Delta Air Lines Removes Chris Rock Special from In-flight Entertainment Over Anti-Gay Slurs

Delta Air Lines says it will remove Chris Rock’s Kill the Messenger HBO comedy special from in-flight entertainment systems after Jeremy Foreshew, a Grindr employee, complained to Delta officials about a scene in which Rock explains the proper context in which it’s okay to use the word “faggot.”

GayTravel.com reports that Foreshew viewed the segment on a flight on his way home from spending several days with LGBT activists and non-profits on a project his company is working on:

“Having come from being with all these activists, knowing the current state of violence against the LGBT community, and knowing the current political climate… I just came to a place where I couldn’t believe this was something happening in 2016. When you think of the number of people who fly Delta every day and have access to that language… it just shocked me.”

Delta released a statement to GayTravel.com about the programming:

“The Chris Rock ‘Kill the Messenger’ segment should not have been uploaded on flights based on our criteria for excluding onboard programming that includes content featuring explicit language, slurs, extreme violence, and explicit scenes. We apologize to any customers who were offended by the content or our airing of the segment, and we are working as quickly as possible to remove it from our aircraft. Our commitment to inclusion and respect of all customers is rooted in Delta’s values and culture, and we proudly embrace diverse people, thinking and styles.”

Delta recently made headlines after screening copies of the Oscar-nominated Todd Haynes film Carol which had gay kissing scenes cut from it.

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NEW MUSIC: Crystal Castles, Sonic Youth, Thom Sonny Green

It’s music silly season so this week in New Music: Crystal Castles make a comeback with a new frontwoman and it’s thankfully business as usual, a 1986 instrumental oddity from Sonic Youth (above) and another instrumental (mesmerizing) oddity from Alt-J drummer Thom Sonny Green.

Crystal Castles – Amnesty (I)

Amnesty (I) is Crystal Castles‘ first album without frontwoman Alice Glass. Considering the band is basically a duo, it was hard for fans to see how the project could continue without the presence of Glass. However, like many acts before them, Glass was the public face of producer and multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath’s vision so it makes sense for him to continue with new vocalist Edith Frances.

That is not meant to denigrate the importance to Glass to the project but it’s interesting to note that Kath has not been deterred or sidetracked. In fact, Amnesty (I) is so similar in many ways to previous album (III) it’s essentially business as usual. A good thing for fans, a signal from Kath that he’s still on the ball but perhaps just a little but too similar. Nonetheless, this is another excellent entry into Kath’s impressive body of electro pop scuzz.

Sonic Youth – Spinhead Sessions

Another week, another cash-in release from a band that’s long since gone far beyond mere legend. Or is it? Well, no. However Spinhead Sessions, while actually “new” material, is just a series of instrumental pieces the band made together in 1986 as part of a movie soundtrack project.

Spindhead Sessions is therefore not what non-obsessives will think of as Sonic Youth material. There must be very, very little left in the rare/unreleased Sonic Youth cupboard at this stage that releases like this are lapped up by hardcore fans.

The 16 minute opening track “Ambient Guitar & Dreamy Theme” is just that, a dread-laded exercise in soundtracking that gives way to some light release towards the end. “Theme With Noise” is not so much about noise or a theme as such, and short tracks like “Wolf” are interesting, that one in particular because you can hear influences from the likes of The Cure and Robin Guthrie.

Nobody – and I mean nobody – is going to pretend Spinhead Sessions is any more than a curio for major fans. Because it’s Sonic Youth that in itself is enough to garner interest and with the likelihood of the band doing a Pixies and reforming, this is the best you’re going to get before the inevitable flow of “best of”s etc.

Thom Sonny Green – High Anxiety

Thom Sonny Green is none other than the drummer with Alt-J. Alt-J is a pretty decent band so what to expect from him in the back? While Radiohead’s Phil Selway surprised probably everyone except himself with his two solo albums (first one excellent, follow-up pretty good actually) to date, Green is far more introspective.

Apparently recorded in hotel rooms on tour over three years – which does sound a pretty miserable existence – and paired with his anxiety issues, High Anxiety is 22 instrumental pieces all of which are massively claustrophobic, often irritating but at its best (“Huston” and “Beach” for example) utterly compelling for fans of genre.

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Who's the Fiercest Queen in North Carolina? (Photos)

www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2016/8/24/whos-fiercest-queen-north-carolina-photos

Melania Trump Plagiarizes Peter Thiel Playbook, Hires Same Lawyers To Bully Media

And so it begins.

Proud gay Republican Peter Thiel has officially set a new precedent. After using his billions to bankroll Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media, which resulted in the company being sued out of existence, other self-proclaimed members of America’s billionaire class are now following suit.

