Here are the three biggest hand-wringing fears/misnomers people have had about gay marriage, even those who support it:

1. This unimportant issue will cost Obama re-election!

2. Marriage equality would have happened by now, if not for those on-the-down low, religious, self-hating, homophobic black folks!

3. Marriage equality will never pass when it comes up for a vote, because it never has before, and therefore never will, especially in a state with a lot black voters!

Ever since President Obama came out for same-sex marriage, all three have been proven to be utter bullshit. Let's explore.

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For years, Chuck Philips produced some of the best reporting on the shooting deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls

Last week, a trial in Brooklyn started off with a strange twist. At the federal criminal trial of James Rosemond -- a/k/a Jimmy Henchman -- one of the first things Rosemond's attorney did was kick an unemployed journalist named Chuck Philips out of the courtroom by naming him a witness in the case.

Philips was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times for 18 years covering crime and entertainment. In 1999, he won a Pulitzer Prize with his colleague, Michael Hiltzik, for a series examining corruption in the entertainment industry. In 1996, he won the George Polk Award for articles about black art and culture in America. A year later, he won a National Assn. of Black Journalists Award for in-depth coverage of the rap music business.

For years, he investigated the shooting deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, producing some of the most important research into those crimes. And then, in 2008, Chuck Philips' career in journalism suddenly ended. Now, for the first time, he's speaking at length about how that came about, and how he became a witness in a federal trial. At the conclusion, we have a statement from the Los Angeles Times, which I received after informing its attorney that we were printing this story -- Tony Ortega, Ed.

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Hey, Steven Thrasher, I know we've never met, and all, but this is me. Cheers, pal!

​Yesterday, veteran Voice scribe Steven Thrasher apparently spent a good chunk of his day kvetching about me in the form of a lengthy blog post, in which he called me a racist. He then challenged me (without ever actually speaking to me -- or replying to multiple emails -- of course) to some sort of pissing match under the guise of the Voice's grand tradition of in-house bickering.

While I can think of a million things I'd rather be doing than responding to Mr. Thrasher's uber-public request for a fight, I'm not one to turn down a good pissing match. 

Before we get started, however, I don't think we've been properly introduced...

My name's James King -- I'm the new guy here at the Voice and I'll be covering politics, crime, and any other nugget of local news I find interesting enough to share with our adoring audience. However, if you're looking for a news blog full of kitten videos, I'm not your guy.

I was born and raised in New York (despite Mr. Thrasher's insistence on showing me "how we roll in New York," I've actually been here before), but have spent the last six years living in Phoenix, Arizona, the last three of which I spent pissing off Hells Angels, laughing at Governor Jan Brewer, and making the life of America's most racist sheriff, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, as miserable as fucking possible -- all while working for the Voice's sister paper, the Phoenix New Times.

While some of my new colleagues here in the Big Apple have taken me out for drinks to offer advice, give me the lay of the land, and help me settle in, Mr. Thrasher decided to treat me like the new kid who farted in a seventh grade English class -- he rolled out the welcome mat with nothing but insults, again, without ever having met me, or having the cojones to bash me to my face.

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"In the old days, reporters, in the pages of the Voice, went after one another. Readers enjoyed taking sides in these civil wars, and we ourselves sometimes discovered what we should have known before we so confidently wrote."

So wrote Nat Hentoff in "Why I Oppose the Downtown Mosque: How I questioned an imam's motives and broke Tom Robbins's heart" in September of 2010, when Hentoff went after his colleague, friend and onetime union shop steward.

Indeed, there is a long, proud, half-century old tradition here at the Voice of writers duking it out with words within our own paper. "I do not want to get in the way of what looks like it has the making of a really good feud (the old Voice excelled at these; usually we had them with each other)" Robbins himself commented on another 2010 Voice article, where Editor in Chief Tony Ortega got into the ring with Louis Black of the Austin Chronicle. (After Robbins dropped in, he ended his message, "gentlemen, please go back to ripping each other up.")

