Reddit Chief Executive Ellen Pao on Monday issued an apology to users of the popular social news platform over the way the company handled the dismissal of a well-liked employee last week, a move that drew widespread outrage from users.
The site's former Director of Talent, Victoria Taylor, was dismissed from the company on Thursday, prompting moderators to shut down in protest roughly 300 discussion sections, also known as subreddits.
Pao apologized for not communicating well enough with the site's users on big changes like the dismissal, as well as for a history of broken promises made to the community.
"We screwed up. Not just on July 2, but also over the past several years," Pao said in the posting on the website, adding that the privately owned company was working to improve tools used by moderators.
San Francisco-based Reddit launched in 2005 and has grown to become one of the most highly viewed sites on the Internet, drawing some 160 million unique users a month.
Among the more popular sections of the site was the "Ask Me Anything" subreddit, which Taylor managed. AMAs, as they are called, involve celebrities, politicians or other noteworthy people answering user-submitted questions real-time on the site.
Community manager Kristine Fasnacht would step into that role as well as the new position of Moderator Advocate, to serve as a liaison between volunteer discussion section moderators and Reddit employees, Reddit spokeswoman Heather Wilson said.
Wilson declined to discuss why Taylor was dismissed, saying the company does not comment on individual employee matters. She said virtually all of the closed subreddits were back online as of Monday.
On Thursday Taylor tweeted: "Thank you to everyone for their good wishes and support. Love you guys."
The New York Times reported that Pao has faced a series of challenges since taking over the company in 2014, including the recent introduction of an anti-harassment policy that some users criticized as stifling the site's environment of free speech.
An online petition calling for her resignation has so far received more than 190,000 signatures, the Times reported.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)
Orange is the New Black has returned for a third season. If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s time to sit up and take note: the Netflix programme looks set to become a classic of feminist television.
The show is based on the memoirs of Piper Kerman who, after serving 13 months for drug trafficking and money laundering, became an activist. She campaigns for the rights of the 200,000 female prisoners, mostly women of colour, currently incarcerated in the United States. Fusing Kerman’s activist politics with compulsive comedy-drama, the show attracted critical acclaim and a huge feminist following for the challenge it mounts to dominant media representations of women.
The reason the show is able to buck industry trends has to do with the circumstances of its production. Unlike most network series, Orange is the New Black was produced by Lionsgate Television and Netflix as a straight-to-internet release. All 13 episodes of its first series were released simultaneously. This means it is not dependent on the pilot system, whereby shows that take longer to “grow” on audiences risk being cancelled due to low viewing figures.
Taylor Schilling as a frustrated Piper.
Netflix
Box set binges
This taps into the culture of “binge watching”, where audiences consume entire box sets in a single, intense sitting. This intensive consumption makes it possible to experiment with different forms of storytelling. Stories that are driven by relationship development, rather than the suspense that characterises traditional narrative forms can be told, and keep audiences coming back for more. This means there is a potential for different kinds of stories, ones that can perhaps challenge the normative and ideological content of more traditional media.
That said, the term “binge watching” is problematic: Orange is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan has expressed distaste for the term and indeed for the practice itself. Instead, she suggests the metaphor of bathing as a way of thinking about straight-to-web release and changes our sense of time:
Audiences immerse themselves … they bathe in it, they live with these characters for hours and hours at a time — and they have a different experience.
Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning) and Big Boo (Lea DeLaria).
Netflix
I like this bathing metaphor much better, because to immerse oneself in Orange is the New Black is to bask in something very different from mainstream TV’s portrayal of women and LGBTQ people. From its rousing Regina Spektor theme tune onwards, it doesn’t look or sound much like anything else on US television. In a world saturated with banal, airbrushed images of women, this is a treat.
Better than Breaking Bad?
This is the show, after all, that made Laverne Cox a household name as much for her sophisticated intersectional politics as for her laugh-out-loud beauty. A trans woman of colour and the first trans actor to be nominated for an Emmy, Cox has consistently questioned the popular notion that visibility in itself is enough to bring about social change, instead using her position to publicise LGBTQ activism and to call attention to issues of inequality and injustice. Orange is the New Black makes its feminist points in a slyly subversive way: its radical themes combine with compelling storytelling as we are plunged, cellmate-like, into intimacy with the characters.
Sophia (Laverne Cox).
Netflix
There’s tragic, deluded Morello, happily planning her wedding to a fiancé who – for reasons we gradually learn, to heartbreaking effect – never visits her. She reveals romantic love to be the lonely, narcissistic fantasy feminists have always argued it can be.
Bingeing on the show shifts our perspective on characters. Initially encouraged to laugh at “Crazy Eyes”, who seems like the caricature of a predatory prison dyke in search of a “wife”, we quickly come to empathise with her in a way that forces us to reflect uncomfortably on our own collusion in reductive stereotypes. And although Pennsatucky, played with villainous relish by Taryn Manning, comes across as hateful, deluded and pitiful, she nevertheless tells us more about the effects of crack on poor populations than five seasons of Breaking Bad.
While the show does not flinch from the violence and deprivation of prison life, it also has life-affirming things to say about female friendship: the beautifully written and performed banter of Poussey and Taystee, for instance, is a bond deeper than any romance.
Poussey (Samira Wiley) confronting Crazy Eyes (Uzo Aduba) as Taystee (Danielle Brooks) looks on.
Netflix
Doing time
But if the show changes the audience’s relationship to time in the way we watch television, it is its representation of doing time that resonates with feminist media history. Historically, queer and feminist imaginings have excelled in using prison as a starting point for queer and feminists imaginings.
From the sleazy women-in-prison paperbacks published by Naiad Press in the 50s and 60s, to 80s and 90s dramas like Prisoner: Cell Block H, Women in Prison, and especially Maureen Chadwick and Ann McManus’ gritty British soap Bad Girls, prison has been a rich site of feminist pulp, fusing serious messages about the lives of marginalised women with pure melodrama.
Adi Kuntsman has written that prison is not just about loss of freedom but “a form of social death … exercised through the denial of time, and future”. We need popular culture to disrupt this and reclaim marginalised people’s experience from the erasure that prison imposes. Ultimately, Orange is the New Black is great feminist television because it brings these culturally invisible women to unignorable, vivid life.
Who knew that professional wrestlers could be so sensitive? And that their antics could have potentially grave First Amendment implications?
Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media over the publication of the former professional wrestler’s sex tape is the latest case that pits a celebrity’s privacy rights against the Bill of Rights.
A ruling against Gawker could not only destroy the media empire built on trafficking in gossip but could mean the First Amendment will be less likely to protect journalists, even in situations in which the subject matter is more clearly a matter of legitimate public interest.
Before we get to the guts of the Hogan case, whose trial had been set to begin this week but has been postponed, let’s consider a similar one – also involving a colorful wrestler – that could hint at where the jury might be headed.
Jesse Ventura, during his brief stint as governor of Minnesota.
Reuters
Body v SEAL
In July 2014, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, wrestling Hall of Fame inductee, former governor of Minnesota and professional conspiracy theorist, spent three weeks convincing eight jurors in federal court in Minneapolis that his reputation was damaged by former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s account of a bar fight in his book, American Sniper.
Kyle described how he punched a man identified as “Scruff Face” after he said he “hated America,” that Navy SEALS “were killing men and women and children and murdering” and that they “deserved to lose a few” in the war in Iraq.
Ventura said the encounter never happened and that Kyle’s book had destroyed his reputation in the SEAL community and his career as a television personality. He told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that if he lost his libel case, he would be so distraught that he would move to Mexico.
Ventura sought millions of dollars in damages, not only for defamation, but also for Kyle’s use of his name and image to promote the book. Although Kyle never identified “Scruff Face” in the book itself, he did tell interviewers that he was referring to Ventura.
Because Kyle was killed in a shooting in Texas about a year after Ventura filed his suit in 2012, the evidence about what really happened in the bar came from contradictory testimony by Ventura himself and a parade of witnesses produced by the attorneys for both sides.
The jury deliberated for six days and appeared to be deadlocked. The lawyers agreed to accept an 8–2 verdict. And then the jury awarded Ventura US$500,000 in damages for the defamation claim and $1.3 million for the unjust enrichment claim. The case is currently on appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. (Full disclosure: I am one of the signatories to a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Kyle estate in its appeal.)
Hulk Hogan’s sex tape
Fast-forward to a year later and another wounded wrestler is poised to try to vindicate his honor in a court of law. But this time, the issue is privacy, not reputation.
