
The biggest sign so far that September 11th may have been an inside job will not be heard on PBS. Though two FBI counterterrorism agents have come forward with information about pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA and FBI that may have lead to withholding information and lying to investigators after the incident, their bosses over at the Bureau have nixed the idea of the duo appearing on a PBS special to tell their story.
Because it's untrue? Nope:
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From some unfathomable reason, Google is celebrating it's 10th anniversary with a special 2001 theme that let's you use the search engine of yesteryear. Okay, so it's not exactly 10 years old yet (give it another 3 years), but the engine does harken back to a time before September 11th, when typing in 9/11 just brought back results pertaining to home emergencies.
Also, is it a sign of our spoiled times that we look at Google's search of "1,326,920,000 web pages" and think "how quaint?"
Below, the biggest mindfuck of 2001:
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After 9/11, the distortion of facts and the withholding information by the mainstream media became not just a troubling theory held by some Kennedy conspiracy nutjobs, but almost a universally accepted truth. Hell, even ex-Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura believes that the Twin Towers collapse was an inside job.
What's even more terrifying though, is that no one at any network was held accountable, or even questioned, about the propagation of these half-truths about the September 11th, meant to keep America scared and in the dark enough that we would agree to almost anything the government suggested…even if that meant going to war in a country we had no business being in.
And! By allowing the MSM to get away with that one giant event, should you have any reason to believe that the information you're getting from the TV today is any more accurate or less biased than it was after those fateful days?
Below, a couple of stories pulled from the (lack of) MSM headlines about what is really going on in this country:
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Construction at Ground Zero revealed a 110-foot deep pothole that is offering geologists a crazy glimpse into an archeological wonderland. The cavernous site revealed rock imprints over 500 million years old (so take that, creationism).
A fantastic landscape in Lower Manhattan - plummeting holes, steep cliffsides and soft billows of steel-gray bedrock, punctuated by thousands of beach-smooth cobblestones in a muted rainbow of reds and purples and greens - has basked in sunlight this summer for the first time in millennia.
This monumental carving was the work of glaciers, which made their last retreat from these parts about 20,000 years ago, leaving profound gouges in the earth and rocks from the Palisades, the Ramapo Mountains and an area of northern New Jersey known as the Newark Basin.
Sweet. Does it almost make up for 9/11? Nope. But at least one guy at the site had a good idea for the Ghostbuster 2-esque ravine memorial:
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If you're wondering why the gift shops at LaGuardia seem a little less snow globe and keychain oriented and a little more hellbent on getting you to watch The O'Reilly Factor, it's not your Murdoch-induced paranoia or the Ambien kicking in preemptively. Brands like USA Today, CNBC and Fox News are outsourcing their brand names to retail shops in airport lounges that exclusively feature items bearing the corporate watermark.
Two possible reasons for the baffling business tactic:
1) The decline in viewership, for both television and glossies, has media corporations looking to expand their names into wholesale businesses as a way to raise revenue and
2) September 11th:
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Just when you thought that this country had stripped September 11th of all emotional resonance with bitter in-fighting and exploitative faux-patriotism, MSNBC found a way to get creative with the memorial:
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While you figure out whether you want to watch the History Channel's all-day (and all-night) coverage of the Twin Towers falling, Keith Olbermann already determined how he wanted to usher in the day of mourning: by slamming the McCain campaign's supposed exploitation of 9/11. "This is supposed to be a day of remembrance," Olbermann said last night. "Remembrance of the attack, remembrance of the national unity which followed it. Most important of all, remembrance of the dead." Except then McCain went and exploited it! We've got Olbermann's entire delivery below, but as you watch, imagine not Olbermann saying these words, but Barack Obama. The Countdown anchor has become the Democratic nominee's mouthpiece in all attack matters, and while Olbermann may have spoken these words all on his own — whether Obama was in the picture or not — it's becoming harder to separate official campaign talking points from Olbermann's own rhetoric. Much the same way it's always been hard to distinguish the Bush administration's agenda from Bill O'Reilly's. CONTINUED »

