Fade in. Ms. Gaga, ever the generous host, is just chilling with her minions, listening to music.

She is wearing her razor-blade sunglasses, because a girl can never be too careful. The world assaults us with images! We must fight back! (Or, as she told MTV News: "I wanted to design a pair for some of the toughest chicks and some of my girlfriends - don't do this at home! - they used to keep razor blades in the side of their mouths… That tough female spirit is something that I want to project. It's meant to be, 'This is my shield, this is my weapon, this is my inner sense of fame, this is my monster.") I certainly hope you're taking notes.

FYI: Motherboard, barbed wire or fine screen door mesh manicures are the new hot shit. Adjust accordingly.

Suddenly, there's a flash of light.

A room! With Ukranian vodka! This must be a dream. Or a nightmare?

Coffin-like pods line the floor. Note the one which reads "Monster," as therein lies our heroine.

By the way: Since The Lady refers to her creative team as the Haus of Gaga, this scenario, naturally, takes place in the Bath Haus of Gaga.

The Lady emerges, wrapped up for freshness.

It's important to loosen up the joints and muscles after being transported — nay, kidnapped — into a questionable dimension. Working out with friends keeps you motivated.

Speeding through a hole in the time/space continuum often leaves a layer of grime. Bathing is a must.

Here, her eyes are wide with knowledge, not fear: She is a captive!

Product placement! Did you know that Dr. Dre, who has his own Beats By Dre headphones, worked with The Lady to make Heartbeats by Lady Gaga?

Back to the story: Gaga is ripped from the bath by her captors.

She is really just an innocent young thing, what could they possibly want with her?

Well, first they'd like to strip her of her latex garments…

…Then they'd like to force imported vodka down her throat. The usual Tuesday night stuff.

Fueled by liquor, Gaga is trussed up in a sparkly ensemble, robbed of her Burberry overcoat and forced to dance.

So many male bidders, so little time!

The Man With The Gold Chin Strap takes an interest in Ms. Gaga. Gold+Man= Goldman? As in Goldman Sachs? Is Gaga part of the bailout package?

Her brain aches; she must make a choice. She can flee. Sure. But she can also stay and dance her ass off, use this man the way he wants to use her. She could really, really use the money, you see…

…She's got a little problem with her spine. And Oxford won't cover the surgery.

So she dances. She seduces him because she has to. And because she can.

According to The Woman's Dictionary Of Symbols & Sacred Objects, the bond between cats and women has always been strong. There was a time that the patriarchy, suspicious of this connection, would accuse any woman seen talking to or petting a cat of witchcraft. Cats were sacred to the Ancient Egyptians, and festivals for the the cat goddess Bast were huge. The Norse goddess Freya rode in a chariot drawn by cats, and felines were generally thought to be magic. So save your shaved pussy jokes until the end.

Oooh, looky! Our favorite ankle-snapping Alexander McQueen shoes from his Spring 2010 show in paris. You know, the Futuristic Interplanetary Mutant Alien Queen one. Not Derelicte In Wonderland… that's so Fall 2009.

If you saw the McQueen ensembles and thought to yourself, "Who wears that? Now you know.

Anyway: Gaga drags herself and her bear carcass peignoir to do what she knows she must do.

Mr. Goldman awaits, hand creeping toward his stimulus package.

He'd like to see what he's purchased.

She's happy to oblige.

But! Little does he know — she has power, strength, and can, like a young Drew Barrymore, start fires with her mind.

(See, she has already informed the others that there will be a revolt! That's where the red and the leather come in: Viva La Revolucion!)

Yes, the bed is aflame. Fire can be symbolic of passion, but in this case, she is using it as a weapon, to destroy her enemy.

In the end, her sparkbra is saved, but Mr. Goldman? He is merely a charred skeleton.

The moral: Buy flame-retardant lingerie.

Here's the video clip, sans commentary. Enjoy.

Lady Gaga Says 'Bad Romance' Video Is About 'Tough Female Spirit' [MTV News]
Bad Romance Exclusive Premiere [Facebook]
Lady Gaga Bad Romance [YouTube]

Earlier: Questions About The High Fashion & Domestic Violence In Lady GaGa's Video
An Analysis Of The Underlying Themes In Britney's New Candie's Commerical

The much-hyped threeway was really a bit of a let down on what otherwise was a rather good episode. Jenny continued on the path to being queen bitch, supreme bitch; Serena and Blair almost kissed and made up; Nate served as nothing more than a prop; and Jenny's little gay shadow Eric finally came into his own. We hate him for that.

Dorota:
Fashion Points: Even as a blur, she still looks ravishing: +3
Total: +3
Season to Date: 42
Power Position: Up

Chuck:
Fashion Points: Purple!: -1, Purple bathrobe: -2, Black tux and red bowtie makes him look like he's wearing one of those T-shirts with a tuxedo printed on it: -2
Personality Flaw: Likes to be punished: +2 (cause we're into that)
Sexual Intrigue: His "lost weekend" with Nate is going to involve some gay ass shit: +1 (cause we're into that), Are we supposed to believe that Chuck and Nate "shared" a stripper? They totally shared each other: +2 (cause we're still into that)
Social Schemes: Orchestrates the Blair and Serena Reunion Special: +2, Cares enough to give them scotch and cookies when trapped in the elevator: +1, Tries to get them to make out: +1
Total: 4
Season to Date: 27
Power Position: Up

Blair:
Fashion Points: Jenny gives her headband a fashion neg: -1, Her midsection is being attacked by a giant, glittery, red, leech in the shape of a bow: -2
Power Play: Doesn't want to be compared to Lance Armstrong: +1, Is still messing with Cotillion: -1, Stupid Jenny disses her: -2, Reunites with Serena, and it feels so good: +2
Quip: "This is not your wedding day. Cotillion only happens once": +1
Sexual Intrigue: Tells Serena that Trip is bad news, and she's right: +2
Social Schemes: Can create a queen with a dose of expensive mascara, will power, and an icy stare: +2, Steals Jenny's date: +2, Jenny foils her plan to humiliate her: -1, Turns it into a victory by admiring Jenny's maneuvers and making it known she always backed her: +3
Total: 6
Season to Date: 16
Power Position: Up

Serena:
Fashion Points: That black off the shoulder number is quite fetching: +3, Until we see how short it is: -1, Shockingly wears an appropriate outfit to work: +1
Personality Flaw: Has major daddy issues: -2
Power Play: Tells Blair that Cotillion is the only place she still matters. Burn!: +2, Reunited with Blair and it feels so good: +2, Quits two jobs in two weeks: -1
Sexual Intrigue: Trip wants to bang her and he is as hot as a bakery on the sun: +2, He must be a really crappy Congressman if he hires Serena to work for him: -1, She is totally going to fuck Trip and then his crazy wife is going to come for her: (preemptive) -2
Total: 3
Season to Date: 3
Power Position: Down

Dan:
Fashion Points: Never dance again!: -2, V-neck fashion neg: -1, Looking bustier than ever: +1
Personality Flaw: Thinks keg stands are acceptable behavior: -1
Power Play: Is single-handedly keeping a big-budget movie franchise sequel from happening: +3, Nerds hate him. If he were a big-budget movie franchise, he'd be toast: -1, Misses his sister's debut: -1, But it's to have a threeway: +2
Sexual Intrigue: Is telling people he had sex with Georgina. Ew: -1, Barely fights for his girlfriend when she's going to go off to be a movie star: -1, Let's Vanessa continue to constantly cock block him: -1, Until she is there for a threeway: +1, Threeway: +5, Vanessa is involved: -2, He just did it with his best friend. Awkward: -1
Total: 0
Season to Date: -2
Power Position: Down

Olivia:
Bonus: Against our better judgment, we like Olivia: +1
Personality Flaw: She can't study because she is stupid and they don't teach you anything in those joke schools kid stars go to on set: -2
Power Play: Won't be in Endless Knights 4: +2 (cause all good things must come to an end), Nerds love her. For a movie actress, that means huge opening weekend: +3, Holds a big-budget movie franchise hostage: +1, Has to do movie against her will: -1, The director kills the movie, not her: -2
Sexual Intrigue: Threeway: +5, Vanessa was involved: -2
Total: 5
Season to Date: -2
Power Position: Up