Related: Lights Out At Gawker: Nick Denton Publishes Scathing Attack On Peter Thiel In Final Post

Melania Trump just hired the same team of lawyers who represented Hogan against Gawker Media to threaten several media outlets, large and small, with defamation lawsuits after they wrote unfavorably about her alleged past.

Her lawyer, Charles Harder, just sent a letter to several media organizations, including the Daily Mail, Politico, The Week, and The Inquisitr, placing them “on notice” after they ran a story claiming the 46-year-old model once worked as an escort in the early 1990s.

In the letter, Harder calls the reports “100% false, highly damaging to her reputation, and personally hurtful.”

(We can’t help but note the irony in the wife of America’s biggest bully complaining about having her feelings hurt.)

He also says that “outright lying about her in this way exceeds all bounds of appropriate news reporting and human decency” and adds that Mrs. Trump has suffered severe emotional distress and feels her privacy has been invaded.

Related: Rush Limbaugh: Melania’s Revealing Photos Will Win Trump LGBTQ Vote

The letter demands the publications apologize and retract the stories immediately or be faced with a lawsuit which, these days, could mean being sued out of existence and having their reporters, editors, and their families financially ruined for life.

As of yesterday, several of the sites had already caved to the demands, publishing apologies and retractions. Though not everyone seemed very remorseful.

In his apology, titled Trump Lawyers Said Melania Didn’t F**k For Money, Forced Us To Apologize, So Here It Is, Andrew Bradford at the blog Liberal America said he was sorry “that the personal image of the wannabe first lady is so insecure that she feels the need to send her legal hell-hounds chasing after small, independent journalists such as me.”

Related: Twitter Wastes No Time Coming For Melania Trump’s “Borrowed” Michelle Obama Speech

In other Melania Trump news, Mother Jones uncovered that the Trump campaign paid a grand total of $356.01 to the woman who allegedly wrote Melania’s plagiarized speech for the RNC last month. Evidently, they don’t hold writers of any sort, even those working for them, in very high regard.

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Why Are All These Male Celebs Exposing Themselves? An Explanation.

As we’ve said before and (for some reason) are saying again, revealing pics are not so much leaking in 2016 as positively gushing. Bieber. Bloom. Bowen. 50 Cent. Kensworthy (Gus.) And actor Matt Smith, who appropriately stars in the latest reboot of Dr. Who. And that’s in the last two months alone.

Related: Justin Bieber Describes The Moment He Saw His Penis Online: “It Was Alright”

While no one is really complaining about the trend,  it does beg the question: What, if anything, is behind this abrupt uptick in glistening exposed male flesh everywhere, and all the various parts of a man ceaselessly flopping about?

Related: You Won’t Believe The Latest X-Rated Male Trend Happening In Airplane Lavatories

Fortunately, an intrepid reporter at New York cornered former celeb publicist Rob Shuter, now of Naughty Gossip, forcing him to spill the goods on what exactly is happening behind the scenes that’s making these male celeb penises get all up in our business.

Related: Usher Shows His God-Given Talent In Very Revealing Home Shower Tour

Here are a few revealing highlights from the interview.

On the rise of the male celeb full-frontal:

God bless Kim Kardashian and sex tapes and the cover of Paper magazine! She really changed the rules for women, and now the men are catching up.

On how much Orlando Bloom might have paid to buy the photos rather than see them published:

I think they’d want $50,000 or $60,000, because that’s probably what they’d make by selling them through a wire.

On Justin Bieber’s MO:

I think Justin likes us knowing that he has a big penis. He’s not shy and it’s not the first time it’s happened.

Are these pics really the work of paparazzo, or publicists? 

Justin’s [photos look] a bit more staged [than Orlando Bloom’s]. They were a little bit more, dare I say, romantic. It felt like an Annie Leibovitz shoot. The other thing that made me suspicious of Bieber is that there was only, like, two or three of them. Now if I was a paparazzi, or a photographer in the woods, I would click 400 photographs. With Orlando there was a ton of photographs. Every time he moved to the left or the right there was another photograph. Someone clearly had a lens and just: click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click. There’s a series of photographs. But Bieber? There’s, like, three.

On how uncensored versions of paparazzi full-frontal pics end up on Twitter: 

Well, when they’re sent to the photo agency, when they’re sent to the publication, you get the original picture. So the original photograph also exists on the server at the Daily News, which I’m sure gets emailed to friends and family and everybody else. And the agencies sell photos to different territories, too. If you sell it to someone in France, for instance, the rules may be more liberal than ours. French outlets, I think, can run naked images. All it takes is one person on Twitter in Paris to put that picture up, and boom, it’s gone.

On whether we’ll see more of Bieber’s bits: 

More and more. It’s going to get to the point where we’re almost bored of Bieber’s willy.

And these are just a few excerpts from a surprisingly lengthy article that should be ogled in its entirety. 

Head here to read it. 

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Lucky Seal Makes Incredible Last Second Escape from Pod of Orcas: WATCH

A very fortunate seal barely avoided becoming lunch for a pod of orcas on the Campbell River off the coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada this week.

Writes Kirk Fraser:

“I was out with my parents and a family friends when we were looking for whales and a pod of 12 transient killer whales where chasing the seal. It ripped towards the boat in a desperate escape and scrambled on the deck. It fell of three times in panic and finally stayed on untill the whales gave up after about 30-45 minutes. Most intense epic experience ever. Love you Nature. What a lucky seal”

Watch:

Nick Templeman, who runs Campbell River Whale and Bear Excursions, was leading the group and caught more of the orcas searching for the seal after it had jumped aboard the boat.

“This seal was tossed around a few times and taken under quite a bit before seeking refuge among the boats in the area,” Templeman told the CBC. “He got close enough to see us and beelined for the boat. He was on and off the swim grid [on the boat] two times during the encounter. The orcas kept sounding and coming up right behind the boat, searching. It was an amazing and intense encounter — the seal is the survivor.”

Watch Templeman’s incredible video:

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Pat McCrory Attacks Opponent Roy Cooper with Transgender Bathroom Scare Ad – WATCH

Pat McCrory is again using the transgender bathroom myth to scare North Carolinians, and this time to attack his opponent Roy Cooper.

In a new attack ad, Governor McCrory attacks his Democratic challenger, state AG Roy Cooper, by associating him with opposition to the state’s notorious anti-transgender bathroom bill. While only a minority of North Carolina voters are in favor of HB 2, McCrory is betting that he can once again depict the anti-LGBT bill as being about protecting people from sexual predators.

The ad, posted online on Wednesday, features a woman named Gina Little allegedly exposing ‘the truth about Roy Cooper.’ Says Little,

“At nine, I was molested by a teenager. When I found out that President Obama and Roy Cooper want to force school children to share the same locker room, shower and restroom with someone who claims to be the opposite sex, I was horrified. Governor McCrory knows this is not about discrimination, money or politics. He’s standing up for us under extreme pressure and doing what’s right. Our governor is on our side.”

Said Chis Agro, executive director of Equality NC, “The governor is resorting to scare tactics as he sees himself trailing on this and others issues.”

McCrory seems desperate and willing to do anything to win voters’ support, as Cooper has steadily been gaining on him in the polls. The most recent poll, conducted by NBC/WSJ/Marist has Cooper up 7 points against McCrory. 

Watch the ad, below.

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Rodeo Clown Goes on Sickening Anti-Transgender Rant at Michigan County Fair: WATCH

A rodeo clown went on a sickening anti-transgender rant at an event with children at the Calhoun County Fair in Michigan, telling participants to choose whether they’re a boy or a girl, and adding, “If you’re confused you need help.”

Said ‘Rockin’ Robbie Hodges, the rodeo clown:

“You’re either a boy or a girl, y’all understand? If you’re confused you need help. Here at the rodeo we are not gender friendly. Everybody in here who’s really sure they’re a boy raise your hand. If you can tinkle on a fire you go to the boys’ room, if you can’t, you go to the girls’ room, right?”

A shocked mother who recorded Hodges’ comments gave them to a local TV news station and brought them to county fair organizers.

FOX 17 reports:

The viewer who provided the video told FOX 17  that she and her daughter were enjoying the Lost Nations Rodeo until Hodges made the comments. She said she was shocked on two levels: that such comments were made to a crowd full of children, and that the comments do not reflect the values of Marshall, whose residents, as she put it, believe in equality.

Watch a report from Michigan’s Fox47:

The rodeo company said Hodges was an independent contractor and was fired after the Calhoun County event, and offered an apology:

“Lost Nations Rodeo was unaware that those comments would be made, and were off script. Hodges is a well-decorated entertainer, and while we appreciate his services, we do not share the same views or opinions. We sincerely apologize again to all of our fans and look forward to entertaining you in the future.”

And here’s a lovely photo of Hodges out of clown make-up:

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Russell Wilson and Ciara Moved Wedding from N.C. in Protest of HB 2

The couple are just the latest to boycott the state’s controversial law.

www.advocate.com/politics/2016/8/24/russell-wilson-and-ciara-moved-wedding-nc-protest-hb-2