Media
Russia TV pulls show over Putin divorce joke
Russian state television has pulled a show over a joke about President Vladimir Putin's surprise divorce announcement, one of its presenters said Saturday.
In a carefully staged announcement on Thursday, Putin said that he and his wife of 30 years, Lyudmila, were to have a "civilised divorce" because they now lead separate lives.
The news prompted a youth-oriented television show called "The Social Network" to record a spoof item about the 60-year-old Russian strongman putting up a profile on an online dating site.
"We made a video item about photos of Putin for mamba.ru (dating site). They took the whole programme, all of it, off air entirely," the programme's co-host Vladislav Sorokin wrote on Facebook.
He said that he and co-host Yekaterina Voronina planned to quit the show, which airs on weeknights on state-run Obshestvennoye Televideniye, or Public Television.
The channel's general director Anatoly Lysenko denied the show had been pulled for censorship reasons, telling the RIA Novosti news agency: "It's all lies, nothing was closed."
He said the episode, which had been due to be aired on Friday, was pulled because it was "absolutely not ready".
Sorokin said he was inspired by a joke on US website Mashable about the photos Putin should use for his dating profile.
"Keep it up, but without us. We'll work till our contract ends on June 30 and then so long," he wrote.
Voronina confirmed the report to radio station Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei but said her contract barred her from commenting.
Public Television, which can be viewed online and on satellite and cable, was launched only in May.
It was set up at the instigation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as a more socially and regionally focused alternative to existing channels but has so far been criticised for its lack of hard-hitting news.
Russian television is notoriously cautious in joking about Putin and a satirical puppet show portraying him as an ugly dwarf-like figure was pulled shortly after he gained the presidency in 2000.
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Kiefer Sutherland cast as lead in 'Metal Gear Solid' film adaptation
The role of Snake in in Metal Gear V will go to Kiefer Sutherland, Konami announced today. (Konami) The starring role in Metal Gear V: The Phantom Pain, the forthcoming game from Konami, will go to TV and film actor Kiefer Sutherland. In a pre-E3 video announcement released today, Metal Gear creator…
[Image via Wikipedia Commons]
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Bible sales outpacing '50 Shades of Grey' in Norway
Copyright ImageClick to View Actors rehearse a scene from 'Bibelen,' a six-hour play based on a nontraditional interpretation of the Bible that is currently playing at the Oslo theater Det Norske Teatret in Norway.(Det Norske Teatret/AP) It may sound like an unlikely No. 1 best-seller for any country…
[Image: "Woman With The Holy Bible" via Shutterstock]
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Court rules prisoner has a First Amendment right to 'erotic' werewolf novel
California's First District Court of appeals ruled recently that its prisons don't have the right to restrict inmates' access to literary depictions of sex and violence, even if the book itself is far from a timeless literary masterpiece.
When Andres Martinez -- a "voracious reader," his lawyer Richard Braucher told the San Francisco Chronicle -- ordered the second novel in Mathilde Madden's werewolf triology, he hardly expected to end up in court over his taste in literature. But as Martinez is serving time in Pelican Bay Prison for attempted murder and other crimes, prison officials have the right to confiscate obscene and violent material, and they confiscated his copy of The Silver Crown for its graphic depictions of sex and murder.
After losing an administrative appeal, a second appeal and for a Director's Level Review, Martinez filed a writ of habeas corpus for the return of his book, which was also denied by the courts based on the sexual content of the novel. But the Appeals Court took a strong position against the lower court's ruling, noting that prison officials did not take into account the third prong of the legal obscenity test -- whether the novel "taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
In the ruling, Justice James Richman said that it isn't for the government to determine the objective quality of the work to determine whether it qualifies as obscenity, but to judge its intention.
Indeed, we question whether we should judge the superior or inferior literary merit of the book at all. We suspect it is the nature of the work rather than its quality that lends it "serious literary value." In other words, we attempt to determine whether the book is serious literature, not whether it is good literature.
In answering the question about the novel's seriousness, Richman noted the long history of paranormal literature in American culture.
To begin with, we cannot simply dismiss the work as nonserious literature because it deals with werewolves and other paranormal creatures and activities. For better or worse, some segment of the population is fascinated by werewolves and other mythical beings, as most recently shown by the Twilight (Summit Entertainment 2008) movies. ... Whether contemporary readers drawn to this genre actually believe in werewolves, whether they see in such works a metaphor for some kind of human transformation, or whether they simply read werewolf literature as escapist fantasy, the fact remains that werewolf literature retains a place in modern American and European society.
To the question of whether the novel at issue can be considered "serious" in its intentions, Martinez and his lawyers submitted the opinion of San Francisco State University creative writing instructor Peter Orner, who argued that the book had "literary merit. "It's not Tolstoy, fine," Orner wrote, "but this author knows how to move story, carry out a plot, with a theme, and how to give her characters a certain depth characteristic of literary fiction." He added, "The characters have sex but the book is about more than sex. As I said above, it seems to me that the book is an exploration of the confines of a certain society, one that is in some ways similar to our own but that also contains magical elements. It's about freeing oneself from one's greatest fears, and in this way this is clearly a work of literature."
The justices, who clearly read the book in question, added, "This is not a book in which a minimal amount of literary material has been added as a sham to attempt to constitutionalize otherwise unprotected obscenity. While we have not calculated a page-by-page comparison, it is clear that the number of pages devoted to sexually explicit material is a minority of the overall text."
The justices additionally provided a textual comparison between the violent scenes in the werewolf novel and other books deemed appropriate for prisoner reading, like Chainfire by Terry Goodkind and Inner City Hoodlum by Donald Goines to make the point that the human-on-werewolf violence portrayed in Silver Crown is tame by comparison.
The book purchased by Martinez, which was in the justices' possession, was given to California's Attorney General with orders that it be returned to Martinez.
["Muscular Naked Man With Scary Eyes In The Forest, Halloween Theme" on Shutterstock]
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Beck brings Quran, Nazi school manual and 'Hitler's bloodstains' to talk radio convention
Former Fox News Channel host and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck told an audience on Thursday that he regrets that he has spent the last several years dividing people. According to the Associated Press, Beck's remarks came as he accepted a First Amendment Award from "Talkers" magazine, which bills itself as "the Bible of Talk Radio."
Without going into specifics during his acceptance speech, Beck lamented setting people "at each other's throats" and said, "For any role that I have played in dividing" the country, "I wish I can take them back. I don't wish I could take back the truth that was spoken but perhaps - not perhaps - many times I could have said it differently."
The one-time FM radio shock jock and host of a short-lived show on CNN's Headline News network brought a batch of unusual props with him to the Talkers convention, a Nazi-era school manual, a napkin soaked with what are purportedly Hitler's bloodstains and a Quran, which he included to show his support of Americans' right to express opinions contrary to his own beliefs.
In his acceptance remarks, Beck condemned activists who organize the kind of boycotts that got him driven off of the Fox News Channel. Advertisers fled Beck's Fox show in droves after the inflammatory talker accused President Barack Obama of having "a deep-seated hatred of white people."
The racial and social justice group Color of Change spearheaded a boycott of advertisers that culminated in Fox News head Roger Ailes canceling of Beck's 5:00 p.m. program and replacing it with a panel show.
"If they tell you to sit down and shut up, it's trouble," he said. "If it's a Republican or Democrat or independent, if it's a Tea Party person or someone from Occupy Wall Street, if they say shut up, it's trouble."
Beck recently claimed that he left television and formed his online-only empire TheBlaze.com to "save his soul" from the void of cable news. The Fox News PR department rebutted that statement in typically caustic fashion, saying, "Glenn Beck wasn’t trying to save his soul, he was trying to save his ass. Advertisers fled his show and even Glenn knows what that means in our industry. Yet, we still tried to give him a soft landing. Guess no good deed goes unpunished.”
Advertiser boycotts are one of the gravest existential threats to the talk radio empire, as was rocked in 2012 when the medium's avatar, Rush Limbaugh, took to the airwaves to call reproductive rights activist Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a prostitute for testifying before a Congressional hearing about insurance companies covering birth control pills for women. The comments touched off a firestorm, with Limbaugh spending the following days doubling down and ordering Fluke to post videos of her sexual encounters online.
Since then many advertisers have decided to wash their hands of the potentially inflammatory market altogether. While Limbaugh has claimed his own personal finances barely took a hit from the boycotts, stations across the country are having to cut back on what they spend for less well-known programs as their profit margins plunge.
Cumulus Media, one of the companies that was forced to start running Public Service Announcements and dead air for lack of advertisers during Limbaugh's show, saw its earnings plunge 83 percent in the second quarter of fiscal 2013.
Premiere Networks' Senior Vice President of Sales Dan Metter told the AP that Limbaugh's advertising sales are better now than they were in 2012. Premiere's focus has changed, he said, as they pursue smaller businesses instead of larger, more established advertisers who jumped ship in the wake of the Fluke controversy.
Beck, for his part, seems to be contemplating his legacy of late and not liking what he sees. In addition to his regretful remarks at the Talkers conference, he has recently taken great umbrage to the fact that people think he is a conspiracy theorist.
“I’ve never been called a conspiracy theorist in my life,” Beck insisted in a recent broadcast.
This in spite of the fact that in the days after the Boston Marathon bombing, Beck hatched a wild, far-ranging theory in which he insisted that a third, mysterious "Saudi national" had bankrolled the Tsarnaev brothers' attack, or the book Beck claims to have written with author Harriet Parke about Agenda 21, the supposedly UN-led mind-control plot to create a single world government.
During the so-called "Arab Spring" of 2011, Beck concocted a bizarre nightmare scenario in which an Islamic "caliphate" was poised to take over most of Europe and the West. And in March of this year, Beck argued that CSCOPE, a Texas-based online educational program is actually an "anti-American" program for the "indoctrination" of American schoolchildren into socialism.
[photo of Glenn Beck via s_bukley / Shutterstock.com]
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Jackie Chan seals prints at famed Hollywood theater
Hong Kong film star Jackie Chan became the first Chinese actor Thursday to have his hands and feet cast in wet cement at Hollywood's famed Chinese Theatre, alongside generations of Tinseltown icons.
He was joined by American actor Chris Tucker, his co-star from the "Rush Hour" movies, in the ceremony in the courtyard of the TCL Chinese Theatre, as hundreds of fans screamed from across Hollywood Boulevard.
Chan, who has starred in over 100 films and directed 20, recalled first coming to the then Grauman's Chinese Theatre -- it changed name this year for sponsor Chinese company TCL -- two decades ago, invited by Sylvester Stallone.
"Twenty years, ago, 1993 ... I was not on the red carpet, (I was) on the side, and I saw there are so many stars doing interviews. I had nothing to do. I was standing there looking around to see the handprints.
"I thought to myself, when will I have my own things? During all those years my dream (grew)," he said, before thanking his co-stars, TCL, and -- to cheers from the crowd -- "the fans around the world, you make my dream come true."
The honor is considered more exclusive than that of being given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Chan was born in Hong Kong and began his international movie career in the early 1970s, going on to fame with hits including the "Rush Hour" series and "Little Big Soldier."
The 59-year-old -- who stuck his face into the Tinseltown cement, as well as his hands and besocked feet -- also worked as a stunt coordinator for martial arts legend Bruce Lee.
The courtyard of the TCL Chinese Theatre is paved with the hand- and foot prints of decades of Hollywood greats, from Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis to Jane Fonda and Brad Pitt.
Chan said that, as well as being the first Chinese actor honored, he was actually the first to have his handprints done twice. "Twelve years ago I did the handprint, but somebody stole it," he said.
"Then that's the second time. I really want to thank you."
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Nugent: Obama wants to 'rape' the Constitution and 'urinate on' the Founders
In typically bombastic language, National Rifle Association chairman Ted Nugent claimed Thursday that President Barack Obama's agenda involves raping the U.S. Constitution and urinating on the nation's Founding Fathers by passing gun regulations that restrict the sale of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
"Clearly their agenda is banning guns, not banning criminals or saving lives," he wrote for conservative conspiracy website World Net Daily, couching his thesis in the tale of a murderer who was released from prison and went on to kill again. "And their morally bankrupt agenda is wrong, anti-American and counterproductive. Their agenda will achieve nothing except to rape our Constitution and urinate on the vision of our Founding Fathers."