Hulk Hogan, who once wrestled Ventura, is scheduled to go to trial on July 6 in St Petersburg, Florida, seeking damages of $100 million from Gawker, operator of the online blog and celebrity gossip network. Gawker posted a videotape of Hogan having sex with Heather Cole Clem, then-wife of a satellite radio personality who uses the moniker Bubba the Love Sponge.
Hogan says the tape was made without his knowledge or consent. He originally sued Gawker in federal court, but, after a variety of procedural maneuvers, the case against the media company ended up in state Circuit Court, where Hogan’s related suits against Heather Cole and Bubba Clem eventually settled.
Hogan claims that Gawker invaded his privacy by posting the videotape, revealing offensive private facts about him, causing him emotional distress and violating his right to control the use of his name and image. Earlier this year, a state appeals court rejected his attempt to force Gawker to remove the video from its website, finding that it would be an unconstitutional prior restraint.
However, the trial judge announced on July 1 that only the jurors – not the media or the public – will be able to watch the video when it is shown in the courtroom at trial. Gawker’s lawyers have argued that this action could prejudice the jury as it considers whether or not the public has a legitimate interest in seeing the tape.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was another target in Gawker’s sights.
Reuters
Legitimate public interest?
Gawker generally revels in controversy and seems to especially relish acquiring contraband videotapes of celebrities misbehaving.
For example, Gawker reporters made several attempts in 2013 and 2014 to purchase recordings allegedly showing Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine.
But in these instances, as with the Hogan tape, no one has accused Gawker of making or inducing someone else to make the illicit recordings. Under US Supreme Court precedent, if they did nothing illegal to obtain the tapes, publication would be protected by the First Amendment, provided the contents are a matter of public interest and concern.
But what does that mean? It seems that the Hogan tape certainly interests the public. The New York Times reported that it has generated more than five million clicks for Gawker’s site. But are the contents really a matter of legitimate public interest?
Hogan says they are not, even though, as the appeals court in Florida observed, he voluntarily chose to discuss the tape at length with TMZ and on The Howard Stern Show.
A celebrity’s right to privacy
Hogan’s case isn’t the first to involve publication of stolen or surreptitious recordings of celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez, having sex with their spouses or significant others. But most of their privacy lawsuits were either settled, like Hogan’s suits against everyone but Gawker, or were dismissed by a judge.
In 1997, former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and her husband lost their bid to sue Penthouse magazine for publishing sexually explicit photos. A federal court in California concluded that the couple had already voluntarily disclosed intimate information about themselves to the media, and that the photos were “newsworthy” and therefore protected by the First Amendment.
But courts have also recognized that celebrities do not necessarily give up all their rights to privacy simply because they have chosen to reveal some aspects of their lives to the public. As a federal judge court wrote in a case involving yet another sex tape of Pamela Anderson (this time with singer Bret Michaels), “even people who voluntarily enter the public sphere retain a privacy interest in the most intimate details of their lives.”
Will Hogan – who operates businesses in the nearby Tampa Bay area – be able to convince a St Petersburg jury that Gawker has exploited his sex life for crass financial gain? Or will the jurors conclude that Hogan couldn’t have any legitimate right to hide the amorous adventures he bragged about elsewhere and that are intensely interesting to at least some of the public?
Will they agree with Gawker founder and defendant Nick Denton, who told the Daily Beast, “In the Internet Age, you might once in a while have something come out if you’re going to be that indiscriminate in your pursuit of celebrity perks”?
It will be interesting to find out. And given the colorful personalities involved in this case, we can count on lots of media coverage, even though trial judge Pamela Campbell has declared that the trial “is not going to be a carnival.”
Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Even though Judge Campbell has promised the parties “judicial serenity and calm” in the courtroom, she can’t really control how the media reports the case outside it.
Moreover, a flamboyant and charismatic celebrity can have a powerful effect on jurors. They may rally to protect a local hero from what they regard as the actions of an irresponsible press. They can do that by awarding him millions of dollars in damages.
What does it mean for Gawker?
Although in the Daily Beast interview, Denton seemed confident about Gawker’s prospects for victory, predicting that “there’s a one in 10 chance of disaster,” the reality is that juries in state courts are notorious for handing down big libel judgments. This could threaten the company’s very survival.
