"Gossip site Gawker publishes names of ALL licensed gun owners in New York City."

"The names of permit holders are available from NYPD with Freedom of Information Law request/Journalists receive death threats within an hour of publishing list on site."

Gawker seeks traffic. Stirs up outrage. (Link doesn't go to Gawker.)

Gawker tells Steven Crowder to "stop whining, take your licks, and accept that getting hit in the face is a hazard of inserting yourself..."

"... in the middle of an argument between billionaire-funded know-nothing ideologues and people whose livelihoods and stability are being threatened by the insatiable greed of the super-rich and the blind extremism of their wooden-headed political allies. In exchange, liberals will buy you a band-aid for the cut on your forehead and re-iterate that Punching Is Bad. Sound good?"

I know. They're asking for it: a link. I'm a sucker... must say what baited to say blah blah blah blah liberals blah blaming the victim blah blah if a conservative said that about a woman blah blah blah blah she was asking for it blah blah wearing that smirking look short skirt on his face her female body blah blah....

"If you could do it again, would you publish 'The Talk: The Nonblack Version'?"

"I never ponder counterfactuals."

But he also says: "I may even just give up writing and work as a butler or something. I sometimes feel I've said everything I want to say."

Why I won't read "Why We Published the Christine O'Donnell Story."

This link goes to the Memeorandum collection of links to the above-titled item in Gawker. They got nothing but outrage for the story they published, which I glanced at but refused to read and would not link to. My refusal to read it was reflexive, the way I'd immediately close the bathroom door if I opened it and found someone in there. Gawker got a lot of traffic for its paid-for, anonymous story about not having sex with Christine O'Donnell, and they're out to get more traffic explaining why they published it. Gawker has long been traffic-grabbing, which isn't inherently wrong, but it exposes you to temptations, and you have to decide where you want to draw your lines. Gawker has decided, and I'd say, the best response is to deny them the traffic they live for. Don't go there. It may not discipline them back into decency. They'll probably get more traffic as they become more and more notorious for outrageous invasions of privacy. But you don't have to add to that traffic. Don't be a chump and go look just because everyone else seems to be looking.

"Maybe Michelangelo was hiding secret drawings of brains inside the Sistine Chapel's ceiling frescoes."

"Makes total sense, right? Because... well, wait, it doesn't make any sense at all."

"Help Us Congratulate Rush Limbaugh on His Wedding Day."

Now, this headline really is about Rush Limbaugh. Sorry to make the link to Gawker, because they're being a little mean about it, but that's where I saw it first. Somehow, I didn't expect it, even though I heard him say on Wednesday's show that he was going to be away until June 16th. The reason he gave was that he was going to get another English sheepdog to drive his cat crazy.

Gawker:

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, 59, is marrying his 33-year-old girlfriend Kathryn Rogers in Palm Beach this Saturday. He's said some nice things about Gawker in the past, so we wanted to wish him and his betrothed a lifetime of happiness. But Rush is not inviting members of the media to the event for some reason. So we came up with a work-around and rented one of those big airborne billboards to fly down the coast—and over his house—during the wedding.

Now we need your help in coming up with a pithy slogan to share with Rush, his bride-to-be, and the assembled guests. Submit them in the comments, please!

Nothing too amusing in the comments there so far.

By chance, Rush's last show before the wedding hiatus had to cover the breakup of the Gore marriage. He was noticeably kind-hearted about it:

Ladies and gentlemen, Algore and Tipper amidst all of this, separated.  Forty years of marriage.  The interesting thing about this, you can't say, "You know, they just didn't really know each other.  They got married too soon.  Their lives changed just way too much."  Forty years.  Forty years and you split up.  That is not comforting....