Nate:
Fashion Points: Manbangs are gone again and his hair looks like rusty Brillo pad that has been stuck to the soap dish for two months: -2
Personality Flaw: He seems depressed. Maybe he should see a professional: (no points, just a warning)
Power Play: Let's Chuck order him around like Blair does her minions: -1, Teen girls love him. If he were a big-budget movie franchise, that would be huge: +3, Still "epic": +1, But, really, it's Cotillion: -1
Sexual Intrigue: He and Chuck totally got gay on their "lost weekend": +2, Nate's biggest fantasy has been fulfilled!: +2, But he still feels the need to use some stripper as a beard: -1
Total: 3
Season to Date: -6
Power Position: Down

Rufus:
Sexual Intrigue: Is married to the horniest pre-menopausal woman in the world: +3
Social Schemes: Still doesn't understand how society works: -1
WTF: Gave his daughter the middle name "Tallulah." He was never famous enough for that: -1
Total: 2
Season to Date: -8
Power Position: Up

Vanessa:
Fashion Points: Lady dreads!: -2
Personality Flaw: Knows all the gossip on the Endless Knights movies: -1
Power Play: Professional third wheel: -2, It leads to a threeway: +3
Sexual Intrigue: Threeway: +5, She is involved: -2, Sleeping with your best friend is really stupid: -2, Where was your video camera for the celebrity sex tape? You could have made millions!: -1
Total: -2
Season to Date: -28
Power Position: Down

Jenny:
Fashion Points: Her Cotillion dress is actually really nice: +3, Tiny gloves: -1
Power Play: She's no one at Cotillion: -2, Can't dance: -2, A really hot, rich, gay dude wants to be her Cotillion escort: +3, He's gay: -1, She was so condescending to Eric when leaving Cotillion. It was awesome: +2
Quip: "You're over. And so is that headband": +1
Sexual Intrigue: Losing her virginity to Nate finally paid off: +2
Social Schemes: Can not stop the Gay Shadow Rebellion of 2009: -1, Disses Blair as her Cotillion mentor: +3 (for balls!), Embarrassed on stage by Blair and Eric: -1, Gets to walk a second time: +3, With Nate: +2, Impresses Blair with her scheming skills: +2, Try as she might, there is no way that Eric and some short, plain girl can dethrone her: +3
WTF: Oh, Jenny. You'll always be a Brooklyn nobody: -2
Total: 13
Season to Date: -31
Power Position: Up

Lily:
Fashion Points: The jewels!: +2
Power Play: Running Cotillion makes her Queen Mean Girl For Life: +3, Gets a "Brooklyn girl" invited to Cotillion: +3
Sexual Intrigue: Your ex-boyfriend's coming back and you're gonna be in trouble, hey na, hey na, your ex-boyfriend's back: -2
WTF: She sees less of her kids than Jon Gosselin: -1
Total: 5
Season to Date: -32
Power Position: Up

Eric:
Personality Flaw: Knows he's a better person than Jenny: +2
Power Play: Finally came out of the gay shadows: +1, Gets hooked up with some short, plain girl: -1, Blair teams up with him: +4, Thinks he can dethrone Jenny: -2, His only ally now is some short, plain girl: -3
Sexual Intrigue: He totally did it at camp with the guy Jenny wants to take to Cotillion: +2, He's cute and rich: +1 (bonus), Gets dumped: -3
Social Schemes: He fucks with Jenny's date: +1, It's to "save her": -2, His plan gets foiled by some short, plain girl: -1, Effectively steals Jenny's date: +3, She beats him at his own game: -5
WTF: For years of living in the shadows: -30
Total: -33
Season to Date: -33
Power Position: Down

Sandra Guzman was an editor at the Post charged with running, among other things, a section aimed at Latino readers. After the paper published a Sean Delonas cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee being gunned down by white police officers, she complained internally about what she saw as the paper's persistent and overt racism under the leadership of Australian he-man Col Allan. Then she got fired.

Yesterday, she filed a complaint in federal court alleging systematic racism in the Post's hiring, firing, and editorial practices, and depicting Allan as a stupid, giggling frat-boy who likes to show his female employees pictures of naked men for kicks. The complaint has all sorts of damning allegations—you can read the whole thing here, but some of the good bits are below. Guzman has separately filed a complaint against the Post with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The lawsuit comes just one day after the paper fired reporter Austin Fenner, one of the few remaining African-American reporters on the paper's staff—we're told there are just three others, one of whom has been on an extended sick leave for most of the year. We're also told that the paper—a metro daily in New York City—has no African-American editors, and hasn't for nine years. UPDATE: A tipster points out Robert George, an editor on the Post's editorial page, is an African American. Our sources on the Post's demographics were thinking of the news and features pages.

We've contacted the Post to confirm that and for a response to Guzman's complaint, and we'll publish it when we get one.

Here are some of the allegations:

The Post, Guzman says, was a "hostile work environment" for women and non-white staffers, who are subject to "pervasive and systemic discrimination" and "harassment":

Allan's "inappropriate and sexist comments and conduct have been widely known throughout" the Post. For instance, he likes to show ladies what penises look like. He thinks it's funny!

He also, Guzman says, likes to rub his penis up against his female employees, whether they want him to or not:

Other editors at the paper, following Allan's classy lead, have taken to offering female staffers better jobs in exchange for blow jobs:

Allan's colleague Les Goodstein, a News Corp. senior vice president, thinks latin ladies are hot, and told Guzman so. He also liked to lick his lips while staring at other women's breasts in her presence:

The beef that precipitated Guzman's firing was over a drawing by Sean Delonas, a racist, gay-hating, and—worst of all—astoundingly humorless cartoonist. The Barack-Obama-Is-a-Dead-Chimp cartoon is not his first exceedingly tasteless offering, and at one point, Guzman says, Delonas had the bright idea of depicting Jews as sewer rats, a pitch that apparently got nixed:

Guzman's complaints about the cartoon fell on deaf ears, both because real men don't care about whiny P.C. minority-type people and because she just didn't get that the whole point of the New York Post is to "destroy Barack Obama." At least that's what she says the paper's Washington bureau chief told her:

Col Allan certainly didn't care about P.C. minority-type people: When some of them staged a protest outside his newspaper, he laughed at them because "most of them are minorities and the majority are uneducated." Unlike the Post's highly sophisticated, Sean Delonas-loving readership:

Allan felt the same way about the vanishingly small number of non-white employees he oversees. When one of them approached him to discuss his feelings about the cartoon, Allan simply walked away:

After Guzman made her feelings public in an e-mail stating that she had raised her objections to the cartoon to management—an e-mail that got picked up by the Huffington Post and other blogs—Allan, she says, launched a crusade against her. His animus, according to Guzman, overwhelmed his news judgment. In August, Guzman—who is a personal friend of Justice Sonia Sotomayor—was invited as a guest to a White House reception celebrating Sotomayor's confirmation. No other reporters were to be present. Guzman asked for permission to cover and report on the event, and Allan said no. Granted, her personal relationship and status as a guest would make such an assignment weird, but a) it could have been disclosed and presented as an insider account, and b) since when has the Post cared about conflicts of interest? Especially when they have a chance to get an exclusive about a highly newsworthy event? Of all the transgressions listed in Guzman's complaint, this is perhaps the most shocking—that Allan let his hatred of Obama, Sotomayor, and Guzman kill a potential scoop.

There's much more, so do read the complaint in its entirety. We're sure Rupert Murdoch will, using his sophisticated racism-detecting system to determine that Guzman is full of it. Because if Glenn Beck's not a racist, then Col Allan certainly isn't, right?

UPDATE: The Post has released a statement responding to the complaint.

This lawsuit has no merit and is based on charges that are groundless. As previously stated, Ms. Guzman's position was eliminated when the section she edited was discontinued due to a decline in advertising sales.

