Somehow, Tyrese Gibson came across an email address he thought was for the ex-girlfriend of Kanye West, when in fact it belonged to and entirely different Amber. Madcap hilarity does in fact ensue.

…that I whiffed a golden opportunity yesterday re: the deaths of certain jackasses, but in truth I was just super busy.

We are better off without the likes of Andrew Breitbart on this earth, and who knows? Maybe God agreed. Breitbart created controversies for personal gain by selectively and dishonestly editing videotapes, and then calling it “journalism.” He was more interested in personal enrichment and a broken, fundamentally selfish and un-American ideology than in anything else. I was criticized in private correspondence yesterday for dancing on his grave, but the likes of Breitbart are a cancer on American discourse. He and his ilk encouraged the worst impulses of their audience and, in so doing, led them to false conclusions as a party trick. To be worthy of the title “journalist,” you need to be working to inform and educate the public. What Breitbart did was sick, craven manipulation designed to float his own boat and aid his ideological fellow travelers, and he did it in a way that makes Murdoch’s Fox look subtle.

I am sad for his family, and whatever friends he may have had. I am sad he made the choice to use what was clearly an exemplary intellect in such a morally bankrupt way. I am sad that his financial success means we will see more of this kind of media hooliganism, not less.

But I am absolutely not sad that he will make no more such noise.

Every time I hear about another social network I “need” to check out, I roll my eyes a little. Granted, by writing here I maintain a pretty rich online presence, and things like Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, etc., are first and foremost about allowing people too untechnical to create a real blog some level of access in this still-new medium, so to a first approximation I probably should just welcome all these new tools. But who has the time?

The truly eye-rolly thing is that there are some folks who somehow insist they’re participating meaningfully in so many of these networks as to defy belief. Really? You maintain a blog, a Twitter feed, a Facebook wall, a Tumblr, and post 10 shots a day to Instagram? How, exactly? (And if the answer is “I put the same content on all of them,” well, what’s the point?)

So let’s just say that this little parody hits me exactly right, and if you share my view on these things, it may please you as well.

Via Brent Simmons. Even better is the beneficiary of the joke, btw.

(For my part, I do Twitter and Heathen almost exclusively. I’m on Facebook, but only minimally, and mostly at this point to easily communicate with family.)

Ze Frank is Bringing Back The Show.

Confused? Don’t know what this is? You’re in for a treat. Basically, Ze Frank did a brief online episode of commentary, music, comedy and general brilliance every weekday between 17 March 2006 and 17 March 2007. I linked to him often in that year. Now he wants to do some more. This is a good idea.

This is kind of huge. Basically, NPR is walking away from the whole bullshit “teach the controversy” style of reporting that refuses to make any judgements about arguments. You know what I mean: stories that end with the intellectual equivalent of “while sources at the Vatican insist scripture shows the Earth is the center of the universe”.

A journalist’s job isn’t to report what’s being said. It’s entirely possible one side really IS demonstrably full of shit; in fact, in American politics, it’s quite often the case, and quite often the Republicans doing the lying. And the only reason they get away with it is because news orgs are afraid to call them on their shit for fear of being branded “liberal” by Fox and its fellow-travelers.

Even NPR has been taken in by this false equivalency doctrine in the past; no more:

In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments we can find on all sides, seeking to deliver both nuance and clarity. Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.

and

At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.

I’m glad they’re returning to journalism. Or, as certain numbskull NYTimes editors called it, “vigilanteism for facts.”

MeFi points us to this post at Jezebel, about some rich alumna’s letter to the Smith College newspaper complaining about all the poor, nonwhite, lesbian students that are there now.

No, really. I’m not making this up. The letter closes with this:

I can tell you that the days of white, wealthy, upper-class students from prep schools in cashmere coats and pearls who marry Amherst men are over. This is unfortunate because it is this demographic that puts their name on buildings, donates great art and subsidizes scholarships.

Seriously.

Anyway, madcap hilarity ensues, predictably, but the single absolute best part is this comment at Jezebel itself that all by itself manages to redeem blog comments as a concept across the board:

Dear Place I Spent My Youth,

Things are not as good as they were when I was young, because my youth was the Best Time Ever.

I would like the world to reward me for my circumstances, despite the fact that I had nothing to do with them. They are still mine and I demand validation for them. Life is a game I won it, can’t you see that? Everyone loves me, or is intimidated by me, which means that everything is the way it should be.

The fact that you have shown approval to people who do not look like me, act like me, and are clearly not Life Winners like me hurts my feelings. Make them go away and restore my sense of superiority.

If you carry on including people based on their ability to thrive in an academic environment instead of their upper-class status, I will no longer be able to lord my credentials over other people. This will not stand.

Keep putting the cunt in country club,
Selfish Racist Homophobic Narcissist

That, gentle heathen, is a burn.

Stephen Colbert deliciously skewers the utter ridiculousness that is corporate marketing.

I am reminded of Bill Hicks prescription for marketing and advertising people. Seriously, if you spend your days making up bullshit like “Wheat Thins are for people who are actively seeking experiences,” you are a completely useless sack of meat who should drastically re-evaluate your life choices.

Hollywood would really like to have all sorts of extra tools, like SOPA and PIPA, to go with their colonization of the Justice department in the desperate pursuit of eradicating illegal content online.

For a whole host of reasons, that’s just not going to happen. People HAVE to be able to decrypt movies and music in order to watch them, and once they’re decrypted people will make copies. They’ll make backups, because media — either CD/DVD or hard drives — fails. They’ll transcode movies to watch on their phones and tablets. They’ll do these things because they should be able to do them, even though the MPAA would prefer it if you needed to re-buy your movies over and over in order to enjoy them on your TV, on your computer, and on your portable device.

Hollywood’s biggest problem isn’t piracy. Hollywood’s biggest problem is their own inability to treat their customers with anything other than contempt. Endless attempts to cash in at any point — like Sony’s move to jerk The Bodyguard off streaming services this week, because people will want to watch Whitney and maybe they can be convinced to BUY A BLU RAY instead — make it abundantly clear what they think of us, but one more excellent example is the ongoing usage of “release windows.”

The term describes the process of allowing properties to be available in certain ways only at certain times — maybe a movie is on Netflix for a while, but they’ll pull it off and flood the zone with BluRays if there’s a sequel coming, for example. And with television properties, the windowing rarely makes any sense at all.

Case in point, and the whole reason I’m writing this post, is what happened when the author of the Oatmeal tried to watch Game of Thrones. It’s very, very similar to what happened when Mrs Heathen and I tried to catch up on Battlestar Galactica before the final season was available. It beggars belief, really, that they make it this hard to give them money.