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Travel + Leisure Magazine has once again declared New Yorkers the rudest of all the rude peoples of America. Congrats New Yorkers. You know what they say...any publicity is good publicity, and if you can be rude here, you can be rude anywhere! According to our pals at T+L, which based the rankings on input from their esteemed readers, "The Big Apple reclaims its heavyweight title in hostility, a dubious honor it last held in 2009 -- and a reputation it has had for much longer ("You talkin' to me?"). Besides its fast pace, New York City is also No. 1 for diversity. As a result, you might encounter unfamiliar mannerisms that aren't meant to be mean but come across that way. Deep down, voters probably love New York for its flamboyant, bird-flipping spirit. After all, it's also the No. 1 city for great theater." But what does that MEAN? And what rude things do we do? We've compiled a list of 55, but, please, feel free to add your own. To assume there are limits to our rudeness would be rude.

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Just in time for the holidays, here's your Internet beef (it concerns charity this time): On one side, there's Paypal, your go-to method for paying for things online without using a credit card. On the other, there's Regretsy, the hilarious "fail blog of hand crafts." To get everyone up to speed: Regretsy set up a gift exchange where people could buy gifts for 200 needy kids. They raised more money than expected, and with the extra cash, planned to send a monetary gift to the families along with the presents. However, as Helen writes on Regretsy, they used the "Donate" button -- a no-no, apparently -- Paypal says it's only for nonprofits. So Paypal froze the account and is making her refund the donations.

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Makhnevich

There's an interesting case in the news today involving New York dentist Stacy Makhnevich, who is facing a class-action lawsuit from Robert Lee, a former patient. Makhnevich, who calls herself "the Classical Singer Dentist of New York," treated Lee for a toothache, but not before he signed a contract promising not to say anything bad about her online -- he claims he was in such pain he signed it in "a situation of duress" to get the treatment. Later, however, after he says she overcharged him $4,000, sent his records to the wrong insurance company, and refused to provide copies of records so he could submit them himself, he shared that wrongdoing on various sites, including Yelp. Makhnevich turned around and accused Lee of breaching the contract he'd signed and threatened to sue him.

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Ever popular for its philosophy of affordability, if not for the crowding that can happen in its free-yoga-love studios, Yoga to the People is being sued by a powerful enemy, yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, the man behind -- obviously -- Bikram yoga. Bikram, if you don't know yoga, is a 90-minute program featuring 26 poses done in a 105-degree room (tagline: "authentic hot yoga that's changing lives all over the world.") Certainly, it is making people sweat a lot more than they would otherwise. The trouble, according to Choudhury's lawyer, Robert Gilchrest, is that Yoga to the People's founder Gregory Gumucio ripped off Choudhury's yoga moves which, in fact, Choudhury has copyrighted, for a Yoga to the People class called "Traditional Hot Yoga." YOGA BEEF!

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It's not unusual for big companies to be accused of stealing from the little guys. (Remember that whole Urban Outfitters drama earlier this year?) And we're the first to admit that sometimes really good ideas happen to come to different people at the same time. But it's hard to imagine that the most recent case -- involving artist Ophelia Chong, who was informed last Friday by a student that Starbucks' packaging design looked quite a lot like something Chong herself had created -- is somehow the coincidence of creative minds thinking alike. As Hyperallergic puts it, "Ophelia Chong's work looks a hell of a lot like that Starbucks illustration."

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Tired, perhaps, of protesting gay marriage, as well as the funerals of soldiers, people who have died from AIDs, and little girls, Westboro Baptist Church, the hate-based Kansas "religious" sect focused on protesting tragedies or equal rights in order to make people really mad -- so that they can then sue if and when those people get angry and attempt to retaliate physically (note: don't do this, they want you to) -- is now protesting...Fashion Week. Which is just so weird, and, in some ways, once you get beyond the hate-mongering, kind of hilarious. The stuff of good cinema, at the very least.

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