"Madonna put the songs out shortly after the online leak of more than a dozen songs... she called the leak a 'form of terrorism.'"

"The leaked tracks might, in the end, only raise Madonna’s stature. When the finished album is released — with or without different songs — fans will hear what she adds to them, what she changes, what her standards and instincts demand."

"It was largely the men of the class who became the true creators, founding companies that changed behavior around the world and using the proceeds to fund new projects that extended their influence."

"Some of the women did well in technology, working at Google or Apple or hopping from one start-up adventure to the next. Few of them described experiencing the kinds of workplace abuses that have regularly cropped up among women in Silicon Valley."

From Jodie Kantor's NYT article "A Brand New World In Which Men Ruled/Instead of narrowing gender gaps, the technology industry created vast new ones for Stanford University’s pioneering class of 1994."

Rolling Stone magazine asks the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to investigate "the editorial process that led to the publication of the [UVa rape] story."

"... Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone’s editor and publisher, said that the review would be led by Steve Coll, the journalism school’s dean, and Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs.... The report will be published unedited and in its entirety on Rolling Stone’s website, and excerpts will appear in the magazine."

Good... although I feel some suspicion about this: 1. Their website will get a lot of clicks out of that, 2. Going outside is a way of getting the appearance of absolution, which they're already getting with this announcement, 3....

IN THE COMMENTS: MikeB said:

What's the academic wording for "fake but accurate"?

At the Tesla Café...

... plug in!

Goodbye to Joe Cocker.

He was 70.

I loved when he was on "Saturday Night Live" with John Belushi:

It's his mattress too.

"He has gotten used to former friends crossing the street to avoid him."

He has even gotten used to being denounced as a rapist on fliers and in a rally in the university’s quadrangle. Though his name is not widely known beyond the Morningside Heights campus, Mr. Nungesser is one of America’s most notorious college students. His reputation precedes him. His notoriety is the result of a campaign by Emma Sulkowicz, a fellow student who says Mr. Nungesser raped her in her dorm room two years ago. Columbia cleared him of responsibility in that case, as well as in two others that students brought against him. Outraged, Ms. Sulkowicz began carrying a 50-pound mattress wherever she went on campus, to suggest the painful burden she continues to bear....

He says that he is innocent, and that the same university that found him “not responsible” has now abdicated its own responsibility, letting mob justice overrule its official procedures. The mattress project is not an act of free expression, he adds; it is an act of bullying, a very public, very personal and very painful attack designed to hound him out of Columbia. And it is being conducted with the university’s active support. “There is a member of the faculty that is supervising this,” he said. “This is part of her graduation requirement.”

He plays the bullying card.

"Jon Stewart’s expiration date: Why liberalism needs to outgrow the snark."

Headline of a Salon article that ends: "If liberals want to see more of the kind of direct action that’s characterized the Occupy Wall Street and #blacklivesmatter movements — if they really want to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable — they’re going to have to embrace a political vision that has grown beyond the idiosyncratic limitations of Jon Stewart."

"US Corps Claim Billions In Assets In Cuba And Now They'll Want It Back."

That's the way TPM puts it.

50 years ago today: Lenny Bruce was sentenced to "4 months in the workhouse."

He never served that sentence, however. He was free on bail pending the appeal, and he would have won that appeal, but he died, at the age of 40, before the court issued the opinion.



Here's an excerpt from the trial court's unpublished opinion, with this 12-point list of Lenny Bruce Bruce's jokes, awkwardly retold judicial style:

1. Eleanor Roosevelt and her display of "tits." (1st performance; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 27)
2. Jacqueline Kennedy "hauling ass" at the moment of the late President's assassination. (Transcript of 2nd performance at p. 22; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 13)
3. St. Paul giving up "fucking." (1st performance; transcript of 2nd performance at p. 12; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 19)
4. An accident victim-who lost a foot in the accident-who made sexual advances to a nurse, while in the ambulance taking him to the hospital. (1st performance; transcript of 2nd performance at p. 25)
5. "Uncle Willie" discussing the "apples" of a 12-year old girl. (transcript of 2nd performance at p. 20; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 12)
6. Seemingly sexual intimacy with a chicken. (transcript of 2nd performance at p. 25)
7. "Pissing in the sink" and "pissing" from a building's ledge. (transcript of 2nd performance at p. 24; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 15)
8. The verb "to come," with its obvious reference to sexual or orgasm. (1st performance)
9. The reunited couple discussing adulteries committed during their separation, and the suggestion of a wife's denial of infidelity, even when discovered by her husband. (1st performance; transcript of 2nd performance at p. 29)
10. "Shoving" a funnel of hot lead "up one's ass." (transcript of 2nd performance at p. 22; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 13)
11. The story dealing with the masked man, Tonto, and an unnatural sex act. (1st performance)
12. Mildred Babe Zaharias and the "dyke profile of 1939." (transcript of 3rd performance at p. 27)

