"Stuff White People Like." It seemed so innocent for those first few hours. Now the whole format has been squeezed dry and used up like an old bottle of shampoo. Which is Something Hipsters Hate.

No, not a how-to. James Crowley, the Cambridge police officer who hauled Henry Louis Gates to jail for breaking into his own house, teaches police recruits in Lowell, Mass., a class on how to confront racial issues on the job.

The sensibility of all hipsters have two axes: 1. "irony" 2. "alternative". This weekend I got hipster-lit, myspace-account broker, and quirky-NYM-darling Tao Lin to help me plot current events on The Hipster Matrix.

The AP is currently suing (and being sued by) Shepard Fairey over his famous 'Obama' image, stolen from the AP. Here's the front page of the AP photo site on Friday. Ha. SUBTLETY.

Rodale, publisher of Men's Health, Prevention, Running magazine, and other clean living rags, doesn't allow its employees to smoke anywhere on its property. So instead they all go smoke in the park across the street.

Is AOL email now retro cool? One longtime AOL user sure hopes so!

It turns out Plenty was paying attention to the wrong climate change: A tipster tells us the environmental magazine laid off almost the entire staff today after a funding round fell through.

A "landmark" court ruling in the UK means that it is now legal to make jokes there (without having to pay millions in defamation damages). Jokes about Elton John, especially.

Liberal media watchdog Media Matters has revealed its true colors. In an email blast just now touting the "most inane punditry of 2008," MM offers this option: "Barnes: Obama 'not strong on national security' because he opposed war 'when the entire world believed' Obama had WMD." THEY MEANT 'SADDAM' BUT THEY WROTE 'OBAMA.' When will Media Matters stop being so racist?

Hahaha. Some New Jersey girls are pissed because they were caught on camera with douchebag Jersey guys! Three "Hot Chicks" are suing the author and publisher of the fine educational volume Hot Chicks With Douchebags, because they were pictured therein. It's destroyed their reputations, down there in Jersey! Because they were depicted as "females who date dubious men." Outrageous! Here are the actual plaintiffs in question:

The ad industry is perfectly confident that this whole "meltdown of the US economy" thing will be but a blip on their radar. Uh, as long as you weren't on that AIG account. The broke ass insurance giant has (wisely) decided to pull all of its corporate advertising for the remainder of the year, which will save them slightly less than 0.1% of the $85 billion they now owe to you, the taxpayer. More importantly it will save them the absolute humiliation of the ads themselves, in which a little tot can sleep safely knowing that his family has AIG and its "Strength to be there." [In debtor's prison]. You won't have to see this bullshit any more:

Bad news, Obama partisans: a prominent female Hillary supporter has openly defected to John McCain, calling the Democratic candidate "an elitist." That supporter? Lynn Forester de Rothschild. You know, of the Rothschilds. The beloved Real American, salt of the earth banking and finance dynasty. Their very name is synonymous with heartland values like a life of suffocating spiritually empty glamor and excess. So we're sure John McCain is thrilled that he now has the support of Lady de Rothschild. Except, you know, he actually probably is happy about this, because she has lots and lots and lots of money. Oh but Barack Obama still has the support of America's real elites. [Political Ticker/CNN]

Gadzooks. Paris Hilton has been accused of not doing enough publicity for something. The sort-of heiress and other things-doer basically lives for that stuff, so it's odd to hear that an entertainment company is suing her for inadequately press-whoring for something called National Lampoon's Pledge This!.

There was a press conference scheduled at the beach in Queens yesterday, so a Congressman could talk about how he was getting much-needed funding for more lifeguards. But it had to be canceled, because a dead, drowned body washed up on the beach. That's not funny. [NYS]

This is the problem with being an editor or publisher or writer or cartoonist or even blogger and having some small lingering trace of a sense of irony-sometimes you accidentally assume that the Vast and Mysterious "Audience" shares that subversive French sense. Thankfully, after what will presumably be a full week of Outrage and Demands for Apologies, David Remnick and his New Yorker will never make that mistake again. As you might've seen, the cover of that influential publication this week shows Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim, and he is Terrorist Fist-Bumping his aggrieved wife as a flag burns in the Oval Office. This obvious and heavy-handed satire has enraged Democrats and liberal media critics because now they are pretty sure this nation of child-like imbeciles will believe it to be an un-retouched photograph from the FUTURE. New Yorker editor David Remnick defended the cover to the Huffington Post. Did you know that sometimes that magazine makes "jokes"?

Acoustic versions of highly produced pop songs are the new easiest irony, as evinced by yesterday's most watched Youtube video, an acoustic version of Four Minutes to Save the World. This is just-add-water cultural criticism that bespeaks no thought or compelling effort, but which is publicly lauded for adhering to the structure of an actual parody. Ironic T-shirts, I'm talking to you. The acoustic cover amusements began with Alanis Morisette's version of My Humps. That actually was funny, My Humps has stupid lyrics, and underscoring them with legitimate sentiment was something like a commentary. Then there were the thousands of Umbrella covers. At the beginning of hers, Mandy Moore talks about how she doesn't like pop music. This is precisely what's wrong with this trend: Mandy Moore is not allowed to condescend to pop music, she is pop music. After the jump, the Four Minutes video.

In what may or may not be an irony of some kind, but should probably not actually be noted, because it's sort of ghoulish and in poor taste, political journalism superstar Tim Russert went out today with a Friday newsdump, that hallowed Washington DC practice of burying news no one wants to see. Earlier today, June 13, 2008, Russert suffered a fatal heart attack. While working, obviously. Because he worked a lot, and he always looked like he loved it.

Michael Roberts, the Vanity Fair fashion and style director who attributed the uproar over the sexy Miley Cyrus photos to unsophisticated Americans who don't handle "chic pictures" as well as his fellow Europeans, is not just dispensing cultural criticism through the media: he has a book coming out! And in a fun coincidence, the 112-page tome is going to be called Fashion Victims: The Catty Catalogue of Stylish Casualties, from A to Z. Perhaps he'll add a section addressing the fact that "The whole kiddie porn prurient angle seems to be worryingly sour grapes from other magazines that didn't get a picture like this." After all, at Vanity Fair "We don't do cheesy teen pictures. We do chic pictures and pictures that are beautiful portraits." Alrighty then. Just for kicks, another now-ironic quote from last October's Telegraph profile of Roberts:

It was self-righteous and catered to the rich. But was the New York Times Magazine "Green Issue" green enough? Not according to anyone who actually cares about the future of this precious island we call Planet Earth. The magazine was printed on non-recycled paper. Egad! That means all those eco-friendly car ads were actually leaving a gigantic carbon footprint. Vanity Fair's annual green issues are also printed on non-recylced paper. It's like these magazines really just care about the advertising market for environmentalism instead of the actual environment. Let the Times Magazine Green Issue be a lesson: Never care about anything unless you're prepared to be called out as total a hypocrite. [Folio]

Incompetent and angry superflack Ronn [sic] Torossian and his agency, 5WPR, are all about creating powerful connections among the real movers and shakers in New York. So if you're a client or "FRIEND OF THE FIRM"—and if you are, you have some serious self-examination to do—you're invited to a special 5WPR Speaker Series event featuring Dr. Keith Ablow, succinctly described on his website as a "Forensic psychiatrist and author of thrillers." His topic for the evening? "Friction in the workplace and the necessity for conflict/resolution and chemistry building." What better subject for a night with Ronn, a man popular with employees, potential clients, the media, and feminists alike? Anyone lucky enough to attend this ironic event, please send us a report. The full—and predictably ineloquent—invitation is below.