If only Brad Ferro, a 24-year-old former gym teacher, had, while drunk off shots the color of stop lights, hauled off and smashed in the tanned faces of someone named Ronnie or Vinnie, perhaps then he'd still have his old life. If only he'd taken a step back from that Seaside Heights nightclub bar, dropped his shoulder and thrust his fist violently into the famous abs of Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino. Or, you know, if only he'd decided not to hit anyone. Perhaps then he wouldn't have been fired from his job, convicted of assault, forced to attend anger management classes and finger-wagged into begging for forgiveness in [...]

Anna Holmes, proprietress of ladysite Jezebel, goes balls out (can we say that?) against the recent spate of self-promoting, fact-averse detractors. Here's a small sample.

Perhaps you've heard that there's been some… disagreements between certain feminist blogs and The Daily Show recently. If not, let me recap! A couple of weeks ago, Jezebel's Irin Carmon (a hand-to-God Real Journalist, with non-blog bylines!) wrote a piece examining what she termed The Daily Show's "Woman Problem." She largely defined the show as being a hostile environment for women as evidenced by the perennially low number of female correspondents and the testimony of some named and unnamed sources. The piece didn't really go too far, other than apparently being widely linked on Facebook. Olivia Munn, the Daily Show's but-one-month-old lady correspondent may or may not [...]

Linda Hirshman, whose ardent feminism is so strongly felt that she will not allow anything as mundane as "facts" or "evidence"-which are probably man things anyway-to get in the way of an argument, took on ladysite Jezebel for yesterday's debut of new Slate ladysite Double X. Hirshman's contention that Jezebel is "hurting women" would have been an incredibly timely attack if delivered, say, last summer; Jezebel's Megan Carpentier responds rather comprehensively. Then all those bitches in the comment section go crazy.

A couple of times in the last month, Gawker Media sites have been all, "Hey that piece on your site was great, can we syndicate it?" Now, I am old. And for us olds, "syndication" is a term of art in the world of publishing things. In this scheme, people who are self-employed make a living by selling their work, for usually small fees, to a number of different publishers. It's how things called "comics" used to work in newspapers (and currently "don't work" most likely). And columnists, and such. Not a bad system for all involved. And now there is a new kind of syndication, as explained [...]