By now, I’m sure you’ve all read about the “controversial” 1991 painting “Bea Arthur Naked” by artist John Currin that sold for $1.9 million at Christie’s yesterday. It’s been all over the blogsphere.

Well, if you linked to Currin’s now infamous image on your Facebook page and featured Bea Arthur’s naked breasts, for all to see, you might have received a notice from Facebook implementing a 24-hour ban from posting on your page.

The Daily Beast is reporting this happened to them and so are a few other websites and journalists.

According to The Daily Beast when they contacted Facebook they were told by a spokesperson, “Our policy prohibits photos of actual nude people, not paintings or sculptures.”

The spokesperson laid the blame on the company’s “dedicated User Operations Team,” and reviewers in “several offices around the globe,” who look at “millions of pieces of this content a day.”

“As you might expect,” she concluded, “occasionally, we make a mistake and block a piece of content we shouldn’t have.” She said Facebook has an appeals process in place for anyone who thinks they’ve been wrongly banned, and directed me here.

 
 
The Daily Beast’s Facebook page was back to normal as of 2pm Tuesday.

Bea Arthur’s Boobs Got Us Booted From Facebook

 
Street interviews conducted by Travis Nuckolls and Chris Baker in Colorado, Springs where people were asked “When did you choose to be straight?”

It’s interesting to watch—you can tell by their expressions, naturally—how viscerally taken aback some of these folks are by the question.

 
h/t Brian Morales

 
Charles Ramsey is a hero, for sure, but I fully expect for there to be an auto-tuned version of this interview in the very near future.

 
Below, a NSFW recording of the 911 call.
 

h/t Richard Swanson!

 
I’ve had jury duty all last week and I’m returning again today. It sucks, but at least I’m not a juror in the really BIG trial currently ongoing in Los Angeles, the Jackson family vs. AIG. Last Monday when I reported to the court, there were dozens of news vans equipped with satellite dishes lining Grand Ave. My first thought was “Oh shit” and my second had to do with praying to a god I don’t even believe in to please, please please don’t let me get picked for that fucking Michael Jackson jury! I needn’t have worried as the jurors had already been selected. I saw singer Mark Lanegan on Grand Ave. yesterday. I wonder if he’s got jury duty, too? Hopefully he dodged the Jackson/AIG bullet himself.

One witness who will probably NOT be called to the stand in that high profile trial is Derek Acorah, a celebrity “medium” well-known to British TV viewers, Acorah held a televised seance on the Sky 1 network in 2009 during which he alleged that he was able to make contact with Michael Jackson from beyond the grave. With four teary-eyed Jackson mega-fans in attendance, Acorah was able to, um, “divine,” I guess, that Jackson was adjusting well to his spiritual life and spending time with his grandparents. However, Acorah did pass on MJ’s annoyance that he was not laid to rest beside his idol, actress Marilyn Monroe: “I wished to lie alongside her. I suppose it’s of no consequence.”

One of the Jackson fans who participated in the hysterically funny televised seance told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, “I looked into Derek’s eyes, and it was him.” [Emphasis added]
 

 
This is the only time I think one of the Westboro Baptist Church’s protests should be televised.

Which of your idols will God kill next?Yesterday Chris Kelly #kriskrossToday Jeff Hanneman #Slayer#PicketFunerals twitter.com/WBCSays/status…

— Westboro Baptist (@WBCSays) May 2, 2013

This should be interesting…
 
Via reddit

 
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind project has released the eye-popping results of a new poll aiming to gauge public attitudes and awareness level regarding gun issues.

The pollsters found that overall, 29% of Americans agreed with the statement, “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” Five percent were unsure about this.

Some Democrats (18%) said an armed revolt “might be necessary,” while 27% of independents and whopping 44%of Republicans agreed. The less educated someone was the more likely they were to agree with the statement.

PublicMind also found that 25% of voters believe they’re being lied to about the Sandy Hook massacre by people trying to manipulate the tragedy for political power. Another 11 % said they weren’t sure about it.

Read more about the survey here.

 
This glorious PSA from Swedish ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors addresses that simply “liking” a non-profits’ page on Facebook isn’t doing jack shit to help their cause. It might help your conscience by clicking that “like” button, but in reality… you’ve done nothing more than press your index finger.

It’s easier than ever to support a good cause — all you have to do is hit the like button. The organization gets one more supporter and you get positive publicity among your friends. But even though it’s important to be liked, likes can’t fund medicine, water or food. In this campaign for UNICEF Sweden, we highlight the absurdness of our blind faith in likes, to raise money for vaccines.

What gets me more riled-up is when Facebook dum-dums share photos based on claims like “if you share this photo you will save this child’s life,” or “if this photo is shared one million times, together we can conquer breast cancer.” WTF? Explain to me how that would work exactly?

 
Via Copyranter

 
What’s all the fuss about?

That’s what The New York Times’ Frank Bruni wants to know and he’s got a pretty good handle on the situation:

“Many of us want to, and will: when a gay, lesbian or transgendered kid isn’t at special risk of being brutalized or committing suicide. When the federal government outlaws discrimination against people based on sexual orientation, which it still hasn’t done.

“When immigration laws give same-sex couples the same consideration that they do heterosexual ones. When the Defense of Marriage Act crumbles and our committed relationships aren’t relegated to a lesser status, a diminished dignity.

“When a Rutgers coach doesn’t determine that the aptly ugly garnish for hurling basketballs at his players’ heads is the slur ‘faggot. When professional football scouts don’t try to ascertain that potential recruits are straight.

“When an athlete like Collins can be honest about himself without he and his co-author having to stress that he’s a guy’s guy, a godly man, someone who stayed mum about himself before now precisely so he wouldn’t disrupt his teams or upset his teammates, someone who’s inhabited locker rooms for 12 seasons already without incident.

“When a gay person’s central-casting earnestness and eloquence aren’t noted with excitement and relief, because his or her sexual orientation needn’t be accompanied by a litany of virtues and accomplishments in order for bigotry to be toppled and a negative reaction to be overcome.”

At the time that Ellen DeGeneres ‘came out’ in her sitcom in 1997, I was living on Christopher Street in New York’s West Village, one of America’s gay cultural epicenters. That night, the night the show aired, my girlfriend and I must’ve seen 200 lesbian couples holding hands walking around Greenwich Village—this was NOT a common sight at the time, even in that neighborhood—and it was a very, very moving thing to see, and something that brought tears to both of our eyes.

What Ellen did sixteen years ago, and what veteran NBA player Jason Collins did yesterday are big, bold important gestures. In fact, it demeans their courage by calling what they did, merely gestures, because it represents way more than that: they put their careers and their lives on the line for what’s right.

That’s takes a special kind of heroism.

Straight allies like The Times’ Frank Bruni are important, too and I commend and applaud him for this powerful op ed. Read the entire thing here and please share it with friends.

Via Joe.My.God

 
This story is truly upsetting and disturbing, but it needs to be shared so folks are aware that this kind of thing still happens. Via Gaystar News:

Three ‘gay and effeminate’ teens have died after being starved, tortured and killed at a camp that promised to turn them into ‘men’.

A picture of Raymond Buys, 15, taken in April 2011 [above] showed a skeletal, emaciated figure fighting for his life.

Just 10 weeks before, the teen’s parents signed him up to the Echo Wild Game Rangers training course in South Africa in perfect health.

In hospital, Buys was severely malnourished, dehydrated, his arm was broken in two places and there were burns and wounds all over his body. He lay in intensive care for four weeks until he died.

And now, the course ‘general’ Alex De Koker, 49, and employee Michael Erasmus, 20, are on trial for charges of murder, child abuse and neglect, along with two cases of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in relation to Buys’ death.

The teen’s death is alleged to have been the third among the Afrikaans children who attended the R22,000 ($2,400, €1,900) courses, which have been advertized since 2006.

The full story is here.

 
This biting, and brilliant, comic strip satire goes to show the inherent fallacy of any state-sanctioned “War On A Noun.”

It’s the work of the British musician and artist Darren Cullen, and you can find more of his output at the site Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives.