Details Emerge About Neda, the Face of the Iranian Revolution
Over the past couple of days the world has been captivated by the death of a young girl, Neda, who was gunned down on a Tehran street by Iranian forces. Now details about her are beginning to emerge. Her full name was Neda Agha-Soltan. Iranian security forces have forbidden her friends and family from speaking to the press about her life and death, even going so far as forcing them to remove the black mourning banners hanging in front of their house, but the LA Times was able to get comments from a few people who knew her and piece together some background on her, as well as what happened on Saturday when she was killed. Neda Agha-Soltan was born in Tehran, they said, to a father who worked for the government and a mother who was a housewife. They were a family of modest means, part of the country's emerging middle class who built their lives in rapidly developing neighborhoods on the eastern and western outskirts of the city. Like many in her neighborhood, Neda was loyal to the country's Islamic roots and traditional values, friends say, but also curious about the outside world, which is easily accessed through satellite television, the Internet and occasional trips abroad. The second of three children, she studied Islamic philosophy at a branch of Tehran's Azad University, until deciding to pursue a career in the tourism industry. She took private classes to become a tour guide, including Turkish language courses, friends said, hoping to some day lead groups of Iranians on trips abroad. Travel was her passion, and with her friends she saved up enough money for package tours to Dubai, Turkey and Thailand. Two months ago, on a trip to Turkey, she relaxed along the beaches of Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast. "She was a person full of joy," said her music teacher and close friend Hamid Panahi, who was among the mourners at her family home on Sunday, awaiting word of her burial. "She was a beam of light. I'm so sorry. I was so hopeful for this woman." According to her friends, Neda was an accomplished singer who was taking piano lessons regularly. What she wasn't was a political activist, but she felt inspired by the injustice of the recent election to join friends in a demonstration taking place on Saturday, despite warnings from her friends and family that something bad might happen. "Don't worry...It's just one bullet and its over" is what she supposedly told a friend who'd expressed concern for her safety. Her friends say that Neda was stuck in traffic with three others on the way to a demonstration on Saturday. Frustrated, they got out of the car for air. Shortly thereafter, they heard a cracking noise in the distance and Neda collapsed to the ground with a bullet in her chest. "I'm burning" is what friends say her last words were. Family, Friends Mourn Neda Agha-Soltan, Iranian Woman Whose Death was Caught on Video [LA Times] MORE >>
Surprise! Jon and Kate Divorce Papers Filed
In advance of the big Jon and Kate "major announcement" special, People is reporting tonight that Jon and Kate Gosselin have filed for divorce. Shocking, right?! Reports People: "Documents to initiate a legal split were filed in Pennsylvania Monday afternoon." Yes, shocking. Why do we care anymore? We have no idea. UPDATE: Video of the big "announcement" from tonight's episode can be viewed here. Gosselin Divorce Papers Filed [People] MORE >>
Best Tumblr-to-Book Deal Yet
Look At This Fucking Hipster, a blog about looking at hipsters, and then making fun of them, has scored a book deal. Plus the formerly anonymous, self-loathing author has been revealed! He's Joe Mande, a "comedian/ writer" who graduated from Emerson College, has a show at Upright Citizens Brigade theater, appears on Best Week Ever once in a while, and was named the "Best New Comedian" this year by Time Out New York. He doesn't look like I imagined, which is okay! Max Silvestri interviewed him for us last month. There have been many Tumblr-to-book deals, including ones from current or former Gawker employees Doree Shafrir, Richard Blakeley, and Nick Douglas, but as brilliant as those may be, none of them include pictures of people like this, and therefore LATFH The Book (due out next spring!) may well be the awesomest of all. We've emailed Joe Mande and we'll let you know when we hear whatever he has to say about all this. [PW via NYO] MORE >>
So Much for the Kinder, Gentler Perez Hilton
So here's how Perez Hilton's weekend ended: The gossip blogger ended up punched in the face and bleeding outside a Toronto club around 3 a.m., after calling singer Will.I.Am a "gay... fag." So much for a new, nicer Hilton. There's already been an arrested in connection with the incident. Toronto police have charged 36-year-old American Molina Liborio with assault in the case. This sounds like Will.I.Am's manager, known as "Polo Molina," who Hilton had fingered as the man who punched him and who had previously turned himself in to Toronto cops, according to TMZ. The attack occurred shortly after Will.I.Am repeatedly demanded Hilton stop writing about him and Hilton, by his own account, called him "gay" and a "faggot" to get under his skin. Which, honestly, is the sort of over-the-top hissy fit anyone would expect from the Perez Hilton, Scourge of the Internet. That Perez Hilton is so shameless his brand is practically bulletproof; he runs sex pictures of a beloved gay icon and people barely bat an eyelash. But Hilton's been trying to overhaul his image and turn more nice and advertiser-friendly. Which makes it unfortunate, for him, that he's talking defensively about his own meanness in the widely-viewed video (above) about this incident, which he also documented on Twitter (below). Although Hilton's demolished his image rehabilitation, he can take solace that nothing he ever does will ever destroy his brand as the web's most shameless gossip. Still, Will.I.Am still looks worse here, for managing to underline Hilton's (shudder) clout as a music critic and writer with an angry confrontation. Can we somehow conjure sympathy for the guy who called someone else "gay" and "a fag" in a tawdry nightclub fight? Yes, apparently, we can. MORE >>
Gawker Says 'Hi' to Fox News Stalker; He Drives Away Like a Coward
