James Taranto on Fox Business (screengrab)

Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto's bad Tuesday night on Twitter is a tale of two tweets. First,  Mr. Taranto's offending post, which started a firestorm. Referring to the three women whose boyfriends saved them from the bullets of a mass murderer in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater on July 20, Mr. Taranto wrote:

I hope the girls whose boyfriends died to save them were worthy of the sacrifice.

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) July 25, 2012

Yes, the columnist who helms WSJ's "Best of the Web Today" waded right in to the fray. The question many responding to his "challenging" tweet asked was why? Why even say such a thing?

Hours earlier, Mr. Taranto had issued this complaint:

Twitter now taunts me with the "Verified" check sign in my timeline, reminding me I don't merit one.

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) July 24, 2012

Could it be Mr. Taranto, feeling the sting of Twitter's withheld merit badge, decided the best way to assert his "merit" was to aim his "challenging" statement at three women--"girls" to Mr. Taranto--who survived what were surely the worst moments of their lives? Three women who lost loved ones in the process?

We don't know the mind of James Taranto. We don't know if he thinks it is truly his place to question the value of the lives of victims of a terrifying mass murder; if he believes he merits that sort of power.

Maybe he was simply trying to be provocative, for his readers' sakes.

To be fair, Mr. Taranto did retweet many who who took him to task for his musing. This angry, outraged response from a tweeter named Matthew Almont is an excellent example of the sort of bile Mr. Taranto was comfortable with relaying to his followers:

@jamestaranto To their boyfriends, they were. I guess that's what really matters.

— Matthew Almont (@matthewalmont) July 25, 2012

A blistering reply.

A wider variety of opinion, most of it likely not as easy on Mr. Taranto's ego, can be found here.

Rush Limbaugh (Getty Images)

On the same day Rush Limbaugh made bigger waves than usual with some remarks on his nationally syndicated radio show, Suspicious Package Santa visited the long-time conservative radio host's  home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Mr. Limbaugh's frequently white-hot rhetoric may have reached the melting point Thursday when he addressed Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who was famously ejected from Rep. Darrell Issa's  February 16 hearing on whether the health reform law's contraceptive coverage was a violated religious freedom. Mr. Limbaugh implied Ms. Fluke was a "slut" and a "prostitute" but didn't stop there. Addressing Ms. Fluke directly, Mr. Limbaugh said, "If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."

As a furor was erupting in the media over his remarks, someone at Mr. Limbaugh's oceanfront home in Palm Beach reported a suspicious package. A bomb squad was dispatched and traffic re-routed from a nearby road.

The package proved harmless. Based on the Palm Beach Daily News description of the parcel's contents it was still odd:

The package contained an electronic plaque commemorating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, authorities said. No further details about the plaque were immediately available, and Limbaugh sent word through his property manager that the news media would not be allowed to photograph the package.

The Palm Beach paper also reported that the Pittsburgh, PA sender of the package described it as a "business opportunity" for Mr. Limbaugh.

There was, in the end, no connection between Mr. Limbaugh's comments and the strange delivery. Neither he nor his wife Kathryn made any further comment.

Whitney Houston (Getty)

Two Los Angeles radio talk hosts have been suspended for what their station management termed "insensitive and inappropriate comments about the late Whitney Houston." KFI AM 640 announced the suspension of John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, hosts of the "John and Ken Show," on Thursday after the comments were made February 14. 

Choice quotes demonstrate why Mr. Kobylt and Mr. Chiampou's remarks regarding the singer's behavior prior to her death on February 11 were bound to prompt quick reactions:

• “‘[Here] comes the crack ho again, what’s she gonna do."
• Ms. Houston, they said, was "cracked out for 20 years."
• Referring to Ms. Houston's death, the hosts said, "... it took this long?"

John Kobylt issued an apology, saying he and his partner "made a mistake, and we accept the station’s decision." Mr. Kobylt admitted the language was "inappropriate" and apologized to KFI listeners as well as Ms. Houston's family.

Mr. Kobylt and Mr. Chiampou are noted in Southern California for their strong views on illegal immigration and the National Hispanic Media Coalition (N.H.M.C.) has called them promoters of hate speech. The Associated Press quoted N.H.M.C. president Alex Nogales, who said the hosts' temporary suspension was "not enough." Mr. Nogales continued, "How many times do John and Ken get to spew their hate, apologize and then do it again after taking off a long weekend?" Mr. Nogales called for KFI to "permanently remove" the "John and Ken Show" from their lineup.

Urban Informer has audio from the show.

