A member of the NYU revolutionary vanguard alerted us to the pie-ing, and her note is reprinted in full below. The victims were Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, and Robert Spencer from "Jihad Watch," both of whom were there to talk about how there is apparently a Jihad, threatening America? Did you know about this?

Anyhow the kids were not about to let this intolerance of opposing viewpoints stand, so they interrupted the guys with a pie assault. Spencer himself writes about his close brush with whipped cream here. One eyewitness account says the two speakers "ended up largely unscathed." Our tipster tells us that the revolutionary cameraperson assigned to film the pie-ing for propaganda purposes "was tackled by security at the very beginning and didn't get any footage."

How are we supposed to repel the Jihadists if our military-age youth can't even stage a proper pie attack? Very troubling indeed. Full revolutionary press release-type thing below.

Islamophobic Warmongers Pied at NYU!

Tuesday, November 17, 7:15PM

NYU students disrupted a university event this evening featuring Robert Spencer from "Jihad Watch" and Elan Journo from the "Ayn Rand Institute for Individual Freedom." Students called out the panelists for their Islamophobic, warmongering hate-rhetoric, shouting and launching pies at the speakers. One student was detained, and several were escorted out of the building.

The event, entitled "The Jihad Still Threatens America," encouraged viscous Islamophobia and promoted aggressive military intervention in majority Muslim nations. Speaker Elan Journo actively promotes devastating attacks on Iran, claiming that "victory in World War II required flattening cities, firebombing factories, shops and homes, devastating vast tracts of Germany and Japan.... Victory today requires the same: smashing Iran's totalitarian regime and thus demoralizing the Islamist movement and its many supporters, so that they, too, abandon their cause as futile." Fear-mongering comments such as these promote the expansion of US imperialism, and contribute to the wave of anti-Muslim hate that is sweeping our nation.

The pieing came on the heels of an anti-hate sit-in hosted by the Islamic Center at NYU. The event was a response to NYU professor Tunku Varadarajan's recent article entitled "Going Muslim," a new term he has coined in the vein of "Going Postal" (article available at ).

While it is disturbing to see hate being expressed on such institutional levels on our campuses, the students' refusal to be silent is an inspiration to us all.

[Pic via]

In an interview on Sunday, the pilot, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, said that the book, "Fly by Wire," by William Langewiesche, "greatly overstates how much it mattered" that the plane he landed in the river, an Airbus A320, featured an automated cockpit.

Put that in your rudder stick and jerk it, nerd! Just because William Langewiesche is a former professional airline pilot and a notably painstaking research-driven award-winning writer, he may think he "knows" things, such as the extent to which automated airline technology in the Airbus contributed to its safe crash landing in the icy Hudson.

Know this, Langewiesche: Character. It resides in the breast of a man by the name of Sully. And in his balls, which didn't fall off as his crippled plane plunged inexorably downward towards watery doom. Can you say the same? We didn't think so. You want to talk about books? Sully knows about books.

What a guy! (Sully).
[Pic: Getty]

• South Park: In its famous "Cartoon Wars" episode, Cartman decides he hates Family Guy, hilarity ensues.

• Deborah Solomon: The NYT's stern question lady had a decidedly pissy interview with Seth Macfarlane last month. Sample Solomon questions: "Personally, I find the show's rape jokes especially unfunny...Why is that funny?...I would say Groening is a better colorist...Are you contemptuous of families?...Are you straight?" God, shut up, Deborah Solomon.
• Richard Lawson: Famous cultural critic who did not care for the show. He called it "crude, sloppy, shamelessly Simpsons-derivative non sequitur humor," which is relatively non-debatable, as insults go.
• Microsoft: Microsoft and their supercool ad agency Crispin Porter Bogusky were all signed up as sponsors for an upcoming prime time Family Guy special, but then somebody at Microsoft accidentally watched Family Guy, and, whoa! Microsoft can tolerate jokes about nerds, Apple, the blind, barely legal hoes, and Rwanda, but this show's "riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest" were too much, according to Variety.

Remaining Family Guy Fans:

• Seth MacFarlane: That guy is so rich now. Filthy, unclean rich.
• News Corp. Executives: Family Guy makes money.
• Millions of 18-34 year old males: Their taste is America's taste!

Let's all agree that, sure, it would probably be good from a public health standpoint if alcohol ads were banned. But that would hardly erase alcoholism. Or "binge drinking," which is a catchier way to express the phenomenon in trend stories. Every party with a stake in this issue, though, must take an absolutist, laughable position. Everyone is half right and half lying.

