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The Most Important Auction Of Our Time
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War
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The Most Important Auction Of Our Time
The Search For The Holy Grail
The Keith Gessen FSU Middlebrow Remix copy of All The Sad Young Literary Men has been sold for $890, to a very appropriate buyer. The money will be donated to the Homeless Coalition. May this act of charity redeem our souls. [Previously]
The Keith Gessen FSU Middlebrow Remix copy of All The Sad Young Literary Men has been sold for $890, to a very appropriate buyer. The money will be donated to the Homeless Coalition. May this act of charity redeem our souls. [Previously]
war is hell
Mean Judge Tries to Clamp Down on Lara Logan Gossip
The man and his estranged wife at the heart of the recent mostly bullshit sex scandal involving CBS correspondent Lara Logan have both been ordered by a judge to stop talking to the gossip-starved press, long, long after everything damaging ended up in the papers. Contractor Joseph Burkett—who's now in a relationship with Logan after he impregnated her in Baghdad—is trying to divorce his wife Kimberly back home in Texas. She (or her attorney) took the story to The Enquirer, and then Logan took her side of the story to the Washington Post, and now the judge presiding over the divorce has finally issued gag orders to Joe and Kim. Now we won't learn anything embarrassing about them ever again! [DailyTimes]
cultural moments
Buy This Harvard-Free Keith Gessen Book And Win The Culture War!
Once in a rare while, an item comes along that embodies the entire cultural zeitgeist of a particular time and place. Ladies and gentlemen of the creative underclass, we have just such an item in our hands today. And it's up for sale to YOU, the public! The players in this strange saga: Harvard-educated literary it-boy and haughty heartbreaker Keith Gessen; Gawker, sworn enemy of literary culture and pimp of kittens; and a copy of Gessen's poorly reviewed but terribly important book, All The Sad Young Literary Men, with a very special twist. Here's the entire story of how this item came to be, and how you can—and must—buy it, in order to win the culture war and house the homeless: More »
miracle baby
Lara Logan With Child, Howard Kurtz With Exclusive
No wonder Lara Logan was so cranky on The Daily Show—she's preggers! Logan, the CBS war correspondent whose well-deserved promotion to CBS' chief foreign affairs correspondent was overshadowed by all this homewrecking nonsense, is now safely in Washington and expecting a child with Joseph Burkett, the contractor she famously carried on an affair with while stationed in Baghdad. The scoop comes from Washington Post "media critic" Howard Kurtz, which is funny, because he is generally useless and was all hand-wringy about how tabloidy this story was last week. Funny how a little exclusive can change a guy's mind, right? More passionate wartime forbidden love, below. More »
Hollywood
The Army Finds Your Movie Lacking In Nuance
Movies about war: even more important than war itself! The Army has never been able to quite get this whole Iraq business to go well, but it's damn sure not going to sit back and allow moviemakers to make their films about this Iraq business without the extensive input and assistance of the US Army. They've always used their leverage—cooperation in filming—to try to influence movie scripts. But they're having a darned hard time with this most recent crop of war movies, which seem to present the Iraq war as big problem. The military's problem with films like In The Valley Of Elah or Redacted? They're just not nuanced enough, you see: More »
war his hell
Lara Logan and the War Correspondent Sex Scandal Double Standard
CBS war correspondent Lara Logan was recently promoted to "Chief Foriegn Affairs Correspondent," but no one noticed because OMG SEX SCANDAL! The Enquirer broke it, the Post semi-legitimized it, and it's been mentioned now in, like, real newspapers and everything. She slept with some people in Iraq! One of them was married! Some wonder if there is maybe a double standard. Would we hear about the dalliences of male journalists in the war zone? Well... sort of? More »
the cinema
Stripper Porn Will Get You Out Of Iraq
Five years into the war in Iraq, and I had no idea military guys aren't allowed to have any porn over there. That's perhaps because there don't seem to have been too many soldiers actually thrown out of the country over the stuff, probably because the armed services need every last person they can get. Six-figure private contractor gigs in Iraq, on the other hand, are still somewhat coveted, so ITT small-arms repairman Brian Sayler was pretty bummed to be ejected for possessing some DVDs he got free on a stateside break. A stripper, Cassidey (pictured), in Stoughton, Mass., patriotically donated a free lap dance to Sayler, along with a collection of free porn movies such as "Cassidey's Day Off." Both the military and its contractors have had a lax policy toward enforcing the porn ban, according to an article in Boston magazine, but for some reason Sayler's building in Iraq was searched and he was sent packing. He ended up winning reinstatement on appeal, but that's not the point: If porno freedom for brave troops abroad isn't Change We Can Believe In, then what is? [Boston]
war is hell
CBS War Correspondent Gets Promotion, Sex Scandal
Apparently some CBS execs saw their foreign correspondent Lara Logan on The Daily Show last week, and, like thousands of young men across the nation, they said, "who is that cutie?" It turned out she already worked for them! But because she insisted on reporting depressing news from depressing places like Afghanistan and Iraq, she never made it on-air. That will change! A CBS press release says Ms. Logan will now be "CBS News’ Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and will be based in Washington, D.C." Effective immediately! Now Ms. Logan can shoot herself in the head when she's forced to watch the news they show us here in the states. Oh, and also, did you know she is a HOMEWRECKER? Oh ho ho yes she is. More »
what did you do during the war?
Without Comment
"The nude portrait was a gift from Iceland's first lady, who tells Bloomberg News she has 'yet to meet someone who does not want a naked picture of their loved ones with text about themselves.'" [Gothamist via Fleshbot]
what did you do during the war?
Kind Of the Most Depressing Paragraph Ever
"Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has increased slightly this year, with 46 minutes of total coverage year-to-date compared with 83 minutes for all of 2007. NBC has spent 25 minutes covering Afghanistan, partly because the anchor Brian Williams visited the country earlier in the month. Through Wednesday, when an ABC correspondent was in the middle of a prolonged visit to the country, ABC had spent 13 minutes covering Afghanistan. CBS has spent eight minutes covering Afghanistan so far this year." That is from Brian Stelter's remarkable story in the New York Times which is actually entirely about Lara Logan's appearance on The Daily Show. So. No one cares about the war(s) anymore! Until a hot lady shames us in a sexy accent. More »
spies
Meet the Man Who Started the War in Iraq
Rafid Ahmed Alwan (left), the Iraqi refugee code-named "Curveball" whose nonsense reports about Saddam Hussein's mobile bio weapons labs to German Intelligence officers helped pave the way for invasion, is speaking publicly for the first time. And he's pissed. "'For what I've done, I should be treated like a king,' he said outside a cramped, low-rent apartment he shares with his family [somewhere in Germany]. Instead, the Iraqi informant [...] has flipped burgers at McDonald's and Burger King, washed dishes in a Chinese restaurant and baked pretzels in an all-night bakery. He also has faced withering international scorn for peddling discredited intelligence that helped spur an invasion of his native country. Now, in his first public comments, the 41-year-old engineer from Baghdad complains that the CIA and other spy agencies are blaming him for their mistakes." More »
statistics
War: Even More Horrible Than Previously Estimated
Even in America, most people know that the last 50 years have been a nightmare of war and death for much of the planet. Turns out, it was actually three times worse than most people thought! "Wars around the world have killed three times more people over the past half-century than previously estimated, a new study suggests. The finding supports the notion of armed conflict as a 'public health problem' whose instability leads not only to violent deaths, but to indirect deaths from infectious disease and other causes, experts add. 'War kills more people than we had previously thought,' said lead researcher Ziad Obermeyer, a research scientist at Brigham & Women's Hospital, in Boston. 'And that has to be taken into account when we're looking historically, and it's important for people and policy makers to know when they're looking at the consequences of the war. It's important that there's an awareness of how many people actually die.'" More »
tv news
English South African purr. So then she gave up on jokes and said the wars were miserable and CBS News executives should be the first against the wall. Basically we're all terrible people, you see, and then she shamed Jon into basically saying The American People Themselves have abandoned their responsibilities. We can't imagine what Logan has against the American TV news! Her own network ran a totally compelling story just today on the state of the war between boys and girls. One of the most awkward Daily Show interviews ever, attached.
TV News Makes CBS Correspondent Feel Suicidal
CBS News Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan showed up on The Daily Show last night to bum us all out. Seriously, she "cracked" some "jokes" but they were too dark to laugh at, and she always sounds so deadly serious in her little
Candy Candy Candy
Mars bought the huge chewing gum concern Wrigley a few months ago. Hershey is scared of being crushed, so it's boosting its marketing spending by 40% over the next two years. You know what this means, according to the press: they are locked in a "Candy War." A Candy War! [WSJ]
Mars bought the huge chewing gum concern Wrigley a few months ago. Hershey is scared of being crushed, so it's boosting its marketing spending by 40% over the next two years. You know what this means, according to the press: they are locked in a "Candy War." A Candy War! [WSJ]
Controversies
The Marines Are Interested In Your Racial Opinions
Proving once again that the US Military makes strategic decisions based on the rantings of the lunatic fringe, our post last week about the Marine Corps' "We teach black people to swim" ad prompted an article about the "controversy" in the Marine Corps Times, and a healthy discussion on the paper's online discussion boards. Sentiment among the ex-military commenters there is currently running 30-0 against the ad having a racial component. "In my life time, I’ve learned through life experiences, in order for a person(s) to make a comment such as this. That they are racial in one way or another," says one. He's right, you know. (UPDATE: Former gay porn star/ Marine and current conservative blogger Matt Sanchez adds: "Smearing the military is never a big enough issue for the Gawker, it's a reflex. Maybe if they "subtly" stereotyped gay males as promiscuous this issue would have warranted greater indignation.") [MCT. Watch the ad here.]
politics
Neil Young Fans Suddenly Love War
Despite four decades of feverishly anti-establishment rocking by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, fans are showing up at concerts and booing the rock veterans for performing anti-war tunes. They've even been mraching out en masse in protest against songs like "Ohio" and "Military Madness." "The forthcoming documentary 'CSNY: Deja Vu' charts that friction, portraying fans who saluted the group's efforts and those who felt betrayed by them, while introducing viewers to Iraqi War vets who are now protesting the war as musicians, politicians and social workers. Directed by Young and due in theaters July 25, the film blends concert and behind-the-scenes footage with short news features created by CNN correspondent Mike Cerre." More »
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