It's not clear how the proposed regulations pose such an affront to the constitution -- the Second Amendment explicitly says it provides for states to maintain a "well regulated militia" -- but Nugent was adamant that if individuals do not have unlimited access to deadly weapons, freedom will surely die.
That's a typical screed for the Detroit-born rocker, whose modern fame is more due to his alarming commentaries on guns in America than his music. Nugent came face to face with Secret Service agents last April when he claimed that he'd be "dead or in jail" within a year if Obama won a second term. He's not been jailed just yet, but did claim in January that he and some buddies are ready to launch an armed revolt against the government.
Despite Nugent's absolutist views on gun rights, his brother Jeffrey explained in May that he believes the nation will move forward with gun regulations "with or without" the NRA. "Let’s see if the NRA and its new leaders step up and do what is right," he wrote. "If not, it will get done without them. We all have a role here, especially to protect our children. Who is going to be the voice for them?"
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(H/T: Right Wing Watch)
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Wisconsin Republicans vote to muzzle journalism center
A group of Republican lawmakers voted Wednesday to prohibit University of Wisconsin professors from working with a renowned nonprofit journalism center and to force the organization out of the two offices it occupies on the UW campus. According to Inside Higher Ed, Wisconsin's Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee voted 12-4 to introduce a motion to the state house evicting the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from its offices and barring it from working with UW staff.
Greg Downey, director of the School of Journalism at UW-Madison told Inside Higher Ed that the legislation a "direct assault" on academic freedom.
The Center for Investigative Journalism was founded in 2009 and is funded by private sources, so Republicans are incapable of legislating it out of existence. They can, however, deprive it of its current use of University of Wisconsin facilities, the two offices that it occupies under a "Facilities Use Agreement" with the university, under which the Center provides the university with paid internships for students, classroom collaborations, guest lectures and other educational services.
Downey said that while the center is not part of the university, the two institutions rely on each other. He told Inside Higher Ed, "They're a resource for us to rely upon, and we're an academic resource for them."
When asked why the Center might be targeted by Republicans, Downey told Inside Higher Ed that there is "no context or explanation," whatsoever. He speculated that perhaps the lawmakers think the Center is biased, but only because one of the charities funding the group is loosely associated with billionaire financier and perennial right-wing bogeyman George Soros.
The Center's Executive Director Andy Hall said in an email to media watchdog Jim Romenesko that he was completely "blindsided" by the measure, which Republicans are attempting to bundle into a new budget bill. For the legislation to take effect, the budget bill must be passed by both the state Assembly and Senate.
"The Center’s award-winning journalism is making Wisconsin a better place by shining a light on key state issues to strengthen our democracy while training the next generation of investigative journalists," wrote Hall to Romenesko.
He also noted that the very committee that voted in the legislation relied on information obtained by the Center last year for a study about the reliability of GPS systems in tracking criminal offenders.
Downey told Inside Higher Ed that the center plans to mobilize its staff, students and reporters in an effort to have the measure removed from the state budget. Failing that, there is also a slim chance that Gov. Scott Walker could use a limited veto to remove the language before he signs the budget bill into law.
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'Today Show' hosts evacuated after man tries to slit his wrists
A man reportedly harmed himself with a knife outside NBC's Today Show on Thursday.
"Opening the 8 o'clock half hour inside the studio today because there was an incident out on the plaza," host Matt Lauer explained after a commercial break. "A short time ago, a man out there attempted to harm himself with a knife. He did manage to cut himself."
"He was controlled by our security team out there. However, he did harm himself in some way. And so he's now being attended to by medical personnel."
Lauer added that the man "did say something about not wanting to harm others."
Mediabistro senior editor Alex Weprin tweeted additional details about the incident: "Attempted suicide outside the Today show this morning. Crowd evacuated, anchors moved inside from the plaza. Man tried to slit wrists."
Video posted to the social network Mobypicture showed security tackling a man.