Contrary to popular opinion, there are right and wrong ways to blog. Livejournal, for instance, is the perfect platform to unleash all your tween angst. For political debates in the forums? Not so much. It just looks silly to post a lengthy discussion of the McCain camp's smear tactics next to a mood:aggravated icon.
So woe to the venerable institutions that can't tell the difference between appropriate and inappropriate blogging subjects, and who believe Twittering — the "microblogging" service much beloved by everyone at the conventions this year — works for every news-worthy event.
Most recent example? The Rocky Mountain News team that Twittered a little boy's funeral after the 3-year old was gunned down in an ice-cream store. (Ex: "Rabbi recites the main hebrew prayer of death / people again are sobbing. rabbi again asks god to give marten everlasting life/family members shovel earth into grave.") The still-online Twitter feed is here.
File under: Not okay. If you can't tell the difference on what is the appropriate amount of deference a subject should be given online in real-time, here is a handy guide on acceptable Twittering usage: CONTINUED »

You're standing on the north side of 14th Street, watching a man take a tire iron to an electronic store's display window and then begins looting the place. Or some drunk girl thinks throwing a traffic cone at on-coming cars in front of Pianos would be amusing. This is what your 5 megapixel camera phone is for! Snap that jappy bitch and text it to 911. The emergency line, and 311, is now accepting your cell phone pics and video, which means your iPhone doesn't just mean you can become a citizen journalist, but also a citizen crimefighter!
But be forewarned. This does not mean you should start sending 911 pictures of the sandwich that Subway screwed up your order on. And 911 operators have shown a tendency to reprimand those who waste their time by uploading unnecessary emergency phone calls to YouTube, so prepare to see the pictures of you mooning the camera that you sent as a joke posted to Flickr. And if you do send in an emergency-worthy photo, and a dispatcher messages you back "I don't give a shit about the man holding the serrated knife to the woman's throat," know that you do have recourse.

Target, the chic alternative to Wal-Mart, is having a little trouble pleasing investors in this economy: Profits slipped 7.6 percent, which to us actually seems pretty respectable, given Americans' decreasing amount of disposable income to spend on Clybourn Loft Chairs. But they're doing anything they can to attract your last penny, which means they're launching the "new Go International private label collection next month, followed by new designer partnerships in October with Jonathan Saunders for apparel, Anya Hindmarch for handbags and Sigerson Morrison for shoes." And how will they get the word out about their new brands? By launching four pop-up stores, or "bullseye bodegas", in Midtown, Union Square, Soho, and the East Village. They will open on Sept. 11, just in time to put a literal target on NYC.

Government scientist Bruce Ivins killed himself last week, amidst reports federal officials were going to arrest him as a suspect in the anthrax-in-envelopes scares following 9/11. Ivins, who worked with scary molecules like Cholera before turning his attention to anthrax full time, basically went off the deep end as he was closed in on, and even his shrink was scared of him. With Ivins' death, though, comes new questions about Sept. 11's aftermath and the anthrax scare — namely, how ABC News might have contributed to government-planted misinformation about the situation. What type of misinformation? Say, for instance, that Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program was behind the anthrax scare. You remember Mr. Hussein, don't you? He's the late former Iraqi leader who was so evil the United States spent billions of dollars on a casualty-laden war, all based on various pieces of wrong information, like non-existent WMDs and now, perhaps, a non-existent link between Hussein and the anthrax. CONTINUED »

The wingspan of Bill Clinton's power is wide! Or Bill Clinton thinks it is! Back in 2006, he tried squashing the ABC miniseries Path to 9/11, which his inner circle feared would blame some of the WTC attacks on Clinton White House policy (i.e. not finding Osama bin Laden), claims Carol Felsenthal in her new book Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House. Even Madeleine Albright jumped on the bandwagon, calling for the series to get killed, even though she hadn't even seen any of it.
Sound familiar? It should. It's the same sort of scenario Clinton pulled with GQ, threatening to drop out of participating in the magazine's "Men of the Year" issue of a critical profile of wife Hillary got printed. Editor Jim Nelson ending up killing the piece (though it was reused elsewhere), and Bill gave him a cover.
ABC, as history tells it, didn't cave.
The 911 call placed by Heather Locklear's psychologist is as tame as the one placed by the mother of a former Lindsay Lohan assistant is crazy. It's the tape that sent paramedics scrambling to the star's house, only to find the supposedly suicidal Locklear was calm and doing just fine. But the tape is worthwhile for one thing: Between the shrink's half-assed directions and the 911 operator's own admission, you can figure out where she lives. Good luck with the crazies!