Gawker Media is reportedly worth about $200 million. Hogan is seeking an award for half that. Even though statistically, massive jury awards are often reduced or set aside by an appeals court, Florida law will require Gawker to post a bond for the full amount of damages, plus interest, pending appellate review, which could take years.
In the meantime, Gawker would have to find some financial resources to keep afloat.
What it means for the rest of news
This wouldn’t be the first time a news organization was driven to the brink of destruction by a huge damages award.
In 1982, the Alton (Illinois) Telegraph
declared bankruptcy after it lost its appeal of a $9.2 million judgment. That ruling had been based on a memorandum its reporters sent to prosecutors about a local contractor’s alleged ties with organized crime – a story that never even appeared in the newspaper.
In this case, of course, Hogan isn’t suing for libel. He couldn’t, because there is no dispute that the tape is genuine. Truthful speech, no matter how offensive, cannot be the basis for a defamation suit.
Here Hogan is arguing that intimate facts about his private life were made public in a way that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.
Jurors are likely to identify with the plaintiff, on a very visceral level. They wouldn’t want a tape of themselves to be posted online, and they could agree that Hogan shouldn’t have to put up with it, either.
A ruling for Hogan could send a strong message that online sites should be very wary of posting videos of celebrities misbehaving, even if they think the content is newsworthy.
So, although he will appear in court using his real name (Terry Bollea), when the guy some call the greatest wrestler of all time strides into court wearing his signature bandanna, there is a chance he might take down Gawker – and maybe part of the First Amendment as well.
Stranger things have happened. Just ask Jesse Ventura.
A track on the singer’s new album has caused outrage – and been watched 12 million times
“Language. Nudity. Violence,” warns the first frame of the latest video from pop provocateur Rihanna. What follows certainly lives up to the billing.
Depending on which commentator or social media spat you choose, the video – viewed 12 million times since its release – is either an empowering challenge to music industry stereotypes or a racist and gory piece of misogyny.
Bitch Better Have My Money (BBHMM) is a slick seven-minute film, co-directed by one of the few black women in America who has managed to get right to the top of a male- dominated pop industry.
The plot is simple – an accountant has defrauded the singer out of money, so she kidnaps his wife, a spoiled, wealthy white woman complete with chi-chi dog and diamonds. With two friends, she bundles her into a trunk, strips her, swings her upside down from a rope, knocks her out with a bottle, then lets her almost drown in a swimming pool.
When that doesn’t get her the money, Rihanna finds the accountant, straps him to a chair, shows a collection of knives presumably used to finish him off, and then is shown blood-covered and naked in a trunk of money.
A show of sisterhood it isn’t, although the homage to Hollywood’s girl power blockbuster Thelma and Louise, with Rihanna and her co-conspirators riding off in a 1960s blue convertible, suggest the artist might think differently.
The song, the second single from the singer’s eighth album, is based on Rihanna’s grievance against an accountant, Peter Gounis, whom she filed a lawsuit against in 2012, claiming he gave her “unsound” financial advice that led to a loss of $9m in 2009 alone. She won a multimillion settlement.
Predictably, BBHMM ignited a furious debate. A headline on Refinery29 declared the video “Not Safe For Work or Feminists” while Twitter accused Rihanna of glorifying violence against women, and condemned the “kidnapped female” trope. Rolling Stone was attacked for praising the video and crediting the two minor male roles while not even giving a name to the actress who plays the main role.
Rachel Roberts, who has made several Vogue covers, said the offer of her part was “irresistible”. “The video was Rihanna’s concept,” Roberts said last week. “She co-directed it, so she personally cast me. Despite her out-there public image, she’s very professional and hands-on. The whole thing was an insane thrill ride. Helicopters, boats, gunfire, stunts, holding my breath underwater, a dozen locations, and a Pomeranian toy dog.” She praised Rihanna as “an undeniable talent”.
In the New Statesman, Helen Lewis was less gushing: “It was not very feminist – not even very hashtag feminist – of Rihanna to ‘torture that poor rich lady’. That is because it is not very feminist to torture women. Even if they are white. Even if they are rich. Even if you are a woman yourself. Sorry if this comes as a surprise.”
In an America seething over endemic racism, the presentation of a black woman exacting revenge on a white exploiter has been less controversial than the nudity. Vogue.com columnist Karley Sciortino said: “It’s good to normalise the female body. In so many music videos where you see nudity, it’s framed in these really specific ways: abstract female body parts just looking hot. When Rihanna’s naked she isn’t posing in a hyper-sexual way, she’s covered in blood and she’ll cut your dick off. She looks powerful, but it’s almost casual, normalised. It’s about showing a powerful representation of the female body, where women are in charge of the way that they’re being viewed.”
Rihanna’s co-directors, Leo Berne and Charles Brisgand, said her intention was clear. “From the beginning she was like, “I don’t care if it’s not aired on TV’,” Brisgand said. “She wanted something that people don’t expect from her.” The director said it was Rihanna’s idea to hang Roberts from her feet naked.
Rihanna, who has 22 million followers on Instagram, is one of the few whose appearance on a magazine cover will boost sales. Her past as a victim of domestic violence has brought her fans among young women who see a successful survivor. She certainly has the power to provoke – and she is using it.
Many are familiar with James McNeill Whistler’s portrait of his mother – officially titled Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 – which is being exhibited this summer, starting July 4, at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Given the picture’s iconic status as a symbol of motherhood, many also believe that they can guess the character, personality and life experiences of the quiet, seemingly frail, little woman sitting in that chair. You might opine that she led an isolated or sheltered life, or spent her days baking cookies.
But you’d be wrong. When researching my biography of her artist son, I became so fascinated by the part she played in his life and career – and so impressed by her resilience and intelligence – that I decided to write her biography, too. The more I’ve uncovered and read, the more I’ve discovered that Whistler’s mother led no ordinary life, and ended up shattering 19th-century established roles for American wives and mothers.
Womanhood
Anna Matilda (McNeill) Whistler (1804–1881) may have been a quiet, diminutive woman, but she was a mighty force in the lives of those around her.
She reared a renowned artist, an acclaimed physician, a prosperous businessman and a daughter who married into the English upper class.
A shrewd observer of the world, Anna encountered and interacted with an astonishing array of people from nearly every walk of life, whether it was American farmers and Russian peasants or Robert E Lee and Giuseppe Mazzini. She met with diplomats, businessmen, manufacturers, inventors, religious leaders, politicians, journalists, soldiers and, of course, artists.
Naturally, Anna was defined, to a large extent, by her times, and she did assume many of the societal roles prescribed for 19th-century, middle-class, American women.
She was pious and dutiful, with no higher ambition early in life than to marry the man she adored and maintain a well-ordered, economical Christian household, at once a refuge for her husband and a sanctuary for their children.
Anna certainly achieved those ends. As a steadfast wife and mother to eight children, three of them stepchildren, she initially met every expectation of the 19th century’s “cult of true womanhood,” the idea that women should strive for “piety, purity, domesticity and submissiveness.”
Born of two worlds
But there were complicated layers to her character and upbringing.
In a way, Anna was a daughter of the slave-holding South. She spent the first years of her life in North Carolina, where she was raised by a physician father and a beautiful, cultured mother. Both a plantation-owning uncle and Anna’s brother had children with black women. In the case of her uncle, this led to a widely publicized legal battle, in which family members, including Anna, challenged the terms of his will. He had bequeathed, it seems, the larger part of his enormous wealth to a black wife.
A portrait of Anna Whistler when she was roughly 20 years old.
The Whistler Collection, the University of Glasgow Special Collections.
However, Anna’s family moved to Brooklyn when she was 10, and it was in that prosperous northern village that she grew to maturity.
She completed the bulk of her formal education in Brooklyn and became more firmly grounded in the teaching of the Episcopal Church. Her city-hopping continued at 17 when, following the death of her father, Anna and her mother lived variously in New York, Baltimore and Georgetown. In her mid-20s, she spent more than a year in Great Britain, where she had two half-sisters. It was the first of 11 Atlantic crossings she made during her life.
By the time she married George Washington Whistler in 1831, her travels and several residences had not only exposed Anna to a variety of social and cultural environments, but they had also taught her perseverance, patience and independence – qualities she would come to depend on.
Naturally, she had her faults. She was keenly class-conscious, and she could be overly protective. Had her children not inherited her self-reliance, she might have smothered them. Even her strengths, especially her independence, could work against her.
As a sister-in-law complained, “Anna is so unshakable that sometimes I could shake her. And the way she will stand out even against people whose opinion mean the most to her. One can’t help admiring it but it seems so – well, so old!”
