By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 11 years ago

What We Missed

An International AIDS conference opened in Washington DC today. Sex workers, excluded from the conference in the U.S., protested their exclusion by organizing their own conference, the  Sex Worker Freedom Festival, in Kolkata, India.

As expected, Evangelical leaders ask themselves WWJD and decide it would be blame liberals and the media for the Aurora shootings and say that only Christians will get into heaven.

In light of revelations that Joe Paterno helped conceal the allegations of sexual abuse, Penn State’s new president had a 7-foot tall statue of the coach removed from outside the football stadium, calling the sculpture an “obstacle to healing.” The Paterno family disagreed, stating that the removal “does not serve the victims.” That seems pretty presumptuous, especially given how serving the victims was clearly not a priority for the late Joe Paterno.

Meanwhile, Penn State is facing penalties from the NCAA including a $60 million fine.

One of the best responses to the Aurora shootings comes from… Jason “George from Seinfeld” Alexander.

Sports are so gay: Grindr crashed in London following the arrival of athletes for the Olympics.

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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