Watch this video from NBC's Today Show, broadcast June 6, 2013.
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Murdoch's eldest son denies return to News Corp fold
News Corporation tycoon Rupert Murdoch's eldest son Lachlan says he has no intention of rejoining his father's global media empire, telling Australian newspapers he has "moved on".
The tycoon's plans, approved last month, to split his sprawling worldwide firm into separate media and entertainment entities fuelled speculation Lachlan, 41, would re-enter the fray.
Formerly News Corp's deputy chief operating officer, Lachlan Murdoch abruptly resigned from the company in 2005 after clashing with executives, though he has remained on the board.
He had long been regarded as heir-apparent to the Murdoch empire, and his father's decision not to head the newly spun-off print division of News Corp triggered talk it could be a re-entry opportunity for his son.
But Lachlan Murdoch doused the speculation, denying he had any plans to rejoin the corporation's executive ranks.
"No, no. I've moved on from that," he told the Australian Financial Review Thursday.
He was upbeat on the News demerger, scheduled for June 28, saying it was "reflecting well for shareholders and the stock price has, I think, reflected that".
Lachlan Murdoch has significant media clout of his own in his father's native Australia, chairing the commercial Ten television network and DMG Radio.
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'Girls Gone Wild' founder Joe Francis desperate to block release of sex tape
Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, whose company recently filed for bankruptcy, is the unwilling star of a raunchy hardcore sex tape that is currently making the rounds in search of a distributor. According to TMZ, however, the ex-convict CEO is desperate to halt its release and has called in his lawyers to intimidate media outlets that might buy the stolen video.
The video reportedly features sexual encounters between Francis and several women, including girlfriend Abbey Wilson, the 2012 winner of the Girls Gone Wild "Search for the Hottest Girl in America." The video was on Wilson's iPad, which was apparently stolen from her bag at Los Angeles International Airport.
Francis' lawyer, David Houston, said to TMZ, "It is not only unfortunate, but it is a crime. As such, this office will take all necessary steps to determine who in fact has done this and who is attempting to distribute the video."
Addressing the unknown party who is allegedly shopping the video to outlets, Houston said, "When we catch you, we will see that you are prosecuted to the fullest extent of both the criminal and civil laws."
The "Girls Gone Wild" video series features women in their late teens and twenties, often very intoxicated, stripping off their clothes and mugging for hand-held cameras, sometimes engaging in simulated lesbian acts for the titillation of watching men.
Frances has faced a plethora of lawsuits from former business partners and associates, as well as women who say there were unfairly duped into signing waivers consenting to be filmed and recorded. One plaintiff won a $5 million settlement when "Girls Gone Wild" distributed footage of her breasts being exposed in a bar against her will.
[image of Joe Francis via Wikipedia.org]
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Washington Post unveils metered paywall plan
The Washington Post said Wednesday it would start a metered paywall beginning on June 12, offering digital subscription packages at between $9.99 and $14.99 per month.
The Post had been one of few remaining major US newspapers to offer its content free of charge online, but it has been facing financial struggles along with the rest of the industry.
Readers will be able to view 20 articles or features per month before being asked to subscribe, publisher Katharine Weymouth said in an online posting.
"We hope you will consider subscribing even if you don't reach the limit; a subscription will provide unlimited access to all The Post's world-class journalism, multimedia and interactive features and more," Weymouth said.
"Importantly, you will also be helping to support our newsgathering operations."
Weymouth said it would take "a few weeks" to phase in the new paywall system.
Home delivery subscribers will have digital access included. And The Post's homepage and section front pages, videos and classified advertising would be excluded from the paywall, as will articles viewed through search engines or shared links.
Digital packages will be priced at $9.99 per month for access to the desktop and mobile Web $14.99 for an all-digital package which includes access to The Post's custom apps.
In its most recent results, the Washington Post Co. said newspaper operations were hit by slumping circulation and print advertising revenues, offset in part by gains in digital ad sales.
Overall, the profit for the quarter was $4.7 million, a drop of 85 percent from the same period a year ago when the net profit was $31 million.
The results showed an operating loss for newspaper operations of $34.5 million.
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