It’s worthwhile taking this refresher course on rape culture in the wake of that maliciously executed New York Times story about the rape of an 11-year-old in Texas. (I can’t even think about that story without becoming enraged!) And here is a good follow-up to that first piece: “I don’t understand a culture that punishes women for the slight transgression of, like, forgetting to shave their vagina for a week but then drops their monocles and implies they deserve to be brutally raped if they fall in line and put on some mascara and a skirt.”

Do you have a “long form” birth certificate? I certainly don’t! The “hospital” in which I was “born” apparently “burned down.” Now I will never be president, if the birther sympathizers get their way. Unfortunately, they probably won’t, because even when they introduce legislation that requires a “long form” birth certificate to run for office, they are also forced to admit they don’t know what one is. It’s also worth noting that these legislators are attempting to put into law that a citizen who has ever had dual citizenship may not run for president. This is probably unconstitutional? Though who knows! Still, good luck getting a security clearance if you’re a dual citizen — though the Justice Department defines dual citizens as regular old citizens of America for hiring purposes, and of course you’ll do just fine getting elected governor of California if you’re actually a stealthy servant of Vienna! Kenya, for the record, does not have dual citizenships.

Remember the wonderfulness of the typography treatment of the lyrics in the original video for Cee-lo’s “Fuck You” last summer? It started a trend — Hype Williams used a similar, though more photosensitive-epileptic-seizure-inducing, effect in his video for Kanye West’s “All of the Lights” last month. Now, the new video for a remix of another song from Cee-lo’s Lady Killer album, “Bright Lights Bigger City,” puts a new spin on the idea. I think it’s great. And, God, I love that Billie-Jeanie bassline. I’m not sure how much the addition of Wiz Khalifa adds, though, other than the cache that comes from his recent no. 1 single, “Black and Yellow.” His voice sounds fine, but, man I wish he’d try to do a little more with his words. (“Ain’t a Laker, but I’m ballin’…”? Really?)

Speaking of Khalifa, a really dumb thing happened a couple weeks ago that involved him but was not his fault. There’s this website called Big Ghost Chronicles. It’s a comedy site, wherein an anonymous blogger writes posts in the voice of the Wu-Tang Clan rapper, Ghostface Killah. It’s very funny and skillfully done but most importantly, and pretty obviously, it’s fake. It’s a joke. And part of the joke is that the mysterious author supposes that Ghostface would not like Wiz Khalifa’s music. The mysterious author, in fact, imagines that Ghost would include Khalifa on his list of “Ayo the 10 Softest Niggas In the Game!”

Unfortunately, not everyone who has read the the Big Ghost Chronicles site has understood that it’s a fake. As hard it is to believe, the hosts of the Star & Bucwild Morning show on the Philadelphia radio station 100.3 The Beat, did not understand this, and, when Wiz visited the show for an interview, they read him excerpts of the posts about him, attributing the derogatory comments to the real Ghost. Khalifa responded by saying that Ghost “played himself.”

See, this is how rap beef starts.

Luckily, Ghost took his Twitter feed soon after to clear the air:

Ayo i wanna address this bullshit going on, this website called bigghostnahmean is a fake website which i have no affiliation with or did i say anthing negative about any of them artists up on that page, got respect for all the young cats coming up doin they thing. tell the kid Wiz, its all love i respect him as a artist and got no issues wit him at all, Once again the website is fake, its not ya boy!

Sheesh!

Is Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder an asshole? If you ask our friends at Next Media Animation, the answer seems to be a pretty resounding “yes.”

“Imposing the curfew, Caerwyn Roberts, chairman of the magistrates’ bench at Dolgellau, agreed to suspend the order for nights of a full moon. He also ordered the warlock to pay £85 costs and forfeit his knife.”