The doctors are obligated to overstate the persuasive effects of alcohol ads in order to convince the government to consider such a drastic, money-evaporating ban. The media outlets are obligated to make tortuous mouth-noises about being concerned about the problem and everything but look we really really need that money, sweet Jesus, please lord, we need those alcohol ads (close to $300 million worth, btw), it's a god damn recession, okay? And the ad agencies—well, as Ad Age reports:

Dave Trott, creative director of London agency Chick Smith Trott, said, "People who blame advertising for binge drinking have misunderstood the whole purpose of advertising — it's about stealing market share, not persuading people to drink."

Hahahahahaha! Alcohol advertising is not about persuading people to drink. You and your crazy notions! The truth is that humans, battered by the grim fortunes of this cold world, will often turn to the soothing but destructive embrace of the bottle. Particularly the Irish.

Ciaran O'Reilly, managing director of Refresh Digital Communications in Dublin, said, "The realities are that it would be the view of a lot of informed people that advertising is not the root cause of the problem. Living in a darker and more-miserable climate seems to have a direct correlation with alcohol levels."

[Pic via]

Towerlight editor Carrie Wood resigned after the uproar over the anonymously-written "Bedpost" column. How stiff was the opposition? One student said, "Apparently some of the residents hall show pornographic videos like on the TV's and stuff and for them to get made about an article just seems really confusing to me."

Sure! So what was so bad about this columnist telling college kids to mutually masturbate with mutual masturbations, on their privates? Grow up!

Make a lot of eye contact during the act and there's a good chance that you will both orgasm around the same time.
Want to take it to the next level? Try lying next to each other and linking arms.
Girls – add a vibrator or dildo into your routine.
Boys – find out if your girl will let you finish somewhere other than on your stomach. I tend to ask for it on my chest or back.

Later she refers to "heavy petting," which I guess is what "finish" means? No? In any case, Towson should just grow up, and then mutually masturbate as consenting young adults, for sex.

Balls.
[Pic via]

You may recall that last month Yale University Press refused to publish images of the controversial cartoons *in a book about the cartoon controversy*. Because they were scared of offending the type of religious fanatic that would find this book, hop a plane to New Haven, and burn down the Yale University Press headquarters. Even repeating that story is giving us palpitations of rage.

Anyhow, now the cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, is coming to make appearances at Yale and Princeton in the name of Free Speech. Good for him! You know what else? The cartoon did kind of suck! Were you offended by it? Go tell him that, at his appearance! Go tell him his cartoon sucked and was not funny and that you were offended by it! Call him an asshole if you must! Just don't kill anyone. That's what free speech is all about.

Fuck you, Yale University Press. See?

E&P reports from the front lines of the controversy that kids are totally not taking the fact that this comic strip ran in their school paper lying down or whatever:

"We don't care if it was a black, white, orange, purple, pink person who wrote this article," Audrey Foreback, a sophomore, told local radio station WYTV. "They should not have been allowed to print it and publish it throughout the school. It's just wrong."

That extraordinarily stupid statement appears even more stupid once you read the actual comic strip in question. Also stupid is the fact that "some students showed up at the student center with nooses around their necks in protest of the cartoon," which simply does not make sense, if the sight of a man in a noose offends you so (unless the offense is only taken when said noose is rendered in cartoon form).

Keith Knight himself is gracious about the whole thing on his blog but what he's really trying to say is: Shut up, college.

[Pic: K Chronicles]

Basically, the speech amounts to nothing more than our nation's Commander-in-Chief urging kids to stay in school, for, if they do, perhaps one day they'll be president. Floridian Republican Jim Greer was one of the first to seize up over the news, and called Obama's September 8th an attempt to "spread" his "socialist ideology." Greer then got into nitty-gritty politics, and warned that the President would simply be indoctrinating guppies with his liberal politics.

Conservatives are easily swayed, almost collective organism, so their calls for prohibition only grew more voracious. They took particular offense over the announcement that students would be encouraged to "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president."

Rush Limbaugh was soon on board. So was Glenn Beck. And then Greer reared his head on Hardball this evening. Though he and his knows Presidents often address students, this is different, because Obama's a proselytizer of anti-American madness.

The debate has become so heated, in fact, that school districts in six states are refusing to show the video, for, it would seem, they believe Greer's worries that anti-Obama kids will be "ostracized." This couldn't be further from the truth.

First of all, kids are kids and, if our increasingly dim childhood memory serves, don't care much for nitty-gritty policy. They care about recess and juice boxes. By folding to conservative pressure, schools and parents both are tacitly vilifying the President when, in fact, even if he were to discuss policy, most kids wouldn't care or would forget about it after cartoons.

Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of this outrage is that the kids are being denied an opportunity to hear directly from the President, a man to whom some civics classes — if such things still exist — encourage. Democracy goes both ways, we're taught, so wouldn't hearing a generic message about the importance of education be an important lesson in and of itself?

If you ask us, America's children would definitely benefit from hearing the President, particularly the nation's first black president, discuss the necessity of reading, writing and arithmetic. Especially since a Florida school distract just now, in 2009, removed the term "negro" from its racial background form.

Meanwhile, the White House has caved and agreed to release the speech's text ahead of the event. They also changed the announcement letter's language about "helping the president" to "write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals." Both moves only give validity to these inane, unnecessary protests.

At least the kids learned one valuable lesson: bitch loudly and often enough and you can bring the White House to its knees.

When the ad broke big, WWF in the US put out a hasty condemnation; then they said it was a spec ad from a Brazilian agency and that WWF "did not authorize its production or publication." Okay, well, maybe not exactly. Ad Age reports:

After the WWF appeared to initially deny approving the ad, DDB Brasil and the WWF hammered out a statement posted in Portuguese on both groups' Brazilian websites Wednesday afternoon apologizing for the ad and attributing it to "the inexperience of some professionals on both sides, and not bad faith or disrespect toward American suffering."

Thank you for clarifying that, in Portuguese! Upfront and bold responsibility-taking. So some people did some stupid shit and messed up, no biggie. We'd move on except that now the agency and the WWF both say they have no idea who did the video version of this ad. Mmmm hmm.

Well, thanks to anti-Beck boycott organizers ColorofChange.com, we can tell you:

Binder & Binder, Capital One, The Dannon Company, Discover, HSBC, ICAN Benefit Group Insurance, Infiniti, Jelmar (manufacturer of CLR All-Purpose Cleaner), Jordan McKenna Debt Counseling Network, Mercedes-Benz and Simplex Healthcare (creator of the Diabetes Care Club)

This latest round of blow-offs brings the total of boycotting companies to 57. At least one of the companies, Mercedes-Benz, has cited Beck's exclusionary politics as a primary motivation:

Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA) considers its commitment to Diversity and Inclusion [sic] an integral part of its corporate culture and business strategy. We believe that MBUSA's success is dependent on embracing the various cultures, nationalities and convictions of our associates and market that translate into meeting consumer needs and expectations for relevant products and services.

How long, we wonder, until Fox ditches Beck for more advertising-friendly television. His ratings are excellent, but money matters, as we all know, and it will be interesting to see how long popularity — or, rather, headline-grabbing — can trump cold, hard cash. Not long, we imagine.

The uproar, that is! And the book. But not the weed, as far as I know, because this Crrrrrrazymaking skunk only exists in Cheech & Chong movies and the imaginations of lightweights. (And in England).

Julie Myerson is a British author. She had a teenage son. He started smoking skunk and acting progressively more crazy and unmanageable, until she had to kick him out of the house. In America this is known as "being a teenager."

Then she wrote a book about her son's crazy life-destroying skunk addiction. In America this is known as "capitalizing on your own brand." Reality TV has mastered this domain! So who's to say Julie Myerson cannot tell her son's story, as unlikely as it may seem to your average American weedhead?

The British media, that's who! There was a huge uproar over whether Myerson was exploiting her kid (he said she was) and whether she's a terrible person, etc. Which, hey, helped her sell a lot of books!

Now the book's coming out in America and Myerson fears she may see the same uproar here. Unlikely. She'll see a different uproar here. Americans could not care less about exploiting the foibles of a family member through the media. That's the American dream! Our uproar will just be about where do you get this magic weed that makes you crazy?

Cause I mean in Florida they had that Kryptonite but the worst it ever did was make somebody fall off the couch.

GMAC Financial Services


ConAgra


Geico


Procter & Gamble


Progressive Insurance


Roche


Sanofi-Aventis


Radio Shack


Men's Wearhouse


Lawyers.com


Sargento

[Miss any? Email us. Pic via. Info via NYT, Politico, Previously]

To reiterate: this book, entitled The Cartoons That Shook the World, is about this cartoon controversy. But Yale told the author that it was banning not only images of the cartoons themselves, but also three other classical representations of Muhammad which were to be included. This is their reasoning, according to the NYT:

John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, said by telephone that the decision was difficult, but the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was "overwhelming and unanimous." The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Mr. Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.