[LAT]

Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson's wolfy action flick The Grey has PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) snarling and snapping at film producers. In a post published last Thursday in PETA's official blog, blogger Michelle Sherrow first expressed anger that the filmmakers had not kept their word to PETA representatives:

PETA met with a producer of The Grey and explained how animals used in movies often spend most of their time confined to chains or cages when they are not performing and may be beaten or deprived of food in order to force them to perform. The producers assured us that they would use only computer-generated imagery and animatronic wolves—but we've now learned that they reneged on their promise.

Calling The Grey's director Joe Carnahan "Joe Carnage," Ms. Sherrow cited reports that Neeson and fellow cast members had eaten wolf meat to immerse themselves in the desperate situation portrayed in the film and compared The Grey's potential impact on wolves to the demonizing effects Steven Spielberg's Jaws had on sharks in the late 1970s:

The Grey portrays these intelligent, family-oriented animals the same way in which Jaws portrays sharks. The writers paint a pack of wolves living in the Alaskan wilderness as bloodthirsty monsters, intent on killing every survivor of a plane crash by tearing each person limb from limb.

Audiences are not running from The Grey. Nikki Finke reported Friday that it was projected to be "the No. 1 movie at the North American box office," scoring a projected $17.6 million in box office receipts.

[PETA.org]

Fuzzy wuzzy. (Photo: Kevin Rogers)

Kevin Rogers, the Nashville-area comedy fan whose heartfelt blog post about Tracy Morgan's homophobic rant was publicized by Truth Wins Out—resulting in a Twitter-storm of outrage, a decision to finally come out to his parents (an hour before appearing on CNN), a knuckle-rapping for Mr. Morgan courtesy of Tina Fey, another from Bob Greenblatt and finally a live, GLADD-brokered summit with the comedian himself—is not merely a stand-up critic.

He's also a professional photographer (weddings, mostly) who's recently been pursuing a more creative sideline: photographing hairy gay men, also known as bears. Some of his best work is collected in a new online magazine, FUZZ, which is out today. (It was in the works well before the controversy, and Mr. Rogers made it clear that his blog post was not designed as a way to promote the magazine.)

"FUZZ is a magazine that puts out an artistic view of the furry man," Mr. Rogers told The Observer, speaking by phone from his home outside Nashville in a slow, neighborly drawl. "People are starting to embrace bear culture, but I haven't seen anything out there where you can just tear a page out and frame it and hang it on your wall."

For the 18-page premiere issue Mr. Rogers focuses his lens on three chunky, hirsute models—“real men, hand selected by me for your viewing pleasure," as the website states—in a variety of settings, including a men's restroom, a nightclub and a weed-filled lot. Although genitalia are concealed, due to some printing restrictions, it's "everything but," Mr. Rogers said. He laughed and corrected himself. "Everything and butt."

While fairly bearish himself, Mr. Rogers says he prefers to think of himself as a cub. "Maybe that's just me wanting to hold on to my youth," he admitted.

As for his press conference with Mr. Morgan, he said that the two met privately a few minutes beforehand. "He made me look him in the eyes and just said he was sorry. He said he's really been hurt by this, but that he wanted to make it a positive learning experience." Afterwards, as the two men walked down the hallway, Mr. Rogers added, "He told me he'd made a friend for life."

The Observer couldn't help asking: Up close, is Tracy furry? "He's not a bear," Mr. Rogers reported. "He's smooth."

FUZZ is available now. The print version is $6, and the digital version $3. Mr. Rogers is counting on a hit, he said, because he fears his wedding photography business might be adversely affected by Tracy-Gate. "I am in the absolute buckle of the Bible Belt."

The wisecracks weren't very funny ("Oh my God, this is terrible," Kirsten Dunst whispered to herself as she sat next to the increasingly uncomfortable von Trier). Yet they were just offensive enough to force a public apology from the prankster director as well as an eleventh-hour cancellation of the private dinner and after-party for his new film Melancholia. But to earn Cannes' first-ever exile over anti-Semitic remarks? That seems a bit hypocritical, especially when the festival let Mel Gibson walk the red carpet to promote "The Beaver" two days ago.

Then again, in a carnival atmosphere where attendees guzzle carafes of rosé wine like tap water and hammer out distribution deals on only a few hours of sleep, where oglers can choose between obscure Romanian starlets filing into premieres or local gamines at topless beaches, no gesture seems too extreme.

This is the place, after all, where a pair of horny cinephiles groped each other and tongue kissed all the way through Markus Schleinzer's Michael, an Austrian competition entry about a pedophile who repeatedly rapes a little boy locked in his basement. (Chacun à son goût, I suppose.)

And this is where the hottest ticket in town is for Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist, a slight, silly but sweet homage to silent film that took the Croisette by storm precisely because no one in it is being raped, beaten, tortured or forced into a sex-change operation.