It’s been some time since we’ve brought you news on our endless war against the birds, but today is huge. When last we checked in, the plan was to basically kill all of the birds around airports, but that hasn’t worked! Mostly probably because birds aren’t fairly mobile. New news! Birds are more likely to attack than ever: “The number of severe bird strikes suffered by airline flights above 500 feet reached a new high of 150 in 2009, the federal data show. That represents a 40% increase in the rate of bird strikes compared with the average from 2000 through 2008. The trend continued last year, which was on a nearly identical pace of serious strikes through November.” The truth is: there have been 108,000 bird attacks on planes recorded just since 1990. Why won’t the birds just leave us alone?

Livestream news from Hawaii seem to show non-devastating waves and pullbacks as the tsunami spreads out from its source in Japan, but at “fairly significant numbers,” according to the islands’ tsunami guy. Japan is still reporting a shockingly low death toll from such a significant event; but that toll is expected to rise. In Hawaii, people seem nervous but assured: “I’ve cut my feet on this reef a few times but nothing like this,” said the KHNL newscaster a few minutes ago, looking at the exposed Diamondhead reef, which is now getting some water again. So far they’ve seen surge of about six feet; it’s now expected to top out at 8 or 9 feet. In the 1946 tsunami, waves lasted all day; this is not expected to be as severe, but you’ll see “odd behavior” all day around Hawaii. After 7 a.m., foot-size waves are expected to reach California.

by Jessica Machado

A recent Friday expedition on an uptown F train found not a single Kindle, iPad or knickety-knack Nook in sight.

Two young ladies, one clutching her canvas shopping bag, the other with a smart pageboy haircut, were instead reading the ultimate fuck you to the e-reader, the original ambiguous literary doodad: a jacketless hardcover book.

“Feel it,” said Pratt student Chelsea Dowell, about her bare-skinned copy of The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. “It’s sturdy and formidable. Jackets on hardbacks don’t look nice. And I like my book to look good.”

Dowell said she even has no intention to own an e-reader. She instead has bookshelves upon bookshelves of hardcovers, most of which aren’t wrapped in colorful semi-gloss that could easily tackify a hip twentysomething’s apartment. Rows of worn monotone books, as the Times has pointed out, can add vintage charm and intellectual cred to any brownstone walk-up. This lends a complication of aesthetics to a simple choice.

“It’s not my intent to look smart,” she said, “but I can see how it seems snobby to read hardcover books.”

Dowell is not alone in her fondness for naked library castaways. On nearly any train that leaves or enters the crux of thrifty trend-concocting (i.e. Brooklyn), plain-face hardbacks can be found in just as many, if not more, hands than a LCD tablet. (Ride the PATH train to Jersey, or any line to Penn Station, however, and this ratio is reversed.) Unlike the e-reader and iPad, the accessories of choice of the straight-legged business casual fella, the jacket-free book can be regarded as a practical choice or, if you like, a placard of retro chic. And yet it remains as equally anonymous as its electronic counterpart. Its shell is unmarked and free from judgment from train passengers; anything (even a secret Kindle!) could lay between those hard covers and no one would suspect it’s not Pulitzer Prize-worthy literature.

“Yes, I’m reading Candace Bushnell,” said Jennifer Fell, 22, taking her book from her lap to display its spine. “The jacket had pink writing all over it. It was pretty ugly.”

Fell said she’s reading The Carrie Diaries for research for her job as an assistant at HarperCollins, but she also said that she was terribly enjoying it.

Dowell agreed that there is a certain protocol to reading commercial best sellers. “I have to wait at least two years before I can be seen on the subway with a book that was made into a major motion picture,” she said. There is the shame of the mini-billboard cover art that accompanies a book-to-film release. “I don’t want everyone to think that’s why I bought it.”

The same could be said for a book that’s too new or too trendy. In the course of a single afternoon on the L train, three copies of lit Messiah Jonathan Franzen’s second coming, Freedom, were spotted — each without paper wrapping. “It’s just cause it’s a pain to keep on,” explained one young woman in an oversized deer-bedazzled sweater. She raised her brow at the very question of her book’s nakedness. (It should be noted however, this reporter has yet to see someone, anyone, anywhere, reading either Freedom or the new Keith Richards biography with its proper blatant advertisement.)