He quotes Sally Quinn on CBS saying: "I've been on the phone with friends ever since I heard it yesterday, and everyone feels as though somehow their own marriages have split up.  It's -- you know, watching the Gores is sort of looking at the possibilities of what a good marriage could be, and when they -- when it doesn't work for them you sort of think, 'Oh, my God, maybe it's not possible.'" Rush finds that quite bizarre:

How many of you, I must ask, how many of you who have known friends who got divorced felt like your marriage was dissolving at the same time?  Any of you?  You know what you're thinking about when a couple you know gets divorced?  You're thinking, "Okay, which one of them do we like best?  Which one are we going to continue to socialize with and which one are we gonna ostracize."  That's what you're thinking.  You're not thinking, "Oh, my God, oh, my God, my marriage is in trouble, too.  Why, Biff and Sally here just split up."

He's into believing in marriage there — even as he zeroes in on the hilarious (and painful!) truth.

All right, you want me to explain it to you? The Gore divorce.  I'm stunned none of my bright, overrated staff understand what really happened here.  You separate after a 40-year marriage? I mean, that's... (sigh) That's just not done. 

He sighs!

How often do you hear about that?  Now, what it seems to me... This a pure, wild guess speculation, but it's also intelligence guided by experience.  If you are separating after 40 years, it means that there's been trouble in paradise for many years.  However, look at what's happened now.  The kids are all gone; they're out of the nest. 

She stood out of the way and let Algore make his gazillions.  She gets out just before Algore starts the drooling old man part of his life.  She's rich and she's got her whole life ahead of her....

A caller suggests that Al cheated on Tipper:

RUSH:  That's hard to envision....

Another caller:

CALLER:  The key word, Rush, is money.  Whichever way it goes.  I think it's to protect his fortune somehow.

RUSH:  Or... Well, yeah. That's not exactly my theory.  You said you were calling to agree with my theory.

CALLER:  Yeah.  Well, it's something to do with money. That's all I know.

RUSH:  Well, my theory -- I don't need to go through it again but my theory -- basically was if you're going to get divorced after 40 years, it can't all have been hunky-dory but you hang in there for various reasons. The kids...

CALLER:  Yeah.  I would hate to think it's an affair, I really would. 

RUSH:  Yeah, that's just... That's the stuff of nightmares.  That wouldn't compute. I totally agree.

He ends it there, sounding genuinely circumspect.

"We are not very judgmental people, generally, and probably these kids are having a blast dancing their scary little hearts out."

Gawker primed me to disapprove of this video with young girls dancing to "Single Ladies," but I thought they were just fine and even kind of great.

Isn't there a song that is not about, you know, marriage, that they could dance to?

Pro-marriage is a bad message for young girls? When did that happen? When I was a kid, in the 1950s, we played "house," in which you pretended to be a married woman. With children, of course. Adults loved to give us baby dolls to play with. Imagine that. It was all perfectly okay. As for the costumes the girls are wearing in that video — again, in the 1950s "dress up" was a perfectly conventional and encouraged form of play. When did that become wrong?

If you don't think girls should dance like Beyonce in "Single Ladies," you shouldn't let them see the video at all. When I was a kid, I learned to dance listening to "The Mexican Hat Dance." I think I'd be a lot better off or at least a lot better dancer if I could have learned how to dance from "Single Ladies."

"J.D. Salinger invented blogs, according to a federal judge..."

"... who granted a temporary injunction yesterday against John David California's planned 'parody' of Catcher in the Rye."

That's Gawker's take on the judicial opinion that said:

Both narratives are told from the first-person point of view of a sarcastic, often uncouth protagonist who relies heavily on slang, euphemisms and colloquialisms, makes constant digression and asides, refers to readers in the second person, constantly assures the reader that he is being honest and that he is giving them the truth.

[Insert you own slangy, sarcastic, digressive aside against the judge... who is probably a phony.]

"Enough. It’s not that you suck, it’s not that you strain for wan fratboy humor, it’s that you’re uninteresting. We’re embarrassed for you."

Enough of Gawker Media.

Via anamariecox.

"We Hate Your Kids, The Poors, The Panic of '08, Journalismism, New York Times, The Rich."

