It’s 12:30 p.m. outside of the downtown offices of the former Washington Blade, which served as Washington D.C.’s gay newspaper of record from 1969 until this morning. Just hours ago, the staff of the Blade learned that its parent company, Window Media, had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, that the Blade was closed effective immediately, and that the paper’s two dozen employees were all out of work.

Now, two guys in purple shirts are methodically removing stacks of boxes out of the office, located on the fifth floor of the National Press Club building. What’s inside? “Just personal belongings,” one says, as he heads to the elevator. Everybody has until 3:30 p.m. to clear out.

Read More “The Final Hours of the Washington Blade” »

It seems like only yesterday that the CockBib arrived on the adult novelty scene to protect us against the horror of sloppy blow jobs. The CockBib, which is exactly what it sounds like, was always there for us—ready to catch our spittle before it fell upon a man’s balls. And I was really hoping that the CockBib was going to be around for the Holiday gift-giving season, offering up winter-themed ball-protectors with phrases like “Ho, Ho, Ho, Suck My Dick,” or “I’m Dreaming of A Dry Ball Christmas,” or “Dry-Balls, Dry-Balls, Dry-Balls, I Made You Out of CockBib.” The possibilities are endless, people.

So imagine my surprise when I click over to the CockBib online store, only to find the Web site abandoned! What the fuck happened to the CockBibs?!

Read More “A Very CockBib Christmas” »

The Huffington Post entertainment page has been conspicuously absent of female nipples lately. I think we’ve finally found the kryptonite to HuffPo’s entertainment page sexism: The biggest, weirdest star in the world suddenly dropping dead.

Observe:

Pictured: Not Megan Fox’s boobs

Read More “Is Michael Jackson the New Nipple?” »

Michael Jackson’s death at 50 from cardiac arrest has inspired the entire world to revisit the King of Pop’s body of work. And though I’m a huge MJ fan, I’d be remiss in my role as Pop Culture Fun Killer if I didn’t point out some defining characteristics of Jackson’s music videos: rapey, stalkey, and victim-blamey.

Off-screen, Jackson’s sex life was notoriously tortured—rumors in the press pegged Jackson alternately as a lifelong virgin, a pedophile, and a freak. In his music videos, we saw Jackson play with sexual violence and physical domination in order to portray the image of complete sexual control.

Read More “Michael Jackson Date Rape Anthems: Too Soon? Edition” »

Farrah Fawcett, sex symbol, has died at the age of 62. This photo reveals the private moment of one young fan unrolling her iconic poster for the first time. The snapshot captures what Fawcett represented to many men and women—an image of beauty to be admired, replicated, bought, sold, manipulated, imitated, discarded, stuck on bedroom walls, stared down, and remembered. It’s an image that has endured through Fawcett’s extended battle with cancer, and that will remain in our consciousness for a long time to come.

Photo by Shaggy Duck, Creative Commons Attribution License

Now together in the big sassy retirement community in the sky.

Bea Arthur, television feminist icon, died on Saturday at the age of 86. When Bruce Weber’s New York Times obit was emailed to subscribers, the headline read, “Bea Arthur, TV Battle-Ax, Dies at 86.”

Someone at the NYT must have thought better of sending Arthur off with a “cautionary/derogatory label for a formidable & forbidding woman.” Now, the obit’s title reads “Bea Arthur, Star of Two TV Comedies, Dies at 86.”

I’m glad Bea is still intimidating them all, even in her death.

Still ruining everything: Palin paved the way for Obama to kill “feminist”

The death of the word “feminist” was broadcast on the evening news. In September 2008, at the height of the presidential campaign, Katie Couric boarded John McCain’s airplane, took a seat with vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and lobbed the first in a series of softballs: Did Palin consider herself a feminist? Palin’s response:

I do. A feminist who believes in equal rights, and I believe that women certainly today have every opportunity that a man has to succeed, and to try to do it all, anyway. And I’m very, very thankful that I’ve been brought up in a family where gender hasn’t been an issue. You know, I’ve been expected to do everything growing up that the boys were doing. We were out chopping wood and we were out hunting and fishing and filling our freezer with good wild Alaskan game to feed our family.

“Feminist” isn’t the only English-language word that suffered from Palin’s candidacy, of course (see “maverick,” “terrorist”). But while other terms employed by the Alaska governor withered from twisted meanings, “feminist” experienced a more symbolic death. Palin killed “feminist” not by altering the meaning of the word—its meaning has never remained consistent in a century of use—but by eliminating its taboo.

Read More “The Feminist Mystique: How Election 2008 Killed a Notorious Word” »

* Revealed! How Moe Tkacik avoided becoming a cat lady early in life—you can too! [via Slate's XX Factor].

* Regrettable! Tiger Beatdown laments that the loss of Sparks’ caffeine, gain of doctors “conscience”.

* Rectal! Shakesville presents the perfect stocking stuffer for the Catalan at heart: the Obama Caganer!

* Rick Warren! Wants wives to submit to their husbands, Feministe remembers. But shrewd Barack Obama must cross party lines to pacify America’s misogynist, gay-hating “other half” for when he needs to later court their support for women’s issues GLBT rights bailouts.

* R.I.P.! Today, we salute the fallen: Deep Throat; brave, suicidal waterslide shark.

Photo by trialsanderrors

Pin-up queen Bettie Page died of pneumonia yesterday in Los Angeles. She was 85 years old.