Cate Blanchett, Julie Christie, Laura Linney, and Ellen Page all lost out on this year's Best Actress Oscar, so they and their publicists jump to the top of the list of suspects for reminding the media of a certain year-old statement from the night's winner, Marion Cotillard, about 9/11.
"I think we're lied to about a number of things", Cotillard told French program Paris Dernière last February. "On the Internet you see all these films about a 9/11 conspiracy theory. It’s fascinating, addictive even. [...] We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned? There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burned for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed. [...] They were finished, I think, by 1973, and to re-cable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them."
Now, golden statue in hand, she's backtracking. "Marion never intended to contest nor question the attacks of September 11, 2001, and regrets the way old remarks have been taken out of context," insists her attorney Vincent Tolesano. She also regrets how the comments may impact her earning potential.
For better or worse, celebrities like Christine Ebersole do not. CONTINUED »
• Foxy Brown pleads "not guilty" to pulling a Naomi Campbell.
• We've finally found somebody crazier than the "I Will Blow Your For Genesis Tickets" guy.
• Urban legends are sometimes real! A 7-foot python was found in the sewer pipes of a woman's apartment.
• It's hard out there for a pimp. Especially the one named Joe Francis.
• According to Wikipedia, O.J. Simpson leads the NFL in "most murders in a single season." Sometimes, even when Wikipedia is wrong, it's also kind of right.
• Rudy Giulani's attempt to literally capitalize on 9/11 (by fundraising in increments of $9.11) fails so miserably he actually ends up barely breaking even.
We are, as you know, unhealthily obsessed with the New York Times' Most Emailed list. And so today, on the seventh anniversary of September 11th, we were interested to see what wide-ranging coverage it would yield.
With that in mind, we weren't exactly surprised to come upon two emotional tributes (numbers one and five respectively) each commemorating the passing of a loved one.
We were, however, somewhat disconcerted by the fact that they were both about a frickin' parrot. [NYT]

America's Mayor will be here to commemorate/campaign. Meanwhile, New York's mayor wants to move on. [NYT]
In honor of the six-year anniversary of 9/11, GMA anchor Chris Cuomo heads to Pakistan to "bring viewers reports on the ongoing hunt for Osama bin Laden and the continuing war on terror." Really, has it been six years already? Wow…sounds like that hunt's been going pre-tty well. [TVNewser]
• Mary-Kate Olsen is taking time out of her busy not-eating schedule to play a Christian fundamentalist on Weeds.
• If you scratch Tom Friedman's back, he'll totally return the favor with a "reach-around."
• Debbie Matenopoulos reminds us all why she was cast as the orignal "dumb blond" on The View.
• Nicole Kidman distracts her husband from his cocaine addiction by getting back in the saddles.
• NYT: "For the First Time, New York Links a Death to 9/11 Dust." Fortunately, Jerry Falwell's not around to attribute the blame to the Jews.
• TVNewser editor Brian Stelter graduates from college; fails to graduate from TVNewswer.
• How do we say "cross" in this city? "Icon of the Attack on New York." [NYT]
• Thankfully, the legend of the Hotel Chelsea will never, ever die. At least not as long as Ethan Hawke's fan club is alive. [Gothamist]
• Since when are East Village hippies "sex-starved?" They don't hook up at Niagra for three days and their famished? Give us a break. [VV]
• The First Lady came to New York and the only thing she said was "I love teachers." Yet, it's still more intelligent than anything her husband's ever said. [NYP]
• Traffic: the reason why New Yorkers are so lonely all the time. And why Park Slope moms with a million kids and block parties life in a blissful bubble. [Curbed]