So now books are no longer including any content that is "freely available on the Internet?" Time to shut down the publishing industry. The images are offensive to some people. And? Books are published about Nazis, and lynchings, and genocide, and include copious images of awful events. That is called "communicating information," and it's what books do.

May we repeat: This book is *about* these cartoons. But Yale University Press will not print the cartoon, because religious fanatics once went crazy over them.

Donatich says he fears "blood on my hands" if he publishes them. First, this is a preposterous fear, as many other experts point out in the story—the images have been shown everywhere by now. Second, John Donatich, you have zero respect for academic freedom. You live in fear of imaginary bogeymen. You value the idea of the possibility of upsetting religious zealots more highly than you value your own author's right to publish freely. Why don't you just resign?

[Or go to work for a newspaper? The NYT didn't publish the cartoon either.]

Many a nationally respected newspaper has gone wildly careening down the rabbit hole chasing a false rumor or half-baked non-story. With three companies holding joint ownership (Fox, Freemantle, and 19 Productions) and a host of oversized stars and their entourages wandering around the set, little is knowable beyond what turns up on the air. So were we wrong to say Paula quit because of money and ego?

The answer I can authoritatively state is, no. And maybe.

When Paula announced she was leaving, sources close to the former-for-now judge say that after a long, emotionally wrenching struggle with the production, she believed she was ending her Idol journey and was not just trying to ratchet up the pressure in her negotiations.

But since then rumors have persisted that doors have remained ajar; people may still be talking.

With confirmable facts being impossible to come by in the tightly controlled circle involved with Idol contracts, analyzing the rumor mill is a bit like sifting through intercepted Al Qaeda communiques; it is very hard to judge the quality of any particular bit of information, but one can attempt to judge the quantity of radio traffic. And all one can say, from looking at the web the level of chatter has become very high, with three sites separately reporting sources inside the Idol/Abdul machines that a rapprochement may be in the works. Any one of these sites is very capable of getting the story very wrong, but the fact that all three are reporting raises the threat level at least.

First with something hard was TMZ which reported last Friday:

Sources tell us Paula Abdul will make a deal with American Idol if the price is right—and we're told that price is $10 million a year.

We've already reported well-connected Idol sources say they haven't closed the door on bringing Paula back for season nine. We're told they have not communicated with Abdul since she tweeted her goodbye, and auditions start Friday—without Paula.

This morning Perez Hilton seconded this movement:

Her departure from the show wasn't a publicity stunt, but it was definitely a negotiating tactic.

Sources VERY close to Paula Abdul reveal exclusively to PerezHilton.com that the beloved judge is working to get back on American Idol.

"Don't count Paula out just yet," says our Abdrool insider, telling us that talks are being held about having Paula return and trying to come to a deal that makes sense.

And finally the most specific piece of info was posted today on Idol fan blog Joe's Place, which has broken an Idol story or two in its day.

I am hearing that when the Judges are on hand for round three of the American Idol 9 auditions, none other than Paula Abdul will be sitting at the judges table with Simon, Randy and Kara.

[UPDATE: In the minutes since this went up, Joe's Place took down their post saying Paula would be on hand for the Atlanta judging rounds. Did they hit too close to home or is the BS about Paula returning after all withering now that people are paying attention?]

As stated, any one of these places is very capable of getting the story wrong, and any source may not be as plugged in as they think they are.

So what could be behind this? Perhaps the uproar over her departure overwhelmed the Idol team. Idol is not a show that likes to say "no" to its public.

Chances are, however, that with divorce papers already submitted to the courts, the parties are focused on getting on with their lives. But there's enough out there to make one think that, just maybe, what seemed impossible is possible: Idol might stay on the front pages for yet another week of it's off-season.

Wrigley had the bright idea to pay Chris "Bubblegum" Brown to put out a pop song that was actually a Wrigley commercial—but without telling anyone it was a Wrigley commercial. The public ate it up! It went huge on pop charts! Proving that people who drive chart sales have no taste, and Wrigley has no ethics.

We issued a (futile) call for a Wrigley boycott but then it turned out Chris Brown was a terrible woman-beater so I guess karma took care of it all for us. The moral of the story is Chris Brown sucks and Doublemint tastes like old rubber bands.

