"Ben Affleck demanded..."

"...PBS program hide his slave-owning ancestor"

Ben Affleck insisted on censoring the fact that one of his ancestors owned slaves from PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” the Sony email hack has revealed.

In a hacked Sony email from July 22, 2014, now available on WikiLeaks, the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., writes to Sony USA chief Michael Lynton asking for advice: “One of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors–the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He’s a megastar. What do we do?”

Twitter JeffB commented...

Hilarious not b/c this somehow makes him guilty of anything, rather b/c he obv'sly THOUGHT it did. White guilt taken to glorious absurdity.
— Jeff B@AoSHQDD (@EsotericCD) April 18, 2015

Damn if you do, Damn if you don't

Who really wants to go and see The Interview?

"Sony Pictures Demands That News Agencies Delete ‘Stolen’ Data"

The studio “does not consent to your possession, review, copying, dissemination, publication, uploading, downloading or making any use” of the information, Mr. Boies wrote in the three-page letter, which was distributed Sunday morning.

 

“If you don’t comply with this request,” he wrote, Sony “will have no choice but to hold you responsible for any damage or loss arising from such use or dissemination by you.”

 

Does David Boies have a leg to stand on here?

Sony hacked emails show Maureen Dowd is a hack?

"Leaked emails from Sony suggest that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd promised to show Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal’s husband, Bernard Weinraub, — a former Times reporter — a version of a column featuring Pascal before publication."

The end result was a column that painted Pascal in such a good light that she engaged in a round of mutual adulation with Dowd over email after its publication. It also scored Pascal points back at the studio, with Sony’s then-communications-chief calling the column “impressive.”

The column, published after the Academy Awards earlier this year, lamented how “Oscar voters and industry top brass are still overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged.”

What does it mean and will anybody care?