Normally we're all about the jokes here on the Roundup but even funnyman David Letterman is very, very serious today, following his jawdropping "little story" last night:

Meanwhile, two of our favourite writers have gone deep and dark -- Shawn Syms exhaustively covers the criminalization of HIV while Paul Gallant examines the poor state of gay activism in a recent piece for This magazine.  We're near, we're queer...whatever.

Down south again, the right-wing drive to overthrow the US government is picking up steam, according to this caller on Michaelangelo Signorile's radio show:

While creepy, this whole movement is still ridiculous considering that "socialist" Barack Obama is proving to be George W. Bush's biggest fan.

Good grief, more depressing news:  Lady Gaga and Kanye West were going to tour together but poor sales have cancelled it all (I smell a Taylor Swift plot!): 

This was surprising news:  Lady Gaga and Kanye West were going to tour together?

 And finally, worst of all, CALIFORNIA HAS FALLEN INTO THE SEA:

Yeah, it's just a big clip from the upcoming absolutely-fucking-ridiculous disaster movie 2012.  I couldn't maintain such seriousness forever, you understand.  Have a great weekend!

It's pretty clear to everyone this morning that sharing a stage with Kanye West is a terrible idea (Mike Myers could've told you that) but while we all pile on him for his overwhelming douchebaggery at the MTV Video Awards last night, we run the risk of ignoring the upwards of 80,000 assholes who descended on Washington yesterday to protest America's Marxist, Communist, racist, fascist, Nazi leader:

I'm sorry -- are we all talking about bland, middle-of-the-road Barack Obama here? And for all their screaming over the President's "socialist indoctrination" to schoolchildren last Tuesday, check out this kid -- now starring in my nightmares:

"We want our country back!" they shriek, which is both hilarious -- considering that they had it for eight years and it didn't work out so well -- and horrifying, since the "white culture" these douchebags are fighting to protect is currently fascism's greatest practitioner: cutting off free debate in the churches, dictating what movies the public has access to and, in Atlanta this weekend, conducting another police raid on a gay bar. Here, "teabaggers," is a protest rally that's actually about freedom:

Now fortunately for us, our ideological opponents are very, very stupid -- how else to explain US conservative leader Newt Gingrich giving a business achievement award to a porn studio? -- but we rail about this stuff here because stupidity kills. 

Just ask Alan Turning, the gay WWII hero and inventor of the computer who finally got an apology from the British government for chemically castrating him in 1952 and driving him to suicide.  55 years later, they apparently feel just awful about the whole thing!

But hey, at least when gay people are attacked now, the apologies come quicker.  This weekend, a healthy portion of Thunder Bay, Ontario turned out to support Jake Raynard after his horrific beating a week ago:

A public protest by smart, humane people is a thing of beauty and it makes me proud of this country and its people.  And if I sound too harsh on the Americans, nothing's permanent -- Beyoncé proved last night that damage from douchebaggery can always be undone: