In the “Style” section? But hey, he’s on the front-page of the website and that’s all that matters:

Meet Alex, the first muppet on Sesame Street with an incarcerated parent. I find Alex’s red skin incredibly insensitive to Native Americans. Why didn’t they make Alex a neutral, non-offensive color? Shame on you Sesame Street, shame on you. . . 

Via Reuters, in reference to the viral-video of a Syrian rebel taking a bite out of the heart of a Syrian soldier:

Putin warns West not to arm organ-eating Syrian rebels

Seems like good adivce to me.

Ed Bott of ZDNet has compared the original Washington Post piece on PRISM with a newer version, highlighting the key areas changed. And as @GabrielMalor points out on Twitter, “Did you notice that WaPo made major stealth-edits to its PRISM story that completely undercut it?”

Do read Ed’s entire analysis. I wonder what else is going to change over the coming days? Maybe we’re looking at Dan Rather 2.0, with a fake-but-real PowerPoint presentation?

What’s more interesting than her first tweet is her trying-to-be-hip profile. She lists “wife” first? Do Bill and Hillary even live together anymore? 

Basically Greenwald called Mika Brzezinski a flack for the White House. Enjoy:

Shuster tweeted yesterday:

To sum it up, Shuster is asking a dark-money 501(c)(4) — Organizing for America, which uses the Twitter handle @barackobama — to pardon “@EJosephSnowden,” a fake Twitter account.

But, other than that David, keep up the great work!

Note: Mother Jones uses “dark money” to describe 501(c)(4) organizations similar to OFA, so I can, too.

Rachel Abrams, sister of former Cornerite and current editor of Commentary John Podhoretz, died yesterday at age 62.

At a recent Seder, I read one of her Facebook posts — of all things — on the meaning of Passover which brought many in my family to tears. She was a powerful writer and will be greatly missed.

Page Six just won’t be the same without him. He posted this on Facebook:

“Almost 23 years ago, I took a temporary 3 month job cartooning for The New York Post. Nearly 6,000 cartoons later, I’ve drawn my last cartoon for the paper. I’ve accepted a buyout,” Mr. Delonas posted on his Facebook page. “I’d like to thank all my colleagues for the great memories. I have nothing but gratitude for Mr. Murdoch and the Post. I believe the paper has a bright future and I look forward to reading it for many years to come.”

Hilarious. Real Clear Politics has the video.

So the tech companies allegedly involved all deny it, and the PowerPoint that all of this is based on says the project only costs $20 million per year. Is there a single government program that only costs $20 million per year? 

Via the Guardian:

Two different versions of the PRISM scandal were emerging on Thursday with Silicon Valley executives denying all knowledge of the top secret program that gives the National Security Agency direct access to the internet giants’ servers.

The eavesdropping program is detailed in the form of PowerPoint slides in a leaked NSA document, seen and authenticated by the Guardian, which states that it is based on “legally-compelled collection” but operates with the “assistance of communications providers in the US.”

Each of the 41 slides in the document displays prominently the corporate logos of the tech companies claimed to be taking part in PRISM.

However, senior executives from the internet companies expressed surprise and shock and insisted that no direct access to servers had been offered to any government agency.

The top-secret NSA briefing presentation set out details of the PRISM program, which it said granted access to records such as emails, chat conversations, voice calls, documents and more. The presentation the listed dates when document collection began for each company, and said PRISM enabled “direct access from the servers of these US service providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple“.

Senior officials with knowledge of the situation within the tech giants admitted to being confused by the NSA revelations, and said if such data collection was taking place, it was without companies’ knowledge.

The rest here.

Hacks. Via Politico:

The New York Times editorial board has quietly changed the language in the most widely cited line from Thursday’s scathing editorial about the Obama administration’s surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The line — “The administration has now lost all credibility” — was changed Thursday night to read, “The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.” No correction or explanatory note was appended.

“The change was for clarity’s sake,” Andrew Rosenthal, the Times editorial page editor, told POLITICO on Friday morning. “It was clear from the context of the editorial that the issue of credibility related to this subject and the final edit of the piece strengthened that point.”

I don’t get what was “strengthened,” however. Here is a larger excerpt from the editorial, with my highlight of their change:

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

To what issue is the Times referring? Transparency and accountability? National security? Domestic surveillance? Executive power? 

What’s more frustrating is the Times doesn’t bother to let their readers know a change was made. The Public Editor should question why an editorial of this magnitude was published and edited without a note to the readers.

Enjoy:

Sorry, Biebs — people have a right to take a picture of you when you’re out-and-about in public:

According to the photographer, who asked not to be identified, one of Bieber’s boys came over and demanded he delete the picture from his cell phone. Then the bodyguard approached and made the same request. 

[. . .]

Before the exchange got out of hand, a security guard for AmericanAirlines Arena stepped in and basically told the bodyguard to get lost. 

Joe Concha of Mediaite wrote me to point out a few things I got wrong in my post responding to his review of Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode.

Concha rightfully points out that the character of Robb Stark’s wife who was killed on Sunday is different from the character in George R. R. Martin’s series of books. He adds that her death, and that of her unborn child, was added by HBO writers to add “shock value” to the scene.

The main point in my post is that the violence in Sunday’s episode — while graphic — was par for the course for the show and shouldn’t have been unexpected. The entires series is popular becasue of its “shock value.”

We see characters beheaded, tortured, castrated, raped — and I could go on. The stabbing death of the pregnant woman on Sunday was definitely shocking, but so was the scene from last season where two orphan boys were killed, burned, and hung in a castle courtyard. So was the scene with a full-grown boy breastfeeding (Vanity Fair called their piece on the episode “Still Shocking.”) Or, even more disturbing, there’s crazy old Craster, who lives north of the Wall has sex with dozens of his daughter-wives and only allows baby girls to live, leaving any newborn boys to be carried off by the abominable-snowmen-zombie White Walkers.

As for the killing of the wolf, which Concha objects to, this is actually the second of the Stark family direwolves killed off on the show, the first being in season one.

The HBO version of the “Red Wedding” is no more shocking than the version that appears in A Storm of Swords. You can read the summary here. Don’t click on the link if you are reading the books and don’t want it spoiled — if not, scroll down to see what they do with the wolf, if you don’t believe me. Imagine if that was on television.

So, that was my point. HBO’s Game of Thrones, since its first episode, has been a graphic, disturbing show filled with violence, sex, and torture. And as for what happened on Sunday, it was supposed to be disturbing. George R. R. Martin calling the Red Wedding “. . . probably the most powerful scene in the books.”

If Concha feels Sunday’s episode is cancel-your-subscription worthy, that’s fine. But he should have known what he was getting into.

Well, anyboy who read the book could see this coming as it was in China where the zombie outbreak started, and it was spread due to China’s trade in illegal organs. Maybe they can just have the virus start in North Korea like they did for the remake of Red Dawn? 

Via The Wrap:

Chinese censors have rejected a cut of “World War Z,” Paramount’s film about the zombie apocalypse starring Brad Pitt, an executive familiar with upcoming releases in China told TheWrap. A Paramount executive said that the studio had not yet heard back from China’s censorship office, and was unaware of any rejection. 

The decision is potentially significant as the inability to screen in China would limit one of the year’s most expensive movies, reportedly $200 million, from having access to the world’s second biggest market. A release in China could contribute tens of millions of dollars in grosses to the film’s bottom line. 

“It definitely got rejected the first time” it was submitted, said the executive, who is close to China’s decision-making structure, which is run by the state. “It has not been cleared.” He said the decision came down a week ago. 

Also read: Fearing Chinese Censors, Paramount Changes ‘World War Z’ (Exclusive) 

The Paramount executive countered: “We have submitted one version and have yet to receive a response.”  

Paramount is angling for a precious release slot in a quota-driven system in China. It may yet be approved; Paramount can still resubmit the film, which opens in the United States on June 21, and hope censors change their minds.

The rest here.

Here’s MSNBC president Phil Griffin in an interview with the New York Times: 

At MSNBC they view it as rooting against death and destruction: the last thing the channel wants is more months like the last two, filled with terror bombings, tornadoes and plant accidents.

It’s not all altruism. The destruction MSNBC also wants to avoid is the havoc such news has been wreaking on its competitive standing.

In May, MSNBC, which generally runs second to the dominant leader, Fox News, among cable news channels, plunged all the way to fourth place, dropping behind not only its closest rival, CNN, but also that network’s sister channel, HLN (formerly Headline News).

At a time of intensely high interest in news, MSNBC’s ratings declined from the same period a year ago by about 20 percent. The explanation, in the network’s own analysis, comes down to this: breaking news is not really what MSNBC does.

