CelebrityLike.com - Celebrity News 24/7 » Gawker » October 10, 2008

Yesterday we brought you the epic, outraged email chain that ensued when Hip Hop Weekly mistakenly sent an invite for a fancy party it was throwing to a list of freelancers who hadn't been paid for their work. It only took one day for them to propose a class-action lawsuit and a protest march. Energetic! And while half of HHW's leadership is apparently trying to calm everyone down, the other half is dealing with the situation by screaming threats over the phone:

From an unpaid photographer on the email list:

Dave Mays, by the way, is a guy who founded The Source while he was a student at Harvard, and built it into one of the most respected hip hop magazines ever—until he let it all go to hell. Benzino is a Boston thug rapper-turned-magazine exec who came in and helped run The Source into the ground, doing things like inserting features about his own rap group into the magazine just before publication. He has inspired much fear in writer types during his media career. The highlight of Benzino's hip hop career is probably being dissed by Eminem in this song:

[More on the fallout from Thaddaeus McAdams at Exclusive Access]

The McCain campaign is stirring up something dark and vicious in the national psyche. The economic meltdown that's killing their campaign is also aiding it's rageful death rattle—people are scared, uneasy, and increasingly pissed off. McCain rallies sound this close to turning violent. (Pictured: McCain winces slightly after an audience member calls Obama "a terrorist.") "Responsible" Republicans are weirded out. Irresponsible ones think they can stir the folks up just enough to win this sucker and then we'll all go back to being polite. Fat fucking chance.

Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds us of the anger of Jerry Falwell and "legitimate" right-wing attacks on activists like Dr. King:

These men didn't kill Martin Luther King, but they contributed to an atmosphere of nationalism, white supremacy and cheap unreflective patriotism that ultimately got a lot of people killed. Confronted with Aparthied South Africa, men like Helms and Falwell used the same "communist" defense. While Mandela wasted away in prison, they dismissed the whole thing as a communist plot.

Let me be clear—This is the ghost that McCain Campaign is summoning. This is the Ring Of Power that they want to wield. The Muslim charge, the "Hussein" thing is nothing more than today's red-baiting, and it is what it was then—a cover for racists. You may say I'm overreacting, and I really hope you're right. 999,000 out 1 million times we'll go on like normal and proceed to Election Day. But if some shit pops off, the thug and thug-mongers will not be able to throw up their hands and say "How could I have known?" Ignorance will not save them. Their stupidity is a scourge on us all.

Joe Klein is scared of what McCain's enabling:

Watch the tape of the guy screaming, "He's a terrorist!" McCain seems to shudder at that, he rolls his eyes... and I thought for a moment he'd admonish the man. But he didn't. And now he's selling the Ayres non-story full-time. Yes, yes, it's all he has. True enough: he no longer has his honor. But we are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower. But McCain hasn't done the right thing all year. His campaign is appalling, as the New York Times editorial board said today—and more, it is a national disgrace.

We forget how much Democratic governments engender violent hatred. The '60s weren't just shitty music and hideous clothes, they were a violent near-revolution. The 1930s were an era of extreme vitriol from the nation's right-wing. The polite front was Congressional rebellion and checks on Roosevelt's power—the less polite part was Father Coughlin preaching fascism and Lindbergh and Ford practicing it. The '90s had Waco and the weird Militia culture and Timothy McVeigh.

Honestly a Barack Obama presidency was always going to stir up the extreme members of society, but to play into it? To feed off of it? It's fucking irresponsible. Rallying the base always means satisfying the furthest out-there elements, but they've taken on the tone of George Wallace's racist campaign. Mocking John Kerry as a Frenchified sissy is a bit different than encouraging people to assume the guy who'll probably be our next president is a secret Muslim terrorist black power '60s radical extremist baby-murderer.

It's all basically a nasty, nasty preview of what we could be in for in an Obama administration. With particularly rabid conservatives already declaring the election pre-stolen by ACORN and (horror of horrors) the poor, black, and homeless (how ACORN is rigging public opinion polls has not yet been adequately explained), the illegitimacy of Obama's presidency will always be a convenient excuse for seething hatred.

And with the economy heading south? With a rise in unemployment probably on the way? With a full-blown recession around the corner? We anticipate a resurgence of Lou Dobbs nativism. The Times is already warning that crime could come roaring back to our rapidly gentrified city:

Whatever fate awaits New Yorkers, many say they are bracing for a crime increase, particularly in petty crimes, if the economy gets worse. But opinions are mixed about whether any signs of disorder have already begun.

Mya Bee, 34, a filmmaker from a Brooklyn neighborhood once ravaged by crime, said that while it was still too early to gauge the full impact of the economic downturn, she had begun to notice some troubling trends. People seem less confident, she said. Some were selling personal belongings. One friend told her he had pulled his money out of the bank.

“When you can’t use your credit cards, it will get worse,” said Ms. Bee, a resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant. “I know when people are really, really feeling it, it’s going to get bad. When that happens, all hell will break loose. People will resort to their old methods of making money, whether it’s robbing or stealing or hustling.”

If the cities fall apart? Obama can't control the Blacks. If the Rust Belt keeps failing? Obama doesn't care about the Whites.

Then, in 2010, if things really suck, we'll get a rerun of the 1994 Republican revolution, with a new, crazier, more nativist breed of lunatics hell-bent on making Obama into the nation's biggest villain. Anti-immigration violence doesn't sound too outside the realm of possibility.

This is all, obviously, worst-case scenario fear-mongering, but things look fucking grim right now. A pissed-off newly poor populace is never a great sign for anyone in a position of power. A minority in a position of power faces god knows what challenges.

Thanks, then, to American Hero John McCain for stirring shit up as much as possible weeks before the election.

Either our nation's elite reporters are all snoozing, or our nation's young new bailout chief Neel Kashkari is a pretty boring guy (likely). But the WSJ today, after an exhaustive investigation, did manage to dig up this nugget: "'Everyone at Goldman has a full head of hair and went to prep school and Dartmouth and played lacrosse. That’s not Neel,' said an investment banker who knew him." Hey, remember Kevin Pollak in The Usual Suspects? "Did you put that together yourself, Einstein? Whattaya, got a team of monkeys working around on the clock on this?" [WSJ]

[Laurens Conrad and Bosworth, of "The Hills," in Los Angeles last night; image via WENN]

Fox Business Network is so happy for this whole Wall Street meltdown thing. Why just recently they finally got an audience that's actually big enough to measure! But even if you agree with many economic experts that Fox Business Network is the financial news equivalent of The Learning Annex, you have to admire their plucky use of ads to snipe at CNBC. They have a new one about how wrong Jim Cramer has been about everything involving money! Which is factually true. Here it is:

[via NYO]

Oh, good: at the same time that parents nationwide find that their savings have evaporated, their children are becoming increasingly strident about harassing them to buy solar panels, hybrid cars, and organic produce. Not only that, but apparently our tax dollars are funding public schools that turn out an army of little Green giants ready to scream over watered lawns and plastic bags. You can almost see their parents smiling tightly through gritted teeth: "That's...good, very good." But as soon as a reporter calls, the adults are ready with an entire litany of annoying complaints:

“They’re on my case about getting a hybrid car. They want me to replace all the light bulbs in the house with energy-saving bulbs.”

Do they have jobs?

In Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, Jan Schmidt, a stay-at-home mother, and Mark Goetz, a professor of furniture design, have watched, amazed, as their 4-year-old son chastises them for letting the water run while they brush their teeth. “He’ll come over and turn it off and say, ‘Every day is Earth Day,’ ” Ms. Schmidt said. “He learned it at school.”

Ha, I bet she said that happily.

“They’ll say, ‘Mom, I thought we weren’t supposed to use plastic bags,’ ” she said.

Douglas and Alison Distefano, of Rumson, N.J., who have two children, dubbed their fifth grader, Olivia, “the recycling militant general.”

That's nice, sweetie.

Paul Wyckoff, a writer in Hunterdon County, N.J., said his 15-year-old son, Will, yells at him for “leaving the car idling for a few seconds in the driveway.” He has even taken to turning off nightlights to save energy.

“My philosophy is get the big stuff,” Mr. Wyckoff said. “I think he takes it too far. But I’m proud of him. I think he’ll moderate with age.”

Kids: shut up. You're turning your parents into Republicans. [NYT]

The spectacle of a slighted novelist going on a gossip blog and defending themselves in the comments—then starting a nutty Tumblr and throwing a "Take Back the Internet" party—is now referred to as the "Gessen Method" by a Texas publication. They're referring to n+1 editor and first-time novelist Keith Gessen. He has now been branded—much to his chagrin, we're sure—not as the next young literary man but "is an icon—a symbol—a cautionary tale about Internet conflict and the way we deal with it."

But imagine living your life under an Internet microscope, where total strangers are invited to criticize your life, your work, your romantic choices, and your psychology in front of a jeering audience of commenters. Gessen-bashing briefly replaced alcohol abuse as the favorite sport of NYC blog commenters, and in his zeal to respond, Keith did everything wrong...

The smarter you are, the less likely you are to respond appropriately when you are attacked on the Internet... Writers, academics, executives— successful people are more likely to handle this wrong because they have been trained, more or less, to expect rational behavior from their peers. [Lubbock Online]

Even though it's hard—so hard—and we don't always follow our own advice, the only way to deal with a blog-avalanche is to ignore blog commenters, bloggers, and blogs in general. Try avoiding the entire Internet if you have a book coming out, actually—the last thing you need to be wasting your time with is obsessively checking your Amazon rankings. Work on your next book, but don't be tempted for one second to make it include more than a cursory reference to Internet culture, Candace Bushnell.

As we mentioned earlier, it's all too possible that another depression might be upon us. So how are to act, what are we to feel, what songs are we to sing? To find some answers, we dove into YouTube and (with some help from Metafilter) found 20 clips from 20 films about the Great Depression of the 1930's. They just might provide valuable insights into what the future holds. Watch and learn after the jump.

It's a Wonderful Life
A suicidal man named George Bailey is given a second chance at life after an angel shows him the good deeds of his past, including keeping people calm during a pre-Depression bank run.

Grapes of Wrath
Okies in the Dustbowl struggle to live amongst dying crops and farm foreclosures.

Ironweed (Sort of graphic, maybe NSFW)
A pair of ne'er do wells (Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson) rage and romance in Depression-era Albany.

Bonnie & Clyde
Clyde Darrow and Bonnie Parker, played by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, take to the bank robbing life during the 1930's. They meet a bullety end.

Annie
A bunch of orphans struggle through the Depression, hoping for rescue. Songs include "The Hardknock Life" and "We Would Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover."

Paper Moon
A grifter and his precocious young daughter con their way through 1930's America.

Road to Perdition
A stoic hitman for the Chicagoland mob, Tom Hanks, takes to the road after his associates turn on him. Really a stunningly beautiful film, the last shot by the great cinematographer Conrad Hall. A modern classic.

Of Mice and Men
From the Steinbeck novel about a pair of migrant farmers roaming 1930's California.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Coen brothers' Depression-set adaptation of 'Ulysses,' about prison escapees and the music they make.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
A grueling dance marathon contest is held during the Depression, in which desperate people compete for hours and days while a cruel emcee manipulates them.

The Purple Rose of Cairo
A bored and sort of sad 1930's gal (Mia Farrow) enjoys a romance with a movie character come to life (Jeff Daniels) in this Woody Allen comedy.

Cradle Will Rock
A truly beautiful film about art and censorship, "Cradle Will Rock" tells the story of a controversial play and the artists who struggled to keep it running. Please watch.

Modern Times
The Charlie Chaplin silent classic about his famous Tramp character navigating a troubled modern world.

Dogville
A disturbing but compelling film, Danish director Lars von Trier strips away all the scenery to tell the story of a Depression-era daughter of the mob (Nicole Kidman) who is first welcomed, then exploited by the denizens of a small Colorado town. Not for the faint of heart.

Hallelujah I'm a Bum
An Al Jolson musical about hobos.

Hard Times
A Charles Bronson rock 'em sock 'em about a street fightin' drifter during the Depression.

The Color Purple
The story of a kept woman, Celie, and her struggles to find her inner strength in the Depression-era Deep South.

Angela's Ashes
It went to Europe, too! The movie adaptation of Frank McCourt's memoir about his youth in Ireland.

Rambling Rose
Laura Dern's daddy, Robert Duvall, sells her into prostitution. Basically.

Gold Diggers of 1933
A silly musical about actresses. Features the Depression classic "We're In The Money."

Who's to blame for this mess? That's what the American people want to know, right? Nobody wants to hear about intricate economic factors that combined in unforeseen ways to predicate an economic collapse. We want scapegoats! The media, politicians, and plain old dumb people on the street who don't know what the hell they're talking about have all picked out their favorite villains in this national crisis. We take a look at the top ten, after the jump:

Dick Fuld: The CEO who destroyed Lehman Bros. What a dick, ha. He was a famously Type-A personality and hard charger till his firm crumbled to dust, thanks largely to his leadership. Then some angry employee knocked Fuld out at the company gym. Even mild-mannered Anderson Cooper blames Fuld in this video clip. You gotta admit, he looks worse than almost anyone right now.


Henry Paulson: Oh, Treasury Secretary Paulson. You picked a time to take your job. Every bad think in America is your fault! Your habit of walking around and looking grave failed to save the US economy. If Paulson could turn this whole thing around before he leaves office, he'd be a hero. But he can't, so he'll be a goat of historic proportions.


Alan Greenspan: Just this week the Times ran a devastating takedown of Greenspan's legacy. He was the Fed chairman for more than a decade, but got out just in time to miss this whole crisis. But in retrospect, Greenspan was obviously not the genius everyone thought. "The financial system as a whole has become more resilient," he remarked in 2004. Dude that was so wrong.


Christopher Cox: American hero John McCain thinks that SEC chairman Cox let the ship sink on his watch! According to McCain (watch the clip for a taste), Cox "betrayed the public" trust by doing nothing while short sellers and their devious brethren undermined the US economy.


Neel Kashkari: The 35-year-old former Goldman Sachs banker hasn't even started leading the government bailout plan, and already everyone is convinced he'll fail! They say he's too young, too inexperienced, too conflicted, and too bald. We'll overlook all that (at least until he has a couple weeks on the job), but the fact that he proudly declared himself "a free market Republican" is a wee bit scary.


George W. Bush: Sure, Bush is the natural guy to blame for all this. Why didn't he read the lessons of history from 1992, or 1976, or 1932, or one of many other years? But then you remember: he can't read. As much as we would all like to blame him, Bush is far too stupid to be responsible for something as complicated as this. Sigh.


Herbert and Marion Sandler: These two billionaires ran Golden West Financial, which did fabulously well in the mortgage business until, you know, all its mortgages blew up. By that time the company had been bought by Wachovia, which had to eat some major losses. Bill O'Reilly thinks they may be economic villains! Saturday Night Live made fun of them! They're pretty good stand-ins for all greedy mortgage lenders.


Alan Schwartz: He was the CEO who oversaw the collapse of Bear Stearns, the first big Wall Street firm to go down. He set this whole thing off! Here's a video of him on CNBC just days before BS failed, talking about how everything was okay. Some people think he lied about his firm's health.


Jim Cramer: The shouty CNBC financial "expert" used to be a big bull on the market. Buy stocks all the time, people! Then the market collapsed. Then he had to apologize and go on TV to tell everybody to pull their cash out of the market. Forget the losses! Abandon ship! He's pretty bad at money advice, ironically.


The Financial Media: Who allowed Cramer to stand up and give all his ruinous advice? Why didn't CNBC tell us this shit was coming? Why didn't the most prestigious financial papers in the country do some digging and tell us that all the people mentioned above were crooks who would eventually drain trillions from our coffers through incompetence or corruption? The answer, of course, is that the financial media gets caught up in the madness just like everyone else, and ends up telling us whatever we want to hear. Which is why you can't forget the final scapegoat in all this, who tends to go unnamed:

The ex-model got a restraining order so that her ex-husband Peter Cook would not be allowed to let their kids watch his post-bitter-divorce interview with Barbara Walters tonight. The move is "plain, old-fashioned message management." [Daily Intel]

Immediately after his inauguration as president in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt instituted a four-day bank holiday during which insolvent institutions were closed and the survivors were given a federal seal of approval. According to Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the big economies are discussing a similarly drastic move, a closure of world markets, hopefully temporary. There's one big difference.

Roosevelt's emergency measure, which gradually restored confidence in the financial system, came after his rousing inaugural address in which he reassured Americans that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." (A clip is below.) By contrast, this international financial rescue plan has been leaked by the most corrupt and irresponsible leader in the Western world and is presumably to be discussed tomorrow by international finance ministers at a White House meeting hosted by a leader despised by foreign leaders even more than he is by the American public. But that isn't a constructive thought.

Shock! Christopher Buckley, an East Coast Intellectual Elitist, is supporting Barack Obama for president! It's funny because the intellectual end of the conservative movement has now completely dried up and blown away. And we're defining "intellectual end" broadly enough to include David Brooks btw. Here is the relevant passage from the Buckley column, printed in Tina Brown's weird Daily Brownington Post internet buzz thing:

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

Amusingly, over at NRO's The Corner, they've been running fawning friendly interviews with Chris all week. A vague request for comment on this column by Mark Steyn has not yet been answered. Presumably K-Lo and Jonah are wating for the "grownups" to weigh in seriously, or alternatively for a particularly insane email they can quote in lieu of coming up with a rosy response to this rather ominous column from a current high-profile National Review contributor.

Jeff Bercovici is reporting that CosmoGirl, Hearst's teen-targeted girlie mag, is folding. It was just confirmed by the company, which says it's consolidating the mag with Seventeen. At least it lasted slightly longer than Teen People and ElleGirl! But this could just be the first of many titles to succumb to the horrible new economic environment for mid-tier media outlets, in particular. So what other magazines are going to fold next? We have a couple of guesses. Do you?:

Men's Vogue? It's been getting thinner and thinner lately, and could be on its last legs, judging by outward appearances.

Details? The men's mag recently came out of the closet—which is nice, but no guarantee of success. It's in a challenging place, and it's not that strong. (Though we hear it's on slightly firmer footing these days than it has been at times in the past).

Your thoughts about who could be next in the comments, please. This may be the beginning of something bad.

Imagine you're a marketing intern at an online dating company that lets you video-chat with others. Part of your job is to give the lonely ladies out there a little webcam-time and pretend you like them. That's what tipster Corey does: "To be fair, it’s not so much an internship as it is emotional prostitution... It's weird and mildly unethical, but it pays well. I mean, if I have to let some 45 year old cat lady from Wyoming think we’re having an emotional affair so I can occasionally eat at Le Bateau Ivre, then so be it." We understand. But it must have been shocking for him to have the omniscient fameball trio of dating columnist Julia Allison & her Nonsociety friends pop up on his screen while he was emotionally prostituting himself. He must have felt like he truly met his match!

This morning I was wooing my usual cavalcade of shut-ins when media maven Julia Allison showed up on my screen. I took this screen shot of our session, she was accompanied by Mary Rambin and some hot chick named Meghan Asha.

Apparently they were on my site to promote their site, Nonsociety. They were kinda bitchy... but none of that really matters because they liked my scarf and said I was cute.

Considering the site, its pretty pathetic that they thought this would bring Nonsociety any press or traffic... It isn't the "Oh Fuck" School of PR, it's the "whore yourself out through every conceivable avenue" school of PR.

In this economy, we are all whores—see you at Le Bateau Ivre.

[via Katie and Corey]

So the New York Times has a great story on Barack Obama's shady illegal fundraising. Because the system is utterly broken and Obama is taking advantage of that fact to win this election. His unprecedented fundraising is democracy at its worst! Of course millions in donations from thousands of random people is not so bad, and McCain's taking advantage of the GOP bundling system that Bush developed which is really just a laundering service. Still, hey, lots of people are donating way more than is legal to Obama's campaign and that campaign is maybe not being as vigilant about checking up on this as they should be. Though honestly this story is primarily an excuse to print the funny fake names and occupations of these mysterious illegal donors:

• Last December, someone using the name “Test Person,” from “Some Place, UT,” made a series of contributions, the largest being $764, to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign totaling $2,410.07.
• Someone identifying himself as “Jockim Alberton,” from 1581 Leroy Avenue in Wilmington, Del., began giving to Mr. Obama last November, contributing $10 and $25 at a time for a total of $445 through the end of February. The only problem? There is no Leroy Avenue in Wilmington. And Jockim Alberton, who listed his employer and occupation as “Fdsa Fdsa,” does not show up in a search of public records.
• But even a contributor who used the name “Jgtj Jfggjjfgj,” and listed an address of “thjtrj” in “gjtjtjtjtjtjr, AP,” was able to contribute $370 in a series of $10 donations in August.
• A pair of donors named “Derty West” and “Derty Poiiuy,” who listed “rewq, ME” as their addresses and “Qwertyyy” or “Qwerttyyu” as either their employer or occupation, contributed a combined $1,110 in July.
• The complaint followed an article on the conservative Web site Newsmax.com that highlighted thousands of dollars in contributions, made in increments of $25 dating back to March, from “Good Will” in Austin, Tex., who listed his employer as “Loving” and his occupation as “You,” as well as thousands in small contributions that started last November from a “Doodad Pro” in Nunda, N.Y., with the same employer and occupation.
• Another donor apparently connected to Good Will and Doodad Pro, “Fornari Usa,” listed the same “Loving” and “You” under employer and occupation, and made a series of $25 donations to Mr. Obama in May, totaling $1,050.

Ha ha ha! Obama's campaign has been giving this money back, but, you know, at their own pace. Also these mysterious donations make up like $40,000 of Obama's ten gazillion dollars raised so far, but still, FRAUD. ILLEGAL FRAUD. (Also the Times is STILL IN THE TANK.)