Last week you loved Clarence Ramsey—that is until you heard about this. Now you feel uncomfortable about that.

WELL, HAVE NO FEAR, because here's the NEWEST person for you to love on the internet: Melinda Brown Duncan BAY-BEE, who has a few choice and hilariously filthy (and on point) words to share with the leadership of Detroit. I'd vote for her anytime, and anywhere. (That is until we hear that she did something terrible. What a fickle internet we are!)

The always-awesome David Carr at the New York Times writes:

Will Bourne, who became editor in chief of The Village Voice in November, and Jessica Lustig, the deputy editor since January, are leaving the weekly publication.

They met with the staff at 11 a.m. on Thursday and said that Christine Brennan, executive editor of Voice Media Group, had instructed them to lay off or drastically reduce the role of five employees on the 20-person staff. Rather than carrying out the cuts, they resigned and left immediately.

Good for Bourne and Lustig. Cutting (or drastically reducing) the staff of the Voice by a quarter would have been a truly awful experience. And working in that post-cut newsroom would probably have been worse than being unemployed. If these cuts go through, I can only imagine that the Voice's scope is going to have to be drastically reduced.

I used to work for a TV news station, so I know when an on-air personality is being TORTURED by the staff. In this clip, a TV weatherman is trying valiantly to be serious while reporting on heavy rainstorms, but is beset by an absolutely hilarious hiccup attack that just keeps getting worse. (Meanwhile in the control room, they could've dumped out of the segment to let him get some water—but people in control rooms are dicks who love this kind of stuff... SO NO WAY. I know, I was a control room dick.)

A reporter in China stops her wedding to report on this past weekend's massive earthquake in the region—while still in her wedding dress. That's adorable! (Or is it? Stand by for the movie version, Runaway Reporter Bride!)

North Dakota's newest news anchor stumbles out of the gay fucking gate. (Via Towleroad.)

Quarter-sized hail pounded the Houston area this week, which was pretty terrible. On the upside, we've discovered the best amateur meteorologist ever, who I would watch every day of my life on TV—because I love her so much. And now, let's go to Houston's Michelle Clark at the Action News Weather KABOOOYOW! desk!

Because everything has to be a popularity contest, the Alliance For Audited Media has released its numbers for which celebs garned the highest and lowest pickup rates for grocery store glossies like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. It's a somewhat inscrutable look into the mind of the last-minute impulse consumer's attraction to Lady Gaga (who had the highest selling Vogue cover of the year), and somewhat puzzling rejection of Rihanna (her Vogue appearance rated 32% below the average copies sold). This handy slideshow tours you through the highlights and lowlights, if you want numerical confirmation of, say, the Kardashian's (possibly? please?) waning popularity or to wring your hands over the stupidity of customers who failed to pick up Architectural Digest's issue featuring Valentino and his pugs—don't worry, I've got a copy you can borrow.

• Fashionologie
• Guess how this one did.

1. Red State blogger Erick Erickson has caused a shitstorm on conservative blogs with this morning's editorial about how the conservative media has gone crazy:

I think conservative media is failing to advance ideas and stories. Certainly part of that is because the general media has an ideological bias against conservatives, which makes it harder for the media to take our views seriously. But many conservatives are, instead of working doubly hard to overcome that bias, just yelling louder about the same things. The echo in the chamber has gotten so loud it is not well understood outside the echo chamber in the mainstream press and in the public. It translates only as anger and noise, neither of which are conducive to the art of persuasion.

Conservatives are trying so hard to highlight controversies, no matter how trivial, we have forgotten the basics of reporting...The “Obamaphone” is a great example of this. Conservatives laughed out loud at the video of the lady saying Barack Obama had given her a phone. Conservatives used it as an example of all that was wrong with the expansion of the welfare state under Barack Obama. What many conservatives missed was that the program was a pre-existing program. In fact, the “Obamaphone” idea goes back to the Reagan Administration, but the present program was implemented in 2008 when George W. Bush was President. Government funds are not even used directly.

Like other truth-tellers in the Republican Party, Erickson will probably get drummed out of the—well, I almost said "drummed out of the union," but a conservative blogger's union is kind of an impossible idea, isn't it? How about "Erickson will probably get kicked out of Galt's Gulch," instead.

2. In other conservative media news, weekly conservative magazine Human Events is ending print publication, effective immediately.

3. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin just keeps repeating untrue shit she reads in chain e-mails forwarded by Republican grandpas and grandmas. Way to stay relevant, "governor!"

..a fact which doesn't bode well for the latest provocation by Camille Paglia, the world's preeminent chronicler of the importance of Madonna's 1984-1991 output. Paglia begins her 2,000-word Sunday Times think piece "Why Rihanna Is the New Diana" with the above mischaracterization of one of her main characters, and hopes sentences like "Diana and Rihanna began as sensitive, wounded, but appealingly bubbly and good-natured provincial girls who slowly discovered their own photogenic virtuosity and began to conceptualize themselves as living sculpture for the lens..." will inspire readers to purchase the full story.

Read the free-and-worth-every-penny excerpt here.