“We’re not the place for that,” said Phil Griffin, the channel’s president, in reference to covering breaking events as CNN does. “Our brand is not that.”

This has to be one of the stupider things I’ve ever heard, especially after NBC and MSNBC were praised for getting their coverage of the Boston manhunt correct while CNN botched it.

When will MSNBC get it that “progressive talk” fails?(Air America, anyone?) Blaming “breaking news” is a cop-out because Griffin doesn’t want to address the reality that viewers just don’t like the channel’s on-air talent. Oh, and remember this bull from above when MSNBC goes all-in with breaking-news coverage from the George Zimmerman trial.

Joe Concha of Mediaite gives one of the stupider reasons I’ve read for someone to stop watching a television show, especially since the show in question — Game of Thrones on HBO — is based on a series of best-selling books and anybody who has read the book, or at the very least skimmed Wikipedia, knew exactly what was going to happen last night. In summary, Concha didn’t like the way they killed off a character last night, and now he wants to cancel his HBO subscription: 

Game of Thrones has been mentioned in this space before as my favorite show on television.

Sure, half the time—like the rest of America—I’ve been utterly confused, wishing characters wore name tags or had VH-1 pop-up bubbles explain who they were and what their role represented. But in the end, the acting is superb, the visuals stunning and the tone of every scene always feeling so damn…important.

But the episode just witnessed (“The Rains of Castamere”)…the show that will go down as the most-talked-about-on-Twitter episode in the history of the program…went way, way (way) too far. And that’s saying a lot considering everything we’ve seen on the hit HBO original series to this point.

Having said that, the following declaration comes without ambiguity: I am done with Thrones. Never again will I watch another episode. And with Entourage long gone and Curb Your Enthusiasm stuck in some kind of abyss, there’s really no need to continue my subscription, particularly after the offensive and appalling display the show just put on.

So what was different about Sunday night’s episode? If you haven’t seen it yet, it might be time to read another one of the fine columns Mediaite has to offer right about now.

But if you have, you know exactly where I’m going with this.

That said, there are two hard and fast rules every television show and movie should live by:

• Never kill a dog or an animal that looks like a dog (like a brave wolf protective of certain humans)
• Never stab a pregnant woman repeatedly in the womb

Thrones blatantly broke both of those rules.

And in regards to the latter, in patently-disturbing fashion.

Well, duh. Oddly enough, what happens in the books also happens in the HBO series. Just as you get to liking a character, that character dies. Gruesomely. 

Concha ends with:

Murder a pregnant woman by going after a baby in the womb first?

It’s not TV, it’s HBO.

A cable network that just lost one subscriber for good.

As for gruesome deaths on HBO, last night’s murder of boy-king Rob Stark and the stabbing of his pregnant wife is about par for the course for an HBO drama now-a-days. Earlier this season, the sadistic king Joffrey tied a prostitute to his bed post — naked, of course — and used her as a target for his crossbow. But last night was “cancel my subscription” worthy? 

And honestly, the writers were telegraphing the murders of the King in the North and and his queen at the Twins for weeks. You really had to be kinda clueless to miss that something really, really bad was going to happen. 

Oh, and a non-spoiler alert: there will be more blood and more characters you’ve grown to like (or hate) gone very soon. Stay tuned!

Another one of the news stories Tom Friedman won’t write about in his ongoing series of China-Is-Aweseome columns. 

I hope there are no leaks. Via the HuffPo:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to meet this week with the Washington bureau chiefs of several major media outlets to discuss the Justice Department’s guidelines for dealing with journalists in leak investigations.

It’s not yet certain exactly when the meeting (or meetings) will take place, but a Justice Department official confirmed to The Huffington Post that it would be sometime over the next two days. Politico’s Mike Allen reported Wednesday morning that the DOJ began contacting bureau chiefs on Tuesday. The Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, also has been contacted.

The news of a meeting between Holder and the bureau chiefs comes amid widespread criticism from journalists and civil liberties advocates over the the DOJ’s seizure of Associated Press phone records and an accusation that Fox News reporter James Rosen could be part of a criminal conspiracy for his reporting.

The fact that Holder is meeting with the bureau chiefs is on the record, according to a network source, but the actual discussion is expected to be off the record. Media organizations will surely want such a newsworthy meeting with the attorney general to be on the record, and it remains to be seen if they will agree to meet under off-the-record ground rules.

Nanda Chitre, acting director of the DOJ’s public affairs office, confirmed to The Huffington Post that the meeting will be off the record.