On the move
Thirteen years into her marriage, and after living in another four homes in three states, she packed up her family and moved to St Petersburg, Russia.
Her world-renowned engineer husband had been hired by Czar Nicholas I to build a railroad from St Petersburg to Moscow. Six years later, when her husband died of cholera, Anna returned to America to rear their two remaining adolescent children on her own.
From a position of relative wealth and status in Russia, she found herself almost impoverished; without her husband’s income, she was forced to depend on her modest savings. Other women might have retreated into a quiet, sedentary life, but that wasn’t in Anna’s nature.
By the 1850s, the lines between private and public lives, domestic and public spheres, were becoming blurred for middle-class women. The cult of true womanhood was giving way to a bolder, more visible, nascent modern woman.
Some women became public figures. Others, like Anna, exploited the same opportunities but chose to work behind the scenes. Being the widow of a famous and respected husband helped: it gave her an identity and credibility she would have otherwise lacked.
For instance, it allowed her to coax Robert E Lee, when he was superintendent at West Point, into giving her cadet son James a weekend pass. She later put her second son, William, through medical school and acted as unofficial business manager in America for James, who, upon being dismissed from West Point, had gone to Paris and London to become an artist. Anna promoted his work, sought commissions and acted as an adviser.
Then came the American Civil War, which presented Anna with a dilemma: on the one hand, she was a southern woman who still had relatives in the Confederate states. Further complicating matters, her youngest son William had married a southern cousin, and had enlisted as a surgeon in the Confederate army.
Yet Anna’s late husband had been a profoundly patriotic graduate of West Point who would have served the Union. So with failing eyesight and her children dispersed throughout the world, Anna slipped off to England, in a way absolving herself from having to pick a side.
In London, a masterpiece emerges
Quickly adapting to yet another upheaval, Anna directed her artist son’s London household, where she lived for most of the next 11 years. It was during this time that, in 1871, she sat for her famous portrait.
James Whistler’s sketch of the originally proposed pose for his Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2. Anna decided she wouldn’t be able to stand long enough in this pose.
The Whistler Collection, the University of Glasgow Special Collections.
Whistler had experienced one of his periodic bouts of self-doubt in the last half of the 1860s. Reconsidering the purpose of art, he experimented with new painting techniques, limiting his range of colors and spreading his paint more thinly and smoothly. He rejected the age-old assumption that a painting should tell a story or convey a moral lesson; beauty was all that mattered, he now said, art purely for art’s sake.
He shunned narrative titles for his paintings, describing them, instead, in musical terms or according to their dominant colors. The results were his unique series of nocturnes and his Arrangements in Grey and Black. The portrait of his mother was initially considered an unorthodox, even eccentric painting, but it went on to solidify James Whistler’s fame.
Anna Whistler passed away in 1881, although in one sense, Anna never really died.
Some would argue that Whistler’s Mother has become even better known than the artist himself. And it’s perhaps fitting that, like the painting’s globetrotting subject, the portrait continues to travel the world, hopping from state to state, from continent to continent.
Whistler’s Mother will be exhibited at the Clark Institute of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts from July 4 to September 27.
NB A previous version of this article located the Clark Institute of Art in Worcester, MA: Clark University is in Worcester and the Clark Institute of Art in Williamstown.
The independent U.S. cable network REELZ will telecast the Miss USA pageant on July 12, the company announced on Thursday, stepping in after NBC dropped plans to broadcast the show because of inflammatory remarks about Mexican immigrants made by co-owner and U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump.
"The decision on the part of REELZ to acquire the rights to the MISS USA Pageant was based on our belief that this special event, and the women who compete in it, are an integral part of American tradition,” CEO Stan Hubbard said in a statement.
The fate of the pageant's English-language broadcast had come into question after Comcast Corp-owned NBC announced on Monday it would no longer air the event "due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants" the company said in a press statement.
Several judges and guests have also scrapped plans to take part in the event.
Trump, in announcing on June 16 that he was seeking the Republican Party nomination for the 2016 presidential election, described migrants from Mexico to the United States as drug-runners and rapists.
"They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some I assume are good people," the billionaire developer said in opening his campaign at Trump Tower on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.
LAWSUIT
Spanish-language Univision [UVN.UL] last week canceled its contract to broadcast the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, co-owned by Trump, calling his remarks insulting.
