In a validation of stupidity not seen since, well, NBC's entire lineup, two institutions that have gone viral for their idiocy are now reaping the benefits of attention.

First, there's there Amy's Baking Co. in Scottsdale, Ariz., an establishment that became instantly notorious after owners Amy and Samy Bouzaglo were unflatteringly featured on Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" – and went on a hilariously bonkers social media rampage. As the Phoenix Business Journal reported on Wednesday, the restaurant this week has become "a tourist attraction as cars slowly drove by to ogle, take photos and try to eat at the bakery and bistro."

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As the sound bite-frenzied media descended in the wake of the dramatic rescue, it was local Good Samaritan and Big Mac aficionado Charles Ramsey who brought an earthy levity – and blunt racial context -- to the proceedings. Sure, in about an hour there will be a thousand autotuned remixes and parodies, but they will never, ever do better than the real thing.

That he's a hero who didn't hesitate to help a stranger in a moment of extreme crisis is indisputable. But Ramsey didn't just assist Amanda Berry as she fled the home owned by 52-year-old former bus driver Ariel Castro. He then turned around and wove the tale into the most straight-shooting, shockingly funny interview about violence since Antoine Dodson told his neighbors that a would-be rapist is "climbing in your windows, he's snatching your people up." 

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The Hollands filed the suit against Cox Media, claiming "invasion of privacy, misappropriation of likeness, defamation and emotional distress" after the image of Adam, who was born with Down syndrome, began appearing as a punch line on various websites. Most notably, Cox's Florida radio station WHPT-FM's Cowhead Show reportedly altered the photo of Adam to make it appear he was holding a sign touting its "Retarded News."

The station's director has apologized, sort of, by issuing an email that says, "The segment 'Retarded News' is designed to highlight odd stories that are seemingly always in the news. Stories such as botched bank robberies and failed crimes. These stories are NOT about disabled individuals." I guess if you're using the image of someone with Down syndrome on your "Retarded News," but not actually talking about people with Down syndrome, he thinks it's somehow ok.

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In the spot, hilariously titled "Pipe Job," a grim, middle-aged man is seen in his garage, methodically taping and running a pipe into his car. He then sits inside stoically, breathing deeply, his face a mask of weary woe. Cut to nightfall, and the man emerging from the garage very much alive. The tag line? "The new iX35 has 100 percent water emissions." Apparently someone thinks Hyundai's target demographic is the depressed, unsuccessfully suicidal car-buyer market. Way to own it!

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We, by the way, are your teachers and employers and future employers and law enforcement officers. But don't take my word for it. Instead, learn from the shining examples of very dumb and very public behavior in just the last few days, and then henceforth, I beg you, pause for just a moment before opening your mouth or hitting the "send" button.

The most recent unfortunate victim of a yawning gap in internal filtering devices is the newly unemployed A.J. Clemente. For about five minutes this weekend, Clemente was a news anchor at KFYR-TV in North Dakota. But in an apparent case of nerves not seen since Albert Brooks perspired his way through the headlines in "Broadcast News," Clemente obliviously kicked off his debut performance by looking downcast and muttering a short string of obscenities. He would later chalk up the mini-meltdown to fear of flubbing the name of London marathon winner Tsegaye Kebede.

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The stampede began, as anything Facebook-related does, with George Takei. The actor and social media icon posted the HRC logo earlier this week, with a note explaining that, "For those friends wondering, this special 'red' equality symbol signifies that marriage equality really is all about love. Thanks to the Human Rights Campaign for this effort. Please consider changing your profile today in support -- esp if you are a straight ally."

And what Mr. Sulu says, goes. Throughout Tuesday, Takei also posted a few comical variations on the avatar theme, including my inevitable favorite, the one featuring Grumpy Cat. By the end of the day Facebook had all but turned red, with plain equal signs, glittery equal signs and ones tweaked to feature such legendary couples as Bert and Ernie and Peppermint Patty and Marcie. The always enthusiastic drinking community even got in on the act, with both Smirnoff and Absolut updating their FB avatars to reflect their own twists on equality.

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The wire asserts that "London Police say Banksy’s real name is Paul William Horner, a 39-year old male born in Bristol, England. The BBC has also confirmed this information with his PR agent Jo Brooks and the website that acts as a handling service on behalf of the artist, Pest Control."

But a quick Google search indicates that a satire blog with the super unofficial name of "Super Official News" had the same post up 17 hours ago. And at the bottom of the blog, a disclaimer calling its editor (and so-called Banksy identity), Paul Horner, an American hero:

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Whatever went down between Breezy and Frank Ocean that led Ocean to be "desirous of prosecution" will never be anything more than another tale of Brown's legendary tantrum tossing. Since his 2009 assault on Rihanna — for which he's still on probation— Brown has pitched a fit on the set of "Good Morning America" and mixed it up at a nightclub with Drake. But did you know that the Grammy-winning convicted felon is also an artist? A sad, tortured artist, natch.

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When, during Monday's inauguration lunch, the First Lady made the eyeroll that went instantly viral, it wasn't just her Joe Biden–worthy, "Oh, hell no" disdain for John Boehner that made the clip noteworthy. It was the way that she shifted her body at the table when Boehner tapped her famous arm, the way she planted her left elbow on the table. The First Lady's elbow. On the table. I can't even.