While some of these hardbacks spotted around Brooklyn are new releases and work perks, the real old school deals are often purchased from book-swapping websites and, presumably, Park Slope rummage sales. The paper trail, so to speak, also leads to Court Street in Cobble Hill, to the aptly named Community Bookstore.

Owner and possible godfather of sardonic hipster disdain John Scioli is a bit of a relic in city’s used bookstore business. The mustached straight shooter does not discriminate against the buying and selling a book without its jacket.

“I’ve never thrown away a book. Who can throw away a book?” he said, and ashed his cigarette on the floor.

Despite the sprouting of fair-trade patisseries and organic baby boutiques around him, Mr. Scioli’s literary hoarder’s nest has been open, successfully, for 25 years. The kicked-in boxes of uncataloged books at the feet of slumped-over bookshelves will not deter the hardbound-hungry who come in with their requests for Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose or Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. Scioli’s nimble mind is his own personal Amazon, keeping track of where every single cookbook, young romance novel and European history text can be rescued from his haphazardry.

To draw attention to his anti-e store, Mr. Scioli also leaves a trail of random books along the sidewalk, leading unsuspecting hipnerds astray from their High Life happy hours and tandori tapas for a peek into his den. Most in the neighborhood are already well aware of his “no-book-left-behind” policy and his amassing of thousands of titles, most of which are sold for under $5 — half the price of an electro copy.

Scioli, who has never touched an e-reader, and doesn’t presently own a computer, could be the unsung hero of retrograde cool, the beacon of curmudgeony that will lead resilient hardcover lovers to his treasure trove in the paper apocalypse.

Or, you know, totally not. “When I’m not here, I stay away from books,” he said. “I watch television.”

Jessica Machado has been fabricating trends under the guise of journalism for far too long.

Photo by moriza.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi almost spent as much money on a pretty contestant from Italy’s “Big Brother” as he did on a whole year’s worth of ties and scarves.

by Abe Sauer

On Tuesday we published an in-depth look at how Republican representatives running for office lied to union reps during the vetting process — lies which directly led to those Republican candidates receiving union endorsements. We also looked at how American Majority, a far right conservative organization founded by the Sam Adams Alliance, had become active in Wisconsin. Their goal: training candidates to take over school boards and city council seats to better use the “tools” in Governor Scott Walker’s budget “repair” bill.

A very polite person named Kasey Ginsberg identified herself in the comments of that piece as an American Majority employee and offered some “corrections.”

One of the details that Ginsberg saw as being in need of “correction” was the statement that, in cases of think tanks and the media, “Virgina-based” means “Washington D.C.” Ginsberg’s correction stated:

“Not that it matters, but we are based in the town of Purcellville, in western Loudon County, Virginia. In 2006 the population was just 6,200. We’re at least an hour and $5 in tolls away from D.C., so we might as well be based in Florida for as often as we’re seen inside the beltway. Check it out for yourself here. So, being identified as “Virginia-based,” means “Virginia-based.”

Though to be fair, on her own Linkedin profile, Ginsberg’s employer, American Majority, is identified as being in the “Washington D.C. Metro Area.”

But that’s just a petty squabble and just a programming detail of Linkedin, which also apparently needs a “correction.”

Far more interesting is that Ginsberg’s Linkedin profile reveals that, in the four months before taking her job at American Majority last August, she was a “Koch Internship Program” intern at the Institute for Energy Research, a climate change denial think tank that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from, yes, Koch Industries.

What a coincidence. Ginsberg told me as much: “To my knowledge, I am the only member of AM’s staff to have participated in a Koch program.”

Except the others. American Majority’s North Texas field representative, Raz Shafer, was a Koch Summer Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an organization, which, in addition to being another climate change denial think tank, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Kochs.