The New Republic's Gabriel Sherman has learned about Wolffe's proposal for 30 Days: A Portrait of the White House at Work, which would be an insider-y, behind the scenes account of the Obama White House. Wolffe, whose book Renegade, The Making of a President chronicled the Obama campaign, and his now-revealed proposal present an ethical dilemma for the White House. Would it be acceptable for them to grant special access to the presidency to a man working on behalf of corporate interests in his side gig?

In the proposal, Wolffe writes that he has personal relationships with Obama officials at "the highest level" who have already "expressed support informally" for the project. Wolffe envisions a fly-on-the-wall account of a month inside the White House, where he'll be "capturing group dynamics and people in action."

Meanwhile the White House claims that Wolffe has yet to "formally present" his plans:

"Mr. Wolffe has not formally presented the White House with a book proposal," a White House spokesperson wrote in a statement to TNR this afternoon. "When and if he does we will evaluate it as we evaluate numerous others, taking account of all relevant factors."

And of course, Richard Wolffe doesn't see any problem with any of the things he's presently doing:

Wolffe doesn't see his corporate ties as a potential conflict. "The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on," he told Politico's Ben Smith in June. "You tell me where the line is between business and journalism."

Sherman goes on to detail an interesting encounter between Wolffe and Ben Smith that took place in an airport lounge after Wolffe read something critical Smith had written about him, a story that only adds to the avalanche of unflattering information to come out about Wolffe in the last few days.

To summarize this little media controversy: reporter Ian Shapira profiled Anne Loehr, a consultant who gets companies to pay her to explain the mysteries of Gen Y. Our own Hamilton Nolan wrote an item about it in which he reprinted four of Loehr's most laughable quotes and ridiculed them. After initially being pleased that his metro profile got some play on a widely read blog, Shapira changed his mind when he got an email from his editor: "They stole your story. Where's your outrage, man?" This led Shapira, in a piece for the Post's Outlook section, to conclude that his job is doomed. To quote steal, Shapira wrote:

The more I toggled between my editor's e-mail and the eight-paragraph Gawker item, the angrier I got, and the more disenchanted I became with the journalism business. I enjoy reading Gawker and the growing number of news sites like it — the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast and others — but lately they're making me even more nervous about my precarious career as a newspaper reporter who enjoys, at least for the time being, a salary, a 401(k) and health insurance.

Shapira is right. Blogs are killing newspapers. But it's not by mindlessly cutting and pasting from newspaper web sites. Gawker would go out of business if that's all we did.

The bigger threat is that blogs say the things that hidebound newspaper editors are too afraid to let their reporters write.

Rereading Shapira's nearly 1,600-word piece (Hamilton's post runs just over 400), the closest I can come to anything resembling a point of view is a tangled mass of clauses that takes Loehr and her consultant pablum at face value. Again to quote steal:

The collective fretting over Generation Y — also known as the millennials — has turned into an industry for entrepreneurs such as Loehr: The former Kenyan hotel executive, based in Reston, is a "leadership coach" and generational guru, one of several who market themselves to corporations, the military, and federal and local governments as anthropologists interpreting today's 70 million to 80 million 20-somethings or early 30-somethings — those who came of age with the kiddie dinosaur show "Barney," high-speed wireless Internet and Barack Obama.

Sounds riveting! Hamilton succinctly digested Shapira's piece and gave his post a headline ("'Generational Consultant' Holds America's Fakest Job") and lede ("The fakest job corporate America ever created was 'Branding Consultant' — until now") that probably resembled what Shapira wanted to write but couldn't. It's hard to imagine that in the course of working on his piece — a process that Shapira describes as two hours of sitting in on one of Loehr's courses and what must have been four truly grueling hours of transcribing the session — he didn't have a chuckle or two at lines like, "I want to touch 500,000 lives this year. I am going to touch 500,000 lives this year. I do have spreadsheets that mark how many people I am touching." He suggests as much in his Outlook piece, complaining that Hamilton got to "cherry-pick the funniest quotes." (Emphasis mine.) So why wasn't there an ounce of humor in the profile?

Now confronted with existential threats, newspaper people rarely look at the failings of their own editorial product. After all, it's tough to criticize something when you're arguing it must be saved at all costs. Last week at an event in Dallas, This American Life host Ira Glass gave some gentle suggestions and painted an interesting picture of some future newsroom "where you would have the tone of The Daily Show — talking in normal language, but they would be real reporters."