Cannes has always embraced alarming images, but this year had some seriously cringe-worthy moments: one movie, Bertrand Bonello's L'Apollonide: House of Tolerance, ends with a close-up shot of a fin-de-siécle prostitute literally shedding tears of semen. Maybe Cannes is actually getting more sensitive to its own historical predilection for offending its viewers. The Dutch drama Code Blue, featuring a euthanizing nurse with a taste for sexual deviancy, prompted the programmer to post a badly-translated warning: "Some scenes of the film Code Blue may hurt the audience's feelings." If only von Trier had done the same.

A few days ago, production company Ish Entertainment quietly posted a "sizzle reel" online. Meanwhile, Ish founder Michael Hirschorn has been squiring Mr. Henry to meetings with agents and network brass in hopes of putting together a deal. 

Mr. Henry has long been prone to overstepping the line, at least when it comes to the standards of morning TV (see, for example, "Moustache Gate"). But he always seemed to get away with it due to a certain lovable impishness. In fact, he won a (Kiwi version of the) People's Choice Award in 2009, then delivered an R-rated acceptance speech that racked up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.

Mr. Henry's luck ran out on October 10, 2010, after his mirthful exegesis on the name of Indian minister Sheila Dikshit led to an international incident, accusations of racism and some hasty diplomatic mopping-up by the New Zealand government. It didn't help that NZTV is a state-owned network.

Then again, what better resumé for a career in world's biggest market? (We hear Regis's job is open!)

If anyone can provide Mr. Henry a successful second act, it would seem to Mr. Hirschorn, the Atlantic Monthly columnist and former chief of programming at VH1. "The unacknowledged master" of "the high-low thing," as David Carr put it in a 2007 Observer profile, Mr. Hirschorn gave the world I Love the '80s, The Surreal Life and Rock of Love. And just look what he did with Flava Flav.

In a call with The Observer, Mr. Hirschorn, who's latest effort, a Bravo special based on New York's "Approval Matrix," airs on Wednesday at 11pm, talked up his new discovery. "He's a little bit unique, in the sense that he comes from halfway around the world, and essentially nobody's heard of him before," he said. But CAA has been circling, he added, and reactions from TV executives have been enthusiastic. "It's 'We love this guy. What can we do with him?'" Mr. Hirschorn said, while allowing that "in some cases there's also a certain level of fear." 

About that fear factor: Mr. Hirschorn expressed confidence that Mr. Henry would be able to rein it in when necessary. "He was for ages New Zealand's top presenter," he pointed out, floating a theory that Mr. Henry's implosion may not have been altogether unplanned. "My suspicion is he was eager to get himself fired and probably bored out of his skull," he said.

Mr. Henry's plans are at the moment open-ended. "We're working with him on several fronts—the reality side, the talk-show side and the scripted side," Mr. Hirschorn said, citing The Larry Sanders Show and I'm Alan Partridge as models for a scripted Paul Henry series. 

But the most likely scenario seems to be a talk show of some kind. "Paul intuitively understands what TV is and needs to be in 2011," Mr. Hirschorn said, "i.e., not the Today show circa 1992."

agell [at] observer.com | @aarongell

But meanwhile, links between the group behind the controversial mosque, the CIA and U.S. military establishment have gone unacknowledged.

For instance, one of the earliest backers of the nonprofit group, the Cordoba Initiative, that is spearheading the Ground Zero mosque, is a 52-year-old Scarsdale, New York, native named R. Leslie Deak. In addition to serving on the group's board of advisors since its founding in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Deak was its principal funder, donating $98,000 to the nonprofit between 2006 and 2008. This figure appears to represent organization's total operating budget--though, oddly, the group reported receipts of just a third of that total during the same time period. 

Deak describes himself as a "Practicing Muslim with background in Christianity and Judaism, [with] in-depth personal and business experiences in the Middle East, living and working six months per year in Egypt." Born into a Christian home, Deak became an Orthodox Jew and married a Jewish woman before converting to Islam when he married his current wife, Moshira Soliman, with whom he now lives in Rye. 

Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as "business consultant" for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three "strategic advisers." These include retired four-star General Bryan "Doug" Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed "all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism," and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he "managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget" and "served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001." 

Besides Pavitt, Brown and a third advisor, banker Alexander Cappello, the Patriot Defense Group is so secretive it doesn't even name its management team, instead describing its anonymous CEO as a former Special Forces and State Department veteran, the group's managing director as a former CIA officer experienced in counter-terrorism in hostile environments and the group's corporate intelligence head as a "23-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service who worked on the personal security details of former Presidents Bush and Clinton."