We finally met Bill O'Reilly's stalker-producer Jesse Watters on Saturday. It was a fleeting and civil encounter—jovial, even—but ultimately unsatisfying. We asked him some questions about his stalking, and then he drove away, because he's a coward. We arrived at Watters' house, nestled on a lovely suburban cul-de-sac deep among the winding byways of Huntington, N.Y., bright and early at 6 a.m. Your blogger was accompanied by Gawker video editor Richard Blakeley and P.J. Vogt, a producer for WNYC's "On the Media" who had asked to shadow us for a segment the show is preparing about ambush interviews. We'd traded in the beat-up 1998 Saturn station wagon festooned with Obama bumper stickers that we'd driven on our previous outings for a rental SUV with tinted windows, which was less likely to attract attention in Watters' neighborhood. We parked in a spot down the street from Watters' house with a good vantage point, and waited. At about 8:45 a.m., Watters walked out on to his driveway with his wife, Noelle, and we hopped out to talk to him. When Watters ambushes people, he rushes at them in a deliberate attempt to rattle them, and asks hostile questions. Not being complete dicks, we decided to approach it differently. We introduced ourselves, said hello, and calmly approached him. He got in his car and drove away. We could have engaged some of the tactics that Fox has used in these situations—by say, running to meet him at his car and positioning ourselves so that he couldn't close the door—but we didn't want to, because we weren't trying to engineer a confrontation. We were trying to engineer an interview. Even though Jesse didn't submit to that interview, we did get one answer: His hurried departure leaves no doubt in our minds that his ambush tactics have nothing to do with the answers he claims to be seeking from O'Reilly's enemies and everything to do with the theater of humiliation that Fox News thrives on and the us-against-them "culture war" that his boss believes he is waging. If Watters honestly believed that people like ThinkProgress blogger Amanda Terkel and the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg—two targets that he ambushed without even inviting them on O'Reilly's show first—have an obligation to answer for the things they do and say in the name of journalism, he would have recognized that obligation in himself. If he honestly believed that people ought to defend themselves to his cameras, he would have been happy to defend himself. And if he honestly believed that stalking and ambushing is a noble pursuit, he would have treated his own ambushers with professional courtesy and let us use his bathroom. (OK, we wouldn't have let us use the bathroom either.) But Watters doesn't believe that—he believes the people he stalks are the enemy, to be attacked or evaded as necessary. His segments are just partisan shitfights and grist for Fox's enraged audience. Watters is unconcerned about the accusation... MORE >>
Neda, The Face of a Revolution
Unless you tuned out completely over the weekend you've seen the haunting video of a young woman named Neda dying on a Tehran street after being shot in the heart. She is now the immortal face of a revolutionary movement. Just like the image of a man standing in front of a tank brigade became the lasting image of the Tiananmen Square protests in China, the video of Neda, her eyes growing ever more vacant by the second as her spirit leaves her body and climaxing with blood pouring from her orifices, is destined to become the image that few of us who saw/see it will ever forget. What happens next in the movement is the question. Will Neda's death galvanize the Iranian revolutionaries who've spent the past week protesting against the religious conservatives who control their government and rigged the recent presidential election in their favor, or will Neda's death scare enough of them into submission to allow the government to effectively squash the movement? Time speculates on this very subject: Although it is not yet clear who shot "Neda" (a soldier? pro-government militant? an accidental misfiring?), her death may have changed everything. For the cycles of mourning in Shiite Islam actually provide a schedule for political combat - a way to generate or revive momentum. Shiite Muslims mourn their dead on the third, seventh and 40th days after a death, and these commemorations are a pivotal part of Iran's rich history. During the revolution, the pattern of confrontations between the shah's security forces and the revolutionaries often played out in 40-day cycles. The first clashes in January 1978 produced two deaths that were then commemorated on the 40th day in mass gatherings, which in turn produced new confrontations with security forces - and new deaths. Those deaths then generated another 40-day period of mourning, new clashes, and further deaths. The cycle continued throughout most of the year until the shah's ouster in January 1979. The revolutionaries exploited the deep passion about martyrdom as well as the timetable of Shiite mourning in whipping up greater opposition to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. With the deaths of "Neda" and others, they may now find the same phenomena used against them. On a personal note, I first saw the video of Neda's death on Sunday afternoon at around 2PM. For the remainder of the day and up to this point, I've failed every effort, and there have been many, to get it out of my head. Even when I went to the gym late in the day, a place of solace where I'm usually able to blast music in my ears while exercising and just forget about everything going on in the outside world, I found myself unable to remove Neda from my mind. Now, I realize that this doesn't make me unique as I'm sure that many have felt overcome with the same feelings after seeing the video, but it's significant beyond Iran for many reasons, not the least of which being because I think it causes everyone who's seen the video to contemplate their... MORE >>
The Hamptons: Still Sucking
Everybody already knows that the Hamptons is the universe's vortex of suck, but here's another reason why: Restaurant/club owners who, as a method of crowd control, roll up the awning sheltering the crowd outside waiting for tables during a downpour. The culprit is this case was a usual suspect, Matt Levine, owner of The Eldridge, the staggering den of douchebaggery on the Lower East Side frequented by laser-card carrying "quality people," where a specialty mixed drink will run you $32, if, that is, you're touched by the hand of God and allowed in to mingle with a group of people who should probably all be sterilized for the sake of humanity. PlumTV's Nick Leighton was on the scene at Levine's Hamptons outpost, Georgica, in the pouring rain, with a camera when Levine rolled up the awning on dozens of people eager to drop hundreds of dollars on sub-par food and crap service. And if you've never been to the Hamptons and need more convincing of how truly awful it really is, watch this other PlumTV clip from this weekend below featuring The Blue Parrot, a place that in any other American town would be just another carbon-copy Mexican joint trying too hard to be "quirky" by serving margaritas out of mason jars, but since it's owned by Ron Perelman, Renee Zellweger and Jon Bon Jovi, it's a place where "everyone is scrambling for a table," including Martha Stewart, clearly wasted after drinking a single "Dirty Bird" margarita. Pic via MORE >>
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