At TMZ:
1. This Morning: ‘Honey Boo Boo’:TLC Cancels Show After June Dates Child Molester
TLC has CANCELLED “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” TMZ has learned, in the wake of our story that Mama June is dating a convicted child molester who sexually abused one of her relatives.
The decision comes one day after TMZ broke the story … June has been secretly dating Mark McDaniel, who got out of prison in March after serving 10 years for forcing oral sex on an 8-year-old.
2. Thursday: Mama June Dating Man Who Molested Her Relative
The new guy is 53-year-old Mark McDaniel. He was convicted in 2004 for aggravated child molestation. Prosecutors say he molested an 8-year-old child — forcing oral sex. June was dating McDaniel at the same time he molested the child.
3. Joan Rivers: Melissa Has ‘No Choice’ But to Sue
4. ‘X-Men’ Director Bryan Singer: I’m Raising My Kid with the Baby Mama
We’re told Bryan and Michelle have been friends for years and he has wanted this baby for a long time.
Our sources say the 2 are not romantically involved but rather extremely close friends.
At the Daily Beast:
5. Boko Haram Abducts 25 More Girls
6. Women Describe How Top D.C. Rabbi Allegedly Spied on Them in the Nude
Bethany Mandel said in a phone interview that she did a practice dunk while converting in 2011. She claims Freundel told her that he required practice dunks specifically to avoid rabbis seeing women naked during the conversion process. Freundel had created the practice dunks because of an experience with a prior convert, according to Mandel. That woman, Mandel said, in nervousness over the completion of her conversion, “stood up and turned around, and like full-frontal exposed herself to the rabbis… he wanted to do practice dunks so that people wouldn’t expose themselves on mikvah day.”
Even after Freundel’s arrest, most of the women interviewed expressed uncertainty about whether they were targets of the alleged voyeurism. Several said they’d felt the practice dunks were a helpful part of the conversion process—including Mandel.
7. Autopsy: Michael Brown Shot Up Close
The evidence supports Wilson’s claim that Brown’s hand was on or near his gun. A forensic pathologist who reviewed the autopsy says the wounds don’t show that Brown was running away or had his hands up.
8. Thank God! To the Church, This Transgender Woman Is Just a Skank
Since its release, Transmormon has racked up a number of awards, including the Artistic Vision Award at the 2014 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. In the process, 25-year-old Hayward has become a transgender poster child, at least to Mormons. But she is a little surprised by the role. “I’m not trying to break any social norms. I’m not trying to break any walls or do anything they don’t understand.”
Hayward doesn’t mean that with a false sense of modesty. Nor is she taking the rhetorical strategy of playing down how dramatic a push for social change is by making it seem more familiar. She really just wants to be an old-fashioned girl. “I’m saying there is something wrong on the outside, fix it, and I will be a conforming member of society,” she says. After years of struggling to articulate that she was transgender, she is more than happy to have people recognize her as a woman—and leave it at that.
Via Drudge:
9. DC Teacher Busted For Classroom Sex With Teen…
10. After He Secretly Records Them…
Though he has since erased the messages, he recalls that he asked her if she was “kinky,” and that she responded by saying “I don’t tell I show.”
11. Obama Asserts Fast and Furious Executive Privilege Claim for Holder’s Wife…
12. Death of promising doctor who mysteriously turned jihadi shocks Israel…
13. Uganda ‘gay’ trial dimissed due to lack of evidence…
14. REPORT: Virtual reality brothels less than a year away…
15. UPDATE: Cannabis Substitute ‘Spice’ Kills Dozens in Russia…
At Gawker:
16. Man Admits to “Gentle Sexual Intercourse” With Beagle Named Piglet
“(Boggess) stated that when he had finished having intercourse that he held ‘Piglet’, petted her, and told ‘Piglet’ that he loved her,” Manolakos wrote in his report obtained by the Charleston Daily Mail.
Kanawha County Sgt. Larry O’Bryan told the paper that Boggess, 47, allegedly told police that he believed it was “OK” to have sexual intercourse with the dog “because it was more than 40 pounds and also because Piglet has been spayed.”
“He said he wished he hadn’t done it,” O’Bryan told the Charleston Gazette. “He said he was drunk when he did it.
17. High School Cheerleading Coach Admits to Summer Sex Fling With Student
18. Donations Pour In To Buy Car For Pennsylvania Cop-Killer Lookalike
19. Four Blackwater Guards Found Guilty for Killing 14 in Iraq
20. This Unreleased Kesha Song Sure Sounds Like It’s About Dr. Luke
Kesha filed a lawsuit against her producer, Dr. Luke, last week, alleging that he physically and sexually abused her beginning when she was 18. She says he drugged her and forced himself on her, and was so verbally abusive that he triggered the eating disorder that sent her to rehab.
At Acculturated:
21. Ashley E. McGuire: Brittany Maynard and the Trouble With Suicide
But what makes her suicide any different from that of Robin Williams? He faced a terminal diagnosis too, one that involves years of suffering and bodily unraveling, one for which there is no cure. Our society, increasingly steeped in a culture of death, doesn’t really have a good answer to the swelling tide of social acceptance for what the pro-suicide movement like to euphemize as “death with dignity.”
No doubt, we all owe Maynard our compassion. It’s hard to fathom the suffering of a 29 year-old newlywed faced with terminal cancer. As she said to People, “Dan and I have given up our dreams of having a family. My mother is soon to lose her only child. We can all agree that no parent should bury their child.” As a 29 year-old beginning my own family, her story hits especially close to home.
But society’s big mistake is in believing that suicide can be a compassionate or dignified choice. Suicide is suicide. There is nothing that can change that. You can make it legal. You can make it seem less horrible by using needles instead of some rope and a chair or a gun. You can put a beautiful woman on the cover of a celebrity magazine as a spokeswoman. But it’s still suicide, and the reality is that anyone who commits suicide, or even ponders it, is suffering deeply.
22. R.J. Moeller: ‘Fury’ and The Good War
Fury is not only a superbly directed war/action drama, it is one of the first full-length candid looks at what it might have been like to “survive” almost the entire length of the war. In nearly every frame, the audience can feel the gut-wrenching experiences of Wardaddy and his men. The fact that they were fighting an enemy they knew to be evil did not make it any easier when your best friend and fellow tank crew member has his face literally blown off of his body in front of you. The things these men went through were horrific and devastating, as well as heroic and important.
Fury, like memorable scenes from other impressive WWII films, takes us deeper into the indelible psychological and emotional scars the warriors of America’s “Greatest Generation” endured. But, unlike the anti-war Vietnam era movies, one does not leave the theater with disillusionment and animosity toward our government or war in general. If anything, I left Fury with an even greater appreciation for the sacrifices made by guys like my grandpa (a B-24 bomber pilot).
23. Mark Tapson: Is Virginity Making a Comeback?
It doesn’t help that American pop culture is relentlessly sexualized. The media have elevated as our young daughters’ most influential role models—you know who they are: celebs who pose before giant neon signs proclaiming them “FEMINIST,” but are really poster models for rampant sluttiness.
Yet despite (or perhaps because of) the best efforts of the entertainment biz to put sex front and center in our children’s consciousness, evidence seems to point to a newfound appreciation for virginity. Teens seem to be waiting longer to have sex than they did in the recent past, for example. Thanks in part to a handful of non-conforming celebrities like Jessica Simpson, Adriana Lima, and the Jonas Brothers, taking pride in preserving oneself for marriage has gained acceptance, and public expressions like purity rings have boomed in popularity. This is contributing, thankfully, to sharply declining teen birth and teen pregnancy rates. All of which suggests that American girls are increasingly rejecting the sex-soaked Siren of popular culture and embracing the notion that virginity is to be guarded until the right moment and given for the right reasons.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member