So, it's unsurprising that Shapira's piece has been used by the newspaper navelgazers to kick around the idiotic notion that their work should enjoy some sort of special super-duper copyright protection. We'll leave that discussion for others, except to note that a more stringent copyright regime would probably be a bigger threat to newsgathering than that of any blog. A less cumbersome way for newspapers to head off the threat of blogs would be to beat us to the punchline.

But if you're going to fixate on blog links as the death knell of the industry, we have a lead for you: The threat is coming from inside the building. Nearly every day — 26 times in July alone — a Washington Post staffer not only sends us links to its expensive reporting but even pulls out the most interesting quotes so as to make it easier to pirate. I have strong feelings about revealing the identity of any Gawker tipster, but in this case it seems the public interest is simply too pressing and we must reveal this threat to journalism:

Maria Cereghino
Manager, Communications
Washington Post Media

Mets GM Omar Minaya said in the press conference yesterday that NYDN writer Adam Rubin (pictured)—who wrote the stories about Mets exec Tony Bernazard that got him fired—had ulterior motives. "Adam has lobbied for the player development position," Minaya said. "I scuffled with it early on. I had to think about that."

Bullshit! Says Adam Rubin.

What I have done, and what Mets COO Jeff Wilpon acknowledged later yesterday, is ask Wilpon for "career advice." My question: Is it even remotely feasible for a baseball writer to get into an administrative job with a team - any team - down the road and what would I need for that to be achieved?

This story's interesting insofar as it raises the issue of the appropriate ways for reporters to talk to sources about possibly switching careers, while still covering those sources. But let's be honest—it happens, it's always happened, and come on, you expect people to be reporters forever? Not if you could get a gig working for a baseball team! Come on! Seriously. You can be sure plenty of other reporters have had far cozier career conversations with sources than Rubin did, so don't expect anyone to come down on him too hard.

Bernazard was fired for doing things like challenging players to fights and calling them "pussy" so Rubin should probably worry more about seeing him around the ballpark than anything else.
[NYDN. Pic via]

Several Midwestern towns with Danish heritage have seen fit, over the years, to use a portion of their municipal budgets to construct replicas of Copenhagen's famous "Little Mermaid" statue. Now the ancestors of the sculptor are going after poor little Greenville, Michigan—demanding licensing payments for the town's statue (even though "it's half the size of the original and has a different face and other distinct features, including larger breasts"). This is just the beginning of the Danish assault!

Annette Andersen, a resident of Kimballton, Iowa, headed a community group that raised the $12,000 needed to restore that town's mermaid statue a few years ago. "Oh boy, I hope they don't find us," says Ms. Andersen, when told about the controversy in Michigan. She says she knows of several towns that have mermaids, including one in Minnesota, but adds, "Theirs aren't as pretty as ours."

Rest assured they've found you now, Annette. Who are the layabout Danish sculptor ancestors to decide how Real Americans see fit to honor mermaids, big-breasted and otherwise? Particularly when the Danes themselves are god damn statue hypocrites:

The statue in Copenhagen is itself a copy; the original has been attacked repeatedly — pieces stolen, arm cut off, painted pink, draped in a burqa — and is now stored in a secret location.

That secret location: Kimballton, Iowa. We hope nobody finds out.
[WSJ. Pic via]

TVNewser notes that Klein sent the email just as Dobbs' show was starting last night, and that Dobbs did indeed say: "Meanwhile, the state of Hawaii says it can't release a paper copy of the president's original birth certificate because they say the state government discarded the original document when the health department records went electronic some eight years ago." [Related: The president of the Southern Poverty Law Center today sent a letter to Klein asking CNN "to remove Mr. Dobbs from the airwaves" because of his support for birthers.]

—-— Original Message —-—
From: Klein, Jon (CNN)
Sent: Thu Jul 23 19:00:44 2009
Subject: Important re birth certificate

I asked the political researchers to dig into the question "why couldn't Obama produce the ORIGINAL birth certificate?"

This is what they forwarded. It seems to definitively answer the question. Since the show's mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead - because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.

Thx

*****************

*In 2001 - the state of Hawaii Health Department went paperless.*Paper documents were discarded*The official record of Obama's birth is now an official ELECTRONIC record Janice Okubo, spokeswoman for the Health Department told the Honolulu Star Bulletin, "At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said.

[TVNewser]