A bulleted accomplishment from Shafer’s resume regarding his Koch fellowship: “Published in multiple media sources including 5 of the nation’s top 10 newspapers.”

To be fair, she did say “to my knowledge.” And anyway, a Koch internship program is completely different from the Koch fellowship program.

Let’s be even more fair to those complaining about a “Koch conspiracy.” There are other wealthy men involved in funding “activist” training in places like Wisconsin. And they really don’t get their due.

One undermentioned billionaire is Howard Rich. Rich is a Club for Growth board member, and a board chair of Americans for Limited Government. On their board you’ll find Eric O’Keefe, who, as we noted earlier, is a Wisconsin resident and chairman and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance.

But again, as American Majority would argue, this is all just a coincidence and it is “sustained through the generosity of individual donors.”

Despite American Majority’s claim that it is “non-partisan,” nearly every American Majority employee I could find has at least one stint as a staffer in a Republican’s office or his campaign. Ginsberg worked for both North Carolina Rep. Bryan Gossage and the North Carolina Republican Party. Indiana-based American Majority controller Mike Moehlenhof was director of new constituent relations for Sam Brownback’s presidential campaign.

It works the other way too. Former American Majority field representative Elizabeth Patton is now the district representative for constituent services for U.S. Senator Jerry Moran. Former Norm Coleman intern and later American Majority field representative Thomas Freeman is now the Redistricting Committee administrator for the Minnesota House Republican Caucus.

American Majority’s two staffers in Wisconsin, Matt Batzel and Heather Weininger, are experienced Republican strategists. Matt Batzel (American Majority-Wisconsin’s Executive Director) worked for Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Pitts. Batzel was the one who arranged sponsorship for the March 6th rally in Madison for the Americans for Prosperity “Stand With Walker” bus tour. The Club for Growth paid for bus transportation (but, remember, American Majority it totally its own organization, independent of those two Koch-funded groups).

American Majority-Wisconsin’s field staffer is Heather Weininger, who has a long history as a Republican strategist. She directed finance for Republican state Rep. John Gard’s Congressional campaign and, according to 2010 campaign finance filings, was paid $19,375 by Republican Mark Neumann as a “fundraiser” during his Republican campaign.

Heather’s husband is Wisconsin state Assembly Rep. Chad Weininger (R-4).

We mentioned the activist training done by American Majority, including its most recent event in Madison on March 5th. American Majority even provides “A Wisconsin School Board Primer” about what a school board is, how to run for it, and suggestions on reforming your school district. These suggestions, surprise, are carbon copies of both the education reforms introduced in Scott Walker’s budget bill as well as the campaigning points for candidiates such as Sauk County Tea Party president and 2011 Baraboo school board hopeful John Meegan, who, as we pointed out, has been working closely with American Majority since last year.

Billed as a simple document to learn about how school boards work, the Wisconsin document includes statements such as “Scholar Richard Briffault has pointed out that nowhere does the U.S. Constitution mention a national education system….”

Their point is simple: “We must bring competition to American education to enact change: reforming the education system must be a priority for all people, regardless of party affiliation.” This primer explains that too much money is spent on the school system, and implies that teachers are overpaid. (Though it does put this out there: “Let’s face it: teachers deserve to be duly compensated for their work.” Radical! But wait. “However, the entrenched system of seniority-based pay — held in place by collective bargaining agreements between school boards and teachers unions — often prevents districts from compensating teachers fairly.”)

At the end, it has a short list of resources. The first on the list is the Alliance for School Choice. There’s also the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The American Majority’s “School Board Primer” is actually a guide to dismantling public schools for charter schools.

American Majority offers ten such state-focused “School Board 101” manuals, from Indiana to Minnesota.

Finally, a clip from an American Majority “grassroots” training seminar featuring Director of New Media Strategy Austin James, from the film “Astroturf Wars”:

Paul Revere would be proud… if he knew what an Amazon was.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.