Not much is known about the baby-faced Malaysian, but tales of his largess are swirling about and frequently as he has been dropping tens of thousands of dollars at hot spots around the city. Here's what we know:

Name: Take Jho Low
Age: 28
Occupation: Officially he is an adviser to some international corporations, but no one knows what that means or seems to believe that is the truth. People say he's involved in oil, gas, and construction. He and was appointed to the board of Malaysian bank UBG Berhad last year. It's rumored that he's an arms dealer.
Residence: Rents several apartments in the Park Imperial on West 57th St in midtown that house him and his staff—including several body guards. Famous neighbors include Daniel Craig and Sean Combs.
Motorcade: Travels about town with his entourage in a fleet of Escalades.
Nightclub Spending:

• Spent $160,000 in one night at Avenue this September during Fashion Week.
• Routinely spends between $50,000 and $60,000 at Pink Elephant.
• Bought Lindsay Lohan 23 bottles of Cristal at 1OAK when she was celebrating her 23rd birthday.

• Just celebrated his 28th year starting last Wednesday with a four-day bash at Ceasar's Palace in Las Vegas.
• Megan Fox was flown out to Vegas to hang out with the birthday boy, who routinely surrounds himself with models.
• The hotel pool was surrounded by caged lions and tigers and filled with girls in bikinis. Later, at a nightclub, Low bought 120 bottles of Cristal for the revelers.
• Jamie Foxx gave him a red sports car for a present.
• Paris Hilton and Usher also attended the party.

[Image via Getty]

Paul Joegriner hasn't worked since March 2008, when he was laid off from his $200,000-a-year job as chief executive officer of a small bank. But you wouldn't know it by appearances.

His wife, Marzena, shuttles their two young children to private school every morning. The family recently vacationed in Virginia Beach, Va., and likes to dine on Porterhouse steaks

Steaks! Sunny Virginia Beach! It is all just as fleeting as the pleasure afforded by a soothing shot of heroin. Because as Mary "Intern Mary" Pilon ably points out in the WSJ today, all those fat, funemployment-funding severance checks are running out after months of joblessness. Regular old unemployment checks will be running out soon enough, too! So if you're a typical bitter struggling member of the creative underclass for whom both "severance" and "Funemployment" are both rage-inducing, untouchable fantasies, take heart in the schadenfreude provided by the stories of the once-affluent who fell so fast, so hard, so dumb. One 50 year-old ad exec married a 32 year-old woman in a $40k wedding, had a baby on the way, and was promptly laid off. So he did the prudent thing:

Although their rent was cheaper, Mr. Hipsher says the family continued to spend like before. They moved with three cars — two BMWs and a Chevy Silverado. They continued to buy cases of $36-a-bottle wine. They spent $250 a month on a cleaning lady, and Mr. Hipsher dropped $50 a week on flowers for his wife. The couple still dined out regularly.

Now that's all gone (including the wedding ring), and the couple is $70k in debt. Feel better now? Funemployment is for the weak. Bask in your poverty. It makes you tough. For when shit really gets bad. Like now!
[Pic via]

LOT 276- JACKET: [1] Blue satin with orange trim jacket labeled and stitched with: NY Mets, 'MADF', '25' and 'Madoff'

LOT 278- SCREEN: [1] Chinese Chippendale Mahogany Two Panel Table Top Screen, English, 19th century, restorations, 44 x 19 inches (each panel) watercolor inserts

LOT 271- FUR: Ladys Bill Blass brown mink coat; no collar, hook front; 3/4 strait sleeves; 36" length x 48" sweep; strip sections; Bill Blass label.

LOT 293- DECOY: Wooden duck decoy w/ black body, natural wood head; green painted beak; black eyes (black w/brown pupil is a replacement); 21"L x 9 3/4" diameter. Note: yellow is coming through bill paint.

LOT 296- GOLF BAG: Belding Sports Golf Bagging Co. South Fork Country Club embroidered golf bag; fine black leather. GOLF CLUBS: Odyssey White Hot putter (Ruth Madoff South Fork CC shaft label). GOLF CLUBS: Three (3) Kasco Power Tornado FG drivers (Ruth Madoff South Fork CC shaft labels); 3, 5, 7. GOLF CLUBS: Great Big Bertha Hawkeye 11 degree titanium driver (Ruth Madoff South Fork CC shaft label). GOLF CLUB: Alien sand wedge. GOLF CLUBS: Diawa Hi-Trac TC5 iron set (Ruth Madoff South Fork CC shaft label); 4 to 11. MISC.: Three (3) leather golf gloves; Thirty (30) misc. used golf balls (incl Volvic Crystal). MISC.: Ruth Madoff South Fork Country Club member tag.

LOT 312- ART: Photograph print rendering of an Indian on bareback; copyright photographer E. Curtis, unsigned; Image: 27cm x 34cm; frame: 20 1/2 " x 23".

LOT 314- PURSE: Ladys Zagliani brand black crocodile leather hand bag; tan suede & silk lined interior; removable shoulder strap; zipper top; rect. shape, 8.5"T x 10"W x 2"D.

LOT 321- PURSE: Ladys Louis Vuitton brown monogram canvas logo hand bag; Trocadero; rect. shape, tan piping; LV logo side hand strap; zipper top; brown leather interior; 6"T x 9.55"W x 2.0"D., PURSE: Ladys Louis Vuitton brown monogram canvas hand bag; rect. shape, tan leather shoulder strap; zipper top; brown material interior; 5.5"T x 8.25"W x 1.5"D., PURSE: Ladys Louis Vuitton brown Monogram canvas travel bag; Neverfull MM; rect. shape, twin tan leather hand straps; open top; brown striped material interior; 11"T x 14"W x 6"D.

LOT 339- SHIRTS: [3] Polo Golf style shirts with 2 signal flags over 'BULL' on front upper left; 1 is L, 2 are XL

LOT 347- TOYS: Three (3) boogie boards; including one 1 pink/white, and 2 yellow; 40" long; "Madoff" written in black marker., FISHING: Tackle box and contents w/ "B.L. Madoff" plastic label on box outside; including 5 fly fishing lures, 1 Medalist Fishing reel, FLUGER Supreme #577 reel; Medalist Pfluger reel, 24 fly fishing lures; pliers & other misc. fishing accessories.

LOT 346- DECORATIVE: White water rescue ring bouy painted w/ "Bullship NY"; 18" diameter, black & gold hand-painted lettering; outer cable knit nylon cord; mfg Carlon Rubber Products, Inc., Derby CT, KOROSEAL PVC foam, model no. KS-18. E25-160.064/012/0.

LOT 350- UMBRELLA: Nylon golf umbrella; w/ MADF insignia & Bernard Madoff Investment Securities, New York and London; black & white color., DUFFLE BAGS: Three (3) monogrammed beige canvas duffle bags; w/ "Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities Montauk 1993" & sun emblem., MISC.: Six (6) vinyl letters in wood cigar box; black on yellow 3" initials B, L, & M (2 each); Macanudo cigar box w/ hinged lid.

When the news broke that TMZ had a Carrie Prejean sex tape, but was making the magnanimous editorial decision not to air the "racy" video, the only possible explanations were either

• 1. The sex tape did not really exist.
• 2. The sex tape depicted an act so inhumanly depraved and unimaginably lewd that viewing it would turn you into a stone.
• 3. The act depicted in the sex tape was perfectly normal as far as amateur porn goes, but some stringent legal matter involving the creation and/or acquisition of the tape (say, the lead actress' age) had TMZ's hands tied.

Turns out it was the third. Hannity—who wrote the foreword to Prejean's new memoir, which will either sell far worse or far better than anticipated—asks about the sex tape first, and Prejean repeats several times that she was "all by myself," filming a sexy masturbatory gift for her boyfriend at a disconcertingly young age. It was "the biggest mistake of my life." The former Miss California explains that she is taking responsibility for her actions, and that she learned an important lesson from the debacle:

I've learned a lot about people and what they'll do to make extra money.

Uh huh: Palin is returning to Twitter in advance of her Going Rogue book tour, using her post gubernatorial handle, SarahPalinUSA. The AP is spreading the Good News, which was initially delivered via Facebook, because the Associated Press apparently fields an entire bureau dedicated to transcribing Palin's Facebook status updates these days (unfortunately for them, our "worst beat in journalism" contest is closed).

Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says she's back on Twitter.

Palin took to the social networking site earlier this year, tweeting about state government, national politics and everything in between.

When she quit as Alaska's governor in July, she promised to keep her fans updated through tweets. But that didn't happen, and Palin instead posted regular updates on her Facebook page, which has nearly 1 million followers.

Currently, Palin's Twitter page sits empty, white like freshly fallen snow on Alaskan tundra. Can't wait to see the beautiful things she pees into it!

Mayer was employee number 20 and retains immense power within the Googleplex. But, as much as she likes to insinuate her vital early contributions to hits like GMail and AdSense, the VP for "search product and user experience" isn't quite the very bedrock of Google's success, as Glamour seems to imply in naming Mayer one of its "Women of the Year:"

We google about 7 billion times a month. And each time, it's like a trip into Marissa Mayer's mind. That sunny logo, blessedly spare interface and perfect list of links you get in response to a query are all pure Mayer.

Google's minimalist design and "perfect" search utility are "pure Mayer?" Google co-founder and Mayer ex Larry Page would take issue with that; he invented the algorithm at the heart of Google while a Stanford University PhD student. Co-founder Sergey Brin, part of the same PhD program, also contributed to the system. Google also had what was, by the standards of the day, a spartan homepage going well before Mayer joined in 1999, complete with a "sunny" if slightly fatter logo.

So while Mayer should continue to enjoy tonight's Glamour awards ceremony, relish her pretty pictures in the magazine (above) and stand proud of her accomplishments at Google, there's no need to give the competitive overachiever credit for every last innovation at the company.

(Top pic: Glamour)

Mayer discussing her award on Today this morning:

Because he is an idiot, Glenn Beck tried in September to shut down glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, a satirical site that used Beck's insidious "I'm just asking the question" pose to advance the Fark-inspired meme that Beck may have raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, because, well—have you ever heard him deny it?

The proprietor was anonymous at the time, but he's come out of the closet as Isaac Eiland-Hall, a Florida computer programmer who was sick of Beck's posturing and enjoyed funny things on the internet. Beck complained to a WIPO arbitration panel that the site was defamatory and infringed on the trademark he holds over his own name. Late last month, his complaint was denied.

The arbitration panel's decision renders in hypnotically robotic, lawyerly prose a precise distillation of what is wrong with Glenn Beck, and it's worth quoting at length. Here's what Beck's lawyers said about the trademark:

Complainant contends that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar to the GLENN BECK mark.

And here's what Eiland-Hall responded:

Respondent alleges that only a "moron in a hurry" could be confused by the disputed domain name.

And here is the panel's magnificent summary of Beck's rhetorical style and why his site constituted a satire of that style:

Respondent argues that the disputed domain name is a meme that is based on the technique deriving from a comedy sketch performed by Gilbert Gottfried on a Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget during which Mr. Gottfried made continuing references to an unflattering rumor concerning Mr. Saget (similar to the one embodied in the disputed domain name), while requesting that those repeating the rumor cease to do so. According to Respondent, Glenn Beck has used a similar technique while interviewing at least one individual on his news broadcast by making an unsupported assertion about his activities, and placing a burden on the interviewee to deny the unsupported assertion. According to Respondent, this technique places the interviewee in a compromised position regardless of underlying facts.

The best part of the whole affair is that, after Eiland-Hall won at arbitration, he sent a letter to Beck with the site's admin username and password and said, essentially, "Here you go you big crybaby. You can have your precious web site. I don't want it any more."

It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what was merely one small critique meme, in a sea of internet memes, and turned it into a super-meme.

[snip]

It also bears noting, in this matter and for the future, that you are entirely in control of whether or not you are the subject of this particular kind of criticism. I chose to criticize you using the well-tested method of satire because of its effectiveness. But, humor aside, your rhetorical style is no laughing matter. In this context of this WIPO case, you denigrated the letter of First Amendment law. In the context of your television show and your notoriety, you routinely and shamelessly denigrate the spirit of the First Amendment. The purpose of the expressive freedoms embodied in the First Amendment is not to simply permis the greatest possible scope of expression, but also, in doing so, to also [sic] strive for excellence in the conveyance of ideas. Rather than choosing to strive for excellence and civic contribution, you simply pander to the fears and insecurities of you audience. And in the process, you do then, and us all, a great deal of harm.

[snip]

Now that it is safe, at least from you (for the time being), I have no more use for the actual scrap of digital real estate you sough. I will transfer the domain to you now.

So glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com is no more. But a mirror still lives here, so Glenn Beck still loses anyway, as is his wont.

While Mad Men is a critical darling and its ratings are growing, it has never been a ratings bonanza for AMC and the pay is notoriously low. And after three seasons of being on "TV's best show," the siren song of more lucrative TV and movie roles may be irresistible. Plus, the way that series creator Matthew Weiner left things — Sterling Cooper as we knew it is dissolved, newly formed Sterling Cooper Draper Price may make it out of the Pierre Hotel, and Don's marriage is effectively over — almost any any character could be easily written out. So it would not be surprising if some of the regular characters disappear entirely from the show by next summer with nothing but a line of dialogue — "Oh, Peggy couldn't stand working next to Pete and Duck hired her after three weeks" — and a guest appearance or two.

Here your betting guide for who's coming back as a regular for Mad Men's fourth series, from most likely to call-your-agent.

Don Draper
Played By: Jon Hamm
Last We Saw Him: Lording over his new kingdom in a hotel room.
Why Stay: There wouldn't be a show without him.
Why Leave: After a great guest spot on 30 Rock, Hamm is getting more attention than anyone in the cast, for drama as well as comedy. He's also involved in several upcoming movies like Howl, The Town, and Sucker Punch.
Odds of Returning: 1: 1,000,000 (come on, there's no Mad Men without Don Draper)

Peggy Olsen
Played By: Elizabeth Moss
Last We Saw Her: Working for Don at the new firm.
Why Stay: She's a fan favorite with a great role and her character is on solid ground at the new firm.
Why Leave: To be a movie star! She's come a long way since her days on The West Wing. Between this an a well-regarded turn on Broadway opposite sushi-poisoned Jeremy Piven in Speed The Plow, now may be her time.
Odds of Returning: 1: 500

Roger Sterling
Played By: John Slattery
Last We Saw Him: Don's new best friend and business partner.
Why Stay: Roger gets all the ladies, funny lines, and best bits. Who doesn't want to play the scene stealer. Plus, Slattery and Hamm are besties.
Why Leave: There will be plenty of work for a veteran character actor like Slattery—work that probably pays a lot better.
Odds of Returning: 1:200

Pete Campbell
Played By: Vincent Kartheiser
Last We Saw Him: Don's new protege at the new firm.
Why Stay: He has a nice juicy, high-profile role that's far better than anything else he'll land.
Why Leave: He doesn't have a good reason.
Odds of Returning: 1: 100

Joan Holloway
Played By: Christina Hendricks
Last We Saw Her: The new office queen of Sterling Cooper Draper Price.
Why Stay: Because if she doesn't, we will slit our wrists.
Why Leave: Holloway is a sexy lady who has been on the fringes of TV for awhile. She may see this as her break. She's in next winter movie Life as We Know It, and she has proven to have the looks and the talent to anchor a TV show of her own.
Odds of Returning: 1: 75

Trudy Campbell
Played By: Alison Brie
Last We Saw Him: Delivering a cake in a wonderful red bucket hat.
Why Stay: Who else is going to nudge Pete in the right direction. And we need someone to show off retro fashions.
Why Leave: This isn't the biggest role, unless she and Pete get an upgrade.
Odds of Returning: 1:50

Harry Crane
Played By: Rich Sommer
Last We Saw Her: Eating one of Trudy's sandwiches at Sterling Cooper Draper Price.
Why Stay: He was saved by this plot twist, which means the writers have something in store for him.
Why Leave: Harry never gets to do much of anything, not even supporting character zany. He may want to stretch his legs.
Odds of Returning: 1: 10

Betty Draper
Played By: January Jones
Last We Saw Her: On the plane to Reno to get a divorce from Don with her future ex-husband Henry.
Why Stay: Because it would be great fun to watch Betty get tortured some more.
Why Leave: She has every reason to leave. Betty's storyline is at an obvious stopping point, at least as featured character. January Jones has been making the PR push, putting her boobs on GQ, hosting Saturday Night Live, and attaching herself to a number of projects. She also has a part in the upcoming Pirate Radio, so it certainly looks like she's planning a busy schedule away from Mad Men
Odds of Returning: 1:5

Sally, Bobby, and Gene Draper
Played By: Kiernan Shipka, Jared Gilmore, some baby
Last We Saw Them: On the couch with Carla being dazed by the TV.
Why Stay: They're kids. What, would they rather go to like real school? Also, they're Don's kids. You can't just erase them.
Why Leave: Or can you? If Betty leaves for good (maybe she and Henry settle in Reno and open a casino?) the kids go with her. And Bachelor Don is going to have plenty of babes to play with.
Odds of Returning: 3:1

Ken Cosgrove
Played By: Aaron Staton
Last We Saw Him: Left at the former Sterling Cooper, but as head of accounts.
Why Stay: A steady job—albeit a small part and, hey, maybe the writers need a way to a character to demonstrate life inside soulless McCann-Erickson.
Why Leave: Staton would be bummed to be cut, but it'd be really easy for him to go off and finally become a novelist.
Odds of Returning: 5:1

Bert Cooper
Played By: Robert Morse
Last We Saw Him: Keeping the sofa warm at his newest ad agency.
Why Stay: As an older gentleman, just like Cooper, if Morse leaves, there isn't going to be much work for him elsewhere. At least not with this high a profile.
Why Leave: He may not have a choice. Cooper doesn't do all that much, and when they need a big shock, it will be easy to give him a stroke/heart attack/Japanese armor accident at any time.
Odds of Returning: 10:1

Paul Kinsey
Played By: Michael Gladis
Last We Saw Him: Wishing Don had taken him instead of Peggy.
Why Stay: There's not much else for him on the horizon.
Why Leave: We have a feeling he doesn't want to, but if we're looking to streamline the cast, his peripheral character is an easy cut.
Odds of Returning: 75: 1

Sal Romano
Played By: Brian Batt
Last We Saw Him: Calling his wife from a pay phone before cruising the after he was fired from Sterling Cooper.
Why Stay: Well, he is effectively gone, but the way his storyline ended, he always seemed like he'd be back for more. Plus his "gay in the closet" storyline has tons of ways it could play out and lots of modern day implications.
Why Leave: He is already gone. Don could rehire him, but their main client is American Tobacco, the company that had him fired in the first place, so that seems about as likely as a Judy Garland Resurrection Tour.
Odds of Returning: 100 : 1 (but we really want him back!)

Thompson, you see, disappointed many of her fans earlier this fall when she signed a petition — along with a host of other boldface names, including Salman Rushdie, Natalie Portman, and Diane Von Furstenburg — demanding that Polanski be freed on charges relating to his rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Luckily, Caitlin Hayward-Tapp was nowhere near as abstemious as the View ladies: last week, the 19-year-old Exeter University student gutsily convinced Thompson to remove her name from the petition demanding Polanski's freeing. But as of this morning, Thompson's name was still on the petition, which is hosted on the website of French public intellectual Bernard Henri-Levy.

After we contacted her a few hours ago, Ms. Thompson's publicist told us that her client "...requested that her name be removed when she said she would. We have asked for confirmation from them but have not yet received it."

We also asked Mr. Henri-Levy's camp for an update, and Liliane Lazar, a former French professor who worked with him on the petition, responded, saying that Thompson's name will be removed Wednesday. As for why it would take several days to remove a line from a posting on a webpage, Ms. Lazar has yet to say.

Related: Thompson Talked Out of Support For Polanski by 19-year-old Student [Independent]
Polanski Business: In Which Emma Thompson Breaks My Heart [Shakesville]
Dear Emma... [Shakesville]

Earlier: Emma Thompson To Remove Name From Polanski Petition?
Letters From Hollywood: Roman Polanski's Rape Of Child No Big Thing

Self-deprecation and crazy sex teases, together at last. Anyhow she says she could be getting out of jail any day now, and you better believe we have big plans for her when she gets out. We haven't thought them up yet, though. Read her entire long-ass letter, as always, at Animal NY.

The season finale (directed by show creator Matthew Weiner himself) was all about Don's relationships and how he rectifies them in order to move on creating his own advertising agency. Usually happy to be the lone gunman, Don has to rally the troops in order to stake out on his own, which means checking his ego, doing some apologizing, and letting some of the people in his life know just how he really thinks about them. And Joan came back! And Trudy wore a killer hat. All was right with the world as it—and Don—strikes out in a new direction.

Don and Connie: As he has been all season, Hilton is a stand in for Don's father, who also got some face time this episode. We learn from Hilton that Sterling Cooper has been sold to a larger agency, one that Don—or anyone else for that matter—doesn't want to work for. Because of that, Hilton drops Don, which leaves him in the lurch because he had to sign a three-year contract to secure the Hilton deal in the first place.

But what he's really upset about is that he doesn't have his independence. He is energized by Connie's final question: is he going to be a whiner or is he going to be a winner? And with the promise that they'll do business again in the future, Connie gives Don the final push to try to take his future into his own hands.

This leads to the flashbacks concerning Don's father, who we learn wasn't happy with the price his crops were going to get in a cooperative, so he struck out on his own to do what was right for him. Instead of selling for cheap, Whitman Sr decides to hold onto his crop and sell it in the winter when it will fetch more money. Though Don tried to shed his past like a snake wriggling out of a dirty skin that was far too tight, he is still his father's son. When things aren't working out for him, he decided that he would rather do the right thing on his own and possibly fail, than succeed as an automaton for The Man.

This is later reinforced when we learn that Don's father was literally killed by caving in. When there isn't much money left, Don's stepmother convinces her very drunk husband that he has to sell his crop. He says he'll go immediately, and Don goes with him to make sure he doesn't literally fall off the wagon. But he doesn't even get on the road, when a spooked horse kicks him in the face and kills him. If he had stood by his principal and held onto his crop, he never would have been out there to be kicked in the first place, and might still be alive—or at least lived a bit longer.

While Don might be the indepence-at-all-costs, up-by-the-bootstraps, fuck-them-all-I-know-what's-right product of his father, he is determined not to be him. He is not bending over to get kicked in the face while McCann fucks him for the rest of his life.

Don and Roger: It was easy for Don to convince Bert Cooper to get on board with his plan of buying the agency (or striking out on their own, as they eventually do) since Cooper would be let go if the agency was sold again. However, it wasn't going to be a cake walk to convince Roger Sterling, who Don has spent the whole season trying to distance himself from.

It would seem that Sterling would much rather sit in his office counting his piles of coins like Scrooge McDuck while kicking back a few drinks and then going home to goose his pretty young wife before passing out in his expensive bed than actually run an ad agency. But he has the money and the accounts to make a new agency work, and it seems like he still has the ambition too. What he really needs is Don to supplicate himself, which he does with great sincerity. Roger hits the nail on the head when he tells Don he's no good at relationships because he doesn't value them. We see that with his home life as well as how things go around the office.

It's great that egotastic Don can be self actualized enough to know he needs Roger to deal with the clients and make them happy, since that's not in his grainy little heart. As we see during their scene at the bar when Roger tells Don that Betty is seeing Henry Francis, Don and Roger work much better when collaborating than they do when competing.

The other brilliant thing that Roger brings with him is St. Joan. As soon as Cooper brought up the fact that no one knows where anything is, we thought, "What a brilliant way to bring back Joan," and the vision of her sauntering in to save the day with her red hair coaxed into tight perfecting and the gold pen swaying seductively between her enormous knockers brought tears to our eyes. Welcome back, kiddo.

Don and Pete: Don has never been the biggest fan of man-child Pete, but both he and Roger know that Pete is the much better account man for the small (at first) firm they're planning than Ken Cosgrove, the upward failing buffoon who seems like he was made for a life in middle management. While Ken might have beat out Pete at Sterling Cooper because he was a yes man who could fit into the corporate culture, he doesn't have the instinct that Pete has to make it in the big time.

