I don’t want to spoil this one for you, so I’ll simply go with the description provided: “A commercial made to raise awareness in a current social epidemic and to draw attention to those whom the artists believe are most responsible in a bid to drive discussion and action to reverse the downward trend.” It’s… uh… really something. [Via]

• An 11-year-old sixth grader in Ohio had his arm broken by teenagers who called him a queer and a sissy because he wanted to be a cheerleader. One of the teenagers who beat him up was suspended! Another was not!

• There’s the suicide, by hanging, of 13-year-old Seth Walsh, in California. There will be no charges filed against the students who bullied him for years. A memorial service will be held this Friday. His siblings, 11, 17 and 18, will attend.

• The suicide, by means of his father’s Beretta, of 13-year-old Asher Brown, in Texas. School officials deny that the parents complained about bullying; the parents are outraged about being called liars and they’re being backed up pretty well by other parents and students, including a student who was beaten with a pipe by other students after his complaints were ignored by administrators.

• It’s only been a month since 15-year-old Billy Lucas hanged himself: “On Billy’s Facebook web memorial, he’s remembered with comments like, ‘Everyone made fun of him.’”

• In related news, there’s the really weird Michigan ADA Andrew Shirvell, who runs a blog devoted to harassing a “radical homosexual activist” (AKA the current University of Michigan student council president) because in part the student is a proponent of… gender-neutral dorms. Something the school’s paper recently editorialized in favor of! (There’s the already infamous Anderson Cooper interview.) This has actually been a “good” event overall, because pretty much it’s exposed the entire student body of the campus to the real face of homophobic crazy.

• And now the suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi. Here’s the very odd story from the Rutgers paper, the Targum. It interviews lots of very defensive friends of the victim’s roommates and the administration, who all suggest that the media may have “misconstrued” or “distorted” the story. That is very odd! Here’s how the Star Ledger described the gist of the matter: “A Rutgers University freshman appears to have killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate broadcast live images of the 18-year-old having a sexual encounter with another man on the internet, according to campus and law enforcement sources.” That doesn’t seem very distortable; one event did indeed follow the other.

Henry Blodget is hiring a new media reporter who is totally out to jack the strat and work the tweets and pitch a tent for the demo! No lame echoes of magazine writing! No preaching! Must own Internet! Enquire within!

“If you want an analogy: Anytime a new drug gang comes into a neighborhood, it always brings a lot of shootings because the turf lines are unclear.”
-New York University School of Law professor Samuel Issacharoff explains the decennial redistricting process. New York state is expected to lose up to two seats when 2010 state population data is revealed in December.

Kim Jong-un, the third son of Kim Jong-il, his second with now-deceased The Respected Mother who is the Most Faithful and Loyal ‘Subject’ to the Dear Leader Comrade Supreme Commander (and also a former dancer), is said to be real due to a new photo and video! This jarring event takes place as North and South Korea began and then promptly ended super-awkward military talks. What’s more: “U.S.-North Korean relations have worsened since President Barack Obama took office.”

Jonathan Chait makes a point that should be included in every article about tax rates, because it is so frequently misunderstood: “The main problem with the article is that it presupposes that individuals making $200,000, or couples earning $250,000, will pay higher taxes. They won’t. The tax hike only applies to income over that threshold. When you go from $250,000 to $250,001, you only pay a higher tax rate on that one extra dollar. Your taxes will go up by a few cents. If you earn $300,000, you will pay a slightly higher tax rate on the last $50,000 of your income — less than a couple thousand dollars. Even people making half a million dollars a year won’t be ‘taxed at rates similar to those who make $5 million,’ because only half their income will be taxes at the top rate.”

I’ve been paying attention to the Harlem rapper Vado lately. He’s a protege of Dipset’s gifted and flamboyant and ridiculous Cam’ron, and he’s delivered some good verses this year. His name is also very close to that of the Cincinnati Reds’ first baseman Joey Votto, who will likely win the National League’s MVP award. So I often find myself saying his name in my head the way he does-”Vaahdo”-when I’m watching baseball. This is a new song from his debut album, which comes out in two weeks. It features the Atlanta rapper Young Dro, who could have made an appearance in Lisa Birnbach’s new book. Dro’s upcoming album is called P.O.L.O.: Players Only Live Once. Pretty cool. But not nearly as cool as the name of Vado’s album, Slime Flu.

All this said, if these new guys think they wear more Polo than anyone else, they’re wrong. It’s a well established fact, and has been since 1998, that no one but no one wears more Polo shit than Trick Daddy.

This should be amusing: “[L]egendary hell-raiser SHANE MACGOWAN is set to take a starring role in the pop nativity of 2010. THE POGUES’ frontman has recorded a festive single with godly trio THE PRIESTS. Their rendition of famous carol The Little Drummer Boy is a great bet to pip the eventual X Factor winner to the seasonal top spot.”

I too hope that the Glenn Greenwald-Andrew Sullivan fight goes on forever. Andrew is in this corner: “I do believe we are at war; and that killing those who wish to kill us before they can do so is not the equivalent of ‘assassination.’” In the other corner: “Would Andrew be comfortable with a future Republican President — let’s say, just to pick a random example… President Sarah Palin — having the power to order American citizens killed based solely on her unchecked accusation that they are somehow involved with or helping Al Qaeda Terrorists, while the targeted citizens have no recourse to any courts and she has no obligation to offer any evidence to justify the targeting?” Meanwhile! “An Internet video showing men in Pakistani military uniforms executing six young men in civilian clothes has heightened concerns about unlawful killings by Pakistani soldiers supported by the United States, American officials said.” Never has the milquetoast newspaper phrase “heightened concerns” seemed more inadequate. Anyway, once we let gays in the military, we can carry forward this argument on killing with guns and executions, instead of blog posts! Thereby proving Malcolm Gladwell right-the Internet really is weaker than the sword/M-16.

From the Times memo just now, announcing the new editor of the Times magazine: “Our search for the next editor of The New York Times Magazine has taken us to some of the masters of the genre and introduced us to some exciting dark horses.” But you know-no actually “dark” horses.