Phawker

THE SUN: BRITAIN’S Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle was in the Priory clinic last night suffering from exhaustion. The singer, dubbed SuBo, had an “emotional breakdown” following Saturday’s final in which she was runner-up. But the talent show favourite was still eyeing a mega United States tour. The 48-year-old virgin, tipped to earn £8MILLION, survived tears and a tantrum to finish second in Saturday’s gripping final of telly’s Britain’s Got Talent. But the pressure finally told late yesterday as the Scots singer – dubbed SuBo by fans – was rushed to the private clinic suffering from exhaustion. Show aides had contacted police to say she was acting strangely at her London hotel. MORE

[Painting by LOOSLI]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions despite decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher. The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was detained some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said. Although Stolz refused to release the man’s name, Johnson County sheriff’s spokesman Tom Erickson identified the detained man as Scott Roeder. He has not been charged in the slaying and was expected to be taken to Wichita for questioning. Court records and Internet postings show that someone using the name Scott Roeder has a criminal past and has expressed anti-abortion opinions on sympathetic Web sites. Long a focus of national anti-abortion groups, including a summer-long protest in 1991, Tiller was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church. Tiller’s attorney, Dan Monnat, said Tiller’s wife, Jeanne, was in the choir at the time. MORE

SAN FRACISCO CHRONICLE: Tiller, 67, was a lightning rod in the struggle over legalized abortion and had previously been the victim of violence. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an abortion protester as he drove away from his clinic. In 1986, his Women’s Health Care Services clinic was severely damaged in a bomb blast. In 1991, the clinic was blockaded for six weeks by anti-abortion protesters. MORE

RELATED: Warren Hern, a Colorado physician and close friend of Tiller’s, who described himself now as “the only doctor in the world” who performs very late-term abortions, said Tiller’s death was predictable. “I think it’s the inevitable consequence of more than 35 years of constant anti-abortion terrorism, harassment and violence. George is the fifth American doctor to be assassinated. I get messages from these people saying, ‘Don’t bother wearing a bulletproof vest, we’re going for a head shot.’ ” MORE

SALON: But there’s no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly [as Bill O'Reilly] thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller’s name first appeared on “The Factor” on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O’Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as “Tiller the Baby Killer.” MORE

[Photo by VOIR-66]

DRAG ME TO HELL (2009, directed by Sam Raimi, 96 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Seventeen years since the last Evil Dead film, fanboy icon Sam Raimi returns to his goo-oozing roots with the tightly-wound thriller Drag Me To Hell.  The doomed bank officer Christine may be seen living through the worst three days of her life but fans of the manic mayhem with whichRaimi originally found fame will rejoice like a curse has been lifted. In a plot that crackles with contemporary resonance, Allison Lohman plays Christine Brown, a nervously ambitious banker desperate to show her boss that behind her girlish insecurity she has the toughness it takes to be a ruthless loan officer.  To demonstrate, she swallows hard and denies Mrs.Ganush (Lorna Raver), a sweet little lady with Old World manners, that she will not be extending her house loan.  When Christine calls security to remove the pleading old woman, Mrs.Ganush turns into a steely-eyed witch, cursing Christine to be dragged to Hell in three days. This is a scene that has likely been played out across banks nationwide in the last six months, here we get to see the wishes of the foreclosed come true and Christine pays for the indifference of the banking industry, and she pays for it in spades.

Over the next three days we see poor Christine battle the shadowy demons to break the curse, with the help of a store front psychic (nicely under-played byDileep Rao) and her ever-supportive boyfriend (the puppy dog-ish Justin Long).  Although the action is often as punched-up as the giddy slime-spewing zombie fights of Raimi early work, the script (written by Raimi and his brother Ivan) lays down a streamlined Hitchcock-like plot in which the main character’s troubled psyche brings about her fate.  When we meet Ms. Brown she is driving into work while listening to elocution types, sweating over her vowel sounds as she tries to leave her pesky mid-western accent behind.  Later she tears up a picture of herself as a porky farm girl tending the pigs, nervous that her wealthy boyfriend will see it.  It is her earthy past she wishes to escape, a fear made into flesh in the shape of the unsophisticated, heavily-accented Mrs.Ganush.

