroom at the Bradley Manning trial, talks about his view of the proceedings as a "show trial". Olbermann agrees that it is "ridiculous even by military standards".

FireDogLake has a report on Choi's ejection from the trial and the base, during which the rank was ripped from his uniform:

Choi, a West Point graduate, went to the Manning trial because “soldiers stand up for integrity, and if the code of ethics and army values are important, then we should support Bradley Manning.” He added that Manning’s actions were not only in the interest of his unit, but also in the interest of the country. “He believed that our country as a whole needed to have integrity. The law of land warfare says that if a soldier sees a crime — a rape or a murder — it’s their responsibility to report it. As I understood it, he brought it up to the chain of command. The chain of command knew about it, and they were the ones who were in violation of the law of land warfare. To not report it is to be complicit. He was the only soldier in the chain of command to do the right thing, so that’s why we have to support him.”

Watch Choi's appearance on Olbermann, in which he discusses the trial, and his ejection, AFTER THE JUMP...

And if you're following the trial, there are several updates HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Towleroad Guide to the Tube #940

I INVENTED AUTOTUNE: The lost footage of Barbara Walters' interview with Cher.

KEITH OLBERMANN: His special comment on taking back governance  from politicians.

I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW IN MY DREAMS: Tiffany and Debbie Gibson do The View.

GULP: The world's largest stop-motion animation, shot on a Nokia N8.

For recent Guides to the Tube, click HERE.