Of course, to get him, Don has to put his condescension aside and let Pete know that he will be a valued member of the team. Of course, Pete asks for more than he's worth, but better that than not asking for enough. This is really the best possible outcome for Pete. He was on the outs at SC anyway, and his interviews at other agencies may or may not have panned out, but he will succeed quite nicely at a firm that will value his gifts while overlooking the fact that he is an immature cad deep in his chewy center.

Speaking of great members of the team, Pete would really be nothing without Trudy. She fixes things up all nice when Don and Roger come a-calling, and excuses herself with a plausible story when they get there. When Pete starts to lose the way her call of "Peter, can I speak to you for a minute," sets him back on the right course. She isn't allowed into the conversation, but just knowing that she's listening turns his rudder in the right direction. She never strong arms, she just nudges. And then she brings sandwiches. And wears a cute hat! If Betty is gone for good next season, we're going to need someone to give us Suburban Splendor Barbie realness, and it's going to have to be Trudy.

Pete got over his hurt quickly and signed up, and another easy sell was Lane Price. Unhappy with being unappreciated, shuffled around, and generally maligned by his bosses and liking the life in New York away from the class constraints of his native land, Price was ripe for the crew to pick off. Considering he was integral to their plan to get the ball rolling, it's good he agreed. We look forward to seeing more of his strangely shaped head around the office. But, oh, his poor wife!

Don and Peggy: Don handled the Peggy situation all wrong, at least the first time around. He naturally thought of her first to take with him to the new agency, but he orders her about like he controls her. It's funny that Don has such a great way with seducing women in his private life but he can be so blind to what Peggy needs at work.

This whole season Peggy's storyline was about empowerment. She smoked weed, she slept around with a boy, she got an apartment and a roommate, she put her domineering mother behind her, she even got her secretary to respect her (even though winning over her colleagues was a bit harder). And finally, she realized that she has a promising career in advertising and a sexual being, both thanks to skeevy Duck. So when Don comes at her like she's a blubbering child, she finally stands on her own, letting him know that she has other offers, and that she is not there for him to kick around. Spurned, Don reacts the way he usually does when he doesn't get his way, by being a cocky asshole.

The way he handles her the second time was perfect though. Don uses his best pitching skills to win Peggy over. Don knows that things have changed—not just for him and the firm, but something fundamental in the culture—and that Peggy is necessary to keeping up with that shift. She's smart and creative and, like Don says, a miniature version of himself. She is often depicted as a mini Don, giving up her personal life for work, but this episode she seemed more like a grown up version of Sally. When Don makes his offer for a second time she says, "If I say 'no' you'll never talk to me again," and starts to tear up, betraying that all she really wants from Don is his approval. The scene where Don makes up with Peggy comes right after the scene where Sally storms off when he tells the kids he and Betty are getting divorced. It seems like Don making peace with Peggy, his office daughter, is somehow akin to him making peace with Sally.

Of course, Peggy agrees to join the team (she nearly broke our heart with joy with the tiny wave of excitement she made when storming the office) and her best moment was yet to come. When the newly assembled Mad Men All-Stars are planning to extricate themselves from the office, Roger tells her to go make him some coffee. She is a secretary no more, she is an equal member of the team, and she is strong and secure in her position. "No," she says in an even and forceful tone, which says, "You will never ask me to do that shit again."

Don and Betty: Wow, Betty actually did it! She asks for a divorce so that she can leave Don and marry Henry Francis. This was the only bit of tying up that had nothing to do with work. This year was very personal, focusing on the denizens of Sterling Cooper in their personal lives rather than in the office, so it was a bit surprising when the final episode centered around the creation of a whole new office. Of course, we couldn't forget about Don's disintegrating home life.

When he comes home drunk to confront Betty about Henry, he puts her journey this season into perspective: Betty was building a life raft. Everything she's done this year has been to get away from Don. Starting things with Henry, finding out his past, getting money from her father—it was her escape route. After all his transgressions, divorcing Don wasn't so much a circumstance, but an inevitability. Poor Betty, doesn't she see that she's leaping from one bad situation to the next. Henry Francis—who barely knows you but wants to marry you!!—will probably be just as bad and stifling as Don. Just as Don said, he gave her everything she wanted, and that wasn't enough, she still wasn't happy. Why does she think replicating it with Henry will have some magically different effect?

When Don chooses to insult her, he really knows how to do it. He calls her a bad mother which, duh, and then calls her a whore. There were several prostitute references last night which are that much more meaningful given Don's mother was a hooker. When he needs to show ultimate disdain for Betty, that's the word he goes for. When talking about the sale of Sterling Cooper, Roger says it's like going from "one john's bed to another." Painting the old firm to look like a whore is the surest way to get Don to distance himself from it. Also, Lane Price's assistant "Moneypenny" is really named Mr. Hooker. We don't know how that fits in, but...hmm?

Back to Betty and Don, she takes off for six weeks in Reno so that she can get an easy divorce from Don, because she can't prove that he's been unfaithful. Maybe she should make about three phone calls, because the wronged ladies shouldn't be that hard to dig up to testify against him. Of course bad mother Betty leaves the kids with Carla while she jets off with her new lover to Reno to get divorced/married. This makes us hate Betty.

Also, the scene where they tell the kids about the divorce was super painful to watch. Don tries his best to pitch the kids on the idea of their new life, but they're not buying it. Betty can't do anything but hide behind her hand and try to keep the tears in. Future lesbian Sally storms off, sad that daddy is leaving. Little Bobby pleads for daddy to stay, but he won't. No wonder this kid is going to be snorting lines with a very dapper, emotionally-distant Halston in the VIP lounge of Studio 54—he's working out some serious daddy issues. But when Don hugged his son and earlier when he climbed into bed with Sally, we see that he really cares deeply about his children, despite his cool demeanor. But he barely sees them now that they live in the same house, how much time is he going to spend with them now?

Sterling Cooper Draper Price, How May I Help You?: Don Draper's marriage may have dissolved, but his firm has just started. He, Roger, Bert, and Lane have drafted Peggy, Harry Crane, Pete, and St. Joan as their coalition of the willing to steal clients and bust into the art department (yes, we saw that someone placed a curlicue letter F in front of Art Department) to take whatever they can get their hands on.

This wasn't necessarily a cliffhanger, because the decisive action has been taken. We won't be left guessing "Will they leave?" a la "Who shot J.R.?" but we are left with plenty of questions to ponder over the winter (or in the comments section). Here are a few:

Now that Peggy and Pete are working in a tiny office together, are they ever going to come to terms with their past?

What is going to happen to Peggy and Duck? Is that still going on? Is he going to ruin Don's new agency?

Just what the heck is Bert Cooper going to do? There's no room for his armor and he can't take naps anymore. Do they even need him?

Lane Price's wife was unhinged before their stay in the U.S. became indefinite. How soon before she goes completely bonkers?

So, does this mean Betty is gone for good or are we going to get to see her staggering unhappiness with Henry?

How soon before Roger starts doing Joan again?

How soon before Doctor Rapist is killed in Vietnam?

Will they think of something interesting for Harry to do?

And what the heck is going on with Suzanne (nee Missy) Sally's teacher that Don was diddling? Why didn't he just go right back to her when Betty called it quits? Will she be coming back?

How sweet is Don's bachelor pad going to be? Just wait for the Mad Men furniture line at CB2.

If Don isn't married, is he just going to spend all of his time scoring ladies or just most of it?

Maclaren, the stroller of choice for parents who insist upon spending too much money on a stroller, has just issued a recall notice for all of its "umbrella strollers." The easiest way to determine whether your Maclaren is one of the affected models is to count your child's remaining fingers.

All Maclaren strollers sold since 1999 are included in the recall, according to a source briefed on the recall.

The step comes after 12 kids allegedly had their fingertips amputated by Maclaren strollers.

Loss of fingertips could impact your child's ability to fill out the little bubbles on the SAT, and should therefore be taken seriously. Please send us pics of the panicked mobs of sexually marginalized Mr. Moms in the streets of Cobble Hill.