Leslie Deak and Moshira Soliman/ PanachePrive

Patriot Defense Group's primary business involves leveraging its government connections and know-how. The firm is divided into two divisions: one that "focuses exclusively on the needs of the U.S. military and law enforcement communities as well as the requirements of friendly foreign governments," and a corporate division, which "provides business intelligence and specialized security services to corporate clients and high net-worth family enterprises."

So, to recap: From 2006 to 2008, R. Leslie Deak worked as a "business consultant" to this super-secretive security contractor with ties to the CIA and counterterrorism forces, and in those same three years he also donated nearly $100,000 in seed money to the foundation now advocating the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

Interestingly, during the same three-year period during which the Deak Family Foundation was financing the Cordoba Initiative, Deak also donated a total of $101,247 to something called the National Defense University Foundation. The National Defense University is a network of war and strategy colleges and research centers (including the National War College) funded by the Pentagon, designed to train specialists in military strategy. The organization recently announced a November 5 dinner gala in honor of Defense Secretary and former CIA chief Robert Gates. Sponsors include Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and...the Patriot Defense Group.

MORE > Top 10 Superstitions That Spook Wall Street

Deak also sits on the NDUF's board of directors, the chairman of which is Mark Treanor, the former general counsel for Wachovia bank from 1998 through its collapse in 2008 and a major bundler of campaign donations for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008. Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo, was recently fined $160 million for laundering "at least $110 million" in Mexican drug money between 2003 and 2008, while Treanor was Wachovia's general counsel, though the figure is likely higher since Wachovia admitted it didn't put any controls on at least $420 billion--that's billion--in cash moved through its network of Mexico currency exchanges.

Which leads to another odd coincidence: Laundering money for drug lords is what brought down Deak & Co., the company run by Leslie Deak's father, Nicholas Deak, years ago. The elder Deak, a former top intelligence commander during World War II for the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA), was the founder of Deak-Perera, which became for a time one of the world's biggest foreign currency and gold dealers. But in 1984, a Presidential Commission on Organized Crime accused the firm of acting as a money laundering operation for Columbia drug cartels, who reportedly brought sacks of cash containing tens of millions of dollars into Deak's Manhattan offices. By the end of 1984, Deak & Co. had declared bankruptcy, and a year later, Nicholas Deak was murdered in the company's headquarters at 29 Broadway by a deranged homeless woman.

After the firm went bankrupt and Leslie Deak was left on his own, the corporation was broken up and sold off in pieces. One company that traces its beginnings to the defunct Deak empire is Goldline International, a business concern well known to fans of Glenn Beck as well as California investigators. Goldline is to Glenn Beck what General Electric was to Ronald Reagan: The company sponsors Beck's TV and radio shows as well as his touring act, and Beck is its public face. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, along with the Santa Monica City Attorney's office, are currently investigating Goldline for defrauding customers by railroading gullible customers into buying their most debased products.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, it has been reported that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company Fox News, which airs Beck's program, is also a major funder of Imam Rauf's projects, as Jon Stewart viewers heard all about last week. 

Coincidences happen, of course. (For instance, Pamela Geller, the blogger who's become the leading voice denouncing the mosque project was once, bizarrely enough, associate publisher of The New York Observer.) 

But add to this array of unexpected connections the work of Imam Rauf on behalf of the U.S. government—which includes serving as an FBI "consultant" and being recruited as a spokesperson by longtime George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes, who headed up the administration's propaganda efforts in the Muslim world—and a compelling picture begins to emerge. Bush's favorite Imam, with backing from a funder with connections to the CIA, the Pentagon and the currency trading company that now sponsors rightwing firebrand Glenn Beck, proposes to build a mosque around the corner from the site of the most devastating terrorist attack ever visited on America. In the name of "[cultivating] understanding among all religions and cultures," he puts forth a project that offends a majority of Americans and deals a significant setback to the broader acceptance of Muslim-Americans. It's a little like Billy "White Shoes" Johnson claiming the only reason he moonwalks after scoring a touchdown is to lower tensions on the football field and raise the other team's spirits.

Whether the Cordoba Initiative ever gets its way with the Ground Zero Mosque, it may well have a lasting legacy at odds with its stated intention: By damaging the very moderates and progressives who actually view New York, and the nation as a whole, as a tolerant melting pot, and strengthening the position demagogues on both sides, it will almost certainly deal a setback to interfaith relations. It will also help to hobble the Democratic party. Which just might have been the point all along. 

Either that, or it's merely a coincidence that this controversy has erupted now, during crucial mid-term elections. In which case we can all go back to what we were doing before—either denouncing the Park51 Mosque as an affront to Americans, or championing it as a symbol of our fundamental rights-playing our accustomed roles in a drama that seems too perfect, somehow, to believe. 

MORE > Top 10 Superstitions That Spook Wall Street