Bruce received a pardon in 2003. His daughter Kitty Bruce, who was 11 when her father died, said:

"Isn't this wonderful? Isn't this a great day in America? Boy, has this been nuts, or what? My dad had so much to say and so little time to say it. This is what America is all about.''

At the Blue Gray Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

And, please, if you need to shop: Use The Althouse Amazon Portal.

Hillary Clinton calls the movie about Kim Jong-un "disgusting and reprehensible."

"The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this movie. We absolutely reject its content and message. To us — to me personally — this movie is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose — to denigrate a revered world leader and to provoke rage..."



Oh... wait... that was that "Innocence of Muslims" movie about Muhammad that some sleazy guy made. Is he still in jail? This Kim Jong-un movie is a different matter. Free speech! Free speech! How dare the North Koreans object to "the fiery, slow-motion assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, to the tune of Katy Perry's 'Firework'"!

“We will make it less gory," the [director Seth Rogen responded to Sony Pictures' Amy Pascal who had some concerns]. "There are currently four burn marks on his face. We will take out three of them, leaving only one. We reduce the flaming hair by 50%." In October, Rogen sent Pascal a follow-up message with the subject line "Kim Face Fix," noting that "the entire secondary wave of head chunks" had been removed. A special-effects technician later weighed in with an update: "the goop from the head pop is darker, specifically to make it less flesh-like and more surreal."

I'm all for free speech, myself. Even for corporations like Citizens United and Sony. But why is this movie deserving of high-level government support when "Innocence of Muslims" was treated like the garbage that — on an artistic/expressive level — it actually was? Let's have some consistency! Do we love free speech and stand up to foreign bullies or don't we? Pick one!

"Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately..."

"... without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious."

Jack Kerouac, "On the Road" (1951).

Modified Christmas, Christmaskwanzakkah, and the No-Holidays Holiday.

3 approaches to dealing with the desire for festivities at solstice time, discussed in "My Jewish child was asked to wear a Santa hat at school. Should I care?"

Public schools would do best to go with...

Modified Christmas

Christmaskwanzakkah

The No-Holidays Holiday

No Christmastime festivities at all

 

pollcode.com free polls

"If you want a government that’s gonna intrude on your life, enforce their personal views on you, then I guess Jeb Bush is your man."

"We really don’t need another Bush in office," said Terri Schiavo's widower Michael.

Though Michael Schiavo got a court order in 2002 to remove his wife’s feeding tube — he said his wife had not wanted to be kept alive artificially — Jeb Bush intervened, pushing the state legislature to pass an unconstitutional bill in a special session giving him authority to order the feeding tube reinserted. When a state judge ordered it removed again, [Michael Schiavo's lawyer George] Felos told ThinkProgress, Bush “manipulated the organs of state government in order to try to evade the court order.”

There's an unfortunate phrase in a serious discussion —  "manipulated the organs of state government" — and yet it's oddly apt, expressing outrage at the inappropriateness of Bush's intrusions. 

"Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, in connection with any violence or killing of police, is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases."

Said Al Sharpton.

AND: "NYPD cops furious with Bill de Blasio turn their backs on the mayor as he enters hospital where officers died."

"In 1968, he used a bread truck to smuggle [The Grateful Dead] onto a Columbia University campus that had been shut down by student strikers."

"The next year, he may have arranged for Hells Angels to provide what turned out to be grossly inadequate security at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, where a man was stabbed to death as the Rolling Stones played."

Just 2 of many interesting sentences in the obituary of "Rock Scully, Grateful Dead’s Manager Who Put the Band on Records."

He leaves behind a daughter, Sage, and a stepdaughter, Acacia. He had a son too, by a woman named Tangerine, but he died in Thailand 10 years ago in the tsunami.

The Dead fired Scully for his drug addition, in 1984, and they blamed him for the drug-related death, 11 years later, of Jerry Garcia. Scully eventually overcame his substance abuse problem, and he entered into a part of his life that his brother called "a very humbling time": "he returned to Carmel, where he took care of his mother, painted houses and became involved in local civic issues."