Raimi falls back on some ancient story ideas that are so old they feel fresh again.  With its supernatural gypsies, spooky seances (a goat gets chained up to the table as the seer begins to make contact) and some late night grave digging,Raimi pilfers situations you might find in many films of the thirties and forties.  Of course he drenches them in the same spewing viscera that seeped from the zombies in his Evil Dead series, making things as gross as a PG-13 rating will allow (which turns out to be pretty gross at that).

In a recent New York Times article, Raimi said this is the first time he has had complete artistic control over a production since the first Evil Dead film in 1981.  Control is the word, as Raimi builds and sustains his premise with the confident assurance of a natural storyteller.  Raimi may have risen to the top of the industry with his success directing the Spiderman series but with Drag Her To Hell he finally succeeds at delivering on the promise of his low budget debut while remaining completely true to his own goofy, movie-loving voice.

STEVE VOLK: The problem is getting “young people” to read newspapers — either in print or online — and personally, it’s not my experience that, as Doctor suggests, we need the brightest minds of the Harvard Crimson to “reinvent journalism” in order to make that happen. I happen to work in a town, Philadelphia, overrun by bloggers. The reinvention of journalism is happening all around us here, where Will Bunch of the Daily News continues to be the hardest-working man in show business, writing a book, stories for his paper, and a blog, Attytood, that makes me feel part of a citywide conversation every morning; where Atrios influences the thinking of the politically-minded both here and across the country; and where two blogs, Philebrity and Phawker, compete for the coveted audience of “young people” that once belonged to alt weeklies. MORE

BY PHILLY GRRL There are those people who refuse to take SEPTA at night. I am not one of them. On any given week, out of a mixture of sheer stubbornness and necessity, I join the throngs of second-shift workers on their way home. Riding at night is different. Gone are the students and suit-and-tied office workers who pack the aisles during the day. The buses go faster. There is no lingering at stops. People are tired and their tiredness gives way to a sort of looseness that only appears at night.

That particular night, I sat at the bus station for nearly two hours. Market Street was empty. The last tourists and revelers had moved on. I was alone, except for the homeless man who sleeps on the bench there. He always wears blue pants and a blue jacket and is always there when I am. He slept on his bench while I read my Philadelphia Style magazine.

That was when the man in the white Cadillac came. It had been an hour. The bus was running late. I had read my magazine and moved on to a book. Suddenly, in a show of screeching tires, a white Cadillac pulled a (rather admirable) U-Turn in the middle of Market Street. The man who came out wore a white suit, white hat, pink tie and sunglasses. He came out running and yelling. “Lana, Lana!” he shouted. The homeless man on the bench stirred. The man in the white suit ran down the stairs behind us to the Market-Frankford Line. He emerged from the stairs only to run down again. He repeated this two mores times. All the time screaming “Lana, Lana!”

The homeless man wakes up, cursing. “Man, why you gotta be screaming while I’m sleeping?” The man in the white suit doesn’t listen. He’s on his cell phone now. The homeless man grumbles. He is angry at being awoken. He glares at me, then chooses to ignore me. I studiously stare at my book and ignore him as well. From his stash of plastic bags, the homeless man carefully pulls out a yellow Shop Rite bag. From the bag, he takes out a drumstick and begins to chew. On the street, the man in the white suit puts away his phone and speeds away. The homeless man lays back down on the bench. The bus comes. I leave.

Photo by PHILLYBITS

BY KYLEE MESSNER “Phoo on you, we hate Yoo,” chanted Norman Koener, head member of Philadelphia’s World Can’t Wait chapter.  Unfortunately for Koener, a crowd of photographers and Delaware Valley War Veterans were the only ears listening to World Can’t Wait’s pleas to stop torture.  Sporting a mask resembling torture lawyer John Yoo, Koener and WCW carried on with their protest against torture and waterboarding demonstration as planned for the National Day Against Torture.  Hoping to gain support for prosecution against those responsible for committing torture at, the organization laid their attacks on the U.S. government as a whole, with attacks against John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer that wrote the legal memos justifying torture, and Barack Obama. Candidate Obama’s call for accountability for the Terror War excesses of the Bush administration stands in marked contrast to his actions as Commander-In-Chief.