[Pic: Pardon Me For Asking]

Fuchs was reportedly at a party early Sunday morning when the elevator he was in stalled. Newsday reports:

As Fuchs attempted to jump out of the elevator and onto an adjacent floor, the hood of his sweatshirt got caught on a piece of the elevator, causing him to fall five stories to the bottom of the elevator shaft, according to the police report.

Fuchs—who was once in a band with Businessweek media reporter Jon Fine—was a beloved guy in the Williamsburg music scene, and has already inspired eulogies everywhere from Chunklet to the L Magazine to the New York Times.

Besides Williamsburg musicians, the following people in New York wear hoodies: Everybody. Stay safe, everyone.

[Pics: Myspace]

British writer and analyst Charles Leadbeater, and researcher Annika Wong, have put together a report called Cloud Culture to be published by the British Council next year. Their statistical study, provided to me by Leadbeater, is based on figures from the social media analytics company Sysomos. It shows that such a tiny proportion of Iranians are on Twitter that any stories about a new movement based on the social network are meaningless. The figure they provide, by they way, includes the thousands of foreigners who changed their Twitter location to Tehran when the 'Iranian internet revolution' story struck after the elections in June and Facebook and Twitter were afire with Iran sentiment. So the likely figure is even lower.

The report adds that only one third of Iranians have internet access at all. And because opposition supporters are young, and on the internet, and Ahmadinejad supporters tend to be older and rural, the picture on the ground is likely skewed by any analysis that relies on tweets.

Leadbeater and Wong also compile a series of hyperbolic quotes from a variety of media sources at the time of the protests:

• "Twitter has become a key information conduit as the authorities in Tehran have cracked down on reporting by traditional media." Chris Nuttall and Daniel Dombey, Financial Times.
• "After disputed election results and massive street demonstrations in Tehran, Iran, information is flooding out of the country – on Twitter." Ashley Terry, Global News.
• "This is it. The big one." Clay Shirky of NYU.
• "We've been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony... The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over." Jon Williams, BBC World News editor.

The meme was just too tempting, it seems, for anyone to dig into its veracity. The media — this site included — loves to write about Twitter, and loved doing so even more in summer when it was even newer and shiner. The storyline also fit the fact that Iran is a young country, and chimed with the heartbreaking YouTube video of the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan.

The solidarity that thousands, even millions of Americans showed with the people of Iran during June's elections and the subsequent protests was admirable. It was also potentially dangerous. I was at the UN protests against President Ahmadinejad earlier this fall. Several young men were wearing dust masks they had purchased from hardware stores. I asked one why. "I am wearing it because I have to go back to Iran," said a softly-spoken and shy 28-year-old student who gave his name only as Mohammed. "I return next year and this is for safety, in case they are watching," he added, pointing to his mask. "It could be the best $3 I ever spend."

If Mohammed is picked up despite his dust mask, the fact that the protests in Tehran were partly fomented by Western support based on a false story about Twitter will be of no consolation. It's probably not much comfort to these people either.

Family Guy's jokes frequently rest on so-called "offensive" humor, and this was on full display during "Seth and Alex's Almost Live Review," which featured MacFarlane and Alex Bornstein (the voice of Lois) playing to a live audience in front of a big band. The musical numbers, sketches and karaoke-like live performances to Family Guy clips almost universally pushed the very hot buttons of race, class, gender and disability in ways that should guarantee Fox an inbox stuffed full with angry letters for the next few weeks. But "Seth and Alex's Almost Live Review" managed to do something Family Guy doesn't always accomplish: Be funny in an "offensive" way while avoiding the sense that to cause offense was an end in itself.

The best "offensive" jokes are those that comment on the very concept of being offended. They spoof the arcane rules of political correctness that dictate what certain people can say about other kinds of people, and how they can say it. The bit above is probably the purest form of this kind of humor: What could have been the worst sort of caricature was deftly turned into a meta-joke on viewers. The realization that Matlin's in on the joke prompts (at least in me) a sense of relief so strong that it makes you question what the hell you were doing laughing in the first place. The reveal is a judo move that uses our own highly-honed sense of political correctness against us, and, basically, is just really funny! Good work, Seth and Alex.

This bit from Family Guy, on the other hand? Meh.

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

(A) A bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.
(B) Eggs Benedict.
(C) A Christmas ham.
(D) A bagel, a blintz, lox, matzo brei, kreplach, shmear, whitefish, sable, a "nosh" of anything, or nothing, because you're getting bar/bat-mitzvah'd next weekend and your parents told you to watch your figure.

Question 2:

You think Larry David is

(A) Not funny.
(B) Who?
(C) Hysterical.
(D) Bad for the Jews.

Question 3:

Your parents are divorced, and they both want you to come home for the high holidays. You:

(A) Go home to wherever you still have a good weed hookup.
(B) Go wherever more singles will be.
(C) Split holidays; Ma gets Yom Kippur, Dad gets Rosh Hashana.
(D) Can we not talk about my mother for once, please?

Question 4:

You want to marry a Gentile man or Gentile woman. How's this gonna work?

(A) Our kids will be progressive, they'll get more presents, it'll be fine. Give your college roommate Aariz a ring, we'll ordain him as a Universal Life minister, turn this thing into a rockin' multicultural experience.
(B) Well, we've lied to Mom for this long. What's another 20 years?
(C) Honestly, who cares? We love each other and we haven't been subject to a New York Magazine profile yet, so this can't be that complicated.
(D) He/she'll convert! We've got a great Rabbi and he's so welcoming and this is gonna be easy; we'll just do it in the closest temple, and be done with it. My spouse has fully embraced my spirituality and culture believes what Jews believe so, you know, draw baby a Mikvah and let's get goin' here!
(E) You're converting in an Orthodox temple, with an Orthodox rabbi, under strictly Orthodox rules. Throw out those Manolos, by the way.

Question 5:

Your parents are:

(A) Awesome.
(B) Annoying.
(C) One's Jewish, one ain't.
(D) They're both Jewish, Mom converted in a conservative Judasim temple a long time ago, but now attends Orthodox services with Dad.
(E) They were both born, raised, and remain Orthodox. I have a sneaking suspicion that one of them converted, but if they did, it was definitely an Orthodox synagogue. Nothing less. If they ever found me with a Shalom Auslander book, they would kick the everloving shit out of me.

If you answered A, B, or C to any of the questions, give yourself -5, -3, and -1 points.

If you answered D to any of the questions, give yourself 0.01 points.

And if you answered E to any of the questions, give yourself 100 points.

0 to -25 Points: Goyim.

1 to 99 Points: Meh.

100+ Points: Mazel Tov! According to certain authorities, You're a Jew! This is the only circumstance under which the government-funded Jews' Free School in North London will admit your child. Congrats:

The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews' Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London's Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts....Because M's mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew - nor was her son. It turned down his application.

Mind you, this is the New York Times most emailed articled today for a reason. There are wide, wide gaps in some Jewish communities where, despite regularly attending services, embracing Jewish customs into one's family's lives, and practicing on a daily basis, you are still not considered Jewish. This isn't just in the Orthodox community. A good example came up in last night's comments about this very issue:

I'm a half-breed (Shiksa mother) and I vividly remember being told that I was not Jewish by a girl at summer camp. I cried for days and couldn't understand how I was Jewish enough for a Bat Mitzvah and Hebrew school but not Jewish enough for this little girl in my bunk.

In the great literature of our time, Harry Potter, people without two magical parents are considered by evil angry purebred magical people to be "Mudbloods." This is kind of like that. Am I suggesting the Orthodox community in question in the New York Times today are anything like J.K. Rowling's Death Eaters? Not at all.

But it's interesting to think that the Anti-Defamation League—a Jewish organization whose sole purpose is to "stop the defamation of the Jewish people, to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike," but has been criticized for its often elitist, extremist Zionist positioning—has yet to speak out on this one! Shocking. So: how antisemitic are some of these people Jews?

Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school, saying that observance is no test of Jewishness, and that all that matters is whether one's mother is Jewish. So little does observance matter, in fact, that "having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn't make you less Jewish," Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

Damn. Looks like I'll have to re-arrange the next questionnaire.

Jew-on-Jew antisemitism is an actual problem. This thing's gonna strike a very loud chord with many, many people, in many, many places. The case in question has since been overturned on the basis that the school has taken it upon itself to administer an ethnic test and a verdict is expected in the coming months.

Yesterday I was having brunch with a newly married couple in Park Slope—by the way, I know it's cliche and sooo Curbed comment section circa 2006 to mention how many kids there are in Park Slope, but sweet Jesus there are so many [Ed. goddamn] kids in Park Slope!—and they presented to me a piece of paper that may forever change the way I view politics and love forever.

The document was enclosed in an official-feeling folder of heavy navy blue stock embossed with a giant raised seal of the Borough of Brooklyn that features a woman holding a hatchet which: hahahah Park Slope Mom amirite? Inside the folder was basically a cross between the Certificate of Participation that you get in third grade rec soccer or maybe after you finish a Lamaze class, I wouldn't know, and a Blingee if you were to print it out with a dot matrix printer. I think there were still a few places where they hadn't fully ripped off the perforated margins.

The paper solemnly stated: "President of the Borough of Brooklyn MARTY MARKOWITZ Congratulates [name of the couple, rendered in cursive font] on the Occasion of your wedding." Surrounding the text was, no joke, clip art images: cupid, wedding cakes, hearts, a lil groom, what have you, and then most hilariously a right-click-copy-alt-tab-right-click-paste'd picture of the couple cribbed straight from their New York Times announcement.

!!!!!!!!

Seriously, is this a thing that someone from the Brooklyn Borough President's office actually does? Does Marty make it himself!? Do only NYT weddings with right-clickable photos earn the honor? I tried Googling the phenomenon but it was hard to figure out what search terms to input and also I suspect that the real dirt is only to be found in bridal "forums" and you couldn't pay me enough.

But if you've received or ever even heard of one of these glorious mailings please let us know. Maybe I need to assign John Cook to the case STAT.

***

Last week we discussed couples' treatments of Halloween but wow, this couple really took the holiday and ran with it ... I'm kind of scared.

This is not the bride and groom, but I bet they had some wild superhero sex later that night.

Melissa Johnson, "known for her sardonic humor and love of dark, gory films and burlesque" was surprised when she fell for chipper Timothy Lagasse, an "endlessly upbeat designer and fabricator of puppets" who works for shows like Sesame Street. (Dude, what is the Times' deal with the Sesame Street hard-on? Also, hello perverts who found this page by Googling Sesame Street hard-on! You may want to go read this Vanity Fair article before it's too late.)

She became smitten when Lagasse came into her office and told her everything he knows "about puppets, film, food, politics, monkeys and the world all at once." Wait, monkeys? Whatever, they were both involved in relationships at the time but then at another later time they were no longer both involved in relationships and so they got together and then "tested one another's mettle" with trips to Disney World followed by a trip to Morocco in which she refused to book hotel rooms just so she could make sure "he could travel in the Third World."

He proposed to her in a graveyard ("one of their favorite spots in Brooklyn" and this was their wedding:

James Godwin, a Universal Life minister, performance artist, painter and puppeteer, officiated at the ceremony, during which the couple slipped on wedding bands and announced, "With this ring, I mark you mine!" They then downed shots of horseradish vodka and smashed a pumpkin to symbolize their union.

Weird vodka shots and smashed pumpkins? If that's all it takes, I think a lot more of you might be married than you let on. It's like when you go to some unpronounceable country and accept a free necklace from a street vendor and now technically he can sell you for drugs.

If there's one thing the Times enjoys more than Sesame Street staffers it is old people, and Nancy Kelton and Jonathan Zich do not disappoint. Kelton's dive back into the ole dating pool post-marriage was so traumatic that it inspired her to write this book, with chapters like:

• Lawyers and Other Orators From Hell
• Shrinks and Other Psychopaths
• Men with Addictions, Ambivalence, and Wives They Have Not Quite Divorced
• Men Whose Libidos Are in Rest Homes

And that was in 1995! Imagine the horror that The Internet brought into the mix. "An abundance of certifiable loons" is how Kelton charitably described J-Date. And so you can imagine that when she finally met a seemingly normal guy, she took all the necessary precautions on their first date:

"I fired away questions," she said. "Really creepy ones. About his health and the health of his parents, whether they had cancer or problems with their hearts, and if he ever had a colonoscopy."

To be fair, at least she didn't make him talk about all his exes! I hear that really turns people off.

Christopher Knott-Craig was equally smooth the first time he met Nichole Stelma. The couple "met at an ATM machine in the basement of an Oklahoma City hotel," and I am going to cancel my subscription to Cosmo right now because they NEVER have put that on their list of 101 Unexpected Places To Meet Men! Knott-Craig noticed Stelma because she was wearing "huge sunglasses in a basement with no windows". So he went in for the kill:

Ms. Stelma remembered that he said, "My, it sure is bright in here!" Ms. Stelma knew the man who was with Mr. Knott-Craig and tried to talk to him instead.

"She didn't pay any attention to me when I was making fun of her," Mr. Knott-Craig said. "I thought he was cute," she said. "He looked like a little surfer boy so I was trying to act like I was too cool for him."

That whole exchange reads much better when you voice it with the sort of thick and dopey Southern accents befitting two people who hail from Alabama and "Sugar Land, Texas".

I just want to highlight this couple because they're so pretty.

Doesn't she look just like Kate Bosworth? Blue Crush era Kate Bosworth, just to be clear, before Kate Bosworth became a scary skeleton?

Elsewhere this weekend, the wedding of the executive vice president of Princeton University reminded me to go back and read this epic Chris Rovzar report from a night at Princeton ("The party was like any regular Yale party, except without hard liquor, dancing, minorities, or jeans"); keep a close eye on any mysterious umbrella-related injuries befalling the lead in Mary Poppins is all I'm saying; a dissertation fellow at the Brown Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America went for extra credit with a wedding that "incorporated Hindu, Jewish and Muslim traditions"; and you can rest easy: Dr. Jupiter is keeping her name.

And now, you know the drill.

Margaret Claire Hoover and John Phillips Avlon

• The groom graduated from Yale and received an MBA from Columbia: +7
• The groom is on the board of the Bronx Academy of Letters and the CItizens Union of New York: +1
• The groom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute: +1
• The groom is a columnist at the Daily Beast: -1
• The bride's father is a real estate-y guy and "a trustee of the George S. Patton Museum Foundation and his mother is a trustee at the Trinity Pawling School: +3
• The bishop of Florida "took part": +2
• The bride is "a great granddaughter of Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States" and, predictably, "on the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford and on the board of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association": +3 (would be more, but I mean, the Hoovervilles and all)
• The groom wrote a book called "Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics": +2
• The groom is a liar, because his wife is a Fox News commentator who worked for the White House from 2004 to 2005 AND he himself was "the chief speechwriter and the deputy director of policy for the presidential campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani": -10
• The groom kinda looks like Jon Gosselin in this pic: +0

TOTAL: 8

Christine Angele Pace and Andrew Lee Ellner

• Both doctors: +3
• "The bride She graduated [sic] summa cum laude from Williams College and received her medical degree from Harvard": +6
• The groom graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, where he also received his medical degree: +10
• The groom also holds a master's in science from London School of Economics: +2
• The bride's mother is a hospital chaplain and her father retired as a reporter for the New York Times: +2
• The groom's father is a professor at BU and chief of infectious diseases at Boston Medical Center: +1
• The bride is rocking what appears to be a side ponytail in this picture but that seems to be, on closer inspection, one of those half-messy buns: +1, I guess, for not caring? But a true side ponytail would have been awesome.
• The bride and groom met because she was delirious and thought he was her boss and started talking to him about a patient and he thought she was cute so he let her ramble on, which come on, that's just mean, because if it were me I probably would have kept talking for like 20 minutes and maybe even started crying: +2
• Blah blah blah "volunteer work providing medical care for the homeless: +1

TOTAL: 28