• Dubai Drama

    Egyptian Billionaire Arrested For Murder Of Lebanese Pop Star Suzanne Tamim

    In late July, Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim was stabbed multiple times and her throat slashed in her well-appointed Dubai apartment. In a pulpy twist, an Egyptian billionaire and parliamentarian, Hisham Talaat Mustafa, has been charged with paying a hit man $2 million to kill Tamim, Mustafa's former lover. According to the English-language Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram, the indictment of Mustafa came as a surprise to many Egyptians, as businessmen like Mustafa are the "backbone of the [ruling] National Democratic Party." Of course, the ruling party is spinning the arrest as a clear sign that it is not biased towards businessmen. Alieddin Hilal, NDP secretary for media affairs, tells Al-Ahram, "the ruling party knows no cronyism and nobody in Egypt is above the law". More »
  • crappy hour

    Geraldine Ferraro: You = What The Media Needs To Start Ignoring

    GODDAMMIT GERALDINE, you just had to drag me back down into your withering wackjob abyss. I said I was never going to post about the Clinton campaign and sexism, since more than 12 out of 12 Clinton campaign surrogates agree that's not why she lost to Obama (despite that, congrats on winning Kentucky yesterday!), and then you go on Fox News and tell Shep Smith that Bob Herbert is a "black journalist who is a surrogate for Obama" on the basis that he is an unremitting misogynist who "hasn't had anything nice to say about Hillary in the last six months." Well, Geraldine, your charge that the media ignores sexism brought me back to a column I read about five months ago. "If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media," it opined, "it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America." Well, if it wasn't written by BOB HERBERT himself! Not that you'd bother reading the writings of such a blatant token with a political leanings so simpleminded he would support a candidate solely on the basis of a shared RACE. Anyway, that and oil prices, Hezbollah, a new World Bank report and how come there are no black people in Kentucky with Megan and (a somewhat irate) me after the jump. More »
  • crappy hour

    Sometimes, Ignorance Is Bliss

    Oh, Moe, what have you done to us? While you were (are?) sleeping the UN decided to halt aid to Burma because the junta just keeps taking it at gunpoint to sell it; Beirut has been at least partially taken over by Hezbollah; there's just too much smack to talk about Mark Penn to even begin to contemplate adding links and, frankly, I'm just a little sick of talking about the primaries. So the Windy's Attackerman and I, in all my morning Glamocratic splendor, take on things we probably should've ignored, like the primaries, Russian goosestepping, Spencer's favorite strip club in all of Canada and Arianna Huffington's secrets about John McCain. More »
  • news roundup

    The Oh, Hell No Afternoon

    • New York City police arrested Al Sharpton, Sean Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, and hundreds of other protesters today for staging prayer sessions at the exits of Manhattan in protest over the acquittal of the cops that shot Mr. Bell. Because, obviously, inconveniencing others to protest the loss of life means you should spend time at Rikers. Why did they have to make me like Al Sharpton? [NY Times]
    • Hillary's staying in the race despite the hellishly long odds, hoping that Barack will fuck it up and she can convince the superdelegates to anoint her the candidate. [NY Times]
    • To that end, she had an unannounced meeting in Washington with many of them behind closed doors. There's nothing sketchy-looking about that to the average voter though. [The Atlantic]
    More »
  • critical mass

    Caramel: The Lebanese Beauty Shop For Those Tired Of Tinseltown

    Caramel is a new rom-com from Lebanon with all the typical traits of a Queen Latifah comedy set abroad (and with no Queen Latifah). Nadine Labaki (who also wrote and directed the film) stars as Layale, a Christian woman and owner of a beauty salon in Beirut who presides over a colorful cast of characters who gather weekly to gossip about their lives. Although the film has some provocative themes, even for American audiences (a hairwasher's lesbian crush on a client; a woman who considers vaginal reconstructive surgery) most movie critics have found the film a little too conventional, though pleasant. We say, with all of crap out recycled in Hollywood chick-flick after Hollywood chick-flick, it's nice to see a formulaic but foreign film centered around female friendships. Some sweet and bitter reviews after the jump. More »
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