“No one has actually done a waterboarding demonstration in Philadelphia,” said Kip Koyuki,  the Philly rep for WCW.  “If they [the Philadelphia Inquirer] want to hire the architect of torture, we want to show what it’s like at the place where he was hired.” The WCW organized the protest in an effort to inform the public about the two-thousand torture photos that have yet to be released by the United States government.  In a recent interview with the UK’s daily telegraph, Major General Antonio Taguba — who conducted the official Pentagon investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib that exposed details of sexual humiliation and physical abuse –  confirmed that some of the unreleased photos depicted rape and sexual abuse of prisoners. These photos were scheduled to be released by May 28th — that is until President Obama reversed his orders in the name of protecting American troops overseas from retaliation.

Photos by TIFFANY YOON & PHILLYBITS

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Come to Moonstone Arts Center tonight. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn will be in Philly TONIGHT for a discussion and signing of their new book RACE COURSE: AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY, along with activist and poet Haki R. Madhubuti, who will read from and sign copies of his latest release LIBERATION NARRATIVES: NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS 1966-2009. And, I’ll be there! How could you miss out?Bill and Bernardine will discuss how systemic racial inequality in the criminal justice system, education, and housing illustrate the powerful pull of bigotry in our times.Open Q & A with the audience will follow.WHEN: Thursday, May 28, at 7:00 p.m.WHERE: The Arch Street United Methodist Church, 55 North Broad Street,
Philadelphia

PREVIOUSLY:THE SMEAR COMES HERE: Philly Booking Agency Takes Heat For ‘Palling Around With Terrorists’

RELATED: Wasilla Rap

BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer you towards the gooey center. Why? Because we love you!

ON THE COVER
CP: Transsexual organist trying to break into an often-conservative church community… where have I heard this before? Oh, right, in PW, in the strange, lip-service-y “queer issue” from a few weeks back. I’m not gonna go on some rant about scooping or stealing story ideas, though. The PW piece on T. Desiree Hines was a straight-forward interview, and a thoughtful one, but Carolyn Huckabay’s CP piece digs a lot deeper, going into Hines’ Mississippi roots, her early feelings of difference (brilliant anecdote: throwing a tantrum over a doll at age 3) and her present life in Philadelphia.

Today, Desiree is comfortable in her own skin. A Gemini on the verge of 30, she lives in University City and keeps herself more than busy. She works a handful of part-time jobs — she’s a church organist, caterer, site manager for Wilma Theater’s subscription campaign — and surrounds herself with an ever-growing network of friends who can’t help but gravitate toward her gregarious, larger-than-life personality.

Desiree identifies as a woman who happens to be transsexual, still waiting until the time is right and money is there — according to a University of Michigan study, anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 in the U.S. — to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. But while it may take years for Desiree to raise the funds for a vaginoplasty, not much else keeps this woman — and from her done-up hair to her sensible heels, she is all woman — waiting.

The other advantage that the CP version has is proximity to this weekend’s GLBT Arts Festival, and Hines, as the Festival’s director, addresses the programming and the thinking behind it in a way she couldn’t have a month ago. “Gregarious” seems an understatement — Hines comes off as downright magnetic — and saying someone’s “on a mission,” though cliched, rings true here. Even after her musical training was forestalled, Hines made herself into an organist. After other institutions bristled at an openly transsexual, she found her way to others and went about setting up some of her own. A simple Q&A can’t bring that to light. Kudoes for taking the story — wherever they found it — and running with it.

PW: Survivalists are no longer bearded, bonkers Ted Kaczynski-types, and they’re not holed up in cabins in the wilderness. They might be your friends and neighbors here in Philly, and they’re just like you and me — but maybe just a little more on edge. Take PW cover guy and Kensington native Fernando Salguero:

These days the bespectacled, stocky guy rocks a black goatee and earns his living selling water and air purification and filtration systems. It’s a subject Salguero is more than a little passionate about. But it’s not the only topic that excites him.

Google his name and you’ll find his footprints all over websites aimed at the dissatisfied and the suspicious, from moveon.org to the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Given his early contact with both Third World living conditions and some of the more mundane aspects of nuclear warfare, it’s not surprising that Salguero isn’t convinced that civilization in its current form is going to continue for much longer. He believes that a cataclysm will occur and that with the exception of himself, his loved ones and those he teaches, his species is horribly unprepared. When megamillion death comes a-courting it could be in one of any of a thousand guises, and Salguero is familiar with all the major suspects.