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"I can FINALLY share this!" she wrote. "This was 10 weeks ago when I was having my C-section. Dr. Sawyer broke my water and my daughter reached up out of my stomach and grabbed the doctor's finger and my hubby caught this special moment. Truly amazing."

It is indeed a special moment. In the black-and-white photo, you can see an attending hand pushing Atkins' belly up as a small hand reaches past an umbilical cord and around the wet finger of the delivery doctor. It's an arresting image, one that captures baby Neveah – that's "heaven" spelled backward -- at precisely the instant she made her Oct. 9 entrance into the world. Her first human touch.

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Shit Girls Say

It began as a Twitter feed in 2011, but it was in 2012 that Graydon Sheppard and Kyle Humphrey's devastating drag parody of feminine phrases truly took over the world. Though blowing the lid off the Twinsies!-peppered world of chick vernacular earned Sheppard and Humphrey their share of critics, it also inspired a treasure trove of witty imitations, notably Chesca Leigh's also-gone-viral Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls. It even went old school and became a book. Shut UP! 

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From the beginning, the Lifetime movie, casting reliable train wreck Lindsay Lohan as the scandalous Elizabeth Taylor in her Richard Burton–marrying heyday, was dubiously touted as LiLo's big comeback vehicle. That she had made it through the shooting of an entire project without getting fired seemed sufficient, in at least the minds of Lohan and her publicists, to signal a triumph, the beginning of Lohan being known again as an actress and not just that lady who keeps fighting with her parents and driving on sidewalks. Lifetime eagerly — and with all apparent seriousness — promoted Sunday's "world premiere event" with a heavy rotation of television ads and billboards featuring a violet-eyed Lohan groaning under the weight of the world's largest ring pop. Yet even when the early reviews faintly praised Lohan's "almost decent" performance and debated how calculated  its "pure genius … for belly laughs" was, who could have predicted it would become quite the glorious collective bonding moment it was?

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Yes, it was a prepared speech. And yes, the same morons who found it distasteful earlier this week when the president got choked up are even unhappier now that this – and I'm quoting a Chicago Tribune commenter here – "frickin' crybaby" is staying put in the White House. But plenty of others – like apparently every human being on my Twitter feed right now – saw that video as an affirmation of exactly whom we were voting for on Tuesday. It's a video of a leader with a heart.

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You know it the easily exploitable moment it happens. It's when Mitt Romney trains his cool cyborg eye on Jim Lehrer and says, "I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I like PBS. I love Big Bird." It's when Uncle Joe from Scranton cannot keep a straight face around the guy with the backward baseball cap. It's when a candidate declares his commitment to moving women forward in the workplace by stating, "We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.  I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Could you help us find folks?' And they brought us whole binders full of women."

Binders full of women. Whaaaaaa?

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Shockingly, Livingston did not immediately look down at her own body, suddenly realize she is not built like Brooklyn Decker, issue an immediate apology to her viewers for having the gall to appear on television, and go into hiding pending the loss of a Kenneth W. Krause-approved number of pounds.

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It's the most attention-getting spot in Luvs' recent witty campaign on the triumph of the maternal experience, and a mainstream victory for nursing moms. Tied to a piece of Nielsen data that revealed that second-time mothers are more likely to buy the brand, the Luvs series features a quartet of evolutionary "first and second" baby experiences, including a horrified adventure in temperature-taking and a fumble through a public restroom diaper change. But it's the lady who transforms from the shy new mother hiding her baby under a blanket and gazing apologetically around the room into the confident veteran who can look at her infant and crack, "She's already ordered," while her toddler issues a "Got a problem with that?" stare who's the standout. Sure, that second-timers statistic may be a little skewed, but the other message — that breast-feeding should be no big thing — is rock solid. This week AdWeek praised the spot for its "humor, skill, and grace," while Jezebel declared it "pretty cool."

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Earlier this year, Nye reignited his feisty call for attention to climate change, including battling the CNN anchor, who dismissed him as "the kooky guy who doesn't know what he's talking about" by shrugging him off, saying, "Yeah, I can read graphs, and there's a couple of things you can't dispute." Back then he added, in a phrase that should be plastered in every newsroom and classroom and etched into every laptop and smartphone: "I appreciate that we want to show two sides of the stories — there's a tradition in journalism that goes back quite a ways, I guess — but the two sides aren't equal here."

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So let's give props to the Catholic priest Paul Kelly of Maryborough, Australia, who took a stand against -- and illuminated the horrific stupidity -- of one of his nation's most cruelly backward laws. As Kelly explains in the Change.org petition he started, "A loophole in Queensland law allows people accused of murder to defend themselves in court by claiming 'gay panic' -- that is, if someone who they think is gay 'comes onto' them, the sheer panic they feel is partial justification for murder." And you thought Stand Your Ground was dangerously insane? There are places in the world where the mere perception that someone of your own gender might be into you gives you the right to kill him or her.

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On Wednesday, our greatest foe in the war on "sissy pizza" answered your prayers and launched "a bold solution to the rampant ignorance being thrust upon the people of this nation by lazy and blatantly biased news media outlets." Welcome to CainTV, the Web network whose motto brags, "We are not stupid." And nothing says "We are not stupid" like a rant against billionaire "Warren Buffet" [sic]. I remember him. He's the guy who made his fortune in Sizzler sneeze guards, right?

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