Tags on this Gawker post -- "The Infuriating New Face Of Poverty" -- about a truly absurd NYT article headlined "To Buy Children’s Gifts, Mothers Do Without."

Palpatinian tranche.

I've been reading and listening to people talk for over a half century, so it's really weird to have to look up 2 words in 2 hours.

First, MadisonMan, he of the bird's-eye view of the Michelle Obama rally-ette, said:

I agree that McCain's post-hit grin is a little too Palpatinian.

Okay, now you know I haven't been following the "Star Wars" saga. I'm not ashamed of that. In fact, I'm one of those people who blame "Star Wars" for ruining film.

And then I had to go and read the Gawker item with the revolting title: "Why We Are Better For Knowing Elizabeth Wurtzel Screwed David Foster Wallace."

That Elizabeth Wurtzel had some thing with David Foster Wallace in the nineties is the type of news flash I'd like to have failed detecting this week. Namely because to blog about Elizabeth Wurtzel is to tempt oneself to unwind the various tranches of disquietude summoned when someone like me conducts a Wurtzel Google Image Search. There's the first tranche of familiarity; I've conducted this search before; the second: I remember quickly that I will invariably, though tempted by the grainy topless shots from Bitch, will like Radar before me quickly settle on the hottest color photo available, the one she used for the cover of her 2001 addiction memoir More, Now, Again, even though Wurtzel has graciously offered us photographic evidence that she has, in the intervening (ohgod) seven and a half years, aged. For this is not a new asset, this story; the underlying episode dates back to the nineties, when Wurtzel was still dressing up her faculties and skills with too much blue eyeliner and too many mood-altering substances in lieu of the appropriate degree of risk management and/or clothes.

I admit it. I don't study finance. That's why I unfortunately cannot help you with the burning question of the day, whether the big bailout is the desperately needed cure or a horrible, evil boondoggle. I'm sorry. Really.

So let's examine that tranche for a second: here we have Wurtzel, drawn to David and his big, serious, ambitious, meaty, unfrivolous gold standard of a book; David, drawn to Wurtzel by her fucking leotard and perhaps her nebulous promise to impart upon his serious asset some sort of value-unlocking sense of "buzz"; the confusing, fuzzy subprime relationship they signed onto; all fuzzy fundamentals and wild histrionics and bombastic promises dependent on "trajectories" neither knows how — neither is socialized to know how — to prepare for a soft landing; yeah, you've done that sort of fucking.

Is Gawker trying to write like David Foster Wallace? David's dead, baby.



David's dead, but there were some good movies after "Star Wars."

"Levi Johnston, the kid who knocked up Bristol Palin and will now be forced to marry her, will attend the RNC tonight."

That's how Gawker puts it.

I just had a nightmare vision -- this election season has me continually scribbling a fictionalized screenplay in my head -- of a plot to woo that handsome guy away from Bristol Palin.

Here's the picture of the young man who suddenly has the whole world looking at him:



How is an 18-year-old guy supposed to handle all of this? He could be the main character in one of the ten romans à clef that could be written about this vividly populated election season.

New York Magazine has a piece titled "We’re Sorry, But Palin Baby Daddy Levi Johnston Is Sex on Skates." Doesn't that sound like an open call to female Obama supporters?

Note the caption at that last link.

Funny. But shameless. But he's 18. So... "fair game," right?

Live-action "Simpsons."

Via Gawker. Nicely done. This, less so.

ADDED: I've replaced the embeds with links to declutter the front page in preparation for a new home movie that I happen to know you're going to like. I mean it is certain.

Muppetnet.

(Via Gawker.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Ron says:

Looks like "Bloggingheads: The Prequel!"...

Yeah...isn't that guy on the right Kaus?

Jesse Jackson, Day 2.

1. Mickey Kaus says Jackson was making a perfectly good point.

2. Who really cares if he uses language like "nuts" in private conversation? But what's the other thing he said that FoxNews didn't air? Gawker has the rumor.

