Apparently WPMI-TV managers did not think this was as funny as we do. Lagniappe has an update:

WPMI-TV insiders have confirmed what has been a swirling rumor for the past day - that the station's general manager and news director were suspended for a week because of an embarrassing billboard.

General Manager Shea Grandquest and News Director Wes Finley have been suspended, allegedly because of a "snafu" with one of the electronic billboards in town that showed a picture of anchors Greg Peterson and Kym Thurman and Chief Meteorologist Derek Beasley alongside the headline "3 Accused of Gang Rape in Monroeville." The headline was under the header "Right Now on Twitter," and clearly was aimed at promoting the station's breaking news, but a photo of it has made its way to e-mails all over town and brought plenty of laughs.

Writes the Times:

The terse statement came in the middle of negotiations between creditors and Dubai World, the corporate arm of Dubai, which has led many of its most ambitious real estate projects, but is now struggling under the burden of $59 billion in liabilities...

The decision to take such a step comes just weeks before Nakheel, the developer of Dubai's signature palm-shaped islands, was scheduled to make payment on its $3.52 billion of Islamic bonds. The conglomerate, which also owns Dubai's huge port operations and has taken stakes in glamorous overseas properties like Barneys and MGM Mirage in Las Vegas, has billions of dollars of payments due in the months that follow.

Whoops, Dubai, you're broke. Let's hope things don't get as bad as in broke-ass Iceland—at least you still have McDonald's.

Baum sent an email to every single Jew on his contacts list asking them to write letters to Senator Joe Lieberman asking him to support health care reform. This is funny and stupid in many ways. Like: Lieberman represents American Jews, as a whole? (No, he represents Connecticut insurance companies. And right-wing Jews.)

From: Dan Baum
Subject: Jews

I'm the last guy in the world to try to organize people by religion, but we Jews may be the only people to whom Senator Joseph Lieberman might listen. He is threatening to filibuster the health-care bill to remove the public option. He has been an obvious problem for years, but this time he can do genuine damage, and it's possible a deluge of calls and emails from Jews nationwide will give him pause. Please take a minute and either call his office — (fair warning, the mailbox was full) or (860) 549-8463, or send him an email... This is the text of the message I used, but you could compose your own:

"As a fellow Jew, I am appalled by your threat to filibuster the health care bill now working its way through the Senate. I appeal to your conscience. Do not block access to affordable health care for millions of Americans. Please support the bill." This will take only a minute to do. Once you've sent a message to Sen. Lieberman, please forward this email to all the Jews you know. We could make something happen.

Various poor wording choices and mistakes in tone—the sorts of things that are huge deals to Old East Coast Jews Who Work In Media, i.e. everyone the list he sent this to—displeased the recipients of this honestly well-intentioned missive. Like you are not supposed to say "as a Jew" because that means you are an annoying Jew, and you are not supposed to assume that other Jews think the same way as you do, even though as a whole America's Jews are almost uniformly liberal on matters of domestic policy, and have been since forever. Still: unacceptable! Which is why Jeffrey Goldberg, in order to embarrass and shame Baum, published his email along with a mocking response from another Jew who is not named!

And the second email, with its terrible strained Borscht Belt humor, is so much worse. So, Jews on Dan Baum's email list: please out this farbissener!

So far this year, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., and CEO Janet Robinson have each been granted half a million stock options, and Robinson got 650,000 options last year. And for the past 19 months, they've been paid under a plan that allows for up to $3.5 million in annual bonuses.

Trouble is, in 1991, the Times adopted rules barring its executives from getting more than 400,000 stock options and $3 million in bonuses in any given year. On Friday, the company disclosed the errors in an SEC filing and restructured Sulzberger and Robinson's packages so as to bring them in compliance with the Times' own rules.

Aside from the sheer incompetence of the Times' apparent failure to have a compliance attorney look over the compensation packages of its two most important executives, we're stunned that the board was actually contemplating giving them bonuses for 2009. The 2009 bonus for New York Times staffers was 5 cents of every dollar getting taken out of their paychecks for the good of the ailing company. The 2009 bonus for Sulzberger and Robinson? Half a million dollars more than they're even allowed to be paid.

So clearly they need a federal bailout, right?

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Bad timing? Yes. But awesome naming potential? Absolutely. Surely, someone somewhere will be able to parse this for hidden meaning, and I feel bad for that person, because they're conspiratorial and insane.

Actually, come to think of it, someone already did: the right-wing nutbag who (helpfully!) sent us this tip as an "I TOLD YOU!" actually preceded the clip-tip with a lamely photoshopped picture of Obama "piss(ing) his mark in the sand" on Omaha Beach.

Regarding this clip, Gawker political editor Alex Pareene helpfully replied in an email to said Right-Wing Saturday Afternoon Tipster, who also CC'd Sean Hannity's tipline, among others: "To be fair, the beach is in France, so Brit PM Brown does not actually have the authority to rename it." So now he (and Hannity) know(s) that Brown can't actually name the beach after Obama, and hopefully, he will calm down. Saturdays are for fun! And going to the beach. He should probably do that.

Or, whatever, you are welcome to be on the Twitter, as much as you like! It is material for us, after all! You even Twittered that you didn't mean to Twitter that first thing, and that you'd take down that Twitter ASAP. Hah. Sorry, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, nothing ever disappears from the internet.

Because, you know, nothing says "new chapter in Russo-American relations" like A BIG RED BUTTON but that is just the beginning of this bizarre snafu: the button was supposed to say "reset" in Russian. Instead it says "overcharge." And the Russian Foreign Minister is all "ok nice work on the translation, morons," and Hillary tries to laugh it off but basically it's the Cold War again guys, let's all go see Watchmen.

Our source ran into the 41st prez recently at a Texas restaurant. When the subject of Palin came up during their chat, Bush told of twice phoning her office but never receiving a call back. The first message was left at McCain HQ after she was picked to be Sen. John McCain's veep; the second with the governor's office after the election was over. He shrugged it off as staff error, but our source says he was clearly perplexed.

And yet a Canadian radio DJ pretending to be the President of France got through? Though honestly no one wants to talk to George H. W. Bush, except Bill Clinton, and no one wants to talk to him except Ron Burkle and hot young models and the Saudis.

(Our theory: not "staff error." Bar didn't want him talking to that shiny-haired tramp and made sure his messages never reached their targets.)

An article on March 27 reported on a virus, infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A., killing millions of salmon cultivated for export by Chile's salmon farming industry. It quoted an official at the port of Castro, Chile, describing bags of fish food stored at the facility by Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company, as containing antibiotics, pigments and hormones. The official, Adolfo Flores, identified himself as the port director. He in fact worked as a security guard, The Times learned subsequently. Had The Times been aware of his actual position at the time, it would not have cited him as an authority on the contents of the bags, which were labeled medicated food. The article also should have noted that Marine Harvest and SalmonChile, an industry association, deny that they use hormones or that the pigments they use pose any risk to consumers.

[Via Portfolio]