Pete Wentz's Bar Busted By NYPD For Saucing Up The Young'uns
Whoops! An eagle-eyed tipster spotted this today on the front door of Pete Wentz's East Village bar, Angels and Kings, which got smacked down with an NYPD closure. Looks like they were serving to minors. An inside source notes that Angels and Kings was issued a third citation for serving to minors, so they've been shut down for three days. They also noted that their first two violations were previously thrown out in court, though, so the cops are - as they're wont to do with New York City bars - actually kind of just fucking with them. Sugar, they're going down swinging. Last time this fair website heard from Wentz, he got all different kinds of pissed off and mad and upset when we posted a Gawker Stalker sighting of him. He blogged about it on his Tumblr, and we ran a pretty pie graph about what all of Pete Wentz's fans had to say to us! Wentz, despite Twittering his whereabouts, was primarily concerned with the safety of his kid, who was with him and wife Ashley Simpson (along with their two-ton bodyguard, who probably doesn't stick out at all). And we can respect a guy who looks out for his kids, and who encourages his fans - mostly kids, too, we might add - to be concerned, too. But he's clearly not too concerned with anyone else's kids, or their drinking habits, which their parents might not approve of. Being a rock and roll parent: rough stuff. Bummer. On that note, Gawker Stalkers are encouraged to be more vigilant in reporting their sightings of Pete. We wouldn't want him spiking anybody else's punch. Sightings go here. Closeup of the notice here: Oh, and related: if you've never been to Angels and Kings, Joshua Stein put it best when he noted that, upon opening, "our douche canary in our douche mineshaft keeled over and died." Which is everything you need to know about the place. MORE >>
The Abu Ghraib Photo Mess: Denials, Clairifications, Media Slapfights
What a mess. The Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday that Major General Antonio Taguba had seen the Abu Ghraib photos Barack Obama's trying to suppress, and that they were really, really bad. Now Salon's reporting that Taguba hadn't actually seen them. This is ugly. The Thursday report Salon called into question found Taguba - who retired from his military career in 1997 - noted that the Abu Ghraib photos the ACLU's suing to have released show "torture, abuse, rape and every indecency." Last night, Taguba admitted that he hadn't seen the photos the ACLU is suing over: "The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said — but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress. Taguba then went on to mention that he still thinks "no other photographs should be released" because he fears it could generate and incite more violence and retribution against American soldiers. The Daily Telegraph, now embarrassed at getting the story wrong and trying to find cover, ran their own version of Salon's story earlier this afternoon: their spin is that despite their initial report implying that Taguba had seen the suppressed photos, he had CONFIRMED their story in CLARIFYING that the photos he had seen weren't the ones Obama was trying to suppress. Ohhhhh. Got it. Hate to admit it, but Robert Gibbs was right about one thing: the British Press - kinda stupid, sometimes. They also cited The Daily Beast: Scott Horton, who wrote yesterday about some of the photos Obama was trying to suppress, also had sources confirming their contents! Exciting! The photographs differ from those already officially released ... In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position ... In one withheld photograph, not previously described, Specialist Charles A. Graner, Jr., an Abu Ghraib guard, is shown suturing the face of a prisoner, a reliable source tells The Daily Beast. Well, guess who else looks stupid, here: yes, The Daily Beast. Salon published those two photos in 2006, and Salon's Alex Koppelman took to the streets (blog) about an hour ago to scream that those photos were so three years ago, they had already been there (First!!11!!) and that none of you morons claiming to actually have some kind of exclusive on these photos or their content do. So Salon's playing their own horn really loudly - fine. But both The Daily Beast and the Telegraph both look fairly ridiculous, today: they bought a story without trying it on, took it home, and wore it out to the club. And then Salon pointed out the giant skidmark near their collective ass while they were in the middle of doing the "Soulja Boy." They did a great job... MORE >>
A Bronx Tale: In Search of Sonia Sotomayor
There's been a lot of hootin'-and-hollerin' about Sonia Sotomayor and her rags-to-riches life story. But who's going to the Bronx to find out what her peeps think? I can do that. South Bronx, stand up! Last time me and my video-homie Ray hit the streets it was in Williamsburg, on the hunt for The Hipster Grifter. After listening to the media elites preen-and-prattle all week I decided to go the Boogie Down (my birthplace as well, Sonia. We taking over!) in search of Justice Sotomayor's roots, and some real talk. Here's the video report. A Bronx Tale: In Search of Sonia Sotomayor from weekendvids on Vimeo. MORE >>
Oh, Keith
Keith Olbermann devoted a good deal of time on his show tonight to our reporting on Erich "Mancow" Muller's fake waterboarding escapade. He says we're conspiracy theorists. We never said anybody conspired with anybody to do anything, but his puzzling, false, and hysterically paranoid response makes us wonder. Muller is a shock jock who made his name by pulling stunts like shutting down traffic on San Francisco's Bay Bridge with his station's news van and having his sidekick get a haircut on the asphalt, making prank calls to Chinese restaurants and asking whether they make their Egg Foo Yung with dog or cat meat, saying "nigger" on the air, and making repeated calls to the hair salon next to his studio and insinuating that the male owner is a gay. Seven days ago, after a week of on air hype, Muller—who has always denied that waterboarding was torture—purported to undergo the procedure on the air, after which he dramatically announced that he had changed his mind about it. This would have probably gone largely unnoticed except for the fact that Keith Olbermann designated him as the leading critic of torture. So irresistable was the idea of a nominal conservative coming over to Olbermann's side of the torture debate (the right side, we might add) that even after we reported that Muller's stunt was at best a half-assed spectacle that didn't come close to the actual conditions that waterboard victims experience and at worst a deliberate con job designed to get publicity, Olbermann double-downed and blamed us for ruining his fun. Based on the evidence we've gathered, and Olbermann and Muller's confusing and contradictory responses, we're increasingly convinced that Muller's waterboarding escapade was a purposeful fabrication—that he set out to engineer a publicity event based on the reversal of his position. But even if you take the most charitable view of the evidence from Muller's perspective, all that emerges is a fake waterboarding that frightened a callow radio host. Olbermann brought Muller—with his wife and daughter wandering around aimlessly and confusingly behind him in the studio—back to his show tonight to rebut our stories. He said that "the only actual evidence" that Muller's supposed waterboarding was not, in fact, a waterboarding was "the use of the word 'hoax' in an e-mail." Well, we'd say that's something, considering the e-mail in question was from Muller's publicist, Linda Shafran, who wrote outright that the event was indeed a hoax. Muller explained it away, as he did earlier today, by claiming that he would not have been permitted to do the stunt by his bosses if he let people know that he was actually planning on going through with it. He wasn't clear, but the implication was that Shafran wasn't in the loop—she thought it would be a bullshit stunt: "I didn't think it was a big deal, she didn't think it was a big deal. We were going to prove that it was nothing." Shafran wrote the e-mail on the... MORE >>
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