AND:

3. Forget the "nuts off" statement. Jackson's apology line "I cherish this redemptive and historical moment" is more exquisitely revealing. From the comments on yesterday's post:

Lawgiver said:

What an awesome apology by Jackson ending with, "I cherish this redemptive and historical moment."

To paraphrase;

I said I wanted to cut your nuts off but I didn't really mean it because I really really support what you do and say. So I will really really really think of my nut cutting comment and subsequent apology with a fondness and love that will comfort me the rest of my years for I have been redeemed!.

It doesn't get any better than that.

John Stodder said:

What an awesome apology by Jackson ending with, "I cherish this redemptive and historical moment."

It's quite possible that some of Jesus' disciples wanted to cut His nuts off, despite or perhaps because of His divinity.

Or it's like the old song, "You only cut the nuts off the one you love."

Whatever you do, don't say "maintain" to Mayor Bloomberg.

(Via Gawker.)

And let me just say that maybe this clip makes you think Mayor Bloomberg is nuts or at least unbalanced, but it makes me love him!

Clinton...

.... flaunts cleavage.

Or are you going to say that "flaunts" is too active a verb? She has cleavage. Just happens to have it. Just happens to wear a top that happens to be low enough that you can see it if you happen to have eyes. Just happens to wear it to the Senate floor to give a speech about the cost of education. Are you going to say that we ought to be giving attention to the content of that speech and not to the presentation of the woman who would be President?

ADDED: Link address tweaked to provide photos.

AND: Some more attention for the linked column. Hot Air: "Whatever. I don’t want to hear about Sen. Clinton’s cleavage. I just don’t. And if HRC were a Republican, she’d undoubtedly be getting the Jeri Thompson or Wendy Vitter treatment. But she’s a Democrat, so we get hack poetry paying homage to her boobs." Gawker: "Thanks, Robin! Now if we can just get a little ass-crackery from Obama, we'll be able to make our decision on who to support!"

MORE:

"Mass murder on an unimaginable scale."

Plot averted. Is this the end of carry-on luggage -- even a purse? -- and and bringing your own drink onto an airplane?

UPDATE: Gawker has fun with it. One more reason to love America.

IN THE COMMENTS: A cry of pain: "Unboxed sanitary napkins in a clear plastic bag???? Ugghhhh!!!"

The deLatification of Wonkette.

David Lat is deWonkettifying himself to go work with Elizabeth Spiers on a new law blogging project. Great! I love Elizabeth Spiers. I was addicted to Gawker back in the Elizabeth Spiers days. Gook luck everyone!

"The Blogosphere Is Alive With the Sound of Colbert Chatter."

The NYT has an article titled "After Press Dinner, the Blogosphere Is Alive With the Sound of Colbert Chatter." Okay, great, I'm blogging this. Let's see. They refer to a Gawker survey (without linking to it!). Yeah, Gawker's a blog. They refer to letters posted at Editor & Publisher (again, without a link!). Then:

Others chided the so-called mainstream media, including The New York Times, which ignored Mr. Colbert's remarks while writing about the opening act, a self-deprecating bit Mr. Bush did with a Bush impersonator.

Some, though, saw nothing more sinister in the silence of news organizations than a decision to ignore a routine that, to them, just was not funny.

Others? Some? Who are these mysterious bloggers? The article does quote a piece Noam Scheiber wrote on the New Republic's blog (again, without a link!). So one blog is quoted. Then the article collects some quotes from Al Franken (who's performed at one of these correspondents dinners), Mary Matalin, and Scott McClellan -- not bloggers.

Why isn't this article alive with the quotes of bloggers? And some links, damn it! Cluelessly, the article is dotted with links for various names that appear in the article. These links all take you to pages within the NYT site. There are no links that take you to the blogosphere chatter that the story is about, only links to stale bios and old articles.

The NYT wants to be hip by talking about bloggers, but they are deathly afraid of links that send readers away from their site, and that desperation is horribly unhip.

***

NOTE: I was on on Open Source Radio last night blabbing about the Colbert affair with various pundits. Stream it here.