… Ridiculous non-recovery from attempted racial exploitation goes to:
Capt. Troy K. Gore, an officer detailed to the Philadelphia Fire Department’s recruitment team, was placed on paid leave yesterday over allegations that he proposed a scheme to bring in more minority candidates by doctoring the city’s computerized application process.
Meanwhile, Club Valiants sued the city, CAFFA, and the firefighters’ union last year, alleging a hostile, racist work environment and citing derogatory racial postings on the Web site of the local union, Local 22 of the International Association of Firefighters. The suit is pending.
From the Times Magazine
… Excellence in Discovering New Avenues for Vigilantism:
Human-flesh search engines — renrou sousuo yinqing — have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results.
… Best Actress that Gets My Alma Mater Shouted Out in a Story about Looting … finally:
Tricia Wachtendorf, associate director of the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center, objects to even the use of the words “looting” or “crime” to describe taking essential goods, noting that nobody objected to firemen taking water from stores near Ground Zero to rinse the World Trade Center’s smoke from their eyes.
From Rolling Stone
… Best Writer Calling Political Shenanigans:
To challenge vulnerable Democrats, the GOP plans to co-opt the campaign strategy that ushered Obama into the White House. First, Republicans are actively recruiting younger candidates in the Scott Brown mold, men and women in their 30s and 40s who can create what Luntz calls “a sense of a new beginning for the GOP.” Second, in a throwback to 1994, the party is drafting a new Contract With America, one that echoes the calls for greater government transparency that Obama championed. According to one strategist familiar with the manifesto, the document is designed to help cast the party — tarnished by years of blatant corruption and reckless spending — as above the backroom deals that marked both the stimulus plan and health care reform.
“The GOP is in better shape now than it was in 1994 at this time,” says Luntz. “That’s what’s incredible about what has happened. The best presidential communicator in a generation — and Obama is better than Clinton — has allowed his opponents to get back up, brush themselves off and provide an alternative vision. The Republican Party is like Jason in Friday the 13th — you can’t kill it. It will not die.” — Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone
[T]heir fashion faux pas will not go unnoticed or unmocked. Ms. Rivers, 76, is still very much on their case thanks to her new gig as the head cop on E! Entertainment’s “Fashion Police.”
For those who spent years loving Ms. Rivers’s caustic red carpet rants — she practically invented the art form, beginning on E! in 1996 — it’s like a queen returning to her kingdom after an absence keenly felt by both ruler and subjects.
… And, one we lost Feb. 25:
Bob Biniak, a leading member of the Zephyr Skate Team, a California group whose aggressive, surfing-inspired approach to skateboarding during the 1970s reinvented the sport and was celebrated in two films, died Feb. 25 in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., where he was visiting friends. He was 51.
Biniak died at Baptist Medical Center Beaches four days after having a heart attack, said his wife, Charlene Capitolo.
Oh, that other stuff?
Avatar, Bigelow, Sidibe, Bridges, Mo’Nique, Waltz … and Bingham
That’s what I’d like to see, at least.