Trump filed a $500 million lawsuit against Univision on Tuesday, saying the company was trying to stifle his freedom of speech by backing out of its plans to air the show.
The Mexican media company Televisa said it will not send a contestant to the next Miss Universe pageant.
Trump, a real estate mogul and reality television star, has stood behind his comments. He called NBC's decision to sever its ties with the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants "weak" and "foolish."
REELZ, which describes itself as a leading independent cable and satellite general entertainment network, said the Miss USA pageant will be telecast as scheduled from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Owned by Hubbard Media Group and headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the network reaches 70 million homes, it said in a press release.
The Miss USA show that aired on a Sunday in June 2014 averaged about 5.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; editing by Ralph Boulton)
Late Show host Stephen Colbert posted video on Tuesday of his first post-Comedy Central hosting gig -- not on CBS, but a public-access show in Monroe, Michigan, Gawker reported.
Colbert filled in for an episode of Only In Monroe, which airs on the town's local-access channel, with the highlight being Colbert interviewing rapper Eminem, then stumping him on Bob Seger songs.
"You claim that you're from Michigan, and you don't know any of these songs," Colbert quipped.
During the show, Colbert also hosted a faux-news segment, including a note about the local boat club serving muskrat -- a "local delicacy" -- at its annual dinner.
"If you wonder what muskrat tastes like, imagine eating a rat, but with more musk," he explained.
He also interviewed the program's regular hosts, Kaye Lani Rafko Wilson and Michelle Baumann, reprising his Colbert Report dash across the stage to meet them.
"Is it true you go to a movie theater not to see a movie, [but] just to buy the popcorn and take it home?" he asked.
"I do. My daughter works there and they make a really good popcorn," Rafko Wilson confirmed, adding that one can do that "only in Monroe."
"I would say so," Colbert replied. "If you tried that in New York, they would Taze you."
The Monroe News reported that Colbert and his crew also stopped by a local establishment, Lowery's Bar, much to the surprise of owner Donald Bozynski.
"I didn't believe it either," Bozynski said. “Nobody ends up in Monroe without something going on."
TV Land has pulled re-runs of the 1980s sitcom "Dukes of Hazzard," the U.S. cable network said on Wednesday amid controversy over portrayals of the Confederate flag, which is notably featured on the show's "General Lee" vehicle.
Viacom Inc-owned TV Land declined to comment on why it has pulled the re-runs, but there has been growing criticism of displays of the Civil War-era flag in the wake of the shooting of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina last month.
The man arrested in the shooting, Dylann Roof, is a 21-year-old white man who had posed with a Confederate battle flag in photos posted on a website that displayed a racist manifesto attributed to him.
"Dukes of Hazzard" ran from 1979 to 1985 and centered on the fictional Duke family, who lived in rural Georgia. An orange car bearing a Confederate flag design of the roof and nicknamed "General Lee" was regularly featured in the show.
Fans of the program took to social media to express frustration with TV Land's decision. A Change.org petition to bring the show back had more than 1,800 supporters as of Wednesday morning.
Former Fox News commentator Glenn Beck has suggested a boycott of the just-announced Disney film about the celebrated English naturalist Charles Darwin, during an episode of his nationally syndicated radio show.
Disney’s plan to greenlight a film about Darwin’s voyage on board the HMS Beagle in the 1830s – the expedition that revolutionised scientific understanding of evolution and natural selection – was made public a week ago. A rough reception was inevitable after the difficulties faced in the US by a previous Darwin film, Creation.
Beck’s comments came after a discussion on whether or not boycotts were a legitimate political tactic. Beck has previously disapproved of them on free speech grounds, but his attitude appears to have changed – at least as far as Disney is concerned. After citing his disapproval of Walt Disney World’s decision to project rainbow lights on its Cinderella Castle to mark the supreme court’s backing of gay marriage, Beck said: “Boycotts work and we [conservatives] ... do nothing.”
Beck then said: “They’re doing a new movie, kind of an Indiana Jones swashbuckling spirit of a five-year voyage in 1831 on ship HMS Beagle to the coastline of South America to find and follow the man who made discoveries that made him one of the most influential figures in human history.”
“Wow, this sounds like a swashbuckling thriller that we are going to have to take our families to see. Doesn’t it sound great? It’s Charles Darwin. It’s the story of Charles Darwin and so we’re going to find out how exactly he came up with the idea, made the discoveries that brought him to the theory of evolution. Thank you, Disney! That’s fantastic.”
Darwin, who died in 1882, and whose birthday of 12 February has become an internationally celebrated “Darwin Day”, has become a target of religious-inspired scepticism on the American right, with recent research indication that more than 30% of Americans entirely reject Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Jon Stewart reportedly wants Bill O’Reilly to tell him to “f*ck off” on one of his final episodes of “The Daily Show,” but the Fox News host has already taken some early shots at him.
O’Reilly joked Monday night that Stewart, who is stepping down in August after 16 years as host of the Comedy Central program, had been fired, reported Mediaite.
“I’m worried about Stewart,” O’Reilly said as a producer laughed off-screen. “No longer will he have a TV show available to mock Fox News. Will the man go door to door?”
He was perplexed that every single episode had been made available on the show’s website, wondering who would actually watch any of them.
“If you are concerned for Jon Stewart’s welfare, as I am, and you see him on the street, gently talk to him about Fox News,” O’Reilly said. “Let him vent to you about us. It’s the humane thing to do.”
Watch O’Reilly’s comments posted online by Mediaite:
Journey drummer Deen Castronovo was in jail in Oregon on Tuesday on charges of rape and sexual assault, court officials said.
Castronovo made an afternoon court appearance where a Marion County Circuit Judge did not set bail for his release, court officials said.
Castronovo, of Salem, Oregon, is charged with rape, assault and unlawful use of a weapon stemming from his arrest in an alleged domestic violence incident on June 14, the Statesman Journal newspaper reported.
Another hearing was set for Wednesday morning for Castronovo, 50, who was arrested on Monday, according to the county prosecutor’s office.
Journey's best-known songs include "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Who's Crying Now" from the early 1980s.
Castronovo faced charges in 2012 of harassment and reckless endangerment after an alleged domestic incident at his home, according to the Statesman Journal.
His attorney could not be reached for comment.
The rock band replaced Castronovo with drummer Omar Hakim shortly after his arrest this month.
(Reporting by Shelby Sebens; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Peter Cooney)
"The decision was, in reality, a politically motivated attempt to suppress Mr. Trump's freedom of speech under the First Amendment as he begins to campaign for the nation's presidency," a statement from his office read.
The GOP presidential candidate accused the network of lying when it cited his anti-immigrant comments as the reason it decided not to air the Miss USA pageant, which Trump owns. NBC later decided not to air either that program or the Miss Universe pageant, which is also under Trump's control.
According to WABC-TV, the statement also indicated that Trump was considering suing NBC, as well.
"They will stand behind lying Brian Williams, but won't stand behind people that tell it like it is, as unpleasant as that may be," it read.
Trump's campaign has been criticized from the outset after he accused Mexico of sending "rapists" and criminals into the US, then threatened to make the Mexican government pay for the construction of a massive wall at the border between both nations.
Update, 6:48 p.m. EST:Politico reported that Univision responded with a statement calling the suit "factually false and legally ridiculous."
"We will not only vigorously defend the case, but will continue to fight against Mr. Trump’s ongoing efforts to run away from the derogatory comments he made on June 16th about Mexican immigrants," the statement read. "Our decision to end our business relationship with Mr. Trump was influenced solely by our responsibility to speak up for the community we serve."
he Milwaukee Art Museum says it hopes a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI made of condoms will ignite a conversation about the AIDS epidemic in Africa and the role art plays in public discussions, director Dan Keegan said on Monday.
The museum said that about 200 callers have complained about the portrait. Milwaukee Catholic Archbishop Jerome Listecki called the museum callous and the portrait insulting in a blog last week on the Archdiocese website.
About 17,000 colorful condoms were stitched together to fashion the portrait called "Eggs Benedict," which the museum plans to put on display in November, museum spokeswoman Vicki Scharfberg said.
Milwaukee artist Niki Johnson has said she made the portrait in response to Pope Benedict's position against the use of condoms even to combat AIDS in Africa. She completed it two years ago. Benedict later softened his stance, saying condoms were sometimes permissible to stop the epidemic.
The museum said callers supporting the portrait have outnumbered those opposed it its display.
"We look forward to continuing the dialogue around this work and the role art plays in society," Keegan said.
(Reporting By Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Ken Wills)