Steven Wells, go-to chronicler of all manner of bizarre subcultures, gives a mostly just-the-facts picture of Salguero’s group, Survive and Thrive, and the myriad other organizations who are heralding the arrival of end times. Wells’ balance between letting the new generation of survivalists have their say and placing those views within the current strain of American nutjobbery seems just right, and I love how he sticks in the apocalyptic dates of the Mayan and Hopi calendars. He doesn’t flinch or scoff at the guns or the theories that have motivated their purchase — well, maybe the zombie ones — as he captures the tenor of the times. I, for one, don’t believe we’re doomed, but now I can see how someone might get that impression.

INSIDE THE BOOK

CP: Green Day, back in the bad old days. A neat little stunt, but what’d you drink? Lots of deserving restaurants would have liked to have that spot for a review. For those who thought the Metropolitan Opera House was in NYC. Flustered in Flushing: you can’t spell “Citi Field” without “DL.”

PW: Enough said: “P. Diddy is the Tony Robbins of the hip-hop game. ” Droppin’ science about ceviche: ODB would be proud. A growing population and their preferred, shrinking medium. Jamie Moyer is the Phillies’ “steadfast conscience” AND their bloated ERA.

WINNER: Two really solid cover stories propping up flimsy issues this week, but I think I’ve gotta go with CP. Mets bashing is all fine and good, but to actually prove they suck with stats and stories — that’s just brilliant.

Today is SAY NO TO U.S. TORTURE POLICY Day. We made this reminder so you don’t forget. You’re welcome.

RELATED: Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.  MORE

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TORTURE IS A WAR CRIME!

FIRE, DISBAR AND PROSECUTE TORTURE ARCHITECT JOHN YOO!

RELEASE THE PHOTOS! PROSECUTE THE WAR CRIMINALS!

 

EVENT:            Press Conference and Waterboarding Demonstration

When:             Thursday, May 28^th, 2009            4:30 PM

Where:             The Philadelphia Inquirer

                        400 N. Broad Street

(Philadelphia, PA)–In the face of the Obama administration’s refusal to release a reported 2,000 more photographs of detainee abuse – in spite of being ordered by a federal court to do so – torture opponents in fifteen (15)  U.S. cities will hold visible protests to demand that the government make the photos public.  These protests will also call for prosecution of those who ordered, legally justified, and carried out torture in US detention and secret prisons during the Bush years.

In Philadelphia, protestors will hold a press conference and waterboarding reinactment to call for the firing, disbarment, and prosecution of torture lawyer John Yoo in front of the Philadelphia Inquirer, where Yoo currently writes the monthly column Closing Arguments. In a series of now infamous memos while at the Office of Legal Counsel, John Yoo authorized the use of torture laid the groundwork for the wholesale and systematic torture of detainees, which to date has not been thoroughly repudiated. John Yoo insisted, “In the exercise of his plenary power to use military force, the President’s decisions are for him alone and are un-reviewable.”

World Can’t Wait has called for protest actions to meet John Yoo wherever he travels and declare: “Philadelphia: War Criminal Fee Zone!”

World Can’t Wait’s Fire John Yoo coordinator Curt Wechsler emphasizes, “Obama’s refusal to release the torture pictures, in opposition to court order, eliminates any doubt as to whether the Obama Administration is continuing the Bush Regime’s torture crimes as an operating mechanism for the “war on terror.” This latest revelation underscores the existence of a torture state that must be strongly opposed and further illuminates why the war criminals must be prosecuted.” MORE

PREVIOUSLY: HECKUVA JOB TIERNEY: Why Is THIS Man Bloviating About Supreme Court Replacements In The Inquirer?

PREVIOIUSLY: Spanish Prosecutors To Bring Bush 6 Up On Charges

PREVIOUSLY: A New Low In The History Of Lame Excuses

PREVIOUSLY: YOO HOOEY: Inky’s Harold Jackson And Daily News’ Will Bunch Trade Blows Over ‘Torture Guy’ Editorialist

PREVIOUSLY: HOT DOC: Disbarment Complaint Against John Yoo

PREVIOUSLY: SATIRE: Inky Names Michael Vick Pet Care Columnist

PREVIOUSLY: Look Ma, Stephen Colbert On Inky/Yoo Controversey

PREVIOUSLY: Yes We Can (Cover Up Torture)

MORE [h/t P. RYDDY]

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THE WORLD CAFE

As a child, Benjy Ferree dreamed of becoming an actor. After discovering his love of music, he moved to Washington, D.C., and began playing gigs at local clubs. Before long, Ferree’s vintage Americana music had caught the eye of a label, which put out Leaving the Nest, a folksy, acoustic and blues-filled album that won the singer many new fans. Ferree’s new follow-up, Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee, Bobby Dee, tells the tragic story of Disney actor Bobby Driscoll in song. Though he sticks to Americana, Ferree adds interesting touches of Britpop and ’50s doo-wop while maintaining his idiosyncratic, crooning vocal style. In a session with host David Dye, Ferree performs songs from his new album.

MONICA YANT KINNEY: Twelve religious activists pulled off a legal miracle yesterday: They convinced a judge – who once worked for the Philadelphia Police Department, of all places – that it’s OK to break the law if the harm you cause is less than the harm you think you’re preventing.The unusual case pitted ministers, a rabbi, and one self-described professional “peacemaker” against James Colosimo’s eponymous gun shop on Spring Garden Street. So many people came to listen – 150 by my count – the trial had to be moved to a bigger courtroom. For six hours, a passionate prosecutor in a city beset by violence was put in the odd position of having to beat back factual evidence about a notorious gun seller. Two cops testified that they were more concerned with praying Quakers outside the gun shop than the semiautomatic weapons inside. Repeated objections were raised as defendants cried, preached, and quoted Lincoln in dramatic monologues framed as testimony. The protesters faced trespassing, disorderly conduct, and conspiracy charges for two demonstrations, one of which I viewed and chronicled as part of my efforts to beef up Pennsylvania’s anemic gun laws. But in the end, it felt like Colosimo was on trial. MORE

RELATED:  About a hundred people rallied in the rain in support of 12 activists on trial yesterday for blocking the entrance to a gun store. They were arrested back in January. The protesters say the owner of the store refused to sign a pledge of ethical conduct for gun sales. They want gun store owners to do things like videotape each sale, use a computerized system to trace gun crimes, and scrutinize I.D.’s. Three hundred and fifty t-shirts draped around Dilworth Plaza today bore the names of the 2008 gun violence victims from Philadelphia, Chester and Camden. But Sherry Ryan, from Mothers in Charge, says it will take more than t-shirts to stop the traffic in illegal guns. MORE

RELATED: Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham is announcing this morning the arrests of 17 people charged with buying handguns for juveniles. Abraham also will announce the creation of a new program that targets adults who make so-called straw purchases of guns for those under age 18. Each juvenile arrest in which a gun is recovered will be referred to the Gun Violence Task Force to investigate who provided the weapon to the juvenile. MORE

RELATED: Authorities say that gun traffickers are targeting Pennsylvania, where a straw purchase can net a drug dealer a handgun in a half an hour. In New Jersey and New York, the process takes up to 3 weeks. Assistant District Attorney Albert Toczydlowski says the recent task force created in Pennsylvania is making 10 arrests a month, only a small fraction of actual offenders. In this respect, the anti-straw purchase campaign has been a complete failure. MORE

RELATED: Detectives investigating the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Patrick McDonald are probing if his killer obtained the weapon through a straw purchase. Officer McDonald, 30, was fatally shot during an altercation with Daniel Giddings in North Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon. Giddings, who wounded a second officer, was killed by police. A straw purchase is when an individual without a criminal record purchases an item, most often a firearm, for a criminal who cannot legally obtain the item. MORE

RELATED: This is nothing new. This investigation should go deeper. When working the streets many guns I have gotten off the streets came from down south. I hope the probe goes deeper than this. Why is that? We need to start checking on this deeper as I said. MORE

NEW YORK TIMES: Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial opinions are marked by diligence, depth and unflashy competence. If they are not always a pleasure to read, they are usually models of modern judicial craftsmanship, which prizes careful attention to the facts in the record and a methodical application of layers of legal principles. Judge Sotomayor, whom President Obama announced Tuesday as his choice for the Supreme Court, has issued no major decisions concerning abortion, the death penalty, gay rights or national security. In cases involving criminal defendants, employment discrimination and free speech, her rulings are more liberal than not.But they reveal no larger vision, seldom appeal to history and consistently avoid quotable language. Judge Sotomayor’s decisions are, instead, almost always technical, incremental and exhaustive, considering all of the relevant precedents and supporting even completely uncontroversial